Community Action CEO asks Legislature to remove 5-year statutory board term limit for local control

Tom Donahue, chief executive officer of Brock Community Action, told the House Government Operations & Military Affairs Committee he and other community action agency leaders are asking the Legislature to remove a statutory sentence that limits consecutive service on agency boards to no more than five years.

"What we're trying to do is put it back into local control," Donahue said, asking that the statutory limit be struck so individual agencies may set term lengths in their bylaws. Donahue described the five-member tripartite board structure required by statute—public officials, private-sector representatives and people with low incomes—and said the requested change would not alter the boards' composition, only the mandated term-length language.

Donahue told the committee it has become harder to recruit volunteers who serve on boards and that organizations sometimes want to retain effective volunteers beyond five years. "When we get good volunteers, we wanna keep them," Donahue said. He said many community action agencies are 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations that operate local programs on behalf of state and federal agencies and that the statutory language imposing a five-year consecutive limit dates to 1981.

Representative Keith Nugent pressed Donahue on how agencies would handle situations in which a long-serving board member becomes obstructive or harmful without a statutory turnover requirement. Donahue acknowledged the concern and said local bylaws and governance processes would remain available to remove or replace problematic members.

Several committee members responded favorably to the local-control argument but also noted the value of transition planning and oversight. No committee motion, amendment or vote was recorded during the discussion.