The Smiths are getting ready to head off for summer vacation, but I wanted to provide a quick update on the Sunshine Amendment. We are on track to have 600 signatures around Labor Day or earlier. Response continues to be good and now we have compiled a large enough contact list to believe that we will get the required number of signatures. As of this moment, we are over 480 signatures.
We are starting to work on checking that those who have signed are actual Academy members and not duplicate signatures. There have been a small number of actuaries who signed not realizing that they needed to be a member of the Academy. There have also been a small number of people who signed twice either due to technological issues or us contacting them multiple times due to having multiple email addresses for them.
Duplicate emails for the same person have been one of the challenges of this project. We have built our contact list from a variety of sources. Some sources have personal email address and other sources have work email address. But, probably the more surprising problem has been that some people have multiple aliases for their work email! So, we have tried hard not to “spam” people, but when a person has four email address and we don’t catch it, they may receive an annoying number of emails.
As I have said repeatedly, I believe this whole situation could be resolved quickly and amicably if the Academy would engage on the issue. So, I had my lawyer reach out to the Academy (again) and see if they wanted to discuss the matter or work on alternate language that dealt with whatever problem they are trying to solve but also maintained transparency. The Academy’s response? Crickets… We also requested the number of Academy members so that we could confirm the number of signatures needed. The Academy’s response? Crickets…Well, I guess silence is better than nasty-grams!
So, we move forward with collecting signatures. How quickly will the Academy schedule a vote once they are presented all of the signatures? How likely will the Sunshine Amendment prevail in a membership vote? These are tough questions. I would like to think the Academy will schedule the vote quickly, but there is no guarantee. And, for a bylaw change, we need 2/3 approval instead of a simple majority so when the time comes, we will just have to try to get the vote out and hope for the best!
I will let you know when we get to 600 signatures – until then, enjoy rest of your summer!