[FINANCE] Draft Budget coming November 1

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

The Ministry of Finance has gotten draft requisitions from all Ministries for funding in the 55th Cosa budget. We are currently examining options for revenue on how to pay for these.

We intend to publish a Draft Budget for public comment on November 1, in plenty of time for the final version to go on the Second Clark, as required by law.

Questions? Comments?

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

DRAFT FIGURES FOR THE 55th COSA BUDGET

I have received the following requisitions from the various Ministries of the Government (all sums in $US):

• STUFF: for webhosting for the next 9 months, $80.15; for promoting Talossa's social media posts, $30
• CULTURE: for prizes for cultural contests, $100; for honoraria for writers of articles for a new Talossan cultural magazine, $225
• JUSTICE: for "monetary grants in kind for meritorious and exceptional work done in the execution of official ministerial or bureaucratic duties, for any civil servant or nonpolitical appointees", $100
• FINANCE: for fees for a Registered Agent to represent Talossa as an Unincorporated Association under the laws of the State of Wisconsin, to enable us to formally hold property, $100

No requisitions were received from Interior, Foreign Affairs or Defence. This comes to a total requested expenditure of $585.15.

Estimated sources of revenue include the following:

• Registration fees for Cosa election: $30-40
• Registration fees for Senäts election (assuming the Fleecing Bill passes): $15
• Interest on Talossa's bank accounts: $8

If all these requisitions are to be honoured, this leaves a deficit of $532.15 to be covered by (a) the sale of coins and stamps; (b) "voluntary taxation" (i.e. donations) from Talossan citizens. I note that this deficit is more than half of Talossa's total reserves to date.

I urge, in the month before the Budget has to be presented to the Ziu:

• all the Ministers who have made requisitions to defend the need for these expenditures before the people;
• the widest possible debate as to what level of stamp-coin sales / voluntary taxation is actually feasible.

Let us make it clear that the financial question is here a political question; Talossans are only going to buy stamps and coins and plain give the Government money if they support the proposed levels of expenditure and their goals.

Questions? Comments?

[Eðo Grischun]

STUFF

i) The figure for web hosting is a necessary expense. The bill is not actually due until next summer, but shall fall payable prior to the formation of the next government (ie: when this current government goes into caretaker status during the next election period).  The bill covers 12 months of web hosting from summer 2021 to summer 2022 and also the domain renewal for Talossa.com for that same time period.

ii) the request of $30 for a social media budget is intended to be used to "boost" selected posts on Facebook as posted on the Kingdom's official Facebook page.  The intention is to spend this sum once per month for 6 months at around $5 per spend (6*5=30).  The posts being "boosted" will be for citizenship drives (ie: 'join talossa' posts), of which we will do x4, and also for coin/stamps sales drives, of which we will do x2.  These sales drive posts may help pay for the project and my goal would be that $30 of sales be achieved by those 2 drives to pay for the social media budget. The purpose of "boosting" posts is to increase exposure of those posts to a greater audience (that is that Facebook will display those posts to more people based on how much you spend, similar to Facebook Ads).

iii) The Ministry is available to answer any questions on these budget requests.

iv) It is the intention of the Ministry of STUFF to carry out a redesign of the coin/stamps page on the website to make them appear more appealing (I think we need some nicer and more higher res images and some text tweaking to include more calls to action). Meanwhile, it is the intention of the Ministry of the Interior to start sending all prospective citizens some 'point of sale' literature (which shall be made by MinSTUFF) (basically a JPEG version of the website sales page) in an attempt to increase sales of these items.  At some stage during this Cosa session, we may also send out a mass mailer to all citizens with the sales literature as a sales drive.

[Ian Plätschisch]

for honoraria for writers of articles for a new Talossan cultural magazine, $225

Well gee, maybe I should pack it up over at La S'chinteia and start making fat stacks at whatever this new magazine is 

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

Eh, if you buy $50 of Talossan stamps and write 2 articles for $50, it's pretty much a wash

[Eiric S. Bornatfiglheu]

for honoraria for writers of articles for a new Talossan cultural magazine, $225

Well gee, maybe I should pack it up over at La S'chinteia and start making fat stacks at whatever this new magazine is 

It is not the government's intention in this case to set up a competing magazine.  In fact, the honoraria money is intended to commission Talossan language articles (with translations) for La S'chinteia.  My assumption here in these honoraria is that "if you won't do it for love, will you do it for lucre?"  The expansion of Talossan literature is well worth the investment.

[Sir Alexandreu Davinescu]

I wonder if it would be possible to create a graph of the Kingdom's financial assets over time from the last few years.  I am not sure if my recall is off, but this level of spending and deficit seems unusual -- alarming, actually.  But maybe it's not, and we have just had increased revenues every time?  I don't know.

At this point, with the standardized approach and reporting that we have had for years, this also seems like a thing that could be easily compiled into a spreadsheet so we could compare over years.

[Ian Plätschisch]

I wonder if it would be possible to create a graph of the Kingdom's financial assets over time from the last few years.  I am not sure if my recall is off, but this level of spending and deficit seems unusual -- alarming, actually.  But maybe it's not, and we have just had increased revenues every time?  I don't know.

What usually happens is that appropriations about this large are made but then not actually spent.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

I thought I had already made it clear; yes, this is a significant increase in government spending over previous years. This Government wishes to do more, if possible. Only the question of whether the people will come to the party with stamp/coin purchases or voluntary taxes will answer whether it really is possible. It is of course possible even if we don't get those tax revenues, because of our $1000+ reserves built up over previous years. But it must still be justified and get wide popular acceptance.

This is where I justify the expenditure for a Registered Agent. People say that Talossa has become "virtualised" since Cybercitizens came to outnumber residents of the GTA. But in another sense, we have become far more real, because we now have actual property, being defined as our national webspace, our domain names, our bank accounts, and our stamps/coins. It behooves us to consider how to best protect that property.

At the moment, our "real" property is held by the Burgermeister of Internal Revenue, and our "online" property is held by the Talossan Web Registrant, who are at the moment the same person. This person is, as we all know, a person of impeccable honesty. But we might not always be so lucky. If an unscrupulous successor were to simply embezzle our national property, we would have no recourse under macronational law, any more than KR1 could do anything about the Republican revolutionaries' seizure of Wittenberg and talossa.com on 1 June 2004. (Ben thought he was clever getting MPF to set up our national webspace and not pay him. He thought wrongly. You get what you pay for.)

In previous years, some had suggested setting up Talossa as an incorporated society under the law of the State of Wisconsin, with the King as President of that society. There is a much simpler option, as pointed out to me by my colleague @Dien Tresplet:

There is an Unincorporated Association document for Talossa appointing a Registered Agent on file with the Wisconsin SoS right now, and UAs can have bank accounts and hold property provided the document exists. The Registered Agent either needs to be changed to a Talossan currently living in WI or else we need to pay a corporate Registered Agent.

As no Talossan living in Wisconsin has stepped up to volunteer to be our Registered Agent, it seems that the yearly fee for a corporate Registered Agent is in the $50-$100 per annum range; cxhn. Tresplet is currently doing further research. But this is the price for having Talossa's property secured to us under macronational law, giving us recourse against embezzlement.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

I should note that I am mulling over the question of prioritising these expenditures, some of which will definitely be made out of reserves no matter how much funding rolls in, and some of which will only happen if the necessary funding rolls in. I am definitely not going to authorise $600+ of deficit spending right now.

[Sir Alexandreu Davinescu]

D:na Seneschal, would you agree that many these sums are usually appropriated and never spent?  If so, maybe it would be reasonable not to appropriate such huge amounts for them up front, and only appropriate the ones that are likely and necessary?

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

On the contrary, that's why I am more confident about appropriating them up front, and only spending them if we need to. You will be aware that spending which isn't appropriated up front can be authorised by a PD, which cuts the Ziu out of the equation and is IMHO less democratic. Better to over-appropriate than under-appropriate, IMHO.

[Sir Alexandreu Davinescu]

On the contrary, that's why I am more confident about appropriating them up front, and only spending them if we need to. You will be aware that spending which isn't appropriated up front can be authorised by a PD, which cuts the Ziu out of the equation and is IMHO less democratic. Better to over-appropriate than under-appropriate, IMHO.

Well, we seem to be agreed that this would be a reckless and unacceptable amount of deficit spending currently. It doesn't seem to make any sense to propose authorization of an amounts that would be reckless, though. What's the point in approval of a budget at all if it's going to approve much larger amounts than the Ziu would actually be willing to spend, predicated on hypothetical future fundraising?

If your desire is to respect the democratic process, then you don't have to issue a PD to authorize further expenditures. A bill to do so could also be Clarked and passed at any time. That seems to make the most difference, rather than deliberately asking for authorization to spend an irresponsible amount of money before you know whether or not you'll be able to, right? Is that a possibility?

[Açafat del Val]

Before I do (or do not) respond to any other items... I would like to withdraw the following budget request:

JUSTICE: for "monetary grants in kind for meritorious and exceptional work done in the execution of official ministerial or bureaucratic duties, for any civil servant or nonpolitical appointees", $100

In consideration of the budget deficit, this piece of discretionary spending is better spent on other things.

[Eiric S. Bornatfiglheu]

At least in re: the Cultural appropriations, I can explain my reasoning as follows:

$225 for a culture magazine project:  The idea here is to offer $10 for an English Article, and $15 for a Talossan translation, with a package of both coming in at $25.  As the project is slated to run bimonthly, that would be 3 issues per Clark and funds for 3 articles on cultural topics.

Given the Amount of Talossan writing we already have, this project would prove a significant shot in the arm for the Talossan literary corpus.  Admittedly, one of our chief language experts has indicated that financial inducements don't have an effect because he doesn't know how to write articles.  But I would encourage people in such a condition to team up and then split the honoraria.

I used to work in the nonprofit sector, before I went into education.  One of the major issues with volunteers is that, well... there's only so much you can expect of them.  They're volunteering their time.  The museum where I worked needed reliable outputs, hence they professionalized their staff.  These honoraria aren't big, but that's the intention behind them.  It's enough to afford a couple of beers while you write.

The $100 for prizes and mailings is a shot in the dark on my part to cover shipping costs.  For me, sending a trophy to Gluc is very different than sending a trophy to Iason.  So I assumed that Gluc was going to win in every contest for the next Clark when setting this price.