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NRHA Approves New Governance Structure and Bylaws

 

Following a transition year in 2017, the 2018 board will include 20 members. Five of those will be executive committee members, to include the president, vice-president and two members elected by the membership, all of which will serve two-year terms, plus one member elected from the board to a one-year term on the executive committee. Executive committee members can be re-elected to three consecutive two-year terms and may be re-elected after a one-year hiatus. The remaining 15 board members will be directors representing the global membership – 11 North American directors, two European Council directors, one South American Council director and one Oceana Council (Australia and Japan) director. There will be one ex-officio Reining Horse Sports Foundation representative. The directors will be elected by the membership.

The task force presented a bylaw amendment proposal to add a provision to allow for a special transition term of one year through Dec. 31, 2017. The board approved the proposal unanimously. Therefore, the NRHA will follow guidelines that will result in an overall reduction in the number of board members from 38 to 27 for the transition year 2017. The 22 regional directors will be allocated as follows: Western Canada (1), Eastern Canada (1), Mexico (1), Mountain (1), North Central (1), Southeast (1), Southwest (1), South Central (2), Northeast (2), Northwest (2), East Central (3), European Council (3), South American Council (1), Oceana Council (1), Reining Horse Sports Foundation (1). Regional directors with terms expiring on Dec. 31, 2017, will serve the remainder of their term. The five remaining board members comprise the executive committee, made up of President Mike Deer and a vice president to be elected in October, as well as three directors at large – Mike Hancock, Brian Welman and Casey Hinton, who will all serve the remainder of their terms.

“I am proud of our directors for thinking of our future, and excited to see how these changes will move us forward globally,” Clark said. “This work was done with the membership and our future in mind. The past 50 years of our association have been great and the next 50 promise to be even better.”

Elections of directors and the vice president will be held in October as approved at the  Winter Meeting. The deadline for nominations and specifics on the voting period will be published in the NRHA Reiner and on the NRHA’s websiteThe board will review and vote on proposed bylaws in August. Following their approval, the updated bylaws also will be published online.