LC 2.46 More bills need better organization SOAP amendment (Passed)

[Former President tack50]

More bills need better organization SOAP amendment

Section I. The Amendment
1. Section 2 of the Standing Orders of the Council of Lincoln shall be amended as follows

Section 2: Movement of legislation to the floor
A. The Speaker shall keep a thread on the Regional Governments board wherein for introducing legislation. This thread shall be known as the Lincoln Council Legislation Introduction Thread. Sitting Councillors may post in this thread.

B. The number of threads about legislation that may be opened simultaneously shall be as follows:
i. In Councils with 5 Councillors or less; there may be up to 7 threads about legislation. 5 threads shall be reserved for legislation introduced or sponsored by members of the government and 2 threads shall be reserved for legislation introduced or sponsored by members of the opposition.
ii. In Councils with 6 or 7 Councillors; there may be up to 9 threads about legislation.  6 threads shall be reserved for legislation introduced or sponsored by members of the government and 3 threads shall be reserved for legislation introduced or sponsored by members of the opposition.
iii. In Councils with 8 or more Councillors; there may be up to 11 threads about legislation.  7 threads shall be reserved for legislation introduced or sponsored by members of the government and 4 threads shall be reserved for legislation introduced or sponsored by members of the opposition.
 
C. The Speaker shall move government and opposition legislation to these threads in the order in which it was introduced in the Legislation Introduction Thread. If a government sponsor has 3 or more pieces of legislation in the floor, or an opposition sponsor has 2 or more pieces of legislation in the floor, legislation from other government or opposition sponsors who do not shall take priority instead.

D. Each piece of legislation on the floor shall receive its own thread. Threads shall be titled as follows:

L 1.1: The BLANK Act, where L acknowledges the legislation is in the Council of Lincoln, 1 indicating that the legislation is in the first meeting of the Council of Lincoln, 1 indicating that the legislation was the first piece of legislation introduced in the Legislation Introduction Thread, and BLANK being replaced with the name of the piece of legislation.

E. After any election for the Council, all legislation slots shall be emptied and all pending legislation shall be considered automatically tabled.

F. If a change in government or in a bill's sponsorship implies that there are more bills than there are slots available for the government or the opposition, the speaker may open temporary extra slots for these pieces of legislation. These slots shall be removed once a permanent slot is opened (at which point the bill in the temporary slot shall moved to the opened permantent slot), or the bill is removed from the floor by the means described in Section 2.G.

G. Each thread shall remain open until the bill either (a) becomes law via the Governor's signature, lack of Gubernatorial action, or referendum override, (b) fails to receive majority support from Council, (c) is sent to the public for a referendum, pursuant to Article I, Section 6 of the Comprehensive Constitutional Amendment, or (d) the Chancellor moves to revoke it from the floor, subject to a majority vote.

2. The following new section shall be added between Section 5: Role of Speaker and "Section 7: Amending the SOAP", with the rest of the SOAP renumbered accordingly

Section 6. Rules Disputes
1. The Council may elect to suspend any section of these rules at any time with the consent of two-thirds of sitting Counillors.

2. The presiding officer may unilaterally suspend any section of these rules at any time, unless another Councillor objects. If a Councillor objects, suspending the rules shall require the consent of two-thirds of sitting Councillors.

3. If the Council cannot resolve a rules dispute, Lincoln's chief judicial office may issue a binding decision dictating the proper interpretation.

Sponsor: tack50

Debate time for this bill has started and shall last for no less than 72 hours

[Former President tack50]

Ok, I am introducing this bill partially in response to thr's massive amount of bills introduced, to make things easier. This also adds many things that are in other region's standing orders or the federal ones. List of changes:

-If a councillor has a lot of legislation in the floor, their legislation will not be introduced if other legislations from their side have legislation pending as well. So for example if SNJC wanted to introduce a bill he would not need to wait for thr's 10 bills to pass or fail. Instead his bill would go into the next available slot. This will make legislating accessible to all Councillors who want to.

-The floor of the Council is cleared after all elections. This is to ensure that there is a "blank slate" after any Council elections and to not have a huge backlog of bills when the Council opens. If Councillors want they can still inmediately bring them back of course.

-If there is a change in government, it is unclear what happens as government and opposition slots get swapped (not sure how it was handled with DKrol's government flip). If for example the right wingers in the Chamber somehow managed into power, there would be 7 left wing sponsored bills for only 4 opposition slots. to Anyways, with this change extra slots are temporarily added so that the opposition has time to get everything sorted out.

I will add this change might be unconstitutional but I am not sure about it. These are temporary after all though the constitutionality is unclear.

-Added a rules disputes section that allows us to get disputes sorted out by the courts and to suspend the rules. This would allow stuff like for example inmediately tabling thr's education bill which we are forced to debate for 72 hours now.

[Pyro]

Interesting - I will expect a fair bit of debate on this proposal.

The inclusion of a rules suspension is definitely a necessary one.

[Mr. Reactionary]

Ok, I am introducing this bill partially in response to thr's massive amount of bills introduced, to make things easier. This also adds many things that are in other region's standing orders or the federal ones. List of changes:

-If a councillor has a lot of legislation in the floor, their legislation will not be introduced if other legislations from their side have legislation pending as well. So for example if SNJC wanted to introduce a bill he would not need to wait for thr's 10 bills to pass or fail. Instead his bill would go into the next available slot. This will make legislating accessible to all Councillors who want to.

Side? We are still protecting partisanship in the queue? Why? The 2 bill rule makes that irrelevant.

[Former President tack50]

Ok, I am introducing this bill partially in response to thr's massive amount of bills introduced, to make things easier. This also adds many things that are in other region's standing orders or the federal ones. List of changes:

-If a councillor has a lot of legislation in the floor, their legislation will not be introduced if other legislations from their side have legislation pending as well. So for example if SNJC wanted to introduce a bill he would not need to wait for thr's 10 bills to pass or fail. Instead his bill would go into the next available slot. This will make legislating accessible to all Councillors who want to.

Side? We are still protecting partisanship in the queue? Why? The 2 bill rule makes that irrelevant.

No it does not make the partisan protections irrelevant. The government, and especially the opposition are not hiveminds. It is easy to imagine, especially in the case of a divided opposition that hates each other to see the same spam tactics from the federal house being used in Lincoln.

Imagine if for some reason Ninja hated the Feds and viceversa. Ninja could have simply spammed the opposition queue with bills and leave almost no room for the other 3 members of the opposition.

Same goes for the government, it is easy to imagine 2 coalition partners hating each other.

[Former President tack50]

Does someone have anything to say? Otherwise I will call for a final vote soon.

[Pyro]

Rather disappointed by the lack of discussion from my fellow councilors on this bill.

Anyway, I'll bring up a few points.

1) I believe that the amendment to C is fair and there is little to debate in this area.

2) I mostly support the notion of clearing the queue at the start of a new session, but regarding pending legislation: What happens to bills that are waiting for a final vote to begin, or to bills that are already in mid-vote? Also, would thoroughly amended legislation also simply be tossed out?

3) The proposal for temporary slots makes sense to codify, although the situation with my special election and the DKRol coalition swap would be extraordinarily difficult to replicate.

4) Once more, I support the addition of a rules suspension and its 2/3rds requirement.

[Former President tack50]

Rather disappointed by the lack of discussion from my fellow councilors on this bill.

Anyway, I'll bring up a few points.

1) I believe that the amendment to C is fair and there is little to debate in this area.

2) I mostly support the notion of clearing the queue at the start of a new session, but regarding pending legislation: What happens to bills that are waiting for a final vote to begin, or to bills that are already in mid-vote? Also, would thoroughly amended legislation also simply be tossed out?

3) The proposal for temporary slots makes sense to codify, although the situation with my special election and the DKRol coalition swap would be extraordinarily difficult to replicate.

4) Once more, I support the addition of a rules suspension and its 2/3rds requirement.

Regarding 2), technically the queue doesn't get cleared until the election happens. Meanwhile the Council gets dissolved 72 hours before the election. It would probably be a good idea to codify that during those 72 hours between the election start and the Council being dissolved we could implement some sort of "ending business" period, where no new final vote calls are allowed, but the existing ones are allowed to get a vote.

Alternatively, maybe 48 hours before the Council gets dissolved no new calls for a final vote shall be accepted by the speaker?

Either way probably something to explicitly codify.

As for 3), probably be better safe than sorry. However, this also deals with sponsorship changes. We have an example with Ninja's bill. It would not be unreasonable to imagine a government sponsor sponsoring Ninja's bill while all 7 government slots were occupied.

It is also not hard to imagine a 3-1-3 Council with one centrist who suddenly changes allegiance. Last time it was DKrol, but it could be anyone.

[Pyro]

Regarding 2), technically the queue doesn't get cleared until the election happens. Meanwhile the Council gets dissolved 72 hours before the election. It would probably be a good idea to codify that during those 72 hours between the election start and the Council being dissolved we could implement some sort of "ending business" period, where no new final vote calls are allowed, but the existing ones are allowed to get a vote.

Alternatively, maybe 48 hours before the Council gets dissolved no new calls for a final vote shall be accepted by the speaker?

Either way probably something to explicitly codify.

That would be very smart to implement - a combination of the two, even.

I'll introduce the following amendment to address this concern.

More bills need better organization SOAP amendment

Section I. The Amendment
1. Section 2 of the Standing Orders of the Council of Lincoln shall be amended as follows

Section 2: Movement of legislation to the floor
A. The Speaker shall keep a thread on the Regional Governments board wherein for introducing legislation. This thread shall be known as the Lincoln Council Legislation Introduction Thread. Sitting Councillors may post in this thread.

B. The number of threads about legislation that may be opened simultaneously shall be as follows:
i. In Councils with 5 Councillors or less; there may be up to 7 threads about legislation. 5 threads shall be reserved for legislation introduced or sponsored by members of the government and 2 threads shall be reserved for legislation introduced or sponsored by members of the opposition.
ii. In Councils with 6 or 7 Councillors; there may be up to 9 threads about legislation.  6 threads shall be reserved for legislation introduced or sponsored by members of the government and 3 threads shall be reserved for legislation introduced or sponsored by members of the opposition.
iii. In Councils with 8 or more Councillors; there may be up to 11 threads about legislation.  7 threads shall be reserved for legislation introduced or sponsored by members of the government and 4 threads shall be reserved for legislation introduced or sponsored by members of the opposition.
 
C. The Speaker shall move government and opposition legislation to these threads in the order in which it was introduced in the Legislation Introduction Thread. If a government sponsor has 3 or more pieces of legislation in the floor, or an opposition sponsor has 2 or more pieces of legislation in the floor, legislation from other government or opposition sponsors who do not shall take priority instead.

D. Each piece of legislation on the floor shall receive its own thread. Threads shall be titled as follows:

L 1.1: The BLANK Act, where L acknowledges the legislation is in the Council of Lincoln, 1 indicating that the legislation is in the first meeting of the Council of Lincoln, 1 indicating that the legislation was the first piece of legislation introduced in the Legislation Introduction Thread, and BLANK being replaced with the name of the piece of legislation.

E. After any election for the Council, all legislation slots shall be emptied and all pending legislation shall be considered automatically tabled.

F. If a change in government or in a bill's sponsorship implies that there are more bills than there are slots available for the government or the opposition, the speaker may open temporary extra slots for these pieces of legislation. These slots shall be removed once a permanent slot is opened (at which point the bill in the temporary slot shall moved to the opened permanent slot), or the bill is removed from the floor by the means described in Section 2.G.

G.Each thread shall remain open until the bill either (a) becomes law via the Governor's signature, lack of Gubernatorial action, or referendum override, (b) fails to receive majority support from Council, (c) is sent to the public for a referendum, pursuant to Article I, Section 6 of the Comprehensive Constitutional Amendment, or (d) the Chancellor moves to revoke it from the floor, subject to a majority vote.

2. The following new section shall be added between Section 3. Legislative Debates and Voting and Section 5. Non Sitting Days.

Section 4: Final Business

A. Pursuant to Article 1.15 of the Lincoln Constitution, the Council shall be dissolved 72 hours before general and snap elections.

B. The "Final Business" period of Council shall commence 96 hours prior to dissolution of the Council session and shall end at dissolution.

  i. At the start of Final Business, the Speaker shall declare in all pending legislative threads that Final Business has commenced and the session is nearing its end.

    a. At this time, the Speaker must no longer open new legislative threads.

    b. At this time, neither the Speaker nor legislative sponsors shall consider new amendment proposals or votes.

  ii. Starting 72 hours prior to dissolution of the Council session, the Speaker shall no longer consider any new motion for a final vote, override vote or cloture vote.

  iii. The Speaker shall lock all pending legislative threads at the time of dissolution.

2.3. The following new section shall be added between Section 5:6. Role of Speaker and "Section 7:8: Amending the SOAP", with the rest of the SOAP renumbered accordingly

Section 6.7. Rules Disputes
1. The Council may elect to suspend any section of these rules at any time with the consent of two-thirds of sitting Counillors.

2. The presiding officer may unilaterally suspend any section of these rules at any time, unless another Councillor objects. If a Councillor objects, suspending the rules shall require the consent of two-thirds of sitting Councillors.

3. If the Council cannot resolve a rules dispute, Lincoln's chief judicial office may issue a binding decision dictating the proper interpretation.

[Former President tack50]

Excellent amendment! No objection to it.

Other Councillors have 24 hours to object.

[Former President tack50]

With no objections, Pyro's amendment has been adopted.

I motion for a final vote, 24 hours to object

[Former President tack50]

The Chancellor has informed me that today is a non-sitting day.

Since tomorrow I will be leaving for the Senate, I am rescinding this final vote call, but other Councillors feel free to make a call tomorrow!.

[S019]

If I am allowed to, I would like to motion for a final vote

[Pyro]

Councilors, a Final Vote is now OPEN on the Following Legislation

More bills need better organization SOAP amendment

Section I. The Amendment
1. Section 2 of the Standing Orders of the Council of Lincoln shall be amended as follows

Section 2: Movement of legislation to the floor
A. The Speaker shall keep a thread on the Regional Governments board wherein for introducing legislation. This thread shall be known as the Lincoln Council Legislation Introduction Thread. Sitting Councillors may post in this thread.

B. The number of threads about legislation that may be opened simultaneously shall be as follows:
i. In Councils with 5 Councillors or less; there may be up to 7 threads about legislation. 5 threads shall be reserved for legislation introduced or sponsored by members of the government and 2 threads shall be reserved for legislation introduced or sponsored by members of the opposition.
ii. In Councils with 6 or 7 Councillors; there may be up to 9 threads about legislation.  6 threads shall be reserved for legislation introduced or sponsored by members of the government and 3 threads shall be reserved for legislation introduced or sponsored by members of the opposition.
iii. In Councils with 8 or more Councillors; there may be up to 11 threads about legislation.  7 threads shall be reserved for legislation introduced or sponsored by members of the government and 4 threads shall be reserved for legislation introduced or sponsored by members of the opposition.
 
C. The Speaker shall move government and opposition legislation to these threads in the order in which it was introduced in the Legislation Introduction Thread. If a government sponsor has 3 or more pieces of legislation in the floor, or an opposition sponsor has 2 or more pieces of legislation in the floor, legislation from other government or opposition sponsors who do not shall take priority instead.

D. Each piece of legislation on the floor shall receive its own thread. Threads shall be titled as follows:

L 1.1: The BLANK Act, where L acknowledges the legislation is in the Council of Lincoln, 1 indicating that the legislation is in the first meeting of the Council of Lincoln, 1 indicating that the legislation was the first piece of legislation introduced in the Legislation Introduction Thread, and BLANK being replaced with the name of the piece of legislation.

E. After any election for the Council, all legislation slots shall be emptied and all pending legislation shall be considered automatically tabled.

F. If a change in government or in a bill's sponsorship implies that there are more bills than there are slots available for the government or the opposition, the speaker may open temporary extra slots for these pieces of legislation. These slots shall be removed once a permanent slot is opened (at which point the bill in the temporary slot shall moved to the opened permanent slot), or the bill is removed from the floor by the means described in Section 2.G.

G.Each thread shall remain open until the bill either (a) becomes law via the Governor's signature, lack of Gubernatorial action, or referendum override, (b) fails to receive majority support from Council, (c) is sent to the public for a referendum, pursuant to Article I, Section 6 of the Comprehensive Constitutional Amendment, or (d) the Chancellor moves to revoke it from the floor, subject to a majority vote.

2. The following new section shall be added between Section 3. Legislative Debates and Voting and Section 5. Non Sitting Days.

Section 4: Final Business

A. Pursuant to Article 1.15 of the Lincoln Constitution, the Council shall be dissolved 72 hours before general and snap elections.

B. The "Final Business" period of Council shall commence 96 hours prior to dissolution of the Council session and shall end at dissolution.

  i. At the start of Final Business, the Speaker shall declare in all pending legislative threads that Final Business has commenced and the session is nearing its end.

    a. At this time, the Speaker must no longer open new legislative threads.

    b. At this time, neither the Speaker nor legislative sponsors shall consider new amendment proposals or votes.

  ii. Starting 72 hours prior to dissolution of the Council session, the Speaker shall no longer consider any new motion for a final vote, override vote or cloture vote.

  iii. The Speaker shall lock all pending legislative threads at the time of dissolution.

2.3. The following new section shall be added between Section 5:6. Role of Speaker and "Section 7:8: Amending the SOAP", with the rest of the SOAP renumbered accordingly

Section 6.7. Rules Disputes
1. The Council may elect to suspend any section of these rules at any time with the consent of two-thirds of sitting Councilors.

2. The presiding officer may unilaterally suspend any section of these rules at any time, unless another Councillor objects. If a Councillor objects, suspending the rules shall require the consent of two-thirds of sitting Councillors.

3. If the Council cannot resolve a rules dispute, Lincoln's chief judicial office may issue a binding decision dictating the proper interpretation.

Please vote AYE, NAY, or Abstain.
The vote shall last for 48 hours or until all Councilors have voted.

[Pyro]

AYE

[PSOL]

Aye

[S019]

Aye

[Zaybay]

Aye

[Pyro]

The final vote on LC 2.46 More Bills Need Better Organization SOAP Amendment is now closed.

Aye: 4 (Pyro, PSOL, SNJC, Zaybay)
Nay: 0
Abstain: 1 (thr33)
Not Voting: 1 (Dipper Josh)

The Ayes have it! The legislation has passed.