Both the EAA and VAA boards are elected (subject to some variations, the various EAA subsidiaries: Warbirds, Vintage, IAC, etc... get a seat for their president). The problem is proxies. The core EAA guys (in the past the Pobereznys) had a large block of the general membership proxies which pretty much meant they determined who sat on the board. About ten years ago we tried to go out on the intenret and solicit enough proxies to put a non-Tom approved board member in place (notably Jim Wier, the "d" is silent). We couldn't overcome the corporate inertia.

Actually, in my opinion, the board was perfectly responsive. This whole incident was a knee-jerk reaction to a single incident with a volunteer of storied history that tainted a lot of the volunteer "management" which resulted in a rather ill-advisedd "off with their heads" response from the VAA management. When things calmed down, cooler heads prevailed.