ABATE Removes State Coordinator
Monday, October 20th, 2014Sad. That’s the word that, for me at least, sums up this bit of business.
My ABATE D-10 patch.
Not surprisingly, the state organization is being pretty close-mouthed but they did prepare an official statement. Here is that statement.
In September, 2014, the ABATE of Colorado Board of Directors was made aware of discrepancies in one of ABATE’s bank accounts. At the September BOD meeting, in keeping with the fiduciary duties of the Board of Directors to the membership and the organization as a whole, a committee was formed to investigate these issues.
Although the investigation is far from being completed, by the end of two weeks, the committee had found enough evidence to support the allegations of Breach of Fiduciary Duties the State Coordinator. An emergency meeting of the Board of Directors was called for Saturday, October 4, 2014, at which time the decision was made to terminate the employment of [then] State Coordinator, Terry Howard.
The future of ABATE, and where we go from here, will be formally discussed further at the November (and future) board meeting(s). Don Enninga, assistant State Coordinator, will be acting as State Coordinator while we transition.
One plan at this time is that ABATE will be going back to a volunteer State Coordinator position. Interested parties should submit a Letter of Intent to the Board of Directors.
Please be assured, the Board of Directors and the ABATE office staff are working diligently to prevent future issues and will be keeping you, the membership, updated.
At this point that is all I know. Obviously, I’ll try to learn more and will report on what I find.
But again, the whole thing, to me, is very sad. I’ve known Terry for a number of years now and I like her and I’ve always thought she was doing a heck of a job as state coordinator. Regardless of what the facts of this matter are, ABATE will no longer have her there doing this job.
Let me give you an example of her efforts.
A number of years ago I unknowingly set some wheels in motion. I was doing a lot of work at that time as the National Motorcycle Examiner for Examiner.com. I was (and am) an ABATE member and I got to wondering why it was that the sportbiking crowd and the various state ABATEs were generally unfriendly with each other. So I posted on some sportbike forums asking opinions of ABATE and the reasons.
Boy did I get a response.
It turned out that the sportbikers, who for the most part are ATGATT folks, dislike ABATE because they saw these groups as being anti-helmet. Perhaps some state groups are but in my experience they are more anti-helmet law, which is to say, they prefer to have government stay out of it and let the rider decide. I know ABATE of Colorado strongly encourages wearing helmets, but is against having a law requiring them. That’s my own personal opinion as well.
But in the course of all the discussion there was a comment from someone in the Colorado Sportbike Club who said his group was not down on ABATE the way so many groups in other states are.
Terry Howard was reading these articles and the discussion they were generating and when she saw that statement she immediately contacted that person and when the dust had all settled ABATE of Colorado and the CSC had formed an alliance and the two groups have been working together on issues of concern to all bikers ever since. I may have set the stage but Terry was the one who made that happen. Colorado may be the only state in the country where these two groups are united. And I hope this relationship weathers this storm. I don’t see why it shouldn’t but you never know.
So yes, I think it’s incredibly sad. I don’t know what Terry has or has not done and I don’t even know what she is accused of having done. But I do know that ABATE is a loser in all this. There are no winners. It’s just sad.
Biker Quote for Today
If people focused on the important things in life, there’d be a shortage of dirt bikes.
