On 02/02/2018 09:20 AM, DeLong, Owen wrote:
However, disclosure to the membership is not disclosure to the public. It is disclosure to the “owners” of the business
The members are absolutely the owners of MICE. In general, I think that disclosure to the member-owners is substantially similar to disclosure to the public, as the member-owners are not held to any binding NDA.
who by the very nature of this discussion> are obviously decision makers in the process.
This thread is an opportunity for the members to provide input to the board. The board is the decision maker.
It is pretty normal to disclose quote details to the decision makers.
Agreed. As I noted, the board is fully informed of the pricing.
Is there a MICE-MEMBERS list that isn’t open to the public?
certainly disclosure to individual members that request the data (consider this such a request from Akamai) is entirely appropriate. The authority of the owners is as a collective, not individually. An individual member-owner of a coop can request anything they want, but
No. We can certainly discuss that separately. that does not obligate the coop to provide that information. Buying a telephone line from a mutual telephone company makes you a member-owner, but does not give a member-owner the authority to compel production of the details of pricing on their telephone switch support contract. Nor does buying electricity from an electric coop give a member-owner the authority to unilaterally compel release of business records relating to energy purchase agreements, even though such details are absolutely critical to the long-term financial viability of the business. This is not limited to coops, either. If I purchase a share of Cisco, Akamai, or any other publicly traded company, that makes me an owner, but I cannot individually compel the company to provide me confidential business records. I think that MICE as a business has a legitimate need for non-disclosure of certain details. For example, if the owners require that pricing details on our purchases is made public, it is reasonable to fear that vendors may give MICE smaller discounts. For another example, if the owners require that port traffic numbers are made public, we may lose members (e.g. Akamai) who wish their port traffic numbers to be confidential, even from the other member-owners. This isn't to say that the board or management can do whatever they want and keep the owners in the dark. Obviously, the company's management and board need to provide various reports on the company's activities. -- Richard