WHEREAS, many years ago, a misguided catchment reform bill attempted to put geographic coherence above any other parameter for provincial assignment; and

WHEREAS, this blatantly ignored years of provincial culture-building; and

WHEREAS, this didn't even have the balancing effect I hoped it would have; but

WHEREAS, this caused unnecessary grief to many people now caught in the catchment area of another province, and particularly to the Cjovani people of Benito; and

WHEREAS, Ohio is not Vuodean, it never was, and it's high time we rectified the blatant error besmirching our statute books; so

THEREFORE, Article 7.5 of Title E of El Lexhatx, which reads

Quote7.5. BENITO PROVINCE. Talossan citizens living in the following areas shall be assigned to Benito Province: the Wisconsin counties of Columbia, Dane, Dodge, Fond du Lac, Green Lake, Jefferson, Marathon, Marquette, Portage, Waukesha, Waupaca, Waushara, Winnebago, and Wood. Internationally, Albania, Andorra, Austria, Benin, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Côte d'Ivoire, Croatia, Gambia, Ghana, Greece, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Hungary, Italy, Kosovo, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, Nigeria, North Macedonia, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Senegal, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Togo, Vatican City.

is amended by inserting "; and the U.S. state of Ohio" after the word "Wood", to read:

Quote7.5. BENITO PROVINCE. Talossan citizens living in the following areas shall be assigned to Benito Province: the Wisconsin counties of Columbia, Dane, Dodge, Fond du Lac, Green Lake, Jefferson, Marathon, Marquette, Portage, Waukesha, Waupaca, Waushara, Winnebago, and Wood; and the U.S. state of Ohio. Internationally, Albania, Andorra, Austria, Benin, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Côte d'Ivoire, Croatia, Gambia, Ghana, Greece, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Hungary, Italy, Kosovo, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, Nigeria, North Macedonia, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Senegal, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Togo, Vatican City.

FURTHERMORE, Article 7.6 of Title E of El Lexhatx, which reads

Quote7.6. VUODE PROVINCE. Talossan citizens living in the following areas shall be assigned to Vuode Province: the City of Milwaukee (WI) and all suburbs of Milwaukee, which lie to the north and east of the City of Milwaukee; and the U.S. states of Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania; and the Mexican States of Aguascalientes, Baja California, Baja California Sur, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Nayarit, Nuevo Leon, Sinaloa, San Luis Potosi, Sonora, Tamaulipas, Queretero, and Zacatecas. Internationally, the nations of Algeria, Chad, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Tunisia, and Western Sahara.

is amended by removing the word "Ohio, ", to read:

Quote7.6. VUODE PROVINCE. Talossan citizens living in the following areas shall be assigned to Vuode Province: the City of Milwaukee (WI) and all suburbs of Milwaukee, which lie to the north and east of the City of Milwaukee; and the U.S. states of Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania; and the Mexican States of Aguascalientes, Baja California, Baja California Sur, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Nayarit, Nuevo Leon, Sinaloa, San Luis Potosi, Sonora, Tamaulipas, Queretero, and Zacatecas. Internationally, the nations of Algeria, Chad, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Tunisia, and Western Sahara.

Ureu q'estadra så,

Sir Lüc da Schir (MC-IND/FreeDems)

Azul, I briefly rise - not in my capacity of Túischac'h, but in that of an ordinary member of the Cosă - to offer a brief note on why I abstained on the VoC, unlike the rest of the FreeDem Cosă caucus. First off and to clear any doubt, I should state I am not a member of the Free Democrats; I am an independent who accepted FreeDem seats in agreement with their manifesto.

Among the conditions I offered to the leadership when accepting to serve, I agreed I would follow the whip on confidence, budget and manifesto items (though in general I would always gladly sit in the party room and take part in Clark conversations, even on items not covered by this agreement.) And yet, I am immediately dissenting with my colleagues; this was done under my proposal and in agreement with my friends the Tanaischteă (@Miestră Schivă, UrN) and the Party Secretary (@Antaglha Xhenerös Somelieir) for the following reasons:

1. The Free Democrats and I are positively inclined in respect to the recent change of leadership in the Talossan National Congress. We feel the recent agreement on government formation is mutually beneficial and a good omen for the state of affairs in the 59th Cosă. We encourage the Seneschal @Bråneu Excelsio and the leader of the TNC @þerxh Sant-Enogat to keep course in the coming months.

2. One of the possible items that was discussed as part of the governing agreement was that I could be a neutral "ambassador" of sorts between FreeDems and TNC, by sitting in the TNC-led cabinet and the FreeDem Cosă caucus, while not being a member of either party; I would respect Cabinet collective responsibility and provide the votes for the TNC to pass Confidence, while the rest of the FreeDem caucus would vote Non. This did not come to happen, but the dual party line on confidence certainly stayed on my mind as a way to allow both for principled opposition (based on a neutral interpretation of what the Government actually does and achieves) and for recognising that the main opposition party has a right to express, through a Non vote, that it necessarily feels it should lead instead.

3. The Free Democrats and I recognise the unusual political-judicial situation that led the Excelsio Cabinet to only be fully announced over midway through the First Clark; and more importantly, the Free Democrats and I are extremely and painfully aware of the recent, sorrowful events surrounding the Finance Minister's family. We understand that he is a pivotal figure in the workings of the Cabinet and the party, and are naturally willing to allow for further slack in our evaluation of the Government's performance.

Anyway, as I took another look at H, I am reminded that I hate most of it. I'm fixing issues with H.18 and H.21 right now, but:

• H.1 mandates the State Opening when you can't generally force anyone to do anything that's not crucial. The provision on a simultaneous Living Cosa is outdated and impractical.
• H.1.2 mistranslates Seneschal as First Minister and has an outdated version of Talossan spelling.
• H.2 is ancient and simply ignores the modern practice of Terps as a written exchange on Witt. No one calls Terps "PQs" and the acronym is not even defined anywhere. There's so many little things that are wrong or odd in the subparagraphs too, such as H.2.7 putting the Courts in charge of disciplining an unresponsive Minister (why would the Judiciary cross over into Ziu internal matters instead of simply letting the Ziu censure the Minister?)
• H.5 starts with a ridiculous clause, "A difference shall exist (and be spelled out in future bills)", and goes on to state that difference immediately.
• H.6 has all sorts of capitalization issues; H.6.3, that's a hell of a requirement for a discharge petition!
• H.7.1-2 should be rewritten to be clearer, and merged with H.8.
• H.10 has, to the best of my knowledge, never been followed, and is a terrible idea anyway. Besides, why is this here and not as a subsection of C.1.2?
• H.14 has also never been followed unless John is sitting on a massive stash of signed bills.
• H.20, "the Secretary will make known to the press", is a clear nod to when we had Stotanneu. H.20.1 has never been followed and should rather mandate a PD be added to the Anuntzia dels Legeux asap.
• H.22, what the hell is "The Cosa may hold living Cosas during subsequent Clarks [...]"  supposed to mean? There are also a few other wrinkles, such as 22.3, where you basically forbid any debate not germane to the current Clark to take place at a Living Cosă.

I'm down to tackle most or all of these, but it seems like a lot of work and it will take time.

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN on November 21, 2023, 05:59:58 PM

Quote from: Sir Lüc on November 21, 2023, 05:12:42 PMThe cure would probably be to just restate H.21 and H.22 so they both explicitly occupy those sections, although I would urge anyone interested in tinkering with Title H to instead consider whether it would be better to reorganise the whole title into a more coherent form so that it's harder for this stuff to happen again, and so that it's easier to read.

A personal proposal could be to have H.1.x contain all provisions related to the Ziu as a whole, H.2.x contain all provisions related to the Senate and its officers, H.3.x the Cosă, and H.4.x any miscellaneous stuff.

I beg you to write this legislation yourself. My head hurts just reading all that.

I'd be glad to Hopper a fix and reorganization bill in the coming weeks, on time for inclusion in the Third Clark (when hopefully my two bills amending Title H that are currently slated for the Second Clark will have passed, so I can include their language in the fix.)

The cure would probably be to just restate H.21 and H.22 so they both explicitly occupy those sections, although I would urge anyone interested in tinkering with Title H to instead consider whether it would be better to reorganise the whole title into a more coherent form so that it's harder for this stuff to happen again, and so that it's easier to read.

A personal proposal could be to have H.1.x contain all provisions related to the Ziu as a whole, H.2.x contain all provisions related to the Senate and its officers, H.3.x the Cosă, and H.4.x any miscellaneous stuff.

Basically:

- 56RZ10 meant to move the role of Túischac'h to the OrgLaw;
- People thought Lex.H.17 estabilished the office of Túischac'h, and so it could now be deleted, but it actually contained the Túischac'h election rules;
- Regardless, instead of deleting H.17, 56RZ10 deleted the Living Cosa provisions, then-H.21
- 57PD1 restored the Living Cosa thing, H.21, and deleted the Tuischac'h election rules, H.17, again thinking it estabilished the office of Túischac'h instead
- For some reason, 57PD10 restored the Tuischac'h election rules as H.21, instead of as H.17
- The Living Cosa provisions were renumbered (without specific authorisation) as H.22, where they currently stand

It's a bit of a mess stemming from the fact 57PD10 stated "H.21 of el Lexhatx is added", when H.21 already existed, and didn't say anything about what to do with H.21. Whoever scribed this just renumbered the existing H.21 to H.22.

(Also, 57PD10 is itself a misnumbering, since it was issued during the 58th Cosă)

Approved.

@Baron Alexandreu Davinescu this is truly devastating news. My heart goes out to you and your family. I hope you can have the time and space to process your grief together with your closest ones.

While the Minister overseeing the Scribery is (very sadly) busy with personal matters, I just thought I'd bump this so we could hit the ground running later.

I'm very happy Bentxamì offered to serve, so I'll rephrase my offer: I can either accept an appointment as Scribe for a while, and train him as my deputy with the expectation that he'll take over down the line; or I'm also happy staying on as deputy and tutoring Bentxamì as he immediately gets the main job.

To be clear -- the Government should make up their mind about what exactly they want to happen, since I can't compel anyone to attend, and most of the ceremony is centered around the Seneschal.

I will be happy to conduct the proceedings and to facilitate the scheduling of the event, but I can't do much more. Whether the agenda includes a swearing-in, and/or a Cabinet announcement, and/or a Speech from the Throne, and/or a rebuttal from the Opposition, etc., is not up to me.

I mentioned how the new name should preferably be Talossan and starting with "Be"; in my mind, the latter is to ensure familiarity with the new name, a la "look, we're still the same province"; while the former felt like a natural requirement. These are only my opinions, though.

If we went with those, though, using "bel-" and "ben-" Talossan prefixes is a low hanging fruit to find ourselves a name that fits the bill.

We could additionally look at the features that set us apart from the other provinces, like our coast bordering the river and the tranquil woodland of Riverside Park. I particularly think "Belaschagă", "beautiful-copse", sounds like an ok option (or even "Benschagă", "good-copse", if we wanted to retain the whole "Ben" root.)

I explored doing something with "Betz", "birch", but it appears that birch trees are much more common in Lake Park, Vuode. "Besc", "bush", could be a more useful option for a compound name, together with one of the many words for river,stream,brook.

"Berucă", "crag", could refer to the former ravines of Riverside Park, which are still partially there, though flattened by F.L.Olmsted's work.

"Berberïă" could be a nod at a certain independent streak in our province.

"Beatifică", "that which makes one happy", is I suppose a poetic name but probably needs tweaking to sound less awkward.

Azul, as outlined in my Maestro platform, I am committed to changing the name of this province during the current term.

I am open to suggestions regarding what process we follow, though my tentative outline would be to:

- Have a public consultation on this forum to come up with potential new names;
- Decide on a candidate name by some kind of process of elimination, if needed;
- Introduce and pass legislation at the provincial level amending the Constitution;
- Introduce and pass legislation at the national level amending El Lexhatx.

Either way, a good way to start would be to begin with that consultation.

WHEREAS, many years ago, a misguided catchment reform bill attempted to put geographic coherence above any other parameter for provincial assignment; and

WHEREAS, this blatantly ignored years of provincial culture-building; and

WHEREAS, this didn't even have the balancing effect I hoped it would have; but

WHEREAS, this caused unnecessary grief to many people now caught in the catchment area of another province, and particularly to the Cjovani people of Benito; and

WHEREAS, Ohio is not Vuodean, it never was, and it's high time we rectified the blatant error besmirching our statute books; so

THEREFORE, Article 7.5 of Title E of El Lexhatx, which reads

Quote7.5. BENITO PROVINCE. Talossan citizens living in the following areas shall be assigned to Benito Province: the Wisconsin counties of Columbia, Dane, Dodge, Fond du Lac, Green Lake, Jefferson, Marathon, Marquette, Portage, Waukesha, Waupaca, Waushara, Winnebago, and Wood. Internationally, Albania, Andorra, Austria, Benin, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Côte d'Ivoire, Croatia, Gambia, Ghana, Greece, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Hungary, Italy, Kosovo, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, Nigeria, North Macedonia, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Senegal, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Togo, Vatican City.

is amended by inserting "; and the U.S. state of Ohio" after the word "Wood", to read:

Quote7.5. BENITO PROVINCE. Talossan citizens living in the following areas shall be assigned to Benito Province: the Wisconsin counties of Columbia, Dane, Dodge, Fond du Lac, Green Lake, Jefferson, Marathon, Marquette, Portage, Waukesha, Waupaca, Waushara, Winnebago, and Wood; and the U.S. state of Ohio. Internationally, Albania, Andorra, Austria, Benin, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Côte d'Ivoire, Croatia, Gambia, Ghana, Greece, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Hungary, Italy, Kosovo, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, Nigeria, North Macedonia, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Senegal, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Togo, Vatican City.

FURTHERMORE, Article 7.6 of Title E of El Lexhatx, which reads

Quote7.6. VUODE PROVINCE. Talossan citizens living in the following areas shall be assigned to Vuode Province: the City of Milwaukee (WI) and all suburbs of Milwaukee, which lie to the north and east of the City of Milwaukee; and the U.S. states of Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania; and the Mexican States of Aguascalientes, Baja California, Baja California Sur, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Nayarit, Nuevo Leon, Sinaloa, San Luis Potosi, Sonora, Tamaulipas, Queretero, and Zacatecas. Internationally, the nations of Algeria, Chad, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Tunisia, and Western Sahara.

is amended by removing the word "Ohio, ", to read:

Quote7.6. VUODE PROVINCE. Talossan citizens living in the following areas shall be assigned to Vuode Province: the City of Milwaukee (WI) and all suburbs of Milwaukee, which lie to the north and east of the City of Milwaukee; and the U.S. states of Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania; and the Mexican States of Aguascalientes, Baja California, Baja California Sur, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Nayarit, Nuevo Leon, Sinaloa, San Luis Potosi, Sonora, Tamaulipas, Queretero, and Zacatecas. Internationally, the nations of Algeria, Chad, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Tunisia, and Western Sahara.

Ureu q'estadra så,

Sir Lüc da Schir (MC-IND/FreeDems)

Let it be known that, unless I hear any objections:

- @Mic'haglh Autófil, SMC MC EiP is automatically assigned the lone PdR seat;

- @Iason Taiwos is automatically assigned the lone NPW seat.

I suppose I could consider stepping into a full time appointment, if nobody else wants a crack at it.

Incidentally, the OrgLaw has been scribed to reflect the ratification of 58RZ13 during the most recent GE.