Since the roles of Citizen and Legislator were split, we’ve had two separate Leave of Absence topics monitored by two separate bodies. This leaves us in a situation where a Legislator could lose their status as a result of only filling out one leave of absence request and missing a vote for the uncovered role, or fill out both LoA requests only for one to be accepted while the other’s rejected. As such, I believe it’s time to bring the Legislator LoA under the Citizen LoA, removing any unintended consequences of the system while simultaneously streamlining the process.
You’re chasing down hypothetical situations that haven’t materialized in over a year and should be readily apparent to anybody who can figure out how to request a citizen leave of absence in the first place, because the Citizenship Committee has always told people about this:
That aside, I think this is fine if we plan out the details a bit more. What does it mean to ‘notify’ someone? Why should approval of a leave of absence after a voting period starts affect the Assembly? Why should legislative leaves of absence be handled by the Citizenship Committee?
Sure, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want to patch up a hole in the law before it becomes a problem. Still, there’s the other point of two separate bodies approving the loas resulting in the risk of one being approved while the other’s denied
If we’re just going on definition, notifying someone would mean informing someone or giving them notice, so this would simply mean every time a Legislator’s application is approved CitComm would inform the Chair or a deputy
Wouldn’t this already affect the Assembly?
In order to merge the leave of absence requests, we’re going to need one body to review them. Based on the law currently in effect there are two likely candidates: CitComm and the Chair of the Assembly. It would make little sense to put the Chair in charge of it, as not all citizens are legislators. It makes more sense to put this in the hands of CitComm, as all legislators are already citizens.
I think that’s a bit unnecessary — leaves of absence have always been public and that should be sufficient.
In most cases, sure, but someone might feel they’re around enough to notice an election but not around enough to stay informed about Assembly votes. Now they’d be unable to request a legislative leave of absence if it’s during a voting period.
Leaves of absence apply to the requirements for maintaining citizenship and legislatorship only, so yes, CitComm would very much handle legislative leaves of absence. You can call it whatever you like, but it directly impacts legislator status. It’s not just a general ‘leave of absence’ — elected officials aren’t immune to recall for dereliction of duty, for example, while on a leave of absence.
The proposed amendment would amend a constitutional law (specifically, the Citizenship Act), so we require five days of debate minimum, starting from when Pronoun posted their draft amendment. See Legislative Procedure Act, Article 1, Sections 2 and 3.