The recent ruling by the High Court got me thinking about how to address the issue surrounding the timely response by the Legislator Committee to legislator applications, so I guess now's a good time to open a discussion thread in the Assembly.

One idea I thought of on the fly is opening up an application for debate in Private Halls and subsequently voting on it. I think that would be a good incentive for the Legislator Committee to review legislator applications in a timely manner and allow the applicant to get their application addressed.

4× Cabinet minister /// 1× OWL director /// CRS member /// SPSF

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(This post was last modified: 04-01-2021, 06:27 PM by Jay Coop.)

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Despite the Court's ruling, I don't believe there's anything that needs to be changed about our process or LegComm itself. The issue was not that the law is broken and needs fixing, but that LegComm had only 2 members and fell behind. The Cabinet has nominated 2 additional members, which should alleviate the delays. LegComm isn't designed to operate with just 2 members.

Regarding the suggestion of opening up an application to vote by the Assembly... I don't think that's the best way to do things, even if an application is severely delayed. Our "citizenship" process is designed to be as apolitical as possible, because of how bad things get once people start treating it as a (or perceiving it to be) political process.

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I mostly agree with Glen, however I do think there needs to be an upper limit on how long the committee can ignore an application for. As is they can leave you on pending forever or ignore you entirely without penalty, which in my view constructively amounts to a denial since the outcome is the same as a denial (refusal to grant legislator status).

I think there would be merit in requiring the Committee to approve or deny applications within 2-3 weeks of receipt or face penalty. As is they could all never open Welcoming and Registration again and our only remedy would be to recall them.

Benevolent Thomas-Today at 11:15 AM
"I'm not sure if Altmoras has ever been wrong about anything."

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I think there would be merit in requiring the Committee to approve or deny applications within 2-3 weeks of receipt or face penalty.

What penalty? The only penalty I can think of is recall, which is the available option. 

Perhaps you suggest that applications should be automatically accepted after 2-3 weeks? I think that runs risks of an inactive LegComm resulting in Legislators being accepted who are potentially bad actors. 

Realistically, the process is working as intended. If applications are going slow due to negligence by a fully staffed LegComm, the Assembly can recall them. If applications are going slow due to an understaffed LegComm, then the process works to attempt to fill those spots. 

I am opposed to Assembly voting on applications. I agree with Glen that

Regarding the suggestion of opening up an application to vote by the Assembly... I don't think that's the best way to do things, even if an application is severely delayed.

A lot of the things that lead to a Leg App being rejected wouldn't be publicly available to the Assembly (e.g. IP checks). And it would be insensitive to user privacy to make that information publicly available to the Assembly, even in Private Halls, as a way to work around LegComm. Edit: not to mention that the Assembly can be as slow or slower than LegComm due to size/scale and internal procedure.

(This post was last modified: 04-01-2021, 07:41 PM by HumanSanity.)

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What penalty? The only penalty I can think of is recall, which is the available option. 

I was thinking automatic initiation of a recall vote. Which wouldn't be unreasonable if LegComm effectively abdicates their position. But if we're changing the law then the penalty could potentially be all sorts of things, you could (not should) write in that all members of LegComm are considered to have forfeit their position if any application is not approved or denied in X amount of time, for example. Or that the application is deferred to the CRS or courts or some other body. Sky's the limit.
 

Perhaps you suggest that applications should be automatically accepted after 2-3 weeks? I think that runs risks of an inactive LegComm resulting in Legislators being accepted who are potentially bad actors. 

That would be a very bad idea. As the laws stand LegComm could bypass the CRS and accept anyone and everyone by simply ignoring applications if you had automatic acceptance.

Benevolent Thomas-Today at 11:15 AM
"I'm not sure if Altmoras has ever been wrong about anything."

(This post was last modified: 04-01-2021, 09:30 PM by Altmoras.)

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I don't think automatically initiating a recall vote after 2 to 3 weeks of inactivity would be a problem; but I think we would want it to be complete or major lack of activity. Having a single app slip through the cracks would be a different situation.

I do want to make the point (as I always do when we discuss finite timelines) everyone here is playing a game and LegComm — despite being a position of prestige/authority — is a volunteer position and being too strict on such things will just make the position impossible to fill.

-tsunamy
[forum admin]

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I had an idea, if the app is not accepted nor denied within 7 days then that person gets full Legislator status in the interim.

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I had an idea, if the app is not accepted nor denied within 7 days then that person gets full Legislator status in the interim.

That is an extremely terrible security liability.

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I had an idea, if the app is not accepted nor denied within 7 days then that person gets full Legislator status in the interim.

That is an extremely terrible security liability.

Perhaps, but it would motivate people to get the job done in a reasonable timeframe.

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I had an idea, if the app is not accepted nor denied within 7 days then that person gets full Legislator status in the interim.

That is an extremely terrible security liability.

Perhaps, but it would motivate people to get the job done in a reasonable timeframe.

Or it can let the occasional person who does require extra investigation get access to the very places they're being delayed access to for security reasons.

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