fred8033

Agreed. It's why I think the facility use agreement is much more more accurate for how churches relate to scouting and is a much better match. Not perfect, but better.

Well said ... very good argument for CO liability. Same could be made for national government liability. I'd strongly argue those from patriotic families would be strongly drawn to scouting. Uniform. Salutes. Federal support (president, charter, etc). Military benefits. Previously recognized on college loans. etc. National government definitely benefited in military, projects, and promotion of patriotic citizenship. The whole scouting patriotic package is extremely appealing and benefited Uncle Sam. It's definitely one reason BSA has a congressional charter.

I generally agree you are right, but as the CO charter agreement has been taken more serious recently to infer more responsibility on the CO, similar arguments could be made at the national level. Almost every year there is a picture of the president in the oval office with scouts to receive a report on how scouting is doing. For decades, military hosted and supported scouting jamborees and other events. Our own state has hosted an annual huge scouting event at the local military base. For a long time, military has acknowledged Eagle scouts with rank and effectively extra cash. For a long time, different levels of government have actively supported scouting and benefited by projects. It is easy to see strong national support / involvement for scouting. It seems easy to assert that if COs should have known better, the national government should have known better and was negligent. Until fairly recently, most COs thought their charter was ceremonial. ... who knows what the future will bring ... But I agree with you ... it's a much larger stretch to assert at the national level.

Isn't that protecting the individual "actors"? ... mayors, governors, police chiefs, etc. It doesn't protect the organizations. Cities. School districts. Counties. Federal government. Governments organizations are sued all the time for damages.

I've wondered that continually too.

Been following these cases for years and the bankruptcy from the start. Usually things make sense. In this case, I just don't understand how this case makes sense. Any settlement right now would need to be BSA only. I don't see how any settlement now would end liability for insurance companies, local councils or charter orgs. Even if insurance somehow was in a settlement, they just need to be sued via CO who thought they were insured by them too. This is a "BSA" bankruptcy. There is no insurance or LC or CO bankruptcy involved. There is no "class action" covering all unknown injured. It's only covering the debts currently owed by BSA. Even if there was a settlement, wouldn't that need to go to the bankruptcy to be shared / negotiated by the other parties. The only path I can see is a BSA agreement to lock the amount of funds BSA will put into a bankruptcy trust fund to pay debts. Then BSA can proceed forward. Such a settlement is beneficial to those owed money because it could quickly stop the BSA legal spend rate which could consume a huge portion of assets. Then again ... I just don't understand how this case works and I'm not a lawyer.

Agreed. Also, look at the money ... BSA's advice. https://filestore.scouting.org/filestore/financeimpact/pdf/fiscal_policies_and_procedures_for_bsa_units.pdf "...the tax status of your unit is usually the same as that of your chartered organization if the chartered organization includes the unit in its tax-status." "... shall turn over the surplus, if any, to the chartered organization or the council." "Should our unit consider insuring our unit equipment? Yes. Remember, the chartered organization owns the assets" Even without the financial advice, it's clear because the CO selects the charter org rep / charter head. That rep then selects the committee chair and signs off on every unit leader application. There is vagueness. The charter partner agreement is written more as a friendly agreement than a strong contract. That's why I'm actually advocating our charter org partner using the facility use agreement. It's more accurate to how the church and scouting partner. We can still do pretty much the exact same things. Help the church with projects as a thank you for using their space. Sell flowers / popcorn. etc. ... you've never heard of folks thinking, but it's happening currently in your church? I've seen it twice in two local units. Once during starting the unit and once was a church elder who loved scouting and decided to become the Charter Org Rep ... and then attended every committee meeting, troop meeting and camp out. Yeah, little good comes of it. Churches don't have the manpower. ... I can envision it working, but I just don't see it happening. ... The trouble is the local churches don't have it as a core goal that they professionally monitor and grow. Rather, it's usually some quirky situation that is slightly uncomfortable with someone exercising a bit too much influence in the wrong way. IMHO ... facility use agreement ... sounds like the right way to go. The driving reason is liability. The church accepts liability for pastors and their own employees. They oversee their people. But from what I've seen, the churches have never overseen the scouting program effectively. In fact, in many units, most of the members are not from that church. ... point is if you don't want want to oversee and manage it, then down pretend to own it. Friendly documents from 1950s can be taken as legal contracts and proof of negligence now. Get the right agreement for the right situation. ... IMHO, most should switch from charter partner agreement to facility use agreement. Time will tell. I'll have to see how this washes out with our charter partner.

I thought I was the only one who had that opinion. I have never seen the unit commishioners as effective at all.

I'll take the bait. And, I'll answer for the month before covid. Things are rebuilding right now. #1 Yes. It was one person, but then they'd use the whole district committee to drive nominations. The person took the job seriously. #2 "Council" members? Is that a requirement to have some outside "council" person on the "district" nominating committee? I would have never known and I've taken lots of training. #3 All were unit leaders at some point. 50% to 70% still are, but usually at the ASM level or unit committee level. None were SMs at that time. It's just too much work to be a CM/SM and district committee at same time. A few were retired scouters looking for a place to spend time.

Well said.

I'm comfortable with what you are saying. And, I do think very highly of BSA. But when I read page four of G2SS as it exists today, it says to fulfill legal requirements, but also then has a "scouts first" hotline. Doesn't introduce the concept of scouts first. Doesn't mention that calling law enforcement is not fulfilled by calling scouts first. Perhaps it would be as easy as saying "first report to local law enforcement. Then after the reporting process has started, also report the incident to the scouts first hotline." Right now, I can easily read and interpret it as scouts first hotline is part of how I fulfill the legal requirements. Perhaps it's the place where I'll get the phone numbers. Or get advice on if I'm really in a reporting situation. Even in the best attempt to make things clear, policies often leave vague holes. Though BSA's G2SS statement is pretty good, it is far less than perfect.

View it this way ... The old charter agreements were used as a marketing tool by BSA to get more buy-in from local organizations ... to get those local organizations help with BSA's youth program objectives ... to get local orgs to view packs and troops as an extension of the local church/school/other. Many local orgs took it with a grain of salt and never did anything. Most everyone knew that's how it worked. Even the document itself looked pretty weak and light weight. Think of it this way ... US GOV charter to BSA is honorific. Just really good marketing with little effect. Charter between BSA and local orgs was mostly honorific too. Then over the last few decades, it's inferred more and more. Lately the signed charter agreement has been used as a legal liability too. It's a contract right? I doubt many churches viewed it as a very significant contract. Just an honorific thing. NOW ... Scouting is a real liability. Real risk. You could get sued. So ... is that scouting youth program that critical to your own purposes as a local organization? If so, you should actively manage it and be involved. I myself am recommending our church change from a charter agreement to a facilities use agreement. We've had discussions. They have zero interest in overseeing the scouting program. They are glad to lend use their facilities though. They just don't want to own and be responsible.

I'm also not comfortable with policies that say call before reporting ... in any organization. It infers creepy motives. The reality is it can quickly create a mess. The reality is false reporting does happen by the over zealous or those with other motives. BUT, I'd rather see that over-reporting than any delay in reporting. Even the hint that there is a policy of "call us first, before you do what is legally required" is just not great marketing and definitely not good teaching and it might result in someone not reporting something they should. I'd rather see the police and public organizations spend their money on it than a non-profit try to manage it. It's always a hard decision. I've had to report twice in my role as a volunteer; not thru BSA, but thru another organization. I'm pretty sure in both cases the parents lost the kids. Hardest ### call I've ever made. I could have easily been talked out of reporting or not done it. SUGGESTED SPECIFIC BSA G2SS CHANGE ... https://filestore.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/34416.pdf ... page 4 ... Who to call first? It doesn't explicitly say who to call first. Should I call the BSA help line? Is that mandatory reporting? Should I call 911? Should I call ? Do I call 911 then BSA help line? OR BSA help line and then they route me to the right reporting method? ... Even having the helpline infers something that I suspect it is not doing. ... I'd like the guide to say "Call 911 first if immediate danger or call your local police / ??? / ??? if not an immediate danger" ... or call 911 to ask how to report abuse ... (I'm not sure who the first contact should be either). ... As a second step, you should call BSA scouts helpline so that they can help handle the implications for the scouts, the unit and local scouting. The key is due the mandatory reporting first. Avoid implying BSA before required legal obligations.

Sad to hear that. Volunteers that are not flexible are not helping and might need to move on. It's good to keep friendships and connections, but ultimately we volunteer to help the organization. That means being flexible as the organization needs to change. Districts get re-organized. It happens all the time. Rebalancing unit numbers. Budgets change. Concept changes. Membership number changes. In my 20 years, I've seen three major district re-orgs. AND, there was a major one the year before my oldest son joined scouting. That would be four district re-orgs in 21/22 years. Districts get re-organized. It happens. Always look for something positive.

Minimizing risk? I have no clue what you mean. But I'm 100% offended that you are asserting this statement is the attitude that will cause us to lose scouting. Baloney. Absolute baloney. Wanting to blame others is what will cause division and destroy scouting. Worse, it's just mean and un-scout-like. If you really want to protect vulnerable people, you need to understand the patterns and nature of abuse. You need to look at the many, many varied failure modes. To repeatedly bash a single source is unconstructive. Past society failures to identify and prevent abuse were huge and everywhere.

Far too often authors think they are expressing justified righteous indignation when in fact it's closer to ugly bigotry and motivated by past grudges. We all should stick direct connections. The simple fact is society as a whole did not handle any of this very well in the 1980s or 1990s. Society started adopting the modern understanding of abuse in the late 1990s / early 2000s. People want someone to blame. You might as well blame every part of society.

I am betting there is another path. I've interacted ... "worked with" would over state my invovlement ... I've interacted with the local chapter adviser and youth lodge chief. They have much more flexibility than officially published. If the scout really wants to be in OA, that scout should write a polite mail (or email) to the lodge chief and copy the lodge adviser. State that he/she would be proud to be an OA member. Explain his troop doesn't hold elections. Communicate how he fulfills requirements (rank, nights camping, troop involvement, etc). Further state why he/she would want to be a member. IMHO, the perfect answer would be "to serve" and to learn from other scouts. My only fear is the scoutmaster response. BUT, the ideal scoutmaster should say congratulations and let the scout explore OA. I am betting the lodge adviser and lodge chief would find a path in for that scout. I'm not saying this would work every time, but I suspect it would work a good number of times.

Scoutbook works good for advancement. Roster mgmt too. But that might be our troop. Our troop only records what must be sent to BSA to record advancement. Ranks. MBs. Awards. We do record time in position (because it looks pretty in ScoutBook). And hikes, campouts ... for bragging rights. ... But it's up to the scout to manage the individual line-item advancement and we encourage the scout to use the paper book for that. It's an intentional choice. We don't want our adults tightly overseeing the scout's advancement. It's their path to navigate and not ours to pull them thru. If I had to record each of 50 entries for each rank and another 20+ entries for each MB, I might think again about TroopMaster. ... But we stopped using TroopMaster a long time ago and never regretted it. As for calendar, etc, we use different tools over time. Its moved a few times. TroopMaster never worked well for that ... "for us". Ultimately, it's about good communication with the parents.

Of everything happening recently with BSA, ScoutBook is my big fear. I've grown accustomed to it. I was not in favor initially, but I've gotten used to it. We only use it for roster mgmt and advancement / recognition. But within that context, it does work. I really fear national becoming unable to support it. Councils, units and individual scouts have grown very dependent on it. That's a large user base for such a small IT organization such as BSA must have.

Wow. That is disconcerting. I have wondered too. I suspect it's also that as a patient ... every visit is a doctor charge. Clinics are not wired at all to do one shot at a time. I would have gone out of my way to do that if it was an option. The big vaccination day was a known ... oh oh ... it will be a rough night ... thing. Sad that medical professionals would know without suggesting it as an option.

Inconsistency would be a red flag to me. I'd hope CO has all CO's youth groups follow the same direction. But it's the CO's choice.

I would not be so quick to write things off. I agree with the studies. But I also raised four kids. At the 2 month and 15 month (?? intervals) vaccines, each had fevers or grumpy / irritable after their vaccinations. I remember two that went from making some pre-speech sounds before vaccine to not making some again for months. ... I'm not blaming the vaccine. But vaccines are known to cause fever and grumpy / irritable babies after. It is not wholly inconceivable that someday a connection will be found saying fever affects ear channels and can slow speech development or has some minor speech. I'm pro-vaccine. The good far out weighs the bad. BUT, it's arrogant to say something that is known to cause fevers, affect mood, etc does not affect a child that is growing and doing new things daily. Anyway, I'm pro-vaccine and pro-defending people who have concerns.

Thank you. This will be interesting to see how it plays out. I can easily see it going either direction. Showing fraud on one side.. Other side potentially arguing need for cash to pay legal costs and reserves to pay damages to the number of victims projected at the time, less than 2000 at that time.

HONEST QUESTIONS ... #1 Excluding lender collusion and lender fraud ... excluding no previously existing rights to the asset .... a secure debt is a secure debt. The lender has a right to repayment independent of the reasons the borrow took out the loan. It's easy to question the timing of the loan and even how the loaned money is being used, ... but does any of this affect the status of the secured asset? Even then, this seems like a minor point. The insurance companies seem to be the biggest potential contributor. #2 Without insurance claim caps, would the insurance companies be at risk to pay the same claims twice? Once for BSA liability. Once for council liability? Perhaps a 3rd time for CO liability if the insurance was to cover them too? ... Without bankruptcy protection, insurance companies could continue to bleed for the same cases. I understand it depends on when the insurance contract was written ... are there caps ... were both BSA and local councils listed, etc. ... I'm just wondering if insurance could pay the same victim twice or three times because of different clients (BSA, LC, CO) libel for the same event and the insurance company covering all those libel.

More than once I wished for a delete button ... or a "Way Back Machine" button.