Discussion on multiple deputies permissions

PaulWallLibertarian42

PaulWallLibertarian42

TNPer
I think my moderator deputy RA permissions got taken away. I noticed the remask (thx) and wanted to check to see if my mod powers on the ra still existed they dont.

I should have both permissions. Per discussions with DD and the Speakers Office neither had no objection to me doing both. And Crushing our Enemies did some investigating for the speakers office and found no restriction on not being allowed to remain deputy RA and take on an extra role with DDs Home Affairs office. Can an admin look into this to make sure I maintain both permissions? Thx.
 
I believed that under the constitutional provisions you may not serve in more than one arm of government:

3. The executive category consists of the Delegate, Vice Delegate, Attorney General, and government officials appointed by government officials in the executive category.
4. The legislative category consists of the Speaker, and government officials appointed by government officials in the legislative category.
5. The judicial category consists of the Justices, and government officials appointed by government officials in the judicial category .
6. All government officials, with the exception of members of the Security Council, must maintain membership in the Regional Assembly while in office.
7. All government officials will swear an oath of office. The content of these oaths will be determined by law and be legally binding.
8. No person may simultaneously serve in more than one constitutionally-mandated elected official positions.
9. No person may simultaneously serve in government official positions in more than one of the executive, legislative, or judicial categories. Exceptions to this provision may be established by law.


You were appointed by the Speaker who is a legislative officer. You were then appointed Deputy by a member of the executive.

9. No person may simultaneously serve in government official positions in more than one of the executive, legislative, or judicial categories. Exceptions to this provision may be established by law.

If I am missing the exception, then feel free to point it out and I'll correct it.
 
The exception is that deputy ministers aren't government officials under the definition of the law. :P Only full ministers are.
 
As I have previously consulted with both DD and Zvet they have no issue with me serving in both roles. I have COE lawyering for me saying there is no restriction on being in a capacity somewhere else (Deputy RA in this case) and being a deputy cabinet member as a deputy cabinet incurs no legal authority except to be a glorified assistant to the specific minister they are asked to deputy under. (A full ministership on the other hand would require to resign from a previous position...but this is not a full minister position..) I even have a court Justice advocating for me here. All I require to perform my job duties is moderator powers over the Home Affairs Office (if DD wishes me too) and to maintain Mod Powers over the RA. I already retain access to the RA speaker documents. The masking makes no difference to me. I can maintain the cabinet deputy mask though it gives no special permissions only an identifyer. All i ask is Admin give me mod powers indivdually back over RA while i continue to serve there.

If a person has issue with COEs, Silly, Zvets, Mine, and DDs interpretation of the law then they are more then welcome to file a request with the court in the matter. Until then as both my bosses have no issue with me continuing in both roles. I ask Admin to stop playing court Justice and just admin and just restore my RA mod powers while giving my HA mod powers as well. And if a citizen wants to challenge our interpretation they are more then welcomed to on their own. Thank you.
 
I think the problem is that the language of Article 7 in the Constitution makes reference to "officials appointed by them" and them can refer to "appointed officials" as well, and that exceptions can be provided by law.

However, I do not see any exceptions created by law in the Legal Code. If the intent was to exclude deputies of whatever office, then the lack of a law explicitly creating a category of exceptions for deputies seems to be the issue.

I'm not relying on memory but on what was passed as it appears in the official text of the laws linked in the masthead of the forums. That is what I think McM is doing as well. If you think there is an adopted exception there, please copy and quote it in this thread, because I did not find one.
 
I will have to send COE your way or see if he is available to post as he is my unoffical legal council in this matter and showed me evidence where there is a loophole in the law where I can serve in both roles.

Futhermore, I am dismayed I thought the purpose of admining was to Admin and devorce admin of the forum from any other capacity or intrest and simply admin. - I did not realize the admin requests thread was an extension of the court. I would hope the admins would honor my request for me to retain both powers with the consent of my respective overlords in DD and Zyvet approving. And if there is any role play legal challenges to be made of our role play laws someone is free to file a complaint with the court and make me choose between the two. Until then. I would appreciate my concerns being taken into consideration as far as strictly admining is concerned. Ive talked to dd and zyvet they have no issue with me doing both. I really love the tnp and contributing. I want to help in the ra and help PR the Forum with DD. What harm is there in indulgeing someones ambition? Thx.
 
Futhermore, I am dismayed I thought the purpose of admining was to Admin and devorce admin of the forum from any other capacity or intrest and simply admin. - I did not realize the admin requests thread was an extension of the court. I would hope the admins would honor my request for me to retain both powers with the consent of my respective overlords in DD and Zyvet approving. And if there is any role play legal challenges to be made of our role play laws someone is free to file a complaint with the court and make me choose between the two. Until then. I would appreciate my concerns being taken into consideration as far as strictly admining is concerned.
Click to expand...

:clap:
 
Before we remask or add permissions for someone, we have to be sure it is properly permitted. That principle applies uniformly. It is why we do not remask or add permissions before an oath of office is posted. If there is an ambiguity, then we have to double check. (We often have this problem with NPA-RA overlapped permissions, for example, as some want the NPA badge and others want the RA badge.) Assuming you're allow to do this, we're going to have the same problem because the badges for deputy ministers and deputy speakers are different.
So we are just doing our job.
 
Grosseschnauzer:
If you think there is an adopted exception there, please copy and quote it in this thread, because I did not find one.
Click to expand...
It's not an exception, it's the text of the law.

1. Constitutionally-mandated elected officials are the Delegate, Vice Delegate, Speaker, Justices, and Attorney General.
2. Government officials are the constitutionally-mandated elected officials, any officials appointed by them as permitted by law, and members of the Security Council.
3. The executive category consists of the Delegate, Vice Delegate, Attorney General, and government officials appointed by government officials in the executive category.
Click to expand...

This is written rather confusingly, but it breaks down as follows:

"Government officials" includes the Delegate, the Vice Delegate, the Speaker, the Justices, the Attorney General, members of the Security Council, and anybody appointed by any of the previously named officeholders. This includes Ministers, Deputy Speakers, and Deputy Attorneys General.

Deputy Ministers, however, are appointed by Ministers, not by the Delegate (or to be specific, PWL was appointed by DD, and not by r3n), and the writing of the law is not recursive. The third clause appears on the surface as if it ought to be recursive, but in fact it simply establishes that Ministers (as government officials) are executive officials. Deputy Ministers, who are not government officials under the definition of clause 2, are not "government officials appointed by government officials" and are therefore not executive officials either.

Before we remask or add permissions for someone, we have to be sure it is properly permitted.
Click to expand...
As PWL has pointed out, it is not the admin team's job to interpret the law.
 
SillyString:
Before we remask or add permissions for someone, we have to be sure it is properly permitted.
Click to expand...
As PWL has pointed out, it is not the admin team's job to interpret the law.
Click to expand...
Sorry, but it is *us* that gets b****ed at if we do something wrong like mask people before they take an oath or fail to quickly enough mask/unmask at a transition. So excuse us if we take a brief moment to make sure something that does *not* seem intuitive is actually correct under law.

Having read it, I can see and agree that deputy officials would be allowed to have more than one deputy position.
 
Thank you for your consideration. I didnt mean to sound so salty i aplogize. As far as masking is concerned im apathetic either way. I can keep this. Or go back to deputy RA whatever admin feels best. As long as I can be granted user moderation powers over both the Regional Assemby Forums and the Home Affairs Forum(s). I have in my signature so people should know. Also if they see me doing the work. Anyway. I appreciate your considerations. I look forward to getting this resolved soon.
 
Probably wouldn't have this problem if admins weren't a part of government and could just focus on adminning...cough cough...chuckle chuckle.

Seriously though, none of us admins care about masking people with multiple masks. However, we don't want to be party to doing something "illegal" if we can help it. That's the concern here; no one is trying to take the place of the courts.

I am not sure why this hasn't been brought up, but it would seem to me this line below would preclude PWL from serving in the two positions he would like to serve.

9. No person may simultaneously serve in government official positions in more than one of the executive, legislative, or judicial categories. Exceptions to this provision may be established by law.
Click to expand...

My read of this text is that a Deputy Speaker is a legislative category position. A Deputy Minister is an executive category position. This text states no one can serve as a government official in "more than one" of the three categories. Am I missing something?
 
SillyString:
Grosseschnauzer:
If you think there is an adopted exception there, please copy and quote it in this thread, because I did not find one.
Click to expand...
It's not an exception, it's the text of the law.

1. Constitutionally-mandated elected officials are the Delegate, Vice Delegate, Speaker, Justices, and Attorney General.
2. Government officials are the constitutionally-mandated elected officials, any officials appointed by them as permitted by law, and members of the Security Council.
3. The executive category consists of the Delegate, Vice Delegate, Attorney General, and government officials appointed by government officials in the executive category.
Click to expand...

This is written rather confusingly, but it breaks down as follows:

"Government officials" includes the Delegate, the Vice Delegate, the Speaker, the Justices, the Attorney General, members of the Security Council, and anybody appointed by any of the previously named officeholders. This includes Ministers, Deputy Speakers, and Deputy Attorneys General.

Deputy Ministers, however, are appointed by Ministers, not by the Delegate (or to be specific, PWL was appointed by DD, and not by r3n), and the writing of the law is not recursive. The third clause appears on the surface as if it ought to be recursive, but in fact it simply establishes that Ministers (as government officials) are executive officials. Deputy Ministers, who are not government officials under the definition of clause 2, are not "government officials appointed by government officials" and are therefore not executive officials either.

Before we remask or add permissions for someone, we have to be sure it is properly permitted.
Click to expand...
As PWL has pointed out, it is not the admin team's job to interpret the law.
Click to expand...
However, that explanation does not seem to address the language of clause 9 in Article 7 and its interaction with clause 3:
3. The executive category consists of the Delegate, Vice Delegate, Attorney General, and government officials appointed by government officials in the executive category.
Click to expand...
9. No person may simultaneously serve in government official positions in more than one of the executive, legislative, or judicial categories. Exceptions to this provision may be established by law.
Click to expand...

The "government officials appointed by government officials in the executive category" in clause 3 appears to feed into the restriction in clause 9; which is where it is leading to a literally-read conclusion that a deputy in the executive category can't serve as a deputy in one of the other two categories unless an exception is established by law.

However the current matter is resolved, it's pretty clear that to avoid confusion a law outlining exceptions needs to be proposed and adopted. I won't stop another admin from remasking if they think SS's explanation of the ambiguity is sufficient, but I think there is an unresolvable ambiguity that should be address legislatively. It's the clause 9 language referring to the entire category, and permitting statutory exceptions that argues against COE's interpretation, because if the definition being limited to the first level of appointees was all that was intended, then an exception clause would likely not have been necessary.

EDIT: It appears Punk D and I were posting at the same time to make the same point.
 
I think we need to split off this discussion from the admin request thread. It's not off-topic, but simply deserves to be a thread of its own.
 
The expections clause is there to allow officials in other categories to concurrently serve as Election Commissioners. That's the only exception we've established by law so far.
 
I'm fairly pissed that people are having a go at the admin team for considering the law. As FEC said - we do get busted if someone is not masked correctly or if we mask someone before they should legally have that mask. We take in the law and our masking practices into consideration. So do not accuse us of playing court justice - we're simply considering both factors here. Get off your damn high horse PaulWall, if you had of waited a few hours I would have had it done for you. I already informed your "lawyer" that I would fix it. And I would have done it when I was next on the forum.

We do not mask people until they have taken their oath. Standard practice and complies with the law..

Now tell me - Do you want to have your Deputy Speaker group OR your Deputy Cabinet group? You can't have both, but you can have the moderation privileges for both.
 
I already aplogized for getting out of hand. Its just frustrating. I understand its new territory and consideration needs taken. Ive tried to be patient and understanding as possible. Idk *shrug* from what COE and Asta explained As best I could understand seemed pretty straight foreward. I just got frustrated because one or two admins would see our point and agree to procede and another would come in and go *whoa wait a minute* so I was unsure what direction we were going in.
Again sorry for losing composer.

As far as masking as I said earlier, i am amicable to whatever is easier for Admin to do. If it is easier to keep the mask I have and simply give my acct mod authority over the RA again, fine. - I am okay with what is better/easier for the admin team to do. Thank you.
 
Hm that whole clause does seem a bit confusing. As far as I can see, PaulWall can be masked and then the issue can be discussed in the RA. (Let's not run off to Court with this one when no one is really worried about two deputies)

As far as the Admin team is concerned, it is no great secret that I am more than happy to criticise where it is warranted. It is not warranted here, it was perfectly understandable that they wished to take a step back and think it over.

TL;DR: I agree with the general gist of what people are saying/doing here :P
 
The law is misleading.

So deputies are not government officials unless appointed by a constitutionally mandated elected officials then.

I think it would have made more sense if it had been recursive:

2. Government officials are the constitutionally-mandated elected officials, any officials appointed by themGovernment officials as permitted by law, and members of the Security Council.

Just to throw in a random factoid, the mandatory ministries were constitutionally mandated elected officials until a few years ago. Minister of Defense was directly elected, etc. I guess it must have been like TSP.
 
So like your the AG and elected so if u appoint a assistant thats legally binding whatever. Appointed by a govt mandated offical. But if an assistant to the assistant ag post was created thats not legally binding and they are free to pursuse something else to.

Speaker - deputy speaker (appointed by elected govt offical)

But Delegate - Minister (appointed by elected official) - Deputy Cabinet (not appointed by an elected official so not legally binding..also has no real legal authority basicly the ministers secretary/intern/runner/b*tch - only duties is what the minister sees fit)

Its something that was neglected in the law.

Ovbiously if D is away and would hypotheticly appoint me acting minister then id have to resign the deputy ra first in order to be acting minister. But as long as im a deputy appointed by D and not directly from the delegate im free to pursue another dept.

I dont know if its the same as mcms case notice r3n appointed him MoFA and then COE made him Deputy MinnComm. (Im not sure if you can be appointed as minister over multiple departments...so maybe that is a moot example)

Pretty much

Del - minister is legally binding whatever legal authority

Speaker - deputy

AG - Assistant

But if there was a deputy deputy speaker or a Deputy Deputy AG or something similar or something it wouldnt be legally binding cause its not coming from an elected offical or being appointed by an elected official directly.
 
PWL, your analysis appears to be correct by my reading of the law. However, note that multiple government official positions are allowed as long as they are in the same branch. So Abacathea can serve as both Vice Delegate and Minister of WA Affairs, for example.
 
I'm not sure I agree that it would be better for it to be recursive, Chas. Is there any real need to segregate things that strongly?
 
Well... as I've said before the point of the segregation is to prevent powers being consolidated in an individual but also to delineate responsibilities to make it clearer for accountability.

It's clear that this is a requirement at cabinet level, and deputies can effectively assume the duties of cabinet so the same should be applied to them too.

I could be wrong, but I think it's a loophole that should be closed.

If the delegate appoints the deputies on ministers behalf then no recursion necessary.
 
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