LAB Reform Coalition to Reform LAB Return Control to Members and Restore Traditional Cycling Values

Why LAB Reform?

Why has the League abandoned our rights to the road?

So the League came rallying to his defense - right?  Wrong!  The League has refused to get involved.  Andy Clarke claims there was a "perfectly rideable" shoulder.  League officials accuse Reed of being an extremist for not using it.

Clarke claims that the League offered to help.  (They just did not bother to tell Reed or his lawyer about their offer.)  Read Clarke's excuses here.  Then read what really happened here, including seeing what that "perfectly rideable" shoulder looks like.

Ruthless recklessness

Chicago, which has many dangerous door zone bike lanes, has a BFC award despite falsifying the apparent sizes of cars & trucks depicted in scale drawings in its Bike Lane Design Guide, making them appear to be 20% smaller.  See one of the drawings from the Design Guide with the vehicles re-scaled to the correct size.

Chicago gives this irresponsible advice about door zone bike lanes:  "Keep track of traffic behind you so you'll know whether you have enough room if you must swerve suddenly out of the 'Door Zone'."

Many other award recipients also have hazardous segregated facilities.  Indeed, having segregated facilities seems to be a requirement for receiving an award.  Even restricting cyclists' right to the road is not a problem for BFC.

Bicycle Friendly Fiendish Communities:  Why are they leaving out cyclists? The League is failing in its responsibility to look out for the interests and well-being of its members (CYCLISTS) ... by failing to criticize bad laws and dangerous facilities would be bad enough without giving rewards.  The League should be ACTIVELY out there putting a foot down on badly designed facilities, negligent AASHTO guidance, discriminatory laws and enforcement. Who's really Looking Out for YOU?  It's LAB Reform.  Please support us by telling others about us.  Link to this site in any web pages you write.  Mention us wherever appropriate in club newsletters and in blogs and mail lists. (No, we aren't asking for money.  The League does more than enough of that.)

LAB Reform Goals:

1. Regain members control of the League by restoring their right to elect ALL directors
2. Restore access to the ballot and Bylaws via the petition and referendum
3. Remove the veil of secrecy over the actions of the board and staff
4. Allow members a reasonable process to remove unethical directors
5. Promote the best and safest practices of cycling
6. Stop promoting unsafe facilities
7. Protect the rights of cyclists
8. Revive member services

Why So Much Negativism?

If you haven't been following LAB governance problems, you may have the impression that everything here has an unnecessarily negative or strident tone.  That's not our intention, but the LAB leadership's errors are so serious that we could not find a way to "sugar-coat" them.  Indeed, we wouldn't bother with this effort if the problems weren't serious.

For every criticism we've made against LAB, we've offered a practical and workable alternative.  Indeed, LAB has already adopted a few (too few) of our proposals (details elsewhere on this page and throughout this site).  But there is much more that needs to be fixed before LAB Reform can "go away".  Among the most shameful LAB programs is Bicycle Friendly Communities, which has given awards to cities that build dangerous facilities, ban cyclists from important roads or maliciously prosecute cyclists for simply being on the road.

Please see the LAB Reform Vision

Some Progress -- But Much More Needed

We have some progress to report in our quest to reform the League.  In the 2008 elections, two LAB Reform members were elected to the board and a third director, endorsed by LAB Reform, beat the board-endorsed candidate.  Unfortunately, there are still five non-elected board members who are not accountable to members and the election of 2008-9 was a farce.

At the March 2006 board meeting, the "Statement of Purpose" in the Bylaws that had been reduced to a meaningless platitude in 2003 was restored to nearly its former meaning.  However, the other Sneak Bylaws changes that restrict members' rights have not been rescinded.

In the March 2006 meeting, the treasurer reported that the League's financial situation looks much better than its precarious condition of last year.  The atmosphere in the meeting room was much more friendly to visiting members than in recent years.  Bill Hoffman's notes from the meeting are available here.  Due to a snowstorm, we did not have a representative at the Mar. 2007 meeting and we have no information about what goes on in tele-conferences.

The board has finally embraced cyclists' rights as an issue for the League.  Unfortunately, the uncritical endorsement of separate bike lanes and bicycle sidepaths in the League's Bicycle Friendly Communities Program undermines Cyclists' Rights.  The new "Bicycle Friendly States program" seems to be not as bad as BFC -- but it is not very good either.

The board pledged to support the effort to reform bicycle traffic laws. You can see a presentation Fred Oswald showed to the board that was well-received.  However, a promised article in the League magazine never appeared and communities that restrict cyclists' rights still get awards.

LAB Reform heartily commends LAB for its role in the creation and submission of an amicus brief in the Kentucky Court of Appeals.  This is exactly the type of work LAB should be doing in support of cyclists’ rights and they got it mostly right.  The new Share the Road campaign is also promising.

Serious Issues Remain About the Governance of the League

When outside interests seized control of the League a few years ago, the League largely abandoned its duty to protect our interests, thereby alienating its most dedicated members.  League membership declined about 14 percent between 1996 and 2002, a period when certain board members claimed their leadership "... nearly doubled the League's membership".  We suffered a further decline of ten percent in 2004-2005.  With the decline in membership and continued spending came budget deficits.  We often hear from people who refuse to join the League, or have quit because of mis-management and ethical issues.  We even know a life member who is so disgusted with the League that he quit.

A large part of the "membership problem" is the fact that fewer than 10 percent of cycling club members belong to the League.  These are the people who should form the membership core.  We believe these club members would be the most loyal members of the League if the League would be loyal to them.

Below are some of the "highlights" of the LAB leadership crisis that led to the formation of LAB Reform.  The board has had many opportunities to cure problems.  Unfortunately, they refuse to even admit that "mistakes were made."  Instead they've occasionally escalated the conflict.  These events point out the need to change the leadership of LAB in order to end this crisis and prevent it occurring again.  For details on many of these events, see A Brief History of LAB by Bill Hoffman.

1997 - Board moved headquarters from Baltimore to Washington
1998 - Bylaws changed to allow appointing 4 of 12 directors
1999 - Mike Greehan and Martha Roskowski appointed (not elected) to Board
2001 - Beginning of Education Program crisis
2002 - Which Way LAB distributed at Rally
2003 - The LAB Election Scandal
2003 - Added a fifth appointed director (members not consulted)
2003 - Sneak LAB Bylaws Changes  (Martha Roskowski, then Secretary, played key role in changes.)
2003 - LAB operating deficit $47,000, membership down 14% in 6 years
2004 - "Truce" between Board and LAB Reform
2004 - LAB operating deficit $264,197, membership down another 10%
2005 - Greehan became LAB president
2005 - Greehan threatens legal action against LAB Reform to stifle dissent.
2007 - Mike Greehan and Martha Roskowski finally term limited off board.
2007-8 - LAB Reform members Bill Hoffman and Bruce Rosar elected to board.
2008-9 - A Soviet style election (one candidate per seat).

There are many serious problems with League advocacy that is often harmful to members and that fails to promote the best and safest cycling practices.  The Bicycle Friendly Communities Program is especially troubling.

We have interesting articles by John Forester and John Schubert.  Forester lays out Policies for Restoration of the League of American Bicyclists.  Schubert issues a challenge to the "good" members of the board to reform the League.  What does it take to get the board to finally begin to listen -- and admit serious mistakes?

LAB Recently had Deep Financial Troubles

After a $47,000 operating deficit in 2003, the League generated even more red ink in 2004 -- $264,197.  Instead of significantly cutting expenses, the board desperately searched for outside donations to close another deficit in 2005.  Outside funding did "keep the wolf at bay."  In addition, several key (and presumably highly paid) staffers left in 2005.  Some of them were not replaced.

When donations do materialize they often have strings attached -- strings that clash with the League's traditional mission and that are detrimental to the interests of League members.

Part of the financial problem has been caused by simple carelessness.  Among several examples of extravagance, the League rents an office suite in Washington, D. C., one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country.  We also pay our executive director a very generous salary.  In 2003, the salary was $115,500 in addition to a generous bonus.  In the FY 2005 report, the executive director compensation was $112,577, in 2006 and 2007, it was $115,000.

We need your help to keep the reform process moving

We frequently update the LAB Reform web site with new information and new articles to keep our supporters informed.  These will also include links for informative articles about cycling -- things that should be in the LAB magazine.  We often make small (or not-so-small) updates to various pages, sometimes without changing the main page, thus some material may be newer than the date at bottom of this page.  If you provide your email address we can send an occasional message to tell you when significant new information is posted or when news breaks.

We should send out more email than we do, but we are volunteers with many other responsibilities and we never want to bother people unless we have something really important to say.  You are invited to add yourself to our email membership (you can easily quit at any time) without worrying about receiving junk from us.  Below is the entire history of our previous mailings to our list.  You can see how seldom we send mail.

9/28/03, 10/05/03, 9/16/04, 2/20/04, 9/29/05, 12/17/05, 6/22/06, 12/9/07

We use a JavaScript program to convert the email address shown below.  To use the address, you need to enable JavaScript -- or replace "_AT_" with "@" and "_DOT_" with "."

Please send the following information by email to fredoswald_AT_yahoo_DOT_com.
Name, address, phone, email, your local cycling club(s),
Your level of interest, any special skills or other info., etc.

Keep current on LAB Reform by visiting www.labreform.org.

Did you know? Until the mid-1990s, all League directors were member elected, and their home phone numbers were published in the League magazine.  Then four board positions were taken away from member election and moved to appointed positions, in an attempt to form alliances. When the bicycle industry lobby got three of its people on the LAB board they insisted that board members' direct contact information be withheld from the membership.  This was never voted on; the administration simply did it. The four appointed positions grew to five in 2003.  Also in 2003, the board quietly changed the rules for members to get on the ballot via petition.   What was once a reasonable "safety valve" to protect the League against a self-serving board is now extremely difficult.  The result of appointed members and an unreasonable petition requirement is that the board is answerable to the membership in theory only. Today, concerned members can contact their board members only by letter or e-mail.  They won't necessarily get answered.

Please join us and help restore the BikeLeague to members.

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Revised 9/ 1/10