Wittenberg

Quote from: Üc R. Tärfâ on Today at 09:04:05 AMYou keep talking about transparency, but in your posts (I added the underlines in the quotes above) there's always this part about the Government making the report: how there can be any transparency at all if a Government is required to report on itself?

"Government" is being used here to refer to the entire governing apparatus, including civil servants, not "the Government" (ie the elected and politically-appointed Cabinet).

And you're reinforcing what we're saying: it would be good to have the Burgermeister be obligated to give a Financial Report at the end of the term, rather than passing it through Finance and presenting it concurrently with the budget after the election.  This is another point in favor of the proposal.

Quote from: Üc R. Tärfâ on Today at 09:04:05 AMI can assure the Ministreu that we will not allow him to take transparency away from the Kingdom's money and put the Government in charge of the duty to report on itself on how it spent the money, like it is always implied in all his comments and actions.

You seem to actually understand what we mean when we refer to the government reporting, and you have already noted that the bill itself refers to the Burgermeister.  I don't think anyone has proposed differently here.

Quote from: Üc R. Tärfâ on Today at 09:04:05 AM

• keep the Civil Service, the Burgermeister,  (and not the Government) in charghe of Reporting and supervising how money are spent, just like we have the Civil Service, the Secretary of State, (and not the Government) in charge of the elections;
• detach the final report from the budget (the Government won't have to attach the report to the budget bill);
• add a compulsory preliminary report at the end of the Cosă term (by the Burgermeister) before the Election to give people voting the opportunity to have a report on how money were or werent' spent by the outgoing Government;
• the final report will cover the period from one budget to the other as accounting practice requires.

I don't quite understand why this is a compromise.  This is pretty much just exactly what @Tric'hard Lenxheir proposed.  Two mandatory financial reports: one at the end of the Cosa, and one at the time of the budget.  It looks like the only difference is that you want the second one issued independently of the budget, by the Burgermeister alone.  A return to the system from back in the day works great for me, lol - in for a penny, in for a pound!  @Tric'hard Lenxheir , would this be okay with you?

Quote from: Üc R. Tärfâ on Today at 09:04:05 AMI see the good faith of the Senator, if these concerns are our common and shared goals I'd be more than happy to consponsor a new bill and write it together.

I don't know why we'd abandon this bill when we're making such good progress![/list]

The most useful and relevant time to give a financial statement is when it will keep a government accountable to the people.  It is more transparent and democratic.  It should be required of a government, not optional.  It's the people's money.

I understand that this might bother accountants. We can budget some money for counseling for them, if it gets severe. But I think they will be assuaged if a supplemental report is required in the case of any further expenditures (which almost never happened in that period of time anyway).

Should I make the latter change, would you vote for the bill?

Very slight changes, made once but lost in the Wittpocaylpse:

WHEREAS the Bureau of Corporations was in fact used by two corporations, but it never did its job, and that's not really their fault, and

WHEREAS it's actually good to have a place to officially incorporate both private and public entities, and "please put us on this public list" is a very minimal burden on the government, and

WHEREAS the Register of Talossan Enterprises does not appear to exist and has never even been promoted and I doubt that more than two or three people know it hypothetically exists, so it had its shot over the last two years and hasn't made it,

THEREFORE the tenth subsection of the eighth subsection of the second section of Title D of el Lexhatx, which currently reads as follows:

Quote2.8.10 The Finance Minister shall create a Register of Talossan Enterprises, available to all Talossan citizens. Any Talossan who produces goods and services, whether commercially or as a hobby, may provide a description, no longer than 100 words, of their enterprise together with their contact details, for the purposes of advertisement and information. An enterprise shall be removed from the register at the request of the registrant; or by a determination by the Finance Minister that the enterprise is no longer active, or not of a character with which the Kingdom of Talossa wishes to be associated. Such determinations shall be subject to judicial review.

shall be replaced by the following subsections:

Quote2.8.10 The Finance Minister is authorized to create the Bureau of Corporations, which body shall be responsible for the registration of all Talossan businesses, the enforcement of applicable business laws, and such further tasks as may seem fit by the Ziu.

2.8.10.1 The Bureau of Corporations shall issue business licenses in a timely fashion to all those corporations and businesses that apply for one. Application is voluntary and free.

2.8.10.2 An application for a business license must include the following information:
2.8.10.2.1 The name under which the corporation will do business in Talossa.
2.8.10.2.2 The name of the citizen that owns the business and who has applied for registration.
2.8.10.2.3 The type of business.
2.8.10.2.4 The status of the business, either profit or non-profit.
2.8.10.2.5 The name and location of the business outside of Talossa, if desired.
2.8.10.2.6 The articles of incorporation for the business, if applicable.

2.8.10.3 Official articles of incorporation may be included by a corporation when applying for a license. Registered articles shall be considered binding and may be enforced through civil suits. Registration of such articles is voluntary and free. A registered corporation need not be registered in any other country. Registered articles shall be a matter of public record, and may be amended according to terms laid out within the articles.  Sample articles may be offered at the Bureau's discretion.

2.8.10.4. All business licenses shall be issued by the Bureau in a standardized format, including all of the above information, and assigning each business its own official number. This number shall be composed of three digits to indicate the year of registration combined with three digits to indicate the order a business was registered, beginning with 001. For example, a business, registered in 2012/XXXIII, that was the seventh business registered in Talossa, would have the number 033007. Changes to this numbering scheme may be made at the discretion of the Bureau, but are discouraged. Business licenses shall be a matter of public record, and will be made available by the Bureau on request.  It is encouraged for the Bureau to provide a fancy certificate to any registered business.

Uréu q'estadra så:
Baron Alexandreu Davinescu (MC-TNC)

Well, the actual whole point is realizing that it doesn't make sense to report on our financial state right after elections.  Money is almost never spent in the interim period except on emergencies or scheduled items, so why are we settling accounts after that, rather than in the useful time where it will be visibly linked to the probity and activity of a government?  It's not transparent and it's not useful.

So I think you're largely wrong, but it would seem make sense to require a supplementary report included with the budget, detailing any further expenditures, if any, and providing new final figures in such a case.  @Tric'hard Lenxheir , would you be open to adding that to your bill?

Please add me as co-sponsor.  Sorry, should have asked before this hit the CRL.

The bill is fine in form and function.

Here are some resources that you might find useful.  Laypeople should be aware that it's possible to make all sorts of completely illegal and ugly achievements, but such will not be approved by the Coletx.

-NRH

Heraldicon (free) - Currently, this site is the best option.  It has a ton of art in different styles, and you can also upload any SVG (like from the free Noun Project) to add more.  It is extremely customizable and allows fine adjustments, and it can create achievements from a provided blazon (or vice-versa). The only downside is that there's a bit of a learning curve.

DrawShield.net (free) - This site has an excellent selection of art and uses proper blazons, but sometimes it requires a lot of fiddling with the specialized language to make something look right.  It's an old standby, though, and great for a quick mockup.

MyBlazon (free) - Another site, but with poor design tools, a limited art range, and clunky outcomes.  Only useful if you want a smooth integration with product ordering, but probably not even for that.

Heraldry Studio ($19.99) - This program works decently well and has a good amount of included art in traditional styles, but it's also surprisingly limited considering how long it's been in development and the overall price.

I'm not inclined to do it unless he'd agree to it, personally.  Too much money at risk.  But he might well agree, if people were not aggressive jerks about it.  He already tried to immigrate again.  Maybe it's time to reach out about things like this?

I don't really like the spending freeze aspect of this. This never been a problem, as far as I can remember. May I suggest eliminating that provision?

I would also suggest changing this to the "anticipated conclusion of the Cosa term," instead of "end of the Cosa."

One thing that's weird is that I can get the program to admit that it looks online, but it refuses to tell me its sources truthfully. Whenever I ask it, it just fabricates, rather than actually telling me where it's looking. I guess that's part of the nature of an LLM: it's not actually parsing my question to look for semantic content and compose an appropriate answer, but instead it's predicting what the answer should be based on large pattern analysis and some randomness.

GPT-4 is out now, and I wonder if I should run more tests with our language on that. I was able to get chatGPT to engage about it in a meaningful way, and even seemingly to understand some of the rules. I bet that GPT-4 would be even more effective at that sort of complex task. And the cost for an individual user is basically nothing, so it's worth a try.

Love this AI stuff!

I have updated the draft with expenditures and notes indicating their connection to the preceding budget.  Per the SoS' wishes, I have also put the whole thing back into one familiar-format bill.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


While the government has been working hard at back-end technical fixes to the site, including restoring the email services and implementing daily backups, we have also been working on the front-end presentation on our website.  Most of the site is outdated or broken, and a decision was made to triage many pages.  While this made sense at the time, we are working to improve the situation.  Below is a running list of fixes and improvements.

• Creation of Infotecă, an online information portal about Wittenberg, the Royal Treasury, and our immigration.
• Fixed the social media plugins that were broken.
• Revised the top menu for ease of access and presentation.
• Restored the wiki embed plugin.

I sympathize with your goal, 100%, but it's one of the fundamental characteristics of a PD under the OrgLaw is that it needs the king's countersignature.  You just can't have a PD that has legal force which doesn't have the countersignature.  I'm sorry.

There are other avenues here.  The status quo is that no one refers the ephemeral stuff to His Majesty since it has literally no effect if a Day of Observance is countersigned or not.  It's a fun thing that we do but there's no legal force to any of it.  Or alternatively, we could try to shift away from using PDs for any of those sorts of things, and just have the Seneschal issue policy statements on a few specific things on his own authority, by a new statute delegating limited power to do so on behalf of the Ziu.  Or we could start bugging the king about all of the ephemeral stuff (although that seems silly).  Or maybe something we haven't thought of yet.

Again, I agree with your goals!  I'd love to work to find some solution. But it's impossible to use a statute to exempt some PDs from countersignature.

I'd even just use, "It is suggested that the CRL, with the assistance of the Scribery, shall evaluate the bills mainly from..."  Would that be okay?

Probably?  I guess I don't see why not.