From reading the posts there appear to be two camps supporting a change of weight requirement.

(1) Those who want/have a really good airframe and want to save some pennies and put in cheap gear.
(2) Those who have a really good airframe that's a touch heavy due to repairs/age and want to keep good gear in it. (a safety issue here)

How can the AMA be expected to cater to those from camp one who wish to compete in the highest classes and at local, state and national level who are not committed to having the right equipment for the job? If you don't wish to fly in the highest classes and at national or state level then your plane isn't weighed and it doesn't matter. Run what u brung and hope the person you beat for third place doesn't lodge a protest.

The competitiors in camp two have genuine problems that the AMA should consider looking at. From a safety perspective I would much prefer to allow a plane that is a few ounces overweight to compete with all the right gear in it rather than one that has had half it's airframe ground away along with skimpy battery packs and tiny servos trying to make the weight. A sliding scale incrementing a few ounce per class should see this covered but again it seems that this will only be enforced at national level.

The battery pack in or out issue may need redressing at tha FAI level but it doesn't stop the AMA from making it's own local rules regarding the matter. Perhaps someone could petition that the flying weight of a li-po pack is 75% of it's measured static weight, A123's could be 50% and so forth calculated on it's energy density or better yet a national average on capacity used. I'm sure the AMA could get a few top level electric flyers to fly all the schedules and measure the capacity used to get the average values for each class for the following 12 months. If the average for a class is 4500mAh and I use a 9000mAH pack then my pack flying weight is 50% of it's measured static weight. Yes I could put "bigger" stickers on my pack but that would be cheating