EMergency EM EMpowerment Act

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Han Held
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EMergency EM EMpowerment Act

Post by Han Held »

Background

Given that government posistions in the CDS are Voluntarily taken without the benefit of being able to predict future real-world conflicts, and given the fact that virtual world obligations must take a back-seat to the real world personal situations which allow for vw participation to begin with it has to be understood that there will be times when one or more members of the CDS government will face circumstances where they may be out of touch or unavailable for a limited period of time.

While understandable, this may leave the CDS unable to fulfil it's obligations regarding the smooth operation of the estate.

Intent
In such a situation the CDS has multiple options on how to proceed. In order to grant the estate time to calmly assess the situation and arrive at a decision on how to proceed, this act shall give the Representative Assembly the mechanism to grant Estate Managers the ability to perform duties normally authorised by the Chancellor.

The EMs shall be granted no additional administrative powers except for the ones which are spelled out in this legislation.

Scope of the law and Actions to take
In the event of the Chancellor or other government body being unable to perform these duties, the RA shall (either at a regular or emergency meeting) empower the Esate Managers to take on the following tasks;

1) Send out notices when Tenants are a week away from becoming delinquent
2) Send out notices when Residents are 24 hours away from becoming delinquent
3) Evict Citizen parcels which have fallen into arrears
4) Reclaim parcels which are in arrears
5) Take the necessary steps to put the parcels up for sale. This includes setting parcel information and displays as normal.

The Estate Managers will be granted these powers until either the end of the term, or until the RA gathers in a second meeting and declares the situation resolved. Once the situation has been declared resolved, the Estate Managers will continue in their jobs with the obligations they hold normally.

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Sudane Erato
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Re: EMergency EM EMpowerment Act

Post by Sudane Erato »

Notes on this very helpful proposal...

"Powers" #1 and #2 are currently automatically performed by the Casper boxes themselves, unless the citizen/owner has "Notices Turned Off". Since someone/thing in addition to the Chancellor already performs this role, if the additional notice from a real person is necessary, why not allow an EM to perform this anytime?

Powers #3 and #4 might get clarified. "Evict" customarily means, in the sphere of Hippo and Casper boxes, removing a citizen's name from the tenancy of the box. The boxes are set to retain that name for 90 days... a long time.... but a time intended to delay eviction in the hope that the tenant returns and pays their tier, which is automatically applied to the overdue portion first, and then to future days.. If the tenant is evicted, any hope of getting that overdue tier vanishes. So... yes... Power #3 is very much a judgment call by the Chanceller or her designee, and is properly considered in this proposal.

Power #4 is parallel, in that "reclaim" customarily refers to the parcels themselves. Unless reclaimed, they stay in the name of the citizen or former citizen forever (unless that citizen abandons it). So this too is properly in this proposal.

Power #5 is another "power" which IMO might be permanently permitted of EMs. Once the critical functions of powers 3 and 4 are performed, why not allow an EM to set up the parcels for sale anytime? Indeed, I think that is the practice now.

In any case, an excellent proposal. The RA should definitely take this step and relieve the pressure on the poor individual who volunteers to run for Chancellor.

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Rosie Gray
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Re: EMergency EM EMpowerment Act

Post by Rosie Gray »

I agree that this is a great idea, but would change some of it a bit, according to the practice we have had in the past:

1) Send out notices* when Residents are delinquent by 24 hours
2) Send out notices* when Residents are 1 week delinquent
3) Send out final notice* when Residents are 1 month delinquent, with deadline of 24 hours to pay or be evicted
3) Evict, reclaim, and set parcels for resale on parcels which have fallen into arrears by 1 month or more

*(notecard, IM, email if you know their email address or any other means of contacting)

There is no need to send out notices to residents before they are due as the Casper boxes do that themselves and it would be a huge amount of unnecessary work (as noted by Sudane).

It has been our practice to make every effort to give residents opportunity to bring their tier up to date, and in the majority of cases they have.

1 month is because the time is final resort to reclaim and evict, but the Chancellor has the power to do so as soon as the tier is delinquent at all and is within their realm to make that judgment call.

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Re: EMergency EM EMpowerment Act

Post by Han Held »

Thanks for the feedback, y'all!

I'm going to wait a couple of days and see what (if anything) else folks say, then post a re-write incorporating y'alls suggestions, then send it to Gaius for him to throw out there (and vote on?) in one of the next couple RA meetings.

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Re: EMergency EM EMpowerment Act

Post by Tanoujin Milestone »

I support Rosie's version. The crucial point is 4) evict and reclaim (after 4 weeks). All other responsibilities have already been executed by EMs in the past. Since Rosie sets a clear deadline, I believe there will not be much confusion about it.

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Sylvia Tamalyn
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Re: EMergency EM EMpowerment Act

Post by Sylvia Tamalyn »

If I'm reading it correctly, this law, if passed, does not change any EM powers at this time; it just gives the RA the right to put the additional powers temporarily into effect at a later date, after a separate vote. I'm fine with it, with the addition of Rosie's version. As I said in the other thread, we just need to be very specific about what "in arrears" is, and she has addressed that.

On a side note, the Chancellor was working on late notices a couple of days ago for parcels currently in arrears.

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Re: EMergency EM EMpowerment Act

Post by Callipygian »

The start of this process was as Sylvia points out, the desire to give EMs the ability to act in the absence of the Chancellor. People have noted the absence of a written handbook for EMs - that in part is because each Chancellor is entitled to decide for him or herself what permissions to give EMs in dealing with tier issues and other citizen interactions. As a result the current law speaks to 'the Executive' performing actions- this can be either Chancellor or EMs with Chancellor authorization, and it speaks of certain actions as 'the Chancellor shall/may' specifying that the Chancellor in person carries out those actions; giving the Chancellor freedom to delegate duties from the Law or not. If the aim of this Act is to limit the Chancellor's freedom in this matter at all times, then it should be identified as a law to modify Chancellor powers.

The purpose of this proposed Act as originally raised, in my opinion,is to do two things: establish what constitutes Chancellor absence that requires giving permission to the EMs to act without Chancellor oversight and restrictions, and a process for the RA to give EMs permission to enforce and carry out all aspects of the *existing law*, both Executive and Chancellor actions.

That is a reasonable process to put in place; however, a number of the suggestions in this thread contradict the existing law, whether they are 'what's been done in the past' or not. We have had huge debates around perceived favouritism over land reclamation, tier delinquency etc - this is what led to the existing law being very specific. It would not be appropriate to pass a law that gives EMs a different schedule of action than the existing law, Chancellor present or not. I would strongly urge members of RA to use terminology that says ' EMs will/may carry out any and all actions required in CDSL 21-05 Tier Collection and Land Reclamation Act during the absence of the Chancellor', which means this law will remain valid even when 21-05 is amended and will avoid the probability that now or later we will again have 2 laws contradicting each other. If there is total insistence on itemizing activities, then please ensure that what is proposed here matches 21-05.

Calli

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Han Held
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Re: EMergency EM EMpowerment Act

Post by Han Held »

Thanks, Calli. Not being in the govt I can't guarantee what they'll pass; but the rewrite I submit will follow the guidelines you specified. Namely that it has the clause you spelled out and I'll do what I can to make sure that it doesn't contradict 21-05.

21-05 has a very obvious problem that some RA (this one, or a future one) is going to need to address however. It's very tied into the fact that we were using the Hippo system.

Some RA should probably revise it to make it generic enough to work with whatever payment system the CDS adopts (now, and in the future)

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