On the figure skating side, there are relatively few changes being proposed to the actual technical standards for what skaters do on the ice. But there are a large number of changes being proposed to the ISU's procedures, many of which are clearly a response to recent off-ice controversies in the sport.

The past couple of years have seen a number of serious conflicts between the ISU leadership and the various national member federations. For example, in the fall of 1998, there was a nasty squabble between ISU president Ottavio Cinquanta and the United States Figure Skating Association involving the USFSA's right to invite Michelle Kwan to compete at Skate America. There was also a less publicized dispute involving the ISU's attempt to schedule its new Four Continents Championship in more or less direct conflict with the U.S. Championships in a fairly blatant, and thus-far unsuccessful, attempt to diminish the prestige of the latter event.

Other federations have had their own gripes with the ISU. Last summer, the ISU's decision to take the 2000 World Championships away from Australia and hold them in France in a dispute over domestic TV broadcast rights resulted in the Australian federation filing an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which is still dragging on without resolution. And there has been another ongoing dispute between the ISU and the Russian federation involving the suspension of Sviatoslav Babenko -- one of the toe-tapping judges in the pairs event at the 1999 World Championships -- over alleged violations of due process in his original disciplinary hearing. In the latter case, Valentin Piseev, head of the Russian skating federation, reportedly threatened to take the case to the civil courts as well as the CAS before the ISU backed down.

All of these various conflicts have carried over to the agenda for the ISU Congress. On the one hand, there are proposals from the U.S., Australia and Russia that seek to restrict the powers of the ISU and protect the interests of the member federations. On the other hand, there are proposals from the ISU Council -- its executive decision-making body -- that would consolidate its power, expand its control over the sport and make it less accountable to member federations and the general public.

For example, there are proposals from the ISU Council that would restrict the jurisdiction of the CAS to appeals involving suspension or exclusion of an individual from the ISU. This would essentially guarantee that the ISU gets the final word in any dispute with a member federation. On the other hand, the Australian federation has proposed to amend the ISU Constitution to state "the ISU shall ensure that the interests of all Members are observed and respected." And the U.S. has proposed to give the ISU Congress -- that is, the member federations -- "the power to address, revise or overturn any decision or policy made by the ISU Council, the Technical Committees, or any other governing group within the ISU," noting that "many important current ISU policies and procedures are being created and implemented outside of the normal rulemaking process by executive fiat."

In fact, with the trend toward decision-making by executive fiat, the ISU Council members themselves haven't always been informed of decisions that have supposedly been made in the name of the Council. When an ISU press release announced that the Council had agreed to reduce Babenko's suspension, at least one Council member -- Joyce Hisey of Canada -- claimed to have been "in the dark" about it.

In a particularly striking juxtaposition, one proposal from the ISU Council would enforce the confidentiality of "discussion at the Council meetings, voting by Council members, minutes of the meeting and other documents sent to Council members," under threat of sanctions for misconduct. Meanwhile, another proposal from the Australian federation would amend the same section of the ISU Constitution to require that the ISU Council publish minutes of all of its meetings and decisions made by correspondence, and distribute them to the member federations in a timely manner.

If the ISU has its way, the Four Continents event, which Angela Nikodinov won in February, will increase in significance.(AP)

In another set of proposals, the ISU is continuing to attempt to prop up its Four Continents Championships by making it and the European Championships qualifying events for the World Championships. Under these proposals, the number of entries at Worlds each member federation would earn would be determined by their skaters' placements at the current year's continental championships, replacing the existing formula that uses placements at the previous year's Worlds. Countries who qualify entries this way would be able to have their skaters bypass the qualifying round at Worlds, while other countries would get to enter only a single competitor in each event.

Essentially, this proposal would force the USFSA and other federations to send their top skaters to the continental championships if they want to qualify the maximum number of entries for Worlds, regardless of the scheduling or travel difficulties that have, in the past, made some of these skaters prefer to stay home and concentrate on training for Worlds instead.

The ISU Council also takes a swipe at outspoken Canadian judge Jean Senft, who has been embroiled in an apparently endless series of suspensions and appeals since the Nagano Olympics. There's a proposal that would forbid judges from serving as television commentators or from having any communication with television or the media during any competition in which they are judging. While there are probably legitimate concerns about conflicts of interest in the case of paid commentators, putting a general gag order on judges is certainly a step backward in terms of helping to educate the public about the sport and the way it is judged, and of making the judging system as a whole more accountable to the public.

By far the most complicated group of proposals that have been submitted to this year's Congress is the one that would establish new procedures for evaluating and certifying skating judges. There are at least three separate groups of proposals: one from the ISU's technical committees, one from the Bulgarian federation, and one submitted jointly by France and Slovenia. These proposals are clearly an attempt to address some of the controversies over incompetent or corrupt judging in the past few years, but it's hard to say which set, if any, will have the support of the Congress.

There are also proposals in the agenda that revisit issues from the 1998 Congress. Most notably, there's a proposal to make the already horrendously complex "One-By-One" scoring system even more complicated by adding an additional tiebreaker. And there's another one that amounts to an admission that the new scoring system is far too complicated for manual computation, by removing the requirement that results be checked manually when only a single scoring computer is used. There's also a proposal from the Australians to revert to the less-complicated majority ordinal scoring system in use prior to 1998, on the grounds that the new system does not actually solve the problems it was supposed to.

Meanwhile, the United States is not only proposing once again to lower the minimum age requirement for skaters to participate in the World Championships and Olympic Games but also to make junior-level skaters eligible to compete in international open, or pro-am, events. One wonders if it's really a good idea for those "baby ballerinas" to be hyped in made-for-TV events before they're old enough to establish any credentials by competing in "real" competitions.

Finally, it's interesting to note what isn't included in the agenda for the Congress. There are no proposals to change the rules to allow professional skaters to reinstate for the Olympics again, although perhaps the only person in the world who thought that such a rule change was in the works was Oksana Baiul, who has repeatedly talked in interviews about returning to the Olympics.

There are also no proposals to do away with the compulsory dance portion of the ice dance event, which is something that has been discussed within the ice dance community as a more realistic possibility. Many people think that the addition of specific required elements to the original dance has made the compulsory dances redundant and a waste of time, but at least for the next two seasons the compulsories are still alive.