Hey, 

I want to start with saying that I appreciate the extra work Legislator Committee members take on behalf of the region and the Assembly. They do their utmost to ensure no bad actors are masked as Legislators, assist the Chair of the Assembly with removing inactive legislators, and handle all other statutory responsibilities bestowed upon them. 

With that said, however, we must accept that there are issues with their primary responsibility, which is reviewing legislator applications. 

Some data compiled for time between application to masking, between 05/MAY/2021 to 26/OCT/2021; 



With 46 applications handled between those dates, more than a quarter of it took longer than seven days to be processed. Further, out of that same 46 applications, nearly forty percent of it took longer than two days to be acknowledged by the LegComm. 

And if we look at more recent applications, we can see the trend getting worse. One applications isn't handled at all (i.e. 1), other applications took more than five days to be acknowledged (i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), and some applications took;
10-14 Days: https://tspforums.xyz/thread-9857.html https://tspforums.xyz/thread-9854.html https://tspforums.xyz/thread-9856.html https://tspforums.xyz/thread-9922.html https://tspforums.xyz/thread-9927.html https://tspforums.xyz/thread-9923.html https://tspforums.xyz/thread-9934.html https://tspforums.xyz/thread-9939.html
15-28 Days: https://tspforums.xyz/thread-9886.html https://tspforums.xyz/thread-9915.html https://tspforums.xyz/thread-9894.html https://tspforums.xyz/thread-9897.html
- to be approved / denied. 

I should also add that I had a mostly horrid experience with LegComm during my application process where my application was denied, was provided with no actual information why I was denied in NS Telegram until I reached out to inquire, and thereafter two LegComm members effectively ignored me, offering me no information throughout this process. So maybe I am biased. 

So, what can be done? 
a. Increase the minimum number of LegComm members from three to at least five, 
b. Amend "[...] and shall strive to accept or deny each applicant within a week." to something along the lines of "[...] and must accept or deny each applicant within ten days of application posted."
c. Limit the different offices a LegComm member can hold while being member of that committee, 
d. Establish a system where Cabinet can appoint temp. members with a similar process detailed in Legislator Committee Act, Article 1, Section 4, in case a LegComm member needs to take a LOA. 
e. ?

I would also love to hear about your experience during your application process. Additionally, and if you agree with the premise of this discussion, I would also love to hear what other solutions you may have to this issue.

Thanks.

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Fair enough

For a while we've been in a situation where many of us are otherwise busy so don't remember about doing apps and then get grumpy that nobody else is doing them so they have to and then when more come in think 'ugh I just did a bunch despite being busy, somebody else should do them' and then get grumpier

The best solution would probably be appointing one or two more LegComm. When I got elected elsewhere I asked LegComm to think of any more LegComm but afaik nothing came up. So anyone who wants to be LegComm pls say.

c - probably not gonna work (unless we have a lotof people willing to do legcomm) because people are unlikely to choose LegComm over other things if forced to choose. I wouldn't.

(This post was last modified: 12-16-2021, 09:37 AM by Nakari.)

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The way we've been treating LegComm is a particular, difficult and thankless job.

I have no solutions, but wanted to point that out.

I think we have trouble filling three spots, so I can't imagine trying to fill five. I also think putting arbitrary deadlines in legislation like this is pointless. It's not that people are purposefully ignoring the requirement currently, they're just busy — likely with IRL stuff.

I do think we had a provision to appoint temp members though, no? It was at least bantered about before.

-tsunamy
[forum admin]

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It should be noted that the High Court took a related case earlier this year: https://tspforums.xyz/thread-9299-post-2...#pid216068 

In essence, the Court provided recommendations for potential fixes to missing the hard 48 hours requirement (which to my recollection still have not been addressed). However, the Court did note that the seven-day clause was not binding and instead was a recommendation. The Legislator Committee can, and should, be doing better, but the overall attention to application seems to have improved from before the case was decided.

-Griffindor/Ebonhand
-Current Roles/Positions
-Legislator 2/24/20-
-High Court Justice 6/7/20-
-South Pacific Coral Guard 11/17/20-
-Minister of Engagement 6/17/22-

-Past Roles/Positions
-Legislator 7/3/16-4/10/18
-Secretary of State 4/3/20-2/24/21
-Chair of the APC 9/24/16-5/31/17
-Vice-Chair of the APC 6/1/17-4/10/18
-Local Council Member 7/1/17-11/17/17
-Citizen 5/2012-12/2014 and  2/26/16-7/3/2016

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I can think of a simple fix for us not acknowledging apps in under 48 hours, actually.

Currently we mark apps as [PENDING] only once we've started actually processing them, which obviously is pretty dependent on our availability. We could just mark them as pending/acknowledged the moment we see them. That's not gonna help them get done any faster and we'd need to figure out a new way to mark when we've actually done the work on them (perhaps separate [RECEIVED] and [PENDING] templates?). But it would at least acknowledge them.

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I do think we had a provision to appoint temp members though, no? It was at least bantered about before.

We do under Article 1(4), however I think there are two issues with this provision:
(1) In order for it ever to get used, the problem has to be large enough to where the Cabinet is noticing it, at which point the time to make the emergency appointment and then have the emergency appointee process applications, at which point applications are very severely backed up, and
(2) the way it is written there must be declared vacancy or leave, and the Cabinet is rarely aware if LegComm members are on vacancy or leave since (I imagine) that notice is usually given in LegComm's private forums/threads which Cabinet does not have access to. 

In the short term, Cabinet can (and will) work with LegComm to make a new appointment (thus bringing LegComm up to five members rather than four). However, the fact this problem is so regularly reoccurring makes me wonder if there is a structural problem and, relatedly, if there is any possible solution. I don't have one conveniently on me, but I think it's good to note when there is a problem.

Minister of Foreign Affairs
General of the South Pacific Special Forces
Ambassador to Balder
Former Prime Minister and Minister of Defense

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There's also some tech work to be done to make LegComm work less tedious, plus there are some LegComm-internal things that still need to be figured out to streamline the unified apps more (something on my Todo list, but hadn't gotten to it yet because I've been absolutely obliterated by work+RL these past three weeks).

Love the statistics, LFP. It's always nice to see some hard data put together to demonstrate or disprove a problem.

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Some possible amendments with what was discussed so far, to allow further debate into this issue. 

Amendment to Article 1(2):

(2) The Legislator Committee comprises is composed of no less than three and no more than five seven standing-members who are legislators that have each been appointed by the Cabinet and approved by the Assembly via a simple majority vote.

Comment:
1. Tsunamy made a point of at times the community is unable to fill three spots, and increasing the minimum from three to five could be detrimental. As an alternative, the amendment would increase the maximum membership to seven. 
2. Added 'standing-member' to differentiate between members permanently appointed to the committee, and approved by the Assembly, and members temporarily appointed during standing-member LOAs, by the Cabinet.


Amendment to Article 2(2):

(2) A member of the Coalition may attain legislator status through an application with the Legislator Committee. The Committee shall confirm the reception of an application within 48 hours. The Committee will determine the eligibility of the applicant, consulting any other institutions of the Coalition as needed to inform its decision, and shall strive to accept or deny each applicant within a week ten days. 

Comment:
1. Strike "strive to" in accordance with the Griffondor's comment in this thread and the decision he authored in 2103.HQ, to make the clause binding. ([...] This clause is not a binding clause upon the Legislator Committee but rather a recommendation.)
2. Amend "a week" to "ten days" to grant extra three days with respect to changing the clause binding to the LegComm. 

Amendment to Article 1(4):

(4) If there is no member of the Legislator Committee available due to vacancy, or leave, or leave of absences, and there are outstanding duties to be performed, the Cabinet may appoint an emergency temporary-members to handle any urgent matters of the committee. The Council on Regional Security may, on security grounds only, rescind the Cabinet's appointment. The emergency temporary-member's tenure will last until the Cabinet rescinds the appointment or until one week after a regular committee members is are available, whichever happens sooner.

Comment:
1. Add "leaves of absence" to allow Cabinet to temporarily appoint members to the LegComm, for the duration of the standing-members' LOA, 
2. Strike "an and add "s" at the end of emergency member, to allow the Cabinet to appoint multiple temp. members to the committee, in case the committee is missing more than one member, 
3. Strike "urgent" to ensure Cabinet is able to appoint temp. members to deal with all matters relating to LegComm, 
4. Amend "emergency" to "temporary-" to differentiate members, with reference to the amendment proposed for Article 1(2), 
5. Add "s" to member, amend "is" to "are", with reference to second point made in this Comment section. 

Amendment to Article 1: 

(5) Standing-member of the Legislator Committee who is going for a Leave of Absence shall inform the Prime Minister of their Leave of Absence, and their intended date of return, to allow the Cabinet to consider appointing a temporary-member to the Legislator Committee during their absence,  

Comment:
1. With reference to the point made by HumanSanity, this new section would allow the PM and the Cabinet to be 'in the loop' about LOAs in the LegComm, and would give them ample time to find a temp. replacement to pick up the work of the LOA member. 


Amendment to Article 3(2):

(2) Within the first week of each calendar month, the The Legislator Committee will remove legislator status from a legislator if they failed the voting requirement in the past month, if applicable, or otherwise no longer meet the eligibility requirements as described herein, at the directive of the Chair of the Assembly, following the release of the State of the Assembly . If a legislator no longer meets the eligibility requirements (not including the voting requirement), and it would be impossible for them to meet the requirements before the first week of the following calendar month, the Legislator Committee may remove their legislator status at their discretion before the appointed week. The Legislator Committee may exercise discretion and not remove legislators under reasonable extenuating circumstances.

Comment:
1. Not necessarily an urgent matter, but there were some discussions on Discord about how some removals weren't done due to the first week of the calendar month was missed to revoke the Legislator status of inactive members by the LegComm, 
2. Strike "Within the first week of each calendar month," to allow the status revocations can occur regardless of which week of the month LegComm may be in, 
3. Add  "at the directive of the Chair of the Assembly, following the release of the State of the Assembly" to ensure that such status removals are subject to inactivity, or other reasons that Chair of the Assembly raises, and announced in the State of the Assembly post.

(This post was last modified: 12-19-2021, 05:28 PM by LFP.)

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I motion to move the amendments to a vote.

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Bumping this either for a second or an another motion to table the proposed amendments.

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