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The mother board room assembly is a semi-regular gathering of leading company executives in a boardroom or seminar room to discuss important issues, satisfying their fiduciary duties to shareholders as well as the broader business community. Of these meetings, panels decide how to deal with various problems, such as reimbursement, new business hires and dividend […]

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Paula Dobriansky, Cory Gardner, and Matthew Pottinger to join Board of Directors of the International Republican Institute (IRI)
The post IRI Welcomes New Board Members appeared first on International Republican Institute.

…to 1% y/y [1]. Their Leading Economic Indicator edges up slightly [2]. Justin Ho discussed their brightening view on Friday's Marketplace. Interestingly, the Conference Board sees near zero growth in 2024Q2-Q3. This is consistent with the term spread based predictions which show a high probability of recession in 2024Q2. Figure 1: GDP (bold black), CBO […]

Two distinguished Californians—John Chiang and Dave Puglia—joined PPIC's board of directors yesterday. Together, they bring to our organization a wealth of leadership experience, a strong record of public service, and a rich knowledge of the forces shaping our state.

Today we are announcing that Global Voices' Executive Director Ivan Sigal will be leaving Global Voices and transitioning to a new chapter later this year.

Plus: the Supreme Court weighs housing fees and homelessness, YIMBYs bet on smaller, more focused reforms, and a new paper finds legalizing more housing does in fact bring costs down.

The Australian Institute of International Affairs (AIIA) is seeking to recruit a new Research Chair. The AIIA is a not-for-profit organisation that provides an impartial forum for debate by arranging lectures, seminars and workshops. These range from intimate discussions to large public forums. Each year the AIIA hosts more than 150 of these events between […]

Florida Republicans and police unions insist that toothless civilian oversight boards are still more scrutiny than police deserve.

The shortcomings of CPP 2.0 are so numerous and complicated that the best path forward is for the EPA to go back to the drawing board.

From clown show to freak show, perhaps only the Cypress Black Bayou Recreation and Water
Conservation District Board of Commissioners could pull off such ignominy
in a span of just over a week.

The regular Jun.
21 meeting featured comedy, doubtlessly unintentional on the part of those
who provided it, that for most viewers in Bossier Parish turned surreal upon realization
this was their tax dollars at work. It occurred a couple of months after the
Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that lower
courts had to judge whether Executive Director Robert Berry, who also serves as
the appointee of the Bossier Parish Police Jury to the Board, was in violation of dual officeholding
law by having both posts – with the majority opinion issuing stern instructions
that made clear any lower court would have to rule that he was.

That meeting demonstrated several things:

The Board's other members – Walt Bigby, Jerry Fowler,
Kelly Long, and Gary Wyche, parish political insiders all – had little clue as
to what actually has been going on, or even the rules and regulations they are
in charge of, in the district. Their general vacuousness reflected an unhealthy
reliance on Berry to perform as their agent, reversing the intended flow of authority
where instead of him acting on the orders of the Board its members followed his
directions. One resident who had interacted with Berry on a matter even stated publicly
that Berry bragged how he led the Board around by the nose.In over her head was its counsel Alex Vozzella
from the politically-connected Ayres, Shelton, Williams, Benson & Paine
firm, who kept stumbling particularly on statute and administrative law relating
to contracting. This led to her needing backup at the Jun. 29 special meeting
in the form of the firm's senior partner Lee Ayres. Keep in mind that the District
spent in 2020
and 2021
nearly a half-million dollars – or about 13 percent of total district expenditures
– on legal fees.As for Berry, citing the dispute over his
officeholding, he withdrew from the meeting just after its start, despite his
obligation to act as an appointed representative of the Bossier Parish Police
Jury, because of what he knew was coming.Which was Republican District 3 Police Juror Philip
Rodgers launching a lengthy harangue alleging mistreatment over permits and
their enforcement, which illuminated the cluelessness of all concerned except
the escaped Berry. Throughout, it became clear Rodgers had received special
treatment from Berry partially with Board compliance and who now alleged political
reasons for adverse action the Board seemed poised to take against him. In the
process, not only did Rogers make it appear Berry dispensed favorable treatment
without Board knowledge and in violation of rules, but also that Rodgers' privileged
political insider status allowed him to reap the benefits of that.







This set the stage for the special meeting, with
Berry skipping it completely because, well, as the Board noted, someone had to
work the front gate to let people in – even though the park officially closed its
entrance 15 minutes before the meeting even started. Perhaps because the last
meeting exposed how permit processing – necessary for property owners to secure
variances to existing rules and to carry out the necessary construction –
almost solely resided in the hands of Berry, the Board heard a proposal from
Manchac Consulting Group to oversee contractually the process.

Manchac is the entity to which Bossier City has contracted
public works services with a series of no-bid deals, despite it having no other
experience in running local government affairs and a spotty record with Bossier
City, such as botching
permit arrangements that forced a permanent closure of a stretch of
semi-busy Shed Road. This also would be a no-bid deal.

But where the meeting took on an aspect of a train
wreck occurred when the Board brought up a request for the Police Jury to
reappoint Berry for another five-year term at the end of July. Friends of
Cypress Black Bayou director, long time resident, and long time critic of
certain Board actions Renee Hall addressed the Board with text from the Supreme
Court decision, including reading the interpretation rendered by the Court to
guide lower courts that Berry was in violation of the dual officeholding statute.

Commissioner Long, a lawyer specializing in family
law, then invoked every negative stereotype of lawyers as bending the truth to
support their positions by trying to argue with Hall that the decision merely said
lower courts erred in granting a summary judgment in favor of Berry without a
trial, without acknowledging that the Court's opinion instructed lower courts
to rule that Berry was in violation and even contradicting Hall on that point when
she pressed her on that.

Then, District counsel Ayres tried to bail out
Long further by calling her comments "absolutely correct" and noting a petition
for rehearing had been brought to the Court. This is merely a delaying tactic,
as the Court is highly unlikely to change its mind mere weeks after its
judgment, to buy time to keep a lower court from ruling Berry in violation,
giving him cover to his reappointment possibility.

Thereupon followed Hall's husband David, who made an
absolutely cogent comment: with so much uncertainty legally regarding Berry, discretion
would be the better part of valor by not recommending his retention. He also elicited
from Ayres that the District was ponying up litigation costs on all of this
continued legal wrangling.

Nonetheless, the Board voted unanimously to ask
the Jury to reappoint the conveniently-absent Berry. This meant they advocated
for keeping among themselves somebody who has been accused publicly of playing
fast and loose with District rules and alleged to have said he dictates to his fellow
commissioners what to do, and who the highest court in the state has said
violates dual officeholding law.

On its current course, this is where it's going to
lead: if Berry is reappointed, the Board will spend potentially hundreds of
thousands of taxpayer dollars in a fruitless defense, compounded if the rendered
decision ends up fought all the way back to the Supreme Court. At most, this
will buy Berry perhaps another year in both positions – and if he holds out to
the bitter end will lose
the executive directorship and have to pay back the District six months' salary
(if he voluntarily resigned his commissioner job prior, he would owe nothing).

Such a professed desire to waste wantonly taxpayer
dollars by Berry, Bigby, Fowler, Long, and Wyche is dereliction of fiduciary
duty beyond disgraceful. Yet even more remarkable is, why? Why is Berry so keen
on keeping both offices when the directorship is far more important and
lucrative? Why are the other commissioners so keen to go to the mattresses for
Berry despite the enormous costs and bad publicity that will end in futility?

This behavior tempts the explanation that there is
a whole salacious back story out of public view that if revealed might bring to
light considerable liability for the District and all involved. Let's hope it's
just a matter of small people acting stupidly  – and who
will have to face voters next year for renewal of the 1.56 mil property tax
providing most of the funding for the District.

If board quota legislation is intended to have more significant or widespread impacts on women's professional lives, this is as unlikely in 2023 as it was when California's rule was passed just a few years ago.

I have long believed in the power of data to make a meaningful difference to people's lives. Working in the field for over 30 years, I have seen the ways in which data can be used as a powerful force …

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen deleted his official Facebook account after Meta's Oversight Board recommended his account be suspended for six months after he shared a video inciting violence.

Bei der Chatkontrolle werden anlasslos Inhalte auf den Endgeräten von Menschen überwacht. (Symbolbild) – Public Domain generiert mit MidjourneyDas Internet Architecture Board wacht über die Internetstandards und die Architektur des Internets als Ganzes. Nun hat sich das Komitee zur Chatkontrolle und der damit verbundenen Technologie des Client-Side-Scannings geäußert – mit einem vernichtenden Urteil.

The Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation leads the Government's work to enable trustworthy innovation using data and artificial intelligence. At the CDEI, we help organisations across the public and private sectors to innovate, by developing tools to give organisations …