[FAmSCo] FAD Rheinfelden Reimbursements was - FAmSco meeting 2012-12-27 minutes

[Christoph Wickert]

Am Freitag, den 28.12.2012, 12:00 +0100 schrieb Joerg Simon:
> coming back to the FAD Rheinfelden - Travel reimbursement Discussion -
> 
> > 17:22:13 <cwickert> has anybody been reimbursed for FAD Rheinfelden
> > already?
> > 17:22:20 * cwickert doesn't think so
> > 17:23:19 <sesivany> cwickert: my request hasn't even been approved
> > yet. rbergeron assured me in a private mail that I would get paid,
> > but no progress so far.
> > 17:25:02 <cwickert> same for all the others
> ...
> > 17:29:21 <cwickert> I mean, take FAD Rheinfelden again
> > 17:29:36 <cwickert> the person who is supposed to make the payments
> > is probably kital
> > 17:29:43 <cwickert> or not?
> > 17:29:57 <sesivany> yes
> > 17:30:01 <sesivany> he is
> > 17:30:11 <cwickert> I mean, can a CC holder make payments for the
> > premier events budget or only from regional support?
> > 17:32:00 <sesivany> that's a question. I think he should be able to
> > do both. It's just a tool to pay people and it shouldn't matter from >
> what budget it goes. That's a different problem.
> > 17:32:53 <sesivany> but then we need to do some internal accounting
> > to tie cc holder's expenses to budgets they belong to.
> 
> there are two things -
> 1. from what budget FAD-Budget goes and if FAmSCo can decide on it in
> the future or not?
> 
> something you have to discuss Robyn and Ruth - as already mentioned in
> the log somewhere.

Right, that's our main concern. We suggested to let FAmSCo handle FADs,
see
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/famsco/2012-December/001214.html
but Robyn was very opposed to this. Unfortunately she didn't yet find
the time to get back to me when I asked her what her suggestion was and
who fits the role of the budget owner.

> 2. the current pending FAD Travel reimbursement-requests for this FAD
> 
> https://fedorahosted.org/famsco/ticket/334 - 135.05 euro
> https://fedorahosted.org/famsco/ticket/335 - 125,00 euro
> https://fedorahosted.org/famsco/ticket/336 - $146.74

/me needs to add his request, too.

> before you solve issue 1. - can we at least decide on 2. - so the people
> get their money?
> according to
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Sponsoring_event_attendees
> they made all their event reports and requests and valuable contribution
> on this event ...
> 
> as soon as someone from FAmSCo, the EventOwner or Robyn assign this
> tickets to me, i will reimburse them

Unfortunately we cannot approve these tickets. FADs are premier events
and we are not allowed to manage the premier events budget. Once the
budget owner has approved the tickets, a CC holder can reimburse them,
but until then, there is nothing you or we could do. We cannot even
reassign the tickets to the budget owner because it is unclear who the
budget owner is.

I hope you understand the dilemma we are in. We offered our help in
speeding up approvals. You offered your help to speed up payments. But
none of us is allowed to help. :(

> I hope i do not mix up too much topics here - but a general
> note/clarification - i may be wrong or misunderstood the underlying
> intention - i have the impression from the past discussions with
> Christoph that FAmSCo feels called to manage/command how the
> CommCardHolders should work/act - 

Indeed you are mixing two things up: The overall payments process for
regional budget and the premier events process which is broken since Max
left and we no longer have a real "budget owner".

And let me make this clear to everybody (the two of us already did had a
very good phone call)
     1. FAmSCo does not want more power, in fact we are giving up power
        by letting the regional communities decide. The NA community
        already did it this way for a while and very successfully, but
        it was never really codified or documented in the wiki.
     2. FAmSCo has no intentions to manage the community credit card
        holders. Every credit card holder can still approve anything up
        to USD 500 without asking FAmSCo. Just as any FAmSCo member can
        approve the same amount. We are equals.
     3. If you are a credit card holder or a FAmSCo member, don't
        approve your own requests. Nothing has changed with this
        regards, USD > 500 always required a peer review, and 'peer' is
        a second person.
     4. We don't want more power, we want more security. We need it for
        planing the budget. I don't care who makes a decision as long as
        this person lets us know what he/she needs and we have an
        overview about the spending. Just like you did in #193.

> i think John made the point much better than i could do:

Indeed, John makes some very good points. Thanks for quoting his
statement, I missed it in the ticket.

The main point I see is: Credit cards holders have a legally binding
contract with Red Hat. This means:
     1. Credit card holders have a contract with Red Hat but they are
        not bound to FAmSCo decisions, at least from a legal POV.
     2. At the end of the day, they are held ultimately accountable, no
        matter if they made a decision or FAmSCo made it. I think it's
        always good to have an expense backed up by a peer or by FAmSCo,
        but from a legal perspective this is probably completely
        irrelevant.

I don't yet know what the implications of this are, but I have to admit
we completely missed this dimension when we discussed the whole budget
policy. We definitely should think about it, but nevertheless I think we
should discuss the two topics (premier events and John's points)
separately.

Kind regards,
Christoph