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Bill: Administrative Neutrality Act
Details
Status[?]: passed
Votes: This is an ordinary bill. It requires more yes votes than no votes. This bill will not pass any sooner than the deadline.
Voting deadline: January 3906
Description[?]:
| In the interests of maintaining a more impartial and otherwise apolitical bureaucracy, as well as removing the remaining incentives some politicians may have to break their democratic mandate for monied special interests, the following changes to the nation's administrative regulations are proposed. Details: 1. Article 1 would not restrict further donations from financial members, provided the sum total of such donations do not exceed 10% of the party's total income. 2. Such donations would be publicly registered with the government. 3. Individual candidacies are to be funded by personal finances, as long as said personal finances are at least more than 60% derived from labour and capital income. |
Proposals
Article 1
Proposal[?] to change Public financing of political campaigns
Old value:: All candidates receive public funds, and can still accept donations.
Current: All candidates receive public funds but are not allowed to accept donations.
Proposed: All candidates receive public funds but are not allowed to accept donations.
Article 2
Proposal[?] to change Appointments and requirements for government employees.
Old value:: Government employees are selected and appointed in a political way.
Current: Government employees are selected and appointed in a political way.
Proposed: All government employees have to promise political independence.
Debate
These messages have been posted to debate on this bill:
| Date | 13:23:44, September 09, 2015 CET | From | Zentrum | To | Debating the Administrative Neutrality Act |
| Message | Honorable Members, I hope you find this bill in good health. My colleagues believe its passage is in the best interests of our democracy and that you will find it quite inoffensive. I hope they are right. Vine Fynn, First Executive of the Centre |
| Date | 18:00:53, September 09, 2015 CET | From | Demokrat Konservativen Partei (DKP) | To | Debating the Administrative Neutrality Act |
| Message | Dear colleagues, First, we would like to welcome the Zentrum (OOC : If you don't mind, and in light of your own proposal to germanize the names, I would call your party as this old German party was called. I find it cool) in our political landscape. Second, with all due respect, we must say we disapprove almost all of this bill. Article 1 has a fatal flaw : how much public fund would each candidate get? The only way we can find of allocating this money would be to give money to parties according to what their last result in the elections were. The proposal goal may be to level the ground for parties, but in effect it would lock our political system. If this article was in force right now, the Zentrum couldn't even have any financement for its future campaign. You could say that each party would still have a minimum, but then what could prevent citizens to start their own parties in order to receive State funds for activities which wouldn't have that much to do with political campaigning, in effect divert this money from its legitimate purpose? If the proposer can submit to us how such a system would work, we might reconsider our position. But tight now, we don't see any merit in it. The other article we are against has a far quicker explanation. Why should we support article 3 while our Reichstag is perfectly functioning and has no problem to attract brilliant people? We shouldn't see ourselves as above the people. Our salaries should even be tied to a percentage of the people median income. Still, maybe this is what the Zentrum is proposing. We would like ear them on how much exactly should our mps salaries be higher. |
| Date | 18:06:27, September 09, 2015 CET | From | Demokrat Konservativen Partei (DKP) | To | Debating the Administrative Neutrality Act |
| Message | PS : We forgot to say that we fully support article 2, about the appointment of government employees. |
| Date | 00:53:13, September 10, 2015 CET | From | Zentrum | To | Debating the Administrative Neutrality Act |
| Message | OOC: Yeah, I forgot to get around to that- thanks for reminding me. Although I'm not sure if I should use "The Zentrum" or "Die Zentrum". Sorry, I only started learning German recently, but it's really cool :D IC: That's a good question. Article 1 does not introduce public funding, per se, since that already exists under current legislation. The new restrictions do not preclude members of parties from paying annual standard dues, as is already standard practice. The Zentrum thinks changes to public funding would allow the state to subsidise those dues further, possibly even bracketing them to level the existing playing field. The Congress came to the conclusion that such an initiative would not only maintain the essential fluidity of the political landscape the Honorable Member mentioned, but perhaps even encourage it somewhat. Article 3 is not necessary, from the Zentrum's point of view. It was included at the behest of some of our more cautious members, on the grounds that such restrictions as are being introduced required suitable financial compensation. The details were still on the table at the time of proposition, and the Executive would have no issue with removing the article from the bill. Hopefully these clarifications will ease your valid concerns. Vine Fynn, Erste Exekutive auf Zentrum Kongress |
| Date | 03:04:04, September 10, 2015 CET | From | Demokrat Konservativen Partei (DKP) | To | Debating the Administrative Neutrality Act |
| Message | Dear colleagues, Thank you for your answer. It seems that we agree : parties should still get money from their members. But are you suggesting that the only money they could receive would be membership fees? They wouldn't go that far with that except if their membership fees were very high, which would go against your goal. Plus, only allowing the parties, and not the individuals, to receive political donations, would make independant candidatures (which are not very common in our system, I must readily add) almost impossible and new parties very difficult to start. We think parties and people should be allowed to receive small donations. As for the amount of those donations, we do not have an exact position on it. Now, we understand very well that the way you see article 1, it is there to avoid big business and unions from meddling with the representants of the people. We are not convinced business will not find other ways to circumvent this, but let's suppose they do follow the rules. If they are, there is no reason to not permit the spontaneous creation of a party from small fortunes. If they are not supposed to follow the rules, then your position seems to be that they will not be able to circumvent a blanket ban on donations. We do not suppose this line of reasoning is yours, we simply try to understand your position. This leaves us with a complete ban of political donations save for the members fees. Maybe a workaround for us could be that, to give money to a political party or to a person, you would have to be a member of the party and/or to publicly support the said person or party. That way at least, there wouldn't be shadow donations. There could still be proxies (not sure it is the right word). But the practice would be at least easier to discover, especially if the police can track people making big donations. So, ultimately, we would scrap article one, or heavily amend it by adding something in the line of what we said : - Small donations are possible for members of the parties or people publicly supporting individuals. - Each donation has to be registered in an official registry accessible by everyone. We might have overseen big parts of this issue, but this is the best we can think of for now. Thank you for bringing this concern on this floor. Herwig Kollewe DKP's Internal Affairs spokesperson |
| Date | 08:03:19, September 10, 2015 CET | From | Zentrum | To | Debating the Administrative Neutrality Act |
| Message | It's a good question, and another valid concern. As was mentioned, membership dues would be subsidised by public finances, which would hopefully ease such a burden as you outlined. You have interpreted our intentions correctly- we have sufficient faith in the rule of law that such a ban would be followed through, at least by the letter. But you raise an important point. And a better solution than we ourselves may have been able to formulate. We would wholly endorse the introduction of additional donations for existing financial members of parties, provided they did not exceed a certain amount of the party's income. We hope this would be a suitable compromise. Vine Fynn, Erste Exekutive auf die Zentrum Kongress |
| Date | 11:28:15, September 10, 2015 CET | From | Zentrum | To | Debating the Administrative Neutrality Act |
| Message | The Bill will move to the voting phase in 12 hours time, assuming no further debate is raised. We hope that the Bill is now satisfactory to all parties. |
| Date | 13:50:15, September 10, 2015 CET | From | Demokrat Konservativen Partei (DKP) | To | Debating the Administrative Neutrality Act |
| Message | Dear colleagues, We are glad our proposed changes were introduced and will vote for this bill. However, we would like it if some provision about individual candidacies could be added. Herwig Kollewe DKP's Internal Affairs spokesperson |
| Date | 00:15:50, September 11, 2015 CET | From | Zentrum | To | Debating the Administrative Neutrality Act |
| Message | Following these amendments, the decision is to be put to a vote. |
| Date | 16:26:40, September 11, 2015 CET | From | Communist Party of Darnussia | To | Debating the Administrative Neutrality Act |
| Message | Can the proposing party please define 'financial members' in regards to where donations will be acceptable from? |
| Date | 16:26:40, September 11, 2015 CET | From | Communist Party of Darnussia | To | Debating the Administrative Neutrality Act |
| Message | Can the proposing party please define 'financial members' in regards to where donations will be acceptable from? |
| Date | 16:26:40, September 11, 2015 CET | From | Communist Party of Darnussia | To | Debating the Administrative Neutrality Act |
| Message | Can the proposing party please define 'financial members' in regards to where donations will be acceptable from? |
| Date | 02:46:20, September 12, 2015 CET | From | Zentrum | To | Debating the Administrative Neutrality Act |
| Message | "Financial members" are members registered with the party in question that make an annual contribution of dues, standard across all other members. |
| Date | 04:34:11, September 12, 2015 CET | From | Zentrum | To | Debating the Administrative Neutrality Act |
| Message | To put it less obtusely, members who already pay annual dues. |
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Voting
| Vote | Seats | |||
| yes | Total Seats: 129 | |||
| no |
Total Seats: 78 | |||
| abstain | Total Seats: 94 |
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