On Oct 6, 2015, at 8:39 PM, Ron Baione <ron.baione@yahoo.com> wrote:

There is going to be a degree of devolvement in every group that is becoming less relevant to a consolidating power structure, the natural projection of frustration as the new corporate reality becomes clear. The key, if increasing community involvement was actually a long term goal of ICANN's board, would be to show that they are doing something productive to that end, and not just speaking broadly when the temperature of the community rises, in an effort to run out the clock.

I would like to highlight the "run out the clock" part of your text; when people ask why the Board took so long to comment, one reason that comes to mind is to leverage time pressure. If the same positions were discussed before, the transition clock would be in less of a hurry, so there would be more time to counter those with rationales and proposals.