Regional Officers Act

General Archives Great Council
1

Greetings to the Great Council.

Mr. Chair, I would like to present the following draft for consideration. This is largely a reskinning of the existing act to conform to legislation passed by the Great Council.

Regional Officers Act
An act providing for the dissemination of Regional Officer powers

1. General Provisions

(1) This law is a general law.

2. Regional Officers

(1) The in-game Delegate will be granted all Regional Officer powers.

(2) The Prime Minister will be granted all non-Border Control powers.

(3) The Prime Minister may allot up to four Regional Officer positions, and grant them any combination of Appearance, Communications, Embassies, and Polls powers.

(4) The Security Council will be allotted a minimum of three Regional Officer positions and be granted Border Control and Communications powers.

(5) Moderators appointed by the Administration Team will be allotted up to three Regional Officer positions and be granted Appearance, Communications and Polls powers as necessary to enforce moderation policy.

(6) Members of the Security Council who concurrently serve as another Regional Officer named in this act will be granted the powers of both offices.

(7) Where applicable, all unused Regional Officer positions will be allotted to the Security Council.

(8) During elections, the Election Commissioner will be granted Communications and Polls powers.

(9) The Security Council may grant Border Control powers to other Regional Officers as they see fit.

3. Limitations

(1) The Border Control power does not grant any legal authority to eject or ban nations from the region when not authorized by security or criminal laws, or a reasonable moderation policy as executed by moderators.

(2) The Communications power must not be used excessively in a way that effectively spams the region.

(3) Exercise of Regional Officer powers must follow all applicable laws and rules. Conduct unbecoming of a representative of the South Pacific may result in suspension of Regional Officer power as determined by the issuing authority.

2 Likes
2

Are there any final comments?

3

When I proposed the original no LC framework prior to us passing Kris’ Charter overhaul, there was an alternate version of the Regional Officers Act that included RO slots for the moderators appointed by the administration team. The Charter that Kris wrote and we passed (Article X(4) specifically) still outlines a procedure for admin to appoint RMB moderators.

I think we could pass your RO Act, but that we would need an understanding of when ROs are obligated to execute moderation decisions (e.g. suppressions and/or bans) and when (if ever) they aren’t. Similarly, we’d need an understanding of when (if ever) it would be OK for the in-character government ROs to make suppressions based on the rules outlined by the administrative team. Alternatively, some RO slots should be allocated to the admin team’s appointed moderators.

As an aside, this is inconsistent formatting

4

A fair point, and one I missed. I have adjusted the language to support up to 3 moderators, as appointed by the admin team, and dropped a position allotted to the Cabinet in support of the Election Commissioner’s need for a spot.

It has been corrected.

5

How do you feel about adding a provision similar to the one I included in the previous no-LC Regional Officer Act which allows the RMB moderators to request (and SC to vote to grant) border control powers to them. Arguably, this is covered by 3(2), however I think having an explicit section of the law outlining that senior members of the RMB moderation team should expect to be legitimately considered for Border Control powers and that it is a responsibility of the Security Council to provide timely responses would be appropriate.

My previous language on that dug up:

RMB moderation may request the Council on Regional Security grant border control powers to any of its Regional Officers. The Council on Regional Security will have the authority to grant or deny such requests and will do so in a timely manner. The result of a decision to grant or reject a request to grant border control powers to a RMB moderation Regional Officer will be published by the Council on Regional Security.

6

Mostly ambivalent. I do think 3.2 covers that particular use case, but adding in another clause like the one below works too.

This also led me to take a look at 4.1, which only provides for Border Control powers to be used only when authorized by security and criminal law. I have added some language to include moderation policy.

7

It’s a pedantic note, but do we need to define the various regional officer powers in the act? In practice, we’re just referring to the name of the power in-game, which can technically differ from the current wording (e.g. appearance powers allow officers to pin dispatches but also unpin them and alter the order of pins). Not the most consequential thing, but we’ve had sillier debates over sillier things and it seems relatively easy to avoid them in the future in this case.

How does the opinion of the Security Council stack up?

8

I had written that clause to hopefully avoid any funky situations as might arise from 3.1.

I’m alright with dropping the definitions altogether. I will remove them.

9

I was reading it more with reference to 4.3 — I don’t think it hurts to explicitly state where the Security Council’s opinion falls on the order of precedence.

10

Maybe not, but I feel that if any of those three felt someone wasn’t deserving of a Regional Officer role then it shouldn’t be overridden by another. I could also retool that clause to read as only the issuing authority can revoke Regional Officer powers, defaulting to the Delegate’s opinion.

11

If that’s the case, you should still reword 4.4, since currently, it would seem to suggest that the Prime Minister can override the Delegate and decide not to suspend Regional Officer powers.

I think this is the worse option :stuck_out_tongue: I feel that the Security Council, at least, should be able to remove any Regional Officer if necessary.

12

Maybe the order should be the Security Council, the Delegate, and then the Prime Minister?

13

Alternatively, we could get rid of Article 3 altogether. Those clauses made sense in the old Regional Officer Act, where only 10 RO slots were allocated and thus there was more flexibility. Under this version of the law, there’s only 1 spare RO slot that will at times be taken up by the Election Commissioner. What if we just got rid of 3(1) and only allowed the SC to grant BC powers to other current ROs? If we want to preserve flexibility for PM-appointed non-Cabinet ROs, we can simply remove the words “to Ministers of the Cabinet” from 2(3).

14

My question is who exactly was appointed under Article 3, as opposed to Article 2’s provisions, but it would be a moot point anyways. I will adjust the act accordingly, I doubt it would have gotten much use after the Great Council anyways.

15

Do RMB moderators really need polls and Appearance power? If their sole job is the moderation of the RMB, then they would only need communications powers.

The RMB moderators are not designed to be the “new” local council. By removing polls and appearance powers, this will incentivize the PM and Cabinet to use their powers and fulfill their obligations to engage the gameside.

16

I’ve added those under the anticipation of removing polls that would break moderation policy, or adjusting the WFE for the same reason.

17

Couldn’t think of one use of appearance I’d need to use if I was modding the rmb, unless it’s to update the rules.

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Mr. Chair, I move that this act be brought to a vote.

19

The motion is recognised and will be brought to vote 2022-12-13T14:00:00Z.