Howdy Union!
Now, I can't pretend that this term has started as I hoped it would, nor will it continue as planned. Truth be told I had a fairly generalised set of policies in mind, essentially doing this job and just some minor tweaks to legislation here and there. Sadly, this won't be happening this term. I am surprised, I've seen and been in regions which have had cratering activity and this does not feel like that. The Union RP is doing great, the Executive still has people readily able to do things this term. Yet we have also said goodbye, this term, to two long-time contributers (North Plegia as a citizen and Brittalia as someone in government). And, well, now we're here. The pool of newcomers we've benefited from has seemingly dried up and our long standing members are either too busy or less than thrilled to go into our legislature.
Some of that I get, I've been thinking for awhile that we've kind of... stopped needing new laws. The collection of 12 or so we have at our disposable do most jobs we need and none of us are pedantic enough to stop the government working because of a few niggiling differences between what we do in practice and what the law says should happen. Such... lenient interpretations of law have prevented the region from falling into endless by-elections.
Of course, where does all of that leave us? For starters the most minor of house keeping in a two-Senator Senate, Zuk congrats! You're my deputy. As for literally everything else...
Typically, nuking the entirety of a law archive ought to get activity going again, but I'd argue that'd not work in this case - when we nuked our laws last time in 2020 we didn't see a flurry of activity then, we just... rebuilt it all over a year in ebbs and flows. So, for me, thats a poor option.
We could rework the Senate? Of course at that point, the only option I can see is moving us to the General Assembly model fulltime, unicameral of course, and I think that would work in a few ways: it'd allow a President and their cabinet to be more active legislatively. I am... reticent, however, to advocate for that as anything but a plan B, or C, due to my own prejudices against a unicameral General Assembly. My general warnings about General Assemblies also remain, they attract a few people to control debate as the rest of us do not care as much - at least elected Senators need to care in order to be reelected.
With the two obvious gone I can only think of one option, giving more things for the Senate to do. This could be done by trying to role-play up the Senate, have it pass things to do with the mythology underlying the Region, tying it in with the uh... definitely working States Project... or we could, as Glac has recently suggested, hive off some of the President's responsibilities to the Senate. The question, then, is what responsibilities can be moved? And if we were to move them... would it do any good? The example springing to my mind is giving the Senate a function its counterparts enjoy in real life, a body of expertise with specialist committees; we don't have the manpower to do that in my opinion nor would our resident specialists, in say the Judiciary or Ministry of Justice, or Ministry of Foreign Affairs, be wanting to run for an election to continue to offer that advice.
In short, my dear Union, I am at a partial loss; and I bet the answer to this crisis is probably a combination of the three options above.
Regardless, I hope we can do something here. To that end, we'll be holding semi-informal talks in the Senate Gallery channel on discord to try and find some solutions, or ideas at least to try.
Thank you for your time.
Now, I can't pretend that this term has started as I hoped it would, nor will it continue as planned. Truth be told I had a fairly generalised set of policies in mind, essentially doing this job and just some minor tweaks to legislation here and there. Sadly, this won't be happening this term. I am surprised, I've seen and been in regions which have had cratering activity and this does not feel like that. The Union RP is doing great, the Executive still has people readily able to do things this term. Yet we have also said goodbye, this term, to two long-time contributers (North Plegia as a citizen and Brittalia as someone in government). And, well, now we're here. The pool of newcomers we've benefited from has seemingly dried up and our long standing members are either too busy or less than thrilled to go into our legislature.
Some of that I get, I've been thinking for awhile that we've kind of... stopped needing new laws. The collection of 12 or so we have at our disposable do most jobs we need and none of us are pedantic enough to stop the government working because of a few niggiling differences between what we do in practice and what the law says should happen. Such... lenient interpretations of law have prevented the region from falling into endless by-elections.
Of course, where does all of that leave us? For starters the most minor of house keeping in a two-Senator Senate, Zuk congrats! You're my deputy. As for literally everything else...
Typically, nuking the entirety of a law archive ought to get activity going again, but I'd argue that'd not work in this case - when we nuked our laws last time in 2020 we didn't see a flurry of activity then, we just... rebuilt it all over a year in ebbs and flows. So, for me, thats a poor option.
We could rework the Senate? Of course at that point, the only option I can see is moving us to the General Assembly model fulltime, unicameral of course, and I think that would work in a few ways: it'd allow a President and their cabinet to be more active legislatively. I am... reticent, however, to advocate for that as anything but a plan B, or C, due to my own prejudices against a unicameral General Assembly. My general warnings about General Assemblies also remain, they attract a few people to control debate as the rest of us do not care as much - at least elected Senators need to care in order to be reelected.
With the two obvious gone I can only think of one option, giving more things for the Senate to do. This could be done by trying to role-play up the Senate, have it pass things to do with the mythology underlying the Region, tying it in with the uh... definitely working States Project... or we could, as Glac has recently suggested, hive off some of the President's responsibilities to the Senate. The question, then, is what responsibilities can be moved? And if we were to move them... would it do any good? The example springing to my mind is giving the Senate a function its counterparts enjoy in real life, a body of expertise with specialist committees; we don't have the manpower to do that in my opinion nor would our resident specialists, in say the Judiciary or Ministry of Justice, or Ministry of Foreign Affairs, be wanting to run for an election to continue to offer that advice.
In short, my dear Union, I am at a partial loss; and I bet the answer to this crisis is probably a combination of the three options above.
Regardless, I hope we can do something here. To that end, we'll be holding semi-informal talks in the Senate Gallery channel on discord to try and find some solutions, or ideas at least to try.
Thank you for your time.
