Betsy Palmer Eldridge
No nominations were received initially from the membership at large this year - a common occurrence in recent years. Therefore, the members of the Nominating Committee (Maria Fredericks, Bob Futernick, Harriet Stratis, and myself), in consultation with the members of the current BPG Board, created a "long list" of over 30 members who they hoped might be interested in running as candidates. From these, five candidates were found relatively quickly. However, when it was realized that none of these were in private practice, a serious effort was made to find someone working privately to run, which was unsuccessful. In the end, time ran our and the Secretary/Treasurer position was put forward as a single slate.
In all, over 60 phone calls and faxes were made to the Membership Committee and prospective candidates at a cost of $126.00, figures that would almost double if their return calls were included. The Membership Committee found it useful to have its members from different subspecialties as well as different geographic areas but also from different generations within the field - something that should be born in mind in the future when the members of the Nominating Committee are selected.
In the election, 214 mail-in ballots were received which was down approximately 25% from last year's return of 280 and represented less than a fourth of the membership. The foreign membership was well represented with votes from New Zealand, Hong Kong, England, Germany, Switzerland, Puerto Rico and Canada. The voting elected Walter Henry as Assistant BPG Chair, Betty Fiske as Assistant Program Chair and Elizabeth Morse as Secretary/Treasurer. Our Thanks for running also go to Elissa O'Loughlin and Leslie Hill Paisley, each of whom received over 40% of the vote.
The Nominating Committee decided to recommend that BPG offer a small stipend to its officers to offset the financial burden of attending the Annual Meeting for two or three years in a row - in order to attract members in private practice and also to help members who have difficulty getting institutional funding. The results of the Opinion Poll on the stipend question included on the mail-in Ballot indicate that the membership is in favor of such a stipend and would prefer a Stipend Pool ($1,000.00) to be used as needed to an Automatic Stipend ($200.00) for each of the five officers. The vote was 113 for the former, 59 for the later and 27 against either.