MARINELLO SUBMITS MOTION TO REMOVE SCHULTZ AS SECRETARY
June 18, 2005: USCF President Beatriz Marinello requested a Board meeting by conference call today, and submitted a motion to remove Don Schultz as USCF Secretary. Yesterday, Schultz made a motion by objections procedure regarding the Natrol "Brain Pill" alliance, calling on Marinello to "explain
how the deal came about, who was involved and who if anyone said we'll get a lot of funding from these folks." That motion was stopped when Elizabeth Shaughnessy objected, but Schultz then indicated he wished to introduce it at a conference call.
Following is the motion and supporting argument from Marinello, and the response from Schultz (DS).
From Beatriz Marinello:
I would
like to introduce the following motion to the USCF Executive Board:
Beatriz Marinello:" Move to remove Donald Schultz as USCF Secretary. If
this motion passes it should be effective immediately." Rationale for
Motion:
Mr. Schultz has not dealt with his Secretarial duties in a fair and impartial matter. An Ethic's complaint has been filled against USCF Secretary Don Schultz. Additionally, recent events indicate the need to address the issue of having a Secretary that is in charge of running the election and at the same time acting as a campaign manager for some candidates running for a position in the USCF Executive Board.
DS: “The Ethics complaint is currently an unsubstantiated complaint by one person.”
Here are
more detailed explanations on my statement.
1) Back in February 2005, Mr. Schultz ruled initially to accept one of the
candidate' statement after the deadline announced to all candidates for the
submission of their political statements. Once I was informed about this
ruling and I complaint about it, Mr. Schultz changed his ruling in favor of
enforcing the deadlines giving to the candidates.
DS: “That is incorrect. The only ruling I made was not to accept it.”
2) The USCF
Secretary has the duty to review the list of voters prior to sending the ballots
for the election. There are two issues here which are very serious:
a) Since Mr. Schultz is not an impartial Secretary, he could share this list
with the candidates he is supporting. At the same time, the other candidates
need to purchase the labels for their mailings, and they do not get a complete
list of eligible voting members since some members request not to receive mail
other than Chess Life Magazine and membership forms.
An investigation should be conducted to determine if Mr Schultz has indeed acted
in unethical fashion by using this privilege of obtaining this confidential
information for this own political agenda and in favor of the candidates to whom
he declares himself the Campaign Manager.
DS: “I do
not understand this. The voters are everyone over 16, there are 48,000 of them.”
DS: “The contact with the printer has never been done as far as I know by the Secretary. That aside the instructions to the printer were fine. The problem was there are two ink jet printing nozzles used by the printer – one for the magazine address and one for the verification data on the ballot inside the magazine. During a run of 5,000 of the magazines the nozzle that was supposed to print the verification data was turned away at a 90 degree angle. The printer has conceded that the error was his."
3) The
endorsement of candidates by the Secretary is not banned by the USCF Bylaws.
However, Mr. Schultz admitted that he wrote part of Mr. Channing's political
statement for the May and June Chess Life Magazine. Mr. Schultz admitted
putting in Mr. Tanner's
endorsement of Channing using Tanner's title of the Chess Trust Trustee, in
violation of the code of ethics adopted by US Chess Trust in relation with the
USCF election.
Mr. Schultz is not a neutral supervisor of the election and has a clear conflict
of interest. Therefore, Don Schultz should step down as Secretary.
DS: “And the
president endorsed candidates using official USCF letterhead with the USCF logo.
She supported candidates while she was acting Chief Operating Officer something
never been done before. Secretaries have routinely, in the past endorsed and
actively supported candidates as have all Board members.”
Please Pat check when the Executive Board members are available for a conference call.
Thank you,
Beatriz Marinello