Flyfunston

At their October meeting USHPA directors imposed a gag rule limiting free speech by pilots and by flying clubs. The gag rule applies to USHPA members and to non-members who are club officers. The gag rule, SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) 06-01et seq., is available at USHPA’s WEB site.

The rule requires all clubs and officers “to be goodwill ambassadors for USHPA and … to support USHPA’s image and support USHPA programs.” Clubs may not be publically “critical” of USHPA or have policies “detrimental" to USHPA. The rule doesn’t state who at USHPA or by what standards a policy or comment will be determined to be “critical” and “detrimental”.

Besides limiting free speech, the rule violates USHPA’s stated relationship with the clubs. “These clubs are independent, autonomous, self-governing organizations, which elect to affiliate with USHPA and obtain club benefits, such as site insurance coverage.”

Dissent is vital to democratic organizations from countries to clubs. Criticism frequently is “detrimental” but that is the price for democracy. It is unknown why USHPA is so fearful and insecure that it cannot tolerate dissent.

Even though the gag rule was passed at the October meeting, it doesn’t appear that it was on the agenda USHPA posted for the meeting and the failure to post it raises legal and ethical issues. There is no indication that clubs or members were consulted.

USHPA did post a proposal to keep accident reports secret. The proposal requires reports to be sent to USHPA’s attorney to create an attorney client privilege. I don’t know if the proposal passed. It is standard practice for many organizations on their incident and accident reports to delete names but there is no justification for keeping reports secret. The purpose of a report is to learn from an accident by publicizing not suppressing information about it. The FAA doesn’t keep reports secret.

When I reviewed the SOPs, I discovered a rule that appears designed to end local control at Funston. The SOP states: “Chapters are required to allow membership by all USHPA-rated pilots who are also qualified to fly at Chapter-controlled sites, without restrictions. All Chapter members must have full voting privileges.”

At Funston our site is run by the pilots who fly it and our bylaws limit club voting to those pilots. USHPA may demand that we change our bylaws but we may be able to evade the poorly drafted rule. Our landlord only allows hang gliding. Only hang glider pilots are “qualified” to fly at Funston. Therefore we could limit club membership to hang glider pilots.

The Marin County Hang Gliding Association has taken a strong public position against the new requirement. Its President, Dave Berman, sent the following e-mail:
“In my opinion, a healthy organization welcomes and encourages criticism. Threatening to punish any chapter officers who are critical of USHPA is counter-productive, and possibly illegal. Please join me in asking USHPA to remove this negative language from its SOPs. I suggest you contact your regional directors and other board members to express your opinion.”

We should join MCHGA and, I am sure, other clubs in opposing the gag rule and the ending of local control.

Dan Brown


GAG RULE

“F. Chapters and its officers are required to be goodwill ambassadors for USHPA and are expected
to work within the USHPA committee system to support USHPA’s image and support USHPA
programs. Chapters cannot on one hand participate in USHPA subsidized programs and on the
other take actions which are detrimental to the USHPA and the sport. Examples of actions which
may be detrimental are:
1. Any correspondence in any public media which is critical of USHPA’s programs and
policies.
2. Any correspondence in any public media which is critical of other Chapters.”
3. Any Club policy which is detrimental or causes harm to any USHPA program.”

From SOP 06-01.04:

G. Chapters may not, as a matter of policy, negligently or willfully discriminate against pilots of one
glider type, either hang glider or paraglider, or discriminate between pilots of equal pilot rating.
Chapters must ensure that recreational flight privileges are made available to any and all qualified
USHPA members meeting Chapter site requirements in a fair and equitable manner without
discrimination.

Note: This requirement does not indicate that a site cannot be hang gliding only or paragliding
only. Glider specific sites are permissible for safety, land owner, and possibly other conditions.

In extraordinary circumstances, a Club may not be able to conform to the organizational requirements.
The Club can submit a request for exemption from an organizational requirement to the Chapter Support
Committee. Exemptions to requirements must be approved by the Chapter Support Committee and the
Board of Directors.

FYI:

First, let me apologize. As the new president of USHPA, this is not the direction I want to see USHPA headed. Having a good relationship between USHPA at a national level and USHPA at a local level through its chapters and members is paramount. While the intentions behind changes to this SOP may have been good, I understand most of the concerns I’ve read on this forum and I’m committed to helping fix the problem.

After hearing from some of you and reading every comment in this thread, I wrote to USHPA board members today and asked RD’s to give the Executive Committee permission to delay implementation of this SOP; sending it back to the Chapter Support Committee for further study. Roughly half the RD’s have already responded and a clear majority favors the recommendation. The EC, which acts for the board between board meetings, will review this recommendation shortly.

I’d rather not play the blame game nor will I make excuses for recent events. The draft SOP had been circulated to board members along with roughly a hundred other pages of very detailed material. Chapter Support Committee is not known for stirring up controversial issues and I suspect most directors reviewed the SOP but didn’t give it the critical look it deserved. Once your concerns were brought to the BoD’s attention, the board responded positively. I think we can get this fixed. The underlying objective has always been to have a strong relationship between USHPA and USHPA chapters and members.

One of my goals is to improve USHPA’s ability to communicate with its membership. Mark Forbes mentioned a hosting a forum on the USHPA website where members will have an opportunity to engage in a two-way dialog with USHPA. We recently received clearance from our legal counsel to move forward. Of course, a forum only works if members know what is going on within USHPA in the first place. We will do this, in part, by using USHPA’s email newsletter to share information about various initiatives that may be on the next board meeting agenda. Another new communication tool we’ve developed is email aliases, where members can write directly to a particular committee or workgroup to share ideas. Committee contact info will be on the USHPA website shortly.

Once the EC meets and discusses the Chapter Support SOP, I’ll report back.

Thanks,

Rich Hass

Here is the update Rich promised:

The EC met this morning and reviewed changes to SOP 06-01 the BoD approved at the Fall Meeting. Since most of the changes in this SOP aren't controversial, we decided to let the SOP stand except for SOP 06-01.04 C (language to require chapters to have open membership) and SOP 06-01.04 F (language characterized as limiting free speech). These two subsections are now removed. Both have been sent back to committee for further study.

Thanks for responding to my email on such short notice. The USHPA office will send an update to chapters.

Thanks,

Rich

Thank you Dan for bringing this issue to light for USHPA Members, and thank you Rich for resolving!