While the risks of the AC becoming a gatekeeper are noted, I would also have concern about the ARIN _staff_ (which btw now includes a former NTIA official as it's Executive Director of Government Affairs and Public Policy) becoming too influential in the proposed PDP. This is a point often made about ICANN's PDP. The AC is an elected body, if it fails to serve the community, "the bums can be thrown out" eventually. However, as the proposed PDP is currently worded, a proposal can be effectively delayed by ARIN staff reviews early in the process, forcing the sponsor to petition just to get it in front of the AC for discussion, further editing, and review by the community on the PPML. The point of the staff's proposal review should only be to ensure that the proposal is understandable. Similar to Congressional staffers, they should help the sponsor draft the proposal language but have no ability to influence whether the proposal is actually discussed by the AC and broader community. Obviously, accomplishing this kind of distributed proposal drafting can be challenging, but there are folks exploring how to do this kind of exercise transparently and inclusively in a public policy environment, e.g., PublicMarkup.org A tool like this could even be used further upstream in the PDP by the AC during its draft policy editing phase.