The Senate

This is the home of the National Senate. The Senate is a house of review comprised of the Governors of every Province.

Currently, the ONLY responsibility of the Senate is to approve changes to the constitution, which has not happened since the new constitution was enacted.

I am interested in what the Senators and the Congress (citizens) think could be done to improve the funtioning of the Senate.

Current Senate: (Term 4)
Asphinxia - Almightyjosh
Normandy - crabapple
Istar - Donsig
New Cormyr - rg3333
Ameri - Lovro
Kasmir - Civinator
Scythia - Octavian X
Mohawkia - BCLG100
Nouva Terra - Stuck_As_a_Mac

(please advise by PM or post if wrong)

I am thinking about part of the constitution that I would like to see changed. It is only an idea at the moment, and only involves a change to one article.
The change is to Article D:

Current:
Article D. The Executive Branch is headed by the President, who shall be the designated player of the game, and shall include a council of leaders, each of whom heads a department that is responsible for one major facet of the country. These departments are Domestic, Foreign, Military, Science, Culture and Trade. Each of these departments will be generally responsible for the items found under the respective Advisor in the Civilization III game and esoteric aspects that fall under their department name.

Proposed:
Article D. The Executive Branch is headed by the President, who shall be the designated player of the game, and shall include a council of leaders, each of whom heads a department that is responsible for one major facet of the country, and governors. The departments are Domestic, Foreign, Military, Science, Culture and Trade. Each of these departments will be generally responsible for the items found under the respective Advisor in the Civilization III game and esoteric aspects that fall under their department name.


This proposal basically makes Governors part of the executive, the only effect of which is that they get a council vote. Governors are elected officials and are charged with responsibilities that cover many disiplines, making them even more suited to the executive than narrowly focused department leaders (not meant as insult). Furthermore, Article E speaks of the "legasltive responsibilities" of governors, of which there are none apparent. This is a nessisary change as currently all legislative power rests either with the executive as council votes or with the congress as citizen polls. What is called the senate in the constitution has no role to play as a legislator or a house of review. Either we incorporate it into the executive or we set up a 'council of governors' with clear powers of legislation and review.

This council is what is proposed in Article I of the constitution, but does not seem to be in effect and even then is only for changes in the constitution which are rare. Changes to the COS and COL require no senate input whatsoever.

(EDIT) IN FACT, the word Senate appears only 3 times in the whole constituion, COL and COS. This is totally unsatisfactory.

Supplimentary Info:
Article E. The Legislative Branch will be formed of two houses. The Senate will be formed of the Provincial Governors, each of whom are responsible for the care, management and use of the cities and lands of a province in addition to legislative responsibilities. The Congress will be formed of the entirety of the citizenry.

Article I. The number of votes cast in the most recent presidential election shall constitute a census of citizens (the Congress). A majority of the Congress shall be required to amend the Constitution. A 2/3 majority of the Senate shall be required to ratify said amendment.

Regardless, the institution of the Senate is almost never utilized, which is a shame because it has great potential. Since the new constitution came into effect there have been NO constitutional changes that I am aware of. This effectively turns the council into that privileged group of which you speak!
If it cannot be that all senators get a council vote (which I still think is a good idea, but let me argue in the alternative), there must be some other function for the senate.

I would say initially some other ideas to increase senate function would be to give the senate one executive vote by allowing the senate to ellect a spokesperson, accountable to them, that has a council vote.

Other ideas:
to give the senate juristiction over placement of provincial borders (given congressional approval)
to give the senate the right to request funding for rushes (which currently needs sponsorship from a department)
to allow members of the senate to sponsor polls to change the Constitution, COS and COL (currently only exec)
to give the senate juristiction over worker distribution between provinces (ie to make requests workers be sent from one province to another)
Give the senate the power to remove recalcetrant mayors

We share a common vision - the Council needlessly holds too much power. As a result, average citizens are not accurately represented. While I wish to take things a step further by eliminating council votes, I think your proposal is definitely better than what we have. I, coincidentally, opened a thread about this yesterday in the citizens forum here:
Council Votes?

i would like to offer the city of oil springs to be the home of the senate as there is only a tiny bit of corruption there and there is nothing else thee which could have the senate murdered

We'll think about that later i think. What I was considering is either having the Senate baced in no province (as everyone will want it!), having the senate based in the home city of the current spokesperson (If we decide to have one) or having it situated in Fox Nest or Thebes, which are of National importance. I think the first one of these is by far the best (yes, I know you were all expecting me to say, yaya Thebes!) because all members of the senate are supposed to be equal, it would be unfair to have the Senate baced in any city.

What do you think about the possible responsibilities BCLG100?

The Senate, I'll agree, has to little power. But adding it to the council would be a problem. At current, a quorum is 4 votes. 10 votes would be required if the Senate was added. With the cases of deadbeat governors we've been having, quorums would be hard to come by.

I agree with the problem of quorums due to deadbeats (myself NOT included (Ever since i got my Nuova Terra, ive been to every TC [even if there has been only 1 ])
I think Almightyjosh's proposal is a decent one, except for the quorum effect. maybe we could write in something to lessen the rate?
*puts on powdered wig, takes out ink-dipped quill*
hmmm...
Article D. The Executive Branch is headed by the President, who shall be the designated player of the game, and shall include a council of leaders, each of whom heads a department that is responsible for one major facet of the country, and governors, whos power is checked by that of the remainder of the executive branch. (enabiling a smaller majority to be needed.) The departments are Domestic, Foreign, Military, Science, Culture and Trade. Each of these departments will be generally responsible for the items found under the respective Advisor in the Civilization III game and esoteric aspects that fall under their department name.

That makes NO sense!?!

Any change to quorum could be made under the COL or even the COS. The question is whether, and how, senators should participate. Your proposal kinda makes sence Saam, maye you could outline exactly what you mean?

Perhaps the Senate could be put in charge of treaties? In RL, the US President can sign treaties, but it must be ratified by the Senate. Maybe the Foreign Affairs Leader could ask for a peace treaty, and before it would happen in the game, the Senate would have to ratify it. This would apply to war, peace, Military alliances, RoPs, and MMPs.

The other thing about the Senate is that it grows a lot over the term. In the beginning, we had 0 governors for a long time. While I am not sure how the Constitution has changed for any possible future games, you have to make sure the Laws and Standards scale well no matter how many governors we have.

That's a good point. I suppose in a new game, a single governor would be chosen for the first city.

Senate's do grow...but if you look at it...everything around this has grown a lot over time.

I would like to propose giving more importance to mayors!
If they get more responsibility and recognition, the governors could also do other jobs with their free time.
At the moment, mayor decissions are partly totally ignored, which leads to civil unrest sometimes. Most governors are even so ignorant they dont even start discussing with their mayors nor even state why they overruled a build queue (for example).

I would not like to see more power in the senate as long as the senate partially ignores the citizen's will and destiny.

If the role of mayors is improoved to take decissions for cities and counties, the senate could take the role of the domestic leader.
This will get rid of one more unneeded executive leader position. The domestic leader could then fully concentrate on administrational and fiscal work.
He could be used for resolving ties in the senate, for example.

Most Mayors are doing fine. Furthermore, Mayorial power is not legislative, it is persuasive. A governor can follow a Mayors buildque, or he can not do so, it is the constituional right of the Governor to organise provincial resources, and the Mayor has power stemming from the Governors. If you want to have legislative power, run for office like all we senators did. Mayors are merely appointed and citizens have no input into who the mayors are. THAT is why they have no legislative power.

Senators on the other hand are elected, and are consitutionally afforded legislative power. I thank you that you support the senate taking some of the domestic leader's responsibilities, however these would only ever be in conjunction with the traditional role of governors. To have mayors assume that role would be wrong for three main reasons, Mayors are not elected, it would be logistically impossible to have 80 separate build que posts and we would never find a mayor for even half of our cities.

maybe we dont find the mayors BECAUSE we dont give them any powers?
if you look on how most city-threads died it was because nobody cared.
if you look at the delphi situation: how can you persuade a governor if the governor doesnt even look at the proposals nor discuss with you nor even shows the slightest interest in the opinion of his citizens?

the game rules state clearly that ALL officials have to ACT IN THE WILL OF CITIZENRY. now how does a governor know this will if he doesnt care?

of course, we may not have all cities with mayors, but the cities who have mayors should be given more strength.
the governor as elected official should still have override rights, but he must explain why! also if a governor is gone, the mayors should be allowed to request queues!

btw: if only 1 of 8 citizens states his opinion, and no other is against it, this IS the will of citizenry.

Which is why the surgical removal of your opponents' tongues and hands is always a shrewd political manouver.

Mayors can actually be self-appointed, and since the treatment of individual cities has a huge effect on the entire nation I do not see it as being in the interests of the citizenry to put this responsibilty in the hands of such officials.

If a city has a concern in this, he could declare himself mayor or just call out an election AT ANY TIME(!!!).
Much easier then to impeach a governor, though.

And another thing to think about:
1) there is a poll on park-rules. proposal was accepted
2) a new law for parks is on the way, support is obviously there
3) toasty posted build queues conflicting with the proposal
4) i changed the queues to reflect the proposal

so now tell me, who acted in the will of citizenry?

i would be happy to have greyfox back. in those days, the rules were bended to the good instead of changed to the bad. citizens had the possibility to voice their oppinion and make proposals which were discussed rather than ignored.