1979: ACT
chartered IAC to provide a source of funds for ACT scholarships and activities.
1995: The
ACT Management of Change conference, held at the Lansdowne Resort in Leesburg,
lost nearly $150,000.
1996: ACT
told IAC to pay the deficit, since ACT did not have the reserves to do so.
When ACT President Neil
Stillman ordered IAC Chairman Izzy Feldman to pay the Lansdowne bill, Izzy
balked. He accused ACT of mismanaging their funds. To be fair, Izzy and others
had warned ACT that holding a conference at Lansdowne was a terribly risky, for
reasons cited in Part One. And ACT had been prolific in spending revenues
raised by IAC, not solely for scholarships, but also to fund ACT Executive
Committee (EC) members’ attendance at the international forums held by the International
Council for Information Technology in Government Administration (ICA) in locations
like Barcelona and Budapest.
IAC paid for those delegations through transfers to ACT accounts.
At the time, IAC was
ascendant, holding what was rapidly becoming recognized as the best IT policy
conference, the Executive Leadership Conference, which was, after three years
in a Charlottesville venue, selling out all available seats. As Chairman of the
IAC Executive Committee, Izzy felt that ACT was spending IAC revenues excessively
and irresponsibly.
When IAC said, “No” to
the ACT demand to pay the Lansdowne bill, Neil was incensed. He had been elected
ACT President in 1994, and was in his second term. He viewed IAC as a
subordinate organization – which it absolutely was – that merely collected
industry dues and fees for FGIPC.
Izzy had a
different viewpoint.
He saw his role as IAC chairman as steward for responsible disposition
of funds collected from IAC members for the benefit of those members.
Izzy had
taken over as Chair in 1990 when Jim Ridgell resigned for health
reasons, and
he was the irresistible force that built IAC a power in the federal IT
community.
Two proud and powerful
leaders, with opposing perspectives on who owned the IAC coffers, butted heads
and neither blinked. Both had defensible interpretations of the situation, but
Neil had a bit more desperation – ACT had a firm contract with Lansdowne and delinquent
bills to pay.
Neil struck first. He
called for an emergency ACT Executive Committee teleconference, and pushed
through a resolution to dismiss the IAC Executive Committee. Although several
ACT committee members questioned the legitimacy of an unseemly swift decision,
Neil then hired legal counsel, sent formal letters to the IAC committee members
dissolving the Executive Committee, and claimed the IAC bank account as the
property of ACT.
Izzy, no stranger to legal
and fiduciary gamesmanship, had the bank account frozen, and posited that
Stillman had acted illegally in removing the duly elected Executive Committee and
was in breach of ACT by-laws.
Claim and counter-claim,
threat of suit and counter-suit, played out at the Tower Club. IAC members were
furious that the organization they joined to enhance their relationship with
the government was embroiled in a battle with government executives. The ACT Executive
Committee repudiated Neil’s actions, voting that he should resign. Chaos
reigned, and egos were splattered across the pages of Federal Computer Week.
After several weeks, tempers
calmed and cooler heads prevailed. The consensus was that IAC was undeniably subordinate
to the ACT, and that ACT could rightfully direct the disbursement of
IAC-collected funds. The IAC EC was reinstated, elections were held, and new
leadership was installed. Izzy chose to step down as Chairman, and Ken Johnson
was elected as Chairman and conciliator.
IAC returned to normal
operations, humbled but intact.
ACT had a different reaction.
Neil’s solitary decision-making rankled others on the ACT EC, and the EC demanded
in a six-to-two vote (with two abstentions) that he apologize to the IAC. Neil
refused, claiming the vote taken by electronic mail did not meet the “physical meeting”
requirement in the ACT by-laws. “Stillman said he would not apologize even if
the resolution were passed legally and would continue to represent FGIPC unless
impeached,” reported FCW.
At the time, the ACT EC
had ten members, each representing one of the member councils in accordance
with the charter and by-laws. Confronted with overwhelming opposition Neil took
the only reasonable course: He formed additional Councils, inducted them into
the Federation, and out-voted the opposition. Some of the new Councils had
fairly small constituencies – easily in the single digits, and often enumerable
on a single hand. The ACT power struggle played out in slow motion over months,
and even years, until Neil resigned in 1999 after an unprecedented five terms.
********************
Those were troubled times
for ACT and IAC, but we weathered them and emerged…well, perhaps not stronger,
or even wiser, but at least changed.
ACT had institutionalized the appointive
election process, and Stillman was “President for Life” until his retirement in
1999. IAC conceded the supremacy of ACT as the policy maker we operated under.
Control of funds soon evolved into IAC hands to avoid conflict of interest or ethics issues, with the expectation
that IAC use those funds to fulfill ACT policies.
The ACT and IAC staffs
were eventually merged into a single ACT-IAC staff, and control migrated from
the ECs to the Executive Director. ACT-IAC became a real entity, and staff
expanded to take on more responsibilities previously handled by IAC
volunteers.
And here we are today,
after 35 and 25 years of ACT and IAC.
Any resemblance of the current
organization to the events of 1996 may be coincidental. Or maybe not.
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