I have noticed a curious thing in our law. While it provides for scenarios where the Speaker or the Vice Delegate may mitigate periods where they will be absent from office, it does not give the Delegate the same option. The Delegate cannot trigger the absence clause through their own volition, but must somehow be prevented by law from carrying out their duties. However, the law does not give them the option to declare such a period. We have seen this come in handy with the Vice Delegate, rather than wait for their possible vacating office or recall to ensure their duties continue uninterrupted. But the Delegate has no such option, instead relying on a delegate directive which is obviously limited in scope, and may not adequately handle the situation where a Delegate may deem it necessary to declare an absence from office. Therefore, I propose a simple change to the Legal Code to provide for just these sorts of scenarios.
For starters, I added an explicit reference to absences in the definition section. Just seemed like a prudent thing to do. In addition to allowing for self-declaration of absence, I have also added a provision for scenarios where the delegate vanishes and the region loses contact with them, but they mechanically keep themselves in office. We have seen previous officials do this, and the only remedy was to recall them or fire them (if they were ministers). This way, business can continue while other ways of handling the situation can work their way to the finish. I figured we may as well cover that base if we were going to create this new section. I would be interested to hear if you think any other scenarios should be contemplated while we're putting this together. Finally, this bill also clears up the next potential area of concern if we provide for absences, by explicitly maintaining the Delegate's gameside role and not forcing us to do an impromptu transition back and forth. If a Delegate declares an absence and it gets to be too long, there are plenty of options to handle them, so if gameside presence becomes a problem, those avenues can be explored.
Executive Absence Act:
Executive Absence Act:
For starters, I added an explicit reference to absences in the definition section. Just seemed like a prudent thing to do. In addition to allowing for self-declaration of absence, I have also added a provision for scenarios where the delegate vanishes and the region loses contact with them, but they mechanically keep themselves in office. We have seen previous officials do this, and the only remedy was to recall them or fire them (if they were ministers). This way, business can continue while other ways of handling the situation can work their way to the finish. I figured we may as well cover that base if we were going to create this new section. I would be interested to hear if you think any other scenarios should be contemplated while we're putting this together. Finally, this bill also clears up the next potential area of concern if we provide for absences, by explicitly maintaining the Delegate's gameside role and not forcing us to do an impromptu transition back and forth. If a Delegate declares an absence and it gets to be too long, there are plenty of options to handle them, so if gameside presence becomes a problem, those avenues can be explored.
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