USACA defers constitution vote again at AGM

A highly anticipated vote on a revised constitution has been deferred for a second time this year after a motion was passed at the USACA AGM for league presidents to come up with further revisions to the draft document. It means the document may not be ratified until January at the earliest but could be as late as March and may result in USACA's general elections for 2015 being pushed back.

"The constitution itself, there's not a whole bunch of problems," USACA board member Krish Prasad told ESPNcricinfo. "The biggest problem is the voting issue and league presidents want to have more control of that. The president did not object to that. [Gladstone Dainty] said if this is what you guys want, then go and do it."

A final vote on the proposed constitution was never taken at the AGM, but according to unofficial straw polls conducted following the meeting, between 21 and 26 of the 39 league presidents would have voted to reject the document in its current state.

Prasad also confirmed at the meeting that USACA's financial report revealed the organisation is now, "between $3.5 and $4 million in debt". He says USACA has not received any loan payments since 2013 from Rajiv Podar through the Cricket Holdings America agreement. "Finances are poor," Prasad said. "We know that. We don't have any major kind of money in the bank right now but a lot of expenses."

As for the proposed constitution, a six-man committee of league presidents was formed on November 19 to compile further changes to the document. They have been given a deadline of December 4 to come up with agreed upon revisions before sending it back to the USACA board for review, at which point any revised document will need to be re-circulated and a minimum of 30 days taken for review before a new vote can be taken.

"I think it's a pretty handy responsibility for the committee to be able to articulate the desire for the league presidents and define how governance should be improved in USACA going forward," Shiraz Najam, president of the Midwest Cricket Conference and a member of the committee, told ESPNcricinfo. "I think we have some fine gentlemen on the committee who have been with USACA for a long time, we'll do our best to ensure we can cover all leagues interests in our revisions."

Najam said league presidents will be focusing on three things in the constitution document they are looking to reshape to maintain some control over voting decisions that would be relinquished under the proposal that was put forward at the AGM. At the top of the list is making sure all executive board appointments are voted on by league presidents rather than being decided internally by other members of the board. The other two relate to voting on at-large directors and electing members to a pair of USACA committees.

Prasad and a number of league presidents stated it was the highest attended USACA AGM in history, with more than 70 representatives in attendance voicing their desire for changes to be made in how the organisation is run. Shoaib Ahmed, president of Washington Cricket League, said leagues remained committed to fixing USACA internally rather than jumping ship to the American Cricket Federation.

"The league presidents, the onus is on us," Ahmed said. "All 39 leagues need to step up and do the right thing required to move US cricket forward. We can decide if we want to live in mediocrity or do we want to move up and do better things to move US cricket forward. People have a lot of faith in USACA but we're losing faith in the people running USACA.

"If a company is going bankrupt, you change the management or the people running the company. If the USA is in a deficit, you don't go out and say we want to form a new country. You change the leadership who runs the country. So I think at the end of the day, we need to fix our own house and it's about time. We are determined to make positive changes. It's not about one individual, it's about US cricket and we [have] trust in our organisation. We just need to make sure the right people lead us in the future."