This has come up on the community before. Apparently, those in favor of such a position feel that the board should speak with "one-voice". There is some value to that, in that after a decision has been reached, there does need to be uniform backing by the entire board. Further, when a person is in a position of power, they do need to be careful in their speech lest casual comments are treated as official gospel.
The naive approach to this to stifle speech. Likely it comes from parenting -- "Do what your dad said and no backtalking". Although there are cases this is appropriate (legal strategy, confidential negotiations, personnel actions, etc), it tends to result in loss of respect for leadership when used unnecessarily.
More nuanced approaches are publishing dissenting opinions alongside decisions, with a clear understanding that majority opinion is "law" and the only thing that establishes precedent. The US Supreme Court is a great example of this in action.
Another technique is to train officers to routinely identify when their speech is personal or official. This can be done with word choice, how they sign communications, references (or lack thereof) to their office, etc.
That said, the part I find most disturbing about such allegations is that a board is supposed to represent the corporate owners/shareholders. In the case of a Business League [501(c)6], the closest thing to owners is the membership. Members elect/fire the board and the entire organization exists solely for the benefit of the members. Withholding germane information from the membership, in my eyes, would be akin to being deceitful with one's boss. On the "badness" scale, this probably falls somewhere between insubordination and professional negligence. I do hope that this is not "official policy" and that any lingering examples can be quashed.
That said, I don't feel we need the grandstanding CraignS suggests. We just need up to 5 candidates show up on the community and make such a commitment. Then, we need to vote for them and encourage others to do the same.
David Melnick's simple effort to solicit and thoughtfully respond to my opinion was enough to earn him at least one vote -- well unless 5 more candidates do the same, in which case I will need to do some more analysis. In the end, I guess the old adage does apply -- to win an election, you need to shake a bunch of hands.
