International Fees

[Linda Stanberry]

I strongly agree with the suggestion that we refuse payment of any more 
retroactive fees until after discussing the fees at the December meeting.  
I urge you to delay any fee payment plans until after we can discuss
these fees, and possibly devise alternate plans--such as changing NCEG
from a TG to an ad hoc committee.  

I have to admit, though, that I have already committed to payment of 
the fee for J11.  However, when I submitted the J11 fee for payment to 
LLNL's business services office, they refused to pay since it was 
retroactive--without justifying documentation of why the fee was being
assessed at such a late date.  I sent them the 19 pages of explanation we 
received from CBEMA, but I haven't heard whether or not that fee has been 
paid.  I will not submit any additional (J11.1, J16) fees to be paid for 
"retroactive" services.  

In fact, I would propose a waiver for those who are participants of both 
a parent committee (TC) and a subcommittee (TG) on the basis that those
persons clearly volunteer more time and energy, and should therefore be
recognized for their contributions.

It is pretty grim when the convener of an international committee, and 
the convener of a TG are both considering terminating their participation
because of these fees! I can't help but wonder what cost would be incurred
by these committees as a result.

To me this is another (election year?) case of overtaxing those who are 
already paying more than their share!  I think the result will be a
reduction of the income base as key contributors withdraw their 
participation, not to mention the reduction of the quality and experience
base that will be a loss to the standards process as a whole.

I was glad to see Rex's proposal for agenda time for discussing the fees,
and also to see if Jean-Paul Emard could come to speak to us.  However, we 
should not spend our discussion time in just complaining, but should be 
prepared to formulate a proposal to CBEMA for how to achieve equity in fee 
assessing.  The impression I had in reading CBEMA's explanation, and the
responses from committee members that Rex has distributed, is that CBEMA
made this decision like good old King George in taxing the colonists.  I
doubt that we will come up with anything as rousing as the Declaration of
Independence, but we should definitely be thinking along the lines of how
to express ourselves to CBEMA in a productive way.


Thanks to Rex for championing the cause!

Linda Stanberry
LLNL