Allegations of eavesdropping, aggressive lobbying, breach of fiduciary duty and leaks of confidential documents.
Reading a nine page legal document from the Law Office of McLeod, Watkinson and Miller to National Cattlemen’s Beef President Bill Donald, you get to read not only the allegations of misconduct brought by the NCBA against leadership of the Cattlemen’s Beef Board, but their response, confessions and remedy.
Bill explained the situation to Northern Ag Network on Tuesday.
In the charges of improper conduct, CBB CEO Tom Ramey was alleged to have repeatedly listened to NCBA and Federation conference calls even though he had not been invited to listen in and did not announce his presence.
Mr. Ramey admitted that he did so on several occasions and apologized to the Beef Board and to the CBB Executive Committee.
Tom Jones, Chair of the CBB and former Chair Dan Dierschke admitted that they had been aware of some of Mr. Ramey’s plans to listen unannounced and acknowledged that they erred in failing to direct him not to do so.
This eavesdropping charge is one of four allegations. There were also charges of misconduct brought by the NCBA against CBB Leadership dealing with aggressive lobbying. This came from the alleged use of checkoff dollars to lobby USDA on the matter of “whether NCBA’s Federation Division should be required to separate from the NCBA.” Charges were also brought forth for breach of fiduciary duties and leaks of confidential documents/talking to the New York Times in which the conversation ended up in an article reflecting poorly on the Beef Checkoff.
The letter from the law firm outlines the remedies for each of the breaches of conduct and states that they hope both the Beef Board and NCBA will be able to finally put behind them what has happened in the past and work together in the future to increase demand for beef.
Bill Donald told us that some state organizations may not be so forgiving.
To read the letter from the law firm that outlines the allegations, confessions and remedies, CLICK HERE.
© Northern Ag Network 2011
Haylie Shipp
