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Did the lawyers get it wrong or were they being disingenuous?

I would say that my council culture is toxic. I can't put my finger on the pulse of where it comes from. My CE is a great guy, I like him, I don't want to say the problem is him; however, a lot of council committees do not meet which is cascading to the district level. We're not recruiting enough people to fill the district level committees. These two things combined are collapsing our council, and it has turned into a shutup type situation when you bring up "when are we going to start meeting more regularly, and when are we going to recruit more?".

I can see that membership would go up. There are people who are mental and just being named BSA was keeping them away. Personally I would like to see the breakdown by council, and from there I would like to see some sort of mission statement/vision statement on how to deal with the underperforming councils.

Better than what I have seen in other places (total as low as 980k in some other places).

BSA has pulled the 2020 copy down so this is going to be a little bit of a path through the rules. I found this archived copy of the 2019 version; I suspect that a new registration guidebook is pending deployment to the bsa website. https://quivira.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/25/2021/01/Registration-Guidebook.pdf Page 41 of the 2019 copy states in reference to being able to recharter: • Conduct the Scouting program consistent with BSA rules, regulations, and policies. They may be found on the My Scouting website and at the following location: www.scouting.org/Membership/Charter_Orgs/ resources.aspx. Page 8 of the rules and regulations state: Scouter Training. The Boy Scouts of America may establish training requirements for specified positions and completion of that training may be required prior to registration or renewal. Page 2 of the adult application states: • Take leader position-specific training at my.scouting.org. Classroom training may also be available through your local council. You are considered a trained leader when you have completed leader position specific training for your position and have current Youth Protection training. Which then takes us to the Troop Leader Guide Vol 1 which states on page 82 very clearly " Complete position-specific and Introduction to outdoor Leader Skills training."

There's a third group here. They like the outdoors but hate sleeping in a tent. These are a troops day visitors; a great resource to bring day 2 items such as extra ice, forgotten items, a new spare tire because the trailer had an issue on the way to camp. They don't want an assigned task, they don't want to camp overnight, but they love the outdoors and are willing to show up during the daylight time. I would say that everyone that is registered needs a task. Maybe you have a new member committee where you sequester all the new parents off to coffee and gossip corner and integrate them into the troop for a few weeks while their scouts spreads their wings a bit in a patrol. After that get them into a functional role; don't fall into the trap of having a bunch of paper only committee members. If a unit follows BSA's roles and the subsequent division of labor all of the positions are super easy; even the scoutmaster role.

Why are you tracking advancement anywhere but in Scoutbook? Seriously, you eventually have to migrate advancement into Scoutbook regardless. National has mandated monthly advancement reporting and an annual advancement report in the month of December from everyone unit in the new GTA; those requirements are met by just using Scoutbook/SB+. You're doing at least double work by key entering any advancement in a third party software. I don't want to hear anything about SB/SB+ being difficult. I've used SB/SB+/IA, TroopMaster, TroopWebHost, and spreadsheets and I will say that nothing else is easier than SB/SB+; it all filters down to willingness to learn SB/SB+.

Yet another reason why we need to go back to the old way and not have an eagle project.

What happened here is that fiblandia has a special law. That's not the federal FOIA. So going back to the OP's question, what state is the OP in?

Scouting is going to survive; Scouting America is going to survive. I don't think Scouting America membership has bottomed out yet; and I think a lot of change is coming. I think quality control of adult leaders and of units in general is eminent; certain it will be a thing no later than the final ink is dry on the settlement. I've only ever heard of adults being threatened to be kicked out, and I've only ever heard of units being threatened to loose their charter; I've recently witnessed my first adult leader kicked out of SA after decades of service, and 2 units have lost their charter in the last month, a 3rd was supposedly told 1 more safety/ypt violation and they are gone. What I see is that Scouting America is going to get smaller, and then we are going to turn a very big corner and experience some real growth.

It's going to come down to is he a US citizen? While living here for school or such the registration guide book allows him to join SA; however, if he is a not a US citizen, his time abroad cannot count towards any SA requirements nor can he maintain membership.

Scouting America website for special needs scouts. Troop Leader Guide Vol 2 also has a chapter on working with scouts that have special needs. IOLS and Woodbadge do not have anything beyond (or anything for that matter) concerning working with scouts with special needs. You will need IOLS to be considered trained, and technically per the registration guide book and Troop Leader Guide Vol 1 you're supposed to have it before being allowed to be the SM. I am not sure how strict your council is but I would check your neighboring councils for IOLS classes. If something goes way wrong and you're not fully trained SA might hang you out to dry.

Carter spent 40 years trying to make up for the 4 worst years of his leadership history. Carter got a lot of press, support, and had influence because he was a past president; anyone else with his track record never would been given a second thought. I'm not going to join the whitewash here; Carter's presidency is well know for the worst inflation of the 2000th century, if measured apples-to-apples, probably worse than even now. Carter bumbled everything internationally. Nearly 4 decades of post war (WW2) economic growth cratered because of his policies. The 1 federal department he is responsible for standing up is under so much fire right now because of how poorly it has blown up the US education system. The only thing I will give Carter is that he had 1 really big win as president, and that was creation of the superfund program. Everything else he touched as president was total rot.

This sounds great but also problematic considering YPT (especially the new buddy rules).

No, the FOIA only applies to the federal government; period. If your state has some sort of other state level law I would suggest you state what that law is and the state; it is unlikely that the law you are thinking about even vaguely affects non-government entities.

They lost me at the "lost touchpoint" point. Every unit is supposed to have a membership coordinator who previously was making those touchpoints, and is supposedly still making those touchpoints; only instead of it happening in one 30 day period the touchpoints are happening throughout the whole year (primarily in the fall though).

National announced a grace period; the problem is that it looks like people stop getting emails at renewal date + 7 days. That grace period is massive, 60 days. I am just waiting for the new YPT and training requirements to drop if that gold leaf certification is for real; that's going to blow up 50% of the leaders in my opinion (because they are lazy and can't be bothered to do free training online in my experience).

I am still re-reading front to back. National has removed some of the gray area that bad leaders have lingered in for years. I think we all need to make sure we understand the nuance difference. Statements on MBC and SM authority seem much clearer and designed to reign in ego-mad SM's.

I have been a leader in troops that have traditional patrols, age based, and the age based also had a new scout patrol. My observation is that hands down age based is better. There is that 8th-9th grade teenage boy thing where the 5th-6th graders drive them insane because the 8th-9th are trying to be so much more mature. There is also the friendship and sibling thing; some scouts regardless of age are friends, some siblings want to be together, some siblings want to be as far away from their brothers as possible. I think the answer might be somewhere in between; something like the SM provides a framework, like "hey we have 36 scouts and I want to see 6 patrols of 6, keep tenting and buddy system age requirements in mind, figure it out scouts+, and then the scouts take it from there. A couple of oddities that I have seen is that I have seen older scouts ask to go back down to the NSP because of younger friends from clubs/sports/relatives; I have seen younger scouts that present much more mature than their age ask to get assigned to an older aged patrol because their personalities were more aligned with the older scouts. The biggest mistakes I have ever seen revolved around either the SM, the SPL, or both making decisions in absence of input from the scouts themselves; that patrol design always leads to some sort of s-show. I have seen parents who's kids get split between multiple patrols that do patrol level stuff lose their minds at having to figure out how to get their scouts to 2 different places at the same time for patrol functions (when a troop starts to function a higher level and the patrols start functioning at the highest level it adds complexity and independence that you should have the foresight to plan for). I think the answer is a mix of how many scouts you have, aligning them to the best possible patrol size, aligning personalities, following the rules, and making sure that everyone's voice is heard. Start with the scouts, make as few adjustments as possible; justify those adjustments when the new troop structure is presented.

I was told the same thing about multiples; I am not happy about it but I understand and I am willing to do the extra paper and leg work as long as my primary membership goes through. Both of the units that I directly work with are doing renewal mostly on your own. Unit 1 is doing adults are paid for by the unit, and that only encountered 1 issue, and it was with a multiple who had already paid; council has to drop him from our roster and then re-add him after Jan 1, it makes no sense. Unit 2 is going it all on your own. Both units are basically planning on revisiting peoples membership issues after Jan 1 due to the various grace periods. Overall no-one seems upset except some people with multiples. The multiples thing is a problem, and I think mostly due to a lack of a good job aid to walk people through that process.

I know of at least 3 scouts in my area that have potentially thousands of dollars in their scout accounts, I know of 1 scout that for sure has over 10k. I look at these scout account discussions more along the lines of, when is the IRS going smack a unit, not if. When you look into all of the case law that has been discussed, the public positions, etc ... it's all about the IRS doesn't want the media black eye unless they can really get something bigger than a handful of dollars of abuse.

Let me churn the fire of this thread back up. The following link is getting posted everywhere else today. Looks like scout accounts are probably a big no-no. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-wd/02-0041.pdf

This is unfortunately true. The individuals with the power and money to affect the timeline of any court case often are the winners regardless of the law.

Is BSA going to announce this? I've been sort of waiting for them to announce it on their end but nothing. Is this a spoof?

It says Dallas/Fort Worth area but you know it's in Fort Worth where your opportunity to be on some cop ride along show is astronomical.