Mr. Chandler,

Thank you for your email concerning “live streaming” of an executive committee meeting. With your permission, I will interpret your email as asking whether there is ambiguity in rule 8(g) of the Republican Party of Texas. The authority to clarify perceived ambiguity rests with myself as state Chair pursuant to RPT rule 1(f). Such clarifications are binding on all members of the Republican Party of Texas until such final clarification is made by the SREC.

RPT Rule 8(g) Open Meetings and Right to Testify – All meetings of any State or County Executive Committee or its committees, subcommittees, or ad hoc committees shall be open to any member of that executive committee, and they shall have the right to appear before any such committee, subcommittee, or ad hoc committee and make recommendations for the committee’s consideration or testify concerning any item under purview of the committee and to record the proceedings of any meeting not held in executive session with electronic devices. The committee may adopt reasonable rules including time limits for such presentations and may establish a reasonable limit of time for these presentations. This Rule does not preclude the committee from going into executive session; however, such executive session(s) shall be open to any member of the executive committee including ex-officio members.

The intent and purpose of this rule is to allow all members to have a true reference of the proceedings. As such, a medium is necessary to save that content. A convenient method with today’s technology to preserve that reference is to save the content to the cloud through any number of service providers (Dropbox, Facebook Live, YouTube, etc). Some of these providers allow the live rebroadcast of that content that is referred to as “live streaming”.

The only method that a body (not the Chair) has to limit the sharing of information is by conducting a meeting in executive session. 

It is therefore my clarification that “live streaming” is a type of recording and a protected right of members of that executive committee and can only be prevented by the body voting to go into executive session. Nothing in these rules contemplates an executive committee providing access to the internet to the members or to the public for these meetings. That is the responsibility of the person recording.