After five days of intense discussion, debate, and negotiation, the Executive Council and the Board on Professional Standards (BOPS) agreed to send to the members a compromise version of then-president Newell Fischer's bylaw amendment on membership procedures. The bylaw would reaffirm that oversight of membership is in the hands of Council.

Further, if the compromise bylaw amendment is approved by the APsaA membership in balloting this fall, a new Council Membership Requirements and Review Committee will be set up to establish and conduct all membership procedures. This committee is also charged with considering and recommending changes to the criteria for membership, which currently require that new members either be candidates at an APsaA approved institute, IPA members, or graduates of an APsaA approved institute. Fischer envisioned that qualified analysts who are already members of our local societies would be one of the first groups we might open up to.

Any changes recommended by the Membership Requirements and Review Committee would be presented to the Council for approval, to the Board for its opinion, and then sent to the membership for approval. Like all bylaw changes, new membership criteria would need to be approved by two-thirds of members voting on the measure.

At his farewell party in San Francisco, Fischer said that the compromise version of the bylaw “is a great opportunity to move forward.”

Eric Nuetzel, incoming chair of the Board on Professional Standards, and Lynn E. Moritz, incoming president-elect of the Association, each said that the cooperation between Board and Council in passing a compromise bylaw amendment was a major achievement that was both “symbolic and substantive.”