RE: [nc-budget] NAMES COUNCIL BUDGET COMMITTEE

["Cochetti, Roger" <RCochetti@verisign.com>]

Philip-

As to the date on which the clock starts ticking, we could agree to
interpret the Council's resolution in any way we wish [ including that it
never happened.]  However the plain reading of the text is

>From the date that invoices are mailed/e-mailed to representatives of
Constituencies, if payment is not received by the DNSO or its agent by:

We had a significant debate in the Budget Committee about the date on which
the clock starts ticking because I had proposed that that date be the date
on which invoices were RECEIVED.  A majority of the Committee felt that it
should be the date on which the invoices were SENT, primarily since in the
world of e-mail those dates are normally the same. 

As the year for which year the new procedures are intended to apply, I have
no particular feeling.  I do agree that they were never discussed as
applying to prior years, however, I do not think they were discussed has
having no application to prior years either.  The new procedures, in my
view, were discussed as generic procedures.  

This leaves several questions, including the following: on the day after the
Council adopted these new procedures, some Constituencies fell into further
or new arrearages for prior years' dues, while they were under the new
procedures.  In these cases,  their accumulation of 2000 arrearages during
some of the first and all of the second quarters of this year took place
during a time when these Constituencies knew that new rules were in effect.
Obviously, these rules were not in effect prior to the Council's approval of
them, but the accumulation of new debt for old dues thus occurred during a
period when the non-paying Constituencies knew they were under new
procedures.

Alternatively, we could interpret the Council's intent as not being
applicable to the accumulation of additional arrearages during 2001 if that
new accumulation was linked to dues that were invoiced prior to the date of
the Council's decision.

I think that either of these could be legitimate interpretations of the
Council's intent, since the issue of applicability to newly-accumulated
arrearages was never discussed.  We simply need to decide what we meant to
do.

Finally, I want to reiterate the Council's motivation for these procedures
in the first place:  Constituencies appear to be able to spend considerable
sums of money on every imaginable ICANN related expense, except their
mandatory dues to the DNSO.  If the members of each Constituency would
allocate one tenth of one percent of the money that they spend on
ICANN-related entertainment and travel to the payment of their mandatory
DNSO dues, then their Constituency's arrearages would disappear. 

Roger 

 -----Original Message-----
From: 	Philip Sheppard [mailto:philip.sheppard@aim.be] 
Sent:	Thursday, August 02, 2001 3:23 AM
To:	nc-budget@dnso.org
Subject:	Re: [nc-budget] NAMES COUNCIL  BUDGET COMMITTEE 

Outstanding Payments

1. There is no question about the intent of the NC in establishing its
outstanding payments procedures as to year. It was explicitly stated during
the meeting that this procedure was for 2001 only and not retroactive.

2. When does the clock start ticking for 2001?
Although the procedure is agreed I believe it is up to the budget committee
to decide when the clock starts for any one constituency and then the
notices start. In the absence of that earlier decision whatever we agree to
do today should be no more than an instruction to the secretariat to start
the procedure at the beginning i.e. the 30 day sanction.

We can discuss more during the meeting.

Philip Sheppard
NC Chair