Bill proposal: Clarification of NL 9-2 and CDSL 13-03

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

Clarification of the Land Sales Reclamation Act (NL 9-2 and CDSL 13-03)

Preamble

CDSL 13-03, which amends NL 9-2, establishes the procedures by which citizens, defaulting their payments, become delinquent, partially lose their citizenship, and finally cease to be citizens.

CDSL 13-03 worked under the assumption that (a) either citizens just have a single parcel or (b) there is a mechanism allowing to pay for all parcels simultaneously at the same date. The current system allows different parcels to be held by the same citizen, and each parcel's tier can be due at different dates. Fortunately, the writing of CDSL 13-03 is almost able to deal with the current system, and this bill just makes the following changes, for the sake of clarification:

Amend point 1. to read:

Citizens of CDS are expected to pay tier rentals to the CDS Treasurer in a timely fashion. Payment is to be done automatically, either via specific in-world devices design to collect citizen's payments, or similar mechanisms employing a web-based application. All money collected from tier is to be sent directly to the Treasurer (or a special tier-receiving account just created for the purpose of collecting tier). The due dates for tier are automatically processed by whatever mechanism is implemented and also automatically announced to the landowners by Instant Message, email, or another similar mechanism. In the case of a device failure, it is the responsibility of the Treasurer to make the required announcements manually.

On point 2, where it says:

... when they have failed to pay tier rental...

amend to read:

... when they have failed to pay tier rental for any one of the parcels currently held under their name...

On point 3, where it says:

...who has failed timely to pay rental tier...

amend to read:

...who has failed timely to pay rental tier for any one of the parcels currently held under their name...

Amend point 5 to read:

Fourteen days after the due date on any of the parcels held by the landowner, if the landowner has continued to fail to pay the full amount then overdue to CDS for those parcels, then the Chancellor shall reclaim all parcels owned by the landowner. Objects on the parcels will be returned to the landowner and all parcels be set for re-sale within 72 hours.

Add a new point between 7 and 8:

In case of conflicts regarding improper payments, payments sent but not received or accounted for, and doubts about payment dates related to device failure, or to the failure of the Executive to properly notify citizens in accordance with this Act, the citizen can apply for recourse to the Scientific Council, by notifying the Dean of the Scientific Council via notecard, email, or any similar method deemed adequate. Once the recourse is accepted by the Scientific Council for further review, the eviction mechanism is temporarily suspended until the Scientific Council announces its decision. Abusing the recourse mechanism may be subjected to fees, at the discretion of the Scientific Council.

Comment

CDSL 13-03 imposes very strict rules for dealing with tier payments, and explains very precisely what happens if a citizen defaults payments. Since at that time all payments were due at the same date, it was easier to know, at a glance, who was delinquent or not. Under the current system, payments can happen at any time. This bill proposes, to keep within the spirit of strictness of CDSL 13-03, and taking into account that the current devices allow pre-payment of tier, that failure to pay for one single parcel in due time immediately revokes the citizens' right to vote or hold an office in the CDS.

It further clarifies that the Treasurer is responsible to make sure that citizens are properly notified, and that the claiming of parcels from a delinquent landowner is the role of the Chancellor. Furthermore, for consistency with other laws, this bill limits the time that a parcel can be held vacant without being offered for re-sale (to 72 hours).

On the other hand, technical difficulties are frequent in Second Life, and even the best mechanisms fail. To avoid unlawfully punishing any citizen who made a serious attempt to pay tier without being able to do so due to technical (or procedural) failure, the right to appeal to the Scientific Council was explicitly added.

[cleopatraxigalia]

Looks good to me at first glance, Gwyn, I will re-read and think about it a while too and possibly add more comments..

having the tier boxes closed so there is no transparency for common citizens to see who is paid and when .. or arrears.. means that the public has to rely on the govt to say who did what when... I think this transparency is important .. Can the boxes be changed back so that anyone can tell when tier is due or in arrears.. ? Now only a few people have that power to see,and they have an advantage to help out friends for one thing.. and secondly it is just more transparent and we can all gather facts not rely on the government

[Patroklus Murakami]

I think there are some problems with these laws as drafted and I'm very concerned by Gwyn's haste to rush these laws through in the final few session of the RA without adequate citizen input.

One problem I see is that.. you will immediately make the Chancellor in contravention of the law

It is just not realistic to have a Chancellor continually monitor rental boxes and then evict someone from all their properties as soon as they are 14 days overdue.

I would advise the RA to allow the Chancellor more discretion than this rather than tying the hands of another branch of Government with micromanagement laws. Some citizens get into arrears but are good for the tier. Having 'hard and fast' rules is not sensible in my view.

[cleopatraxigalia]

I would like to take OUT the discretionary ability of the chancellor to pick and choose who gets evicted and when and for what. It is inappropriate when the person in the chancellor's office is a position of needing to be reelected .. to control votes via land sales.

I agree with Pat in one sense, take it out of the chancellors hands. Make an automatic time that land is repossessed and set back on PUBLIC sale with PUBLIC notice.

One loophole now from what I understand, is that the chancellor and the team of estate managers know which land will be repossessed and put on the market exactly when and before others. This allows for land grabbing by them .. I mean what if a chancellor saw a great parcel in arrears that a voter of theirs wanted to buy ? Someone might have incentive to take it for them and give it to the known voter on their side. I am not saying anyone WOULD do this, but lets not allow our system to even have this ability for favoritism built in.

What that means is .. yes...
# Days in arrears.. land taken.. no chancellor discretion without coming to the RA for approval.

I would like the bill to have greater transparency in that there be a record of who took the land from who and when ... how many days in arrears.. who set the land for sale.. how it was publicized and who bought it. Some of this is in the landscanner data.. its historical when most of us see it, and it is not all available to everyone.

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

Pat, I completely fail to understand your obsession with the "rushing".

5. Fourteen days after the due date, if the landowner has continued to fail to pay the full amount then overdue to CDS, then CDS shall reclaim all parcels owned by the landowner and hold all parcels in reserve. Objects on the parcels will be be returned to the landowner and the parcels be set for re-sale

That's a quote from a law passed September 26th, 2011! Almost three years ago!

Are you seriously implying now that you never intended to comply with that law, saying that it was "unrealistic"?

"Adequate citizen input?" Seriously! For three years people have been wondering why no Chancellor ever does their job!

"Not realistic to have a Chancellor continually monitor rental boxes"? Then what you're saying is that the Chancellor is not supposed to do that? Who, then, is going to do that job? Nobody? Maybe that explains a lot...

Still, my point is that this is not about this particular law I proposed. My only suggestion was to change the law so that it was clear who lost citizenship status, taking into account that, under the previous system, everybody was required to pay the full tier for all parcels at the same time, and under the Hippo system you can pay just some of the parcels, at completely different days. It was thus unclear what happened to a citizen who refused to pay for all parcels except one. This amendment fixes that loophole. That's it.

The RA of 2011 didn't want any "discretion", it wanted micromanagement, and that's exactly why the role of the Chancellor, originally, was merely to be the Head of the Civil Service; it was due to public pressure that it became a political role as well. I'm naturally fine with the will of the people, but it means that the Executive has now a double-duty to perform: both political and administrative. Because, seriously, if the Executive is unable to do its administrative tasks, then it's pointless to have an Executive. The whole point of having one was that originally the RA, working as a committee and requiring extensive debating to pass the simples laws, was unable to manage the daily operations of the CDS. Thus, some of the powers of the RA were invested into a new branch who would be able to enforce those laws — "micromanage" as you say — on a daily basis.

Yes, I most definitely expect a Chancellor to do the rounds of all boxes every day and report which citizens are in arrears. Like I expect the Chancellor to do the same about Covenant enforcement. And I expect a Chancellor to coordinate and organize events and inform citizens of what's happening in the CDS. That's why I'm supposed to cast a vote for a Chancellor: to have someone do those tasks. And of course the Chancellor can delegate those tasks — that's why we have a Civil Service, we don't expect anyone to work 24h/day, 7 days/week, but to create a team that aid him or her to fulfill their many roles. Micromanagement, yes, that's all what the Executive is supposed to do. Overall strategic planning is the role of the RA, not of the Chancellor.

If, however, what you're saying is that the Hippo system is unable to do all that effectively (and, yes, as Cleo correctly pointed out, it isn't even very transparent — except for a selected few which have access to the website's backoffice) then we have to start looking for a different kind of software. I mean, even if Prokofy Neva can single-handedly manage vast estates with hundreds of tenants, and refuses to use Hippo but uses a far less sophisticated system, then I'm sure that we can do much better. It's not as if we cannot afford a better system.

Your opinion that we should be more lenient towards citizens is well-noted, but I would point out that it was definitely not what the RA decided in 2011. Also, in the past, before the days of the Hippo system, things were much more ruthless — but there was a very considerable amount of discretion given to citizens who were unable to log in at the appointed time to pay their tier, and would, because of that, duly warn the Treasurer or the Chancellor well in advance, and all would be well — we have always shown respect towards technical difficulties and physical impossibilities of logging in. The problem is that the Hippo system solves a lot of things — like the ability to pay anytime, up to 2 months in advance, without fuss — but has encouraged laziness (I'm one to blame, too! I'm not different!).

Indirectly, respecting CDSL 13-03, even without my proposed amendments, would go a long way to eliminate the problem that Cleo pointed out: that the Chancellor can act differently towards non-paying citizens, discriminating ones against the others, based on personal and subjective views. CDSL 13-03 was an attempt to reduce favouritism by enforcing the same laws to all citizens. I'd be fine to drop my proposed amendment (which was mostly a means to remove ambiguity regarding citizenship status when one citizen fails to pay for one parcel but not others), but I fully expect 100% compliance with CDSL 13-03!

Unless what you're saying is that you refuse to comply with CDSL 13-03 on the grounds that you disagree with a law passed three years ago. Well, in my book, that's called civil disobedience, because I'm not sure if a Chancellor is allowed to go on strike to protest a law he personally disagrees with ('work to rule' comes to mind).

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

After some in-world discussion, I've decided to drop this amendment. It was pointed out to me that CDSL 13-03 was intended to place restrictions on citizenship status only when citizens failed to pay for all parcels and not just one; I actually thought the reverse was intended!

In any case, the issue that seems to worry most citizens is not how CDSL 13-03 is interpreted under the Hippo system, but the utter surprise at suddenly realizing that our very strict laws, in effect since 2011, are not being executed at all! They are simply being ignored!

So, again, I will concentrate my efforts on having CDSL 13-03 actually being actively enforced — as the law stands, and has stood, for almost three years — instead of discussing minor issues with the way it applies to Hippo or not.

And, of course, it seems that the time has come to seriously dump Hippo, or upgrade it to a newer version, or something like that.

[Rosie Gray]

After some in-world discussion, I've decided to drop this amendment. It was pointed out to me that CDSL 13-03 was intended to place restrictions on citizenship status only when citizens failed to pay for all parcels and not just one; I actually thought the reverse was intended!

In any case, the issue that seems to worry most citizens is not how CDSL 13-03 is interpreted under the Hippo system, but the utter surprise at suddenly realizing that our very strict laws, in effect since 2011, are not being executed at all! They are simply being ignored!

So, again, I will concentrate my efforts on having CDSL 13-03 actually being actively enforced — as the law stands, and has stood, for almost three years — instead of discussing minor issues with the way it applies to Hippo or not.

And, of course, it seems that the time has come to seriously dump Hippo, or upgrade it to a newer version, or something like that.

I'm glad to hear you are dropping this Gwyn, I couldn't really understand why you objected to it, but now that I know you had it backwards I understand!

I agree that the laws need to be enforced in a more timely manner, but still, in almost all jurisdictions there is some flexibility for extenuating circumstances. I'm not sure where the happy medium is, but I do understand that there can be an arguement for it.

As to your concerns about Hippo, I'm not sure what the problem is. Before Bags requested that the names be hidden on them, everyone could see who was overdue. I'm sure they could be put back the way they were before, to make it more transparent who owns what and who is overdue. What are the other issues with Hippo?

[Patroklus Murakami]

The problem here is the competing visions of what the Chancellor should be. Some of the candidates want a glorified rent collector who spends every day checking tier boxes and booting people off their land. Well, if that's what you really want abolish the office and put in some mechanistic rule in Hippo. Make it a civil service position and, I don't know, maybe *pay* them to collect tier and do a mindless task on the community's behalf.

My vision for the Office of the Chancellor is somewhat different - providing leadership for community projects e.g. the LA rebuild which was mired in arguments and bickering for months and is now edging towards completion. My vision involves getting people involved in collaborating on events and having fun - attracting new people to the CDS in the process. Like we did with the recently successful and well attended "Floralia" celebrations.

That's what I think people are voting for when they choose a new Chancellor. You can't have both.

[Patroklus Murakami]

I would like to respectfully request that the Representative Assembly, when contemplating the passage of laws which affect the other branches of Government i.e. the Chancellor or the Scientific Council:

• *invite the incumbents in the relevant branch(es) to the meetings where such discussion will take place
  *schedule them for a time which the others can make and
  *provide adequate notice that the items are up for discussion and/or passage as laws

I would respectfully wish to point out that four and a half hours is not adequate notice of such intent.

[Sudane Erato]

"Not realistic to have a Chancellor continually monitor rental boxes"? (quoting Pat) Then what you're saying is that the Chancellor is not supposed to do that? Who, then, is going to do that job? Nobody? Maybe that explains a lot...

As we get passionate about this topic, let's please bear in mind the mechanical facts. There is no automatic system which can monitor when a Hippo box becomes overdue. "Someone" must actually log into the Hippo website each day and check the status of the hundreds of boxes on the list, and note which have gone beyond the legal deadline. When such boxes are noted, according to the procedure you are discussing, "someone" must then log into SL and visit the affected parcel, perform the routines specified in the law; resetting the info in About Land, returning objects, setting the parcel for sale. The Hippo box must also be reset on the website.

This probably takes 10 or 15 minutes on the website and 10 or 15 minutes for each parcel affected. "SOMEONE" has to do this. There is no automatic system. Please folks... as you get passionate arguing about the issues here... please keep in mind that a RL human being has to take the time to do all this stuff. If perhaps the law regarding arrears has not been strictly enforced in the 3 years since it was enacted, consider that it might be simply because a person only has so many hours in their day.

Sudane.........................

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

Rosie, actually, I expected that this amendment would be a 'friendly' one. The law has been in effect since 2011, after all, Hippo or no Hippo. The problem was only that the wording on CDSL 13-03 assumed things like citizens being forced to pay for all their parcels on the same day, or be in arrears; while Hippo allows people to pay on any day, and selectively leave unpaid parcels. It also left unclear how people can complain if, for instance, Hippo boxes fail for some reason, or if they are physically not allowed to pay (because they are away, etc.). It was also a little deficient in the way citizens are notified when their payment is due. But, in essence, it's not a 'new' law, it's an adaptation of the existing law to take into account the way Hippo works. NL 9-2, which is even older, already assumed the same principles but was even more unclear.

As for the 'issues' with Hippo, since I have no experience with its backoffice, I cannot tell what they are. If Hippo allows the following:

• Publicly listing on a webpage which parcels belong to which citizen, and which are vacant

• Publicly listing which parcels are in arrears, and for how many days

• Automatically informing citizens when they are in arrears (as well as the Executive)

• Dealing with land sales and ownership changes (keeping a record that can be publicly seen)

• Locking citizens from their parcels (optionally) if they are in arrears beyond the time set forth in CDSL 13-03

• Maintaining a public waiting list for parcels

then I most certainly have absolutely no issue with Hippo! The only 'issue' is that, right now, I personally don't know where all those lists are and how the public can consult them.

Sudane, thanks for the clarification. I understand then that we shall have to replace Hippo, if it doesn't do what we wish. You know me, Sudane, you know that writing such a system would not take a long time, the only problem being long-time maintenance, and that is always the big issue — and one of the reasons why we outsourced that to the company that does Hippo. Still, may I ask you if the lacking functionality is a limitation of the current version of Hippo, or a design flaw of the whole system and we should instead look for something else that actually works, instead of using technical excuses as a pretext for not collecting tier?

May I remind you again that this is a law with almost three years in existence! I wonder why we're discussing it now! Wouldn't it have been more obvious for the Chancellor elected during the 13th term (I don't remember who that was) to make sure Hippo complies with the law, instead of 'ignoring' the issues and pretend that the law didn't exist?

I certainly didn't expect the reaction of 'Oh no! Citizens are supposed to pay tier in time or lose that status! How dreadful! Let's stop that!'. Even though I'm fine in dropping the amendment, may I remind you all that CDSL 13-03 is still in effect? Citizens still have 14 days to pay their tier or get their land confiscated and all prims returned to them. If Hippo doesn't allow that to be monitored automatically, and never did, why on Earth do we insist that we use it?

I'm actually glad that the CDS is so filthy rich that we can even safely ignore tier collecting laws, but my personal satisfaction is curbed by the understanding that we cannot collect tier as the law demands...

Imagine that Jon told us that his voting system would only allow certain citizens to vote, but not all, so he would be very sorry but our elections wouldn't be able to comply with the laws regulating elections (which evidently require all citizens to be able to vote). Would we still use Jon's system, even though it's unable to comply with existing laws? Of course not!

We should not change laws to comply with the limitations of technical systems; that's a perversion of democracy! Instead, it's the technical system that has to change and be adapted to the laws — not the other way round.

Pat, shall I understand from your "competing vision" of what the Executive is supposed to be that you're not interested in complying with CDSL 13-03, on the grounds that the Chancellor is not supposed to worry about collecting citizen's tier and claiming land when they are in arrears, but just worry about community projects? May I also remind you that the reason for having an Executive and not merely a Chancellor is that the Executive is supposed to create a team of helpers — commonly known as the Civil Service — among which are the offices of Public Information Officer (dealing with events and promoting them), Treasurer (dealing with money collection and payments), and Janitors (cleaning up stray prims, dealing with griefers, and supervising covenant compliance)? May I further add that nobody expects a single person to do all those tasks, and that's why we have, years ago, codified the roles of these members of the Civil Service, which the Chancellor is supposed to appoint and coordinate as a team, and held responsible for their conduct and work, reporting to the Representative Assembly on their behalf?

Nobody 'demands' that the Chancellor is personally doing the rounds of the Hippo boxes and see who has paid and not, but I certainly demand that the Executive does that task (mechanically, manually, I don't care, so long as the task gets done), is aware of the issues, and complies with the existing laws. Laws like CDSL 13-03 are just there to inform the Executive how the Hippo system is supposed to be programmed! Hiring staff to comply with the law is the prerogative of the Chancellor; if you need to hire a dozen people to watch the Hippo page every day, to make sure everybody is a good, law-abiding citizen, then I will be personally the first person proposing a budget extension to hire all that staff. You can rely on me for that. But I'm certainly going to be the first, too, to approve budgets for a PIO (one or many) and more event hosters — because that's the second most important role of the Executive, too.

If the Executive does not wish to have this role of tier collection — allegedly the most important one in the whole of the CDS, since a) land is tied to citizenship; b) without money the CDS cannot pay LL their dues — then who, in your 'vision', should be responsible for that?

Because, seriously, if all you wish to do is to organize nice events — which is certainly a very commendable activity and one that is also very high on the top priorities of the Executive (it says so in the Constitution!) — then we certainly don't need the Chancellor as a political role — we just need to hire a professional event hoster for that.

But we cannot hire a 'tax collector' for the CDS — that would be a form of 'tax farming' which I personally find obnoxious in a democracy, but certainly some RL countries do that — and none of the democratic countries in the world tie citizenship status to taxes or land anyway. As long as it is feasible, I shall defend the right of the CDS Government to collect taxes (= tier) directly.

Then again, we're completely straying from the original purpose of this amendment and discussion, so I think that I'll move the discussion to a different topic...

[Rosie Gray]

Hippo functionality that I personally am aware of:

Automatically informing citizens when they are in arrears (as well as the Executive)

Of course it does this, it's a core purpose!

Dealing with land sales and ownership changes (keeping a record that can be publicly seen)

Not sure, but we have that information here: http://www.tospitimou.com/landscanner/view.php

Locking citizens from their parcels (optionally) if they are in arrears beyond the time set forth in CDSL 13-03

Yes you can do this

I think that the Hippo system is quite flexible, although perhaps there is another system available with more functionality. For all HippoRENT functionality, you can review it all here: http://hippo-technologies.info/products-4/hipporent-2/ and here: http://legacydocs.hippo-technologies.co ... nt/web.php

We need to keep in mind that ultimately it is a person or persons that has to set up, monitor, manage and maintain security on any system and that it can be a lot of work.

[Callipygian]

After some in-world discussion, I've decided to drop this amendment. It was pointed out to me that CDSL 13-03 was intended to place restrictions on citizenship status only when citizens failed to pay for all parcels and not just one; I actually thought the reverse was intended!

In any case, the issue that seems to worry most citizens is not how CDSL 13-03 is interpreted under the Hippo system, but the utter surprise at suddenly realizing that our very strict laws, in effect since 2011, are not being executed at all! They are simply being ignored!

So, again, I will concentrate my efforts on having CDSL 13-03 actually being actively enforced — as the law stands, and has stood, for almost three years — instead of discussing minor issues with the way it applies to Hippo or not.

And, of course, it seems that the time has come to seriously dump Hippo, or upgrade it to a newer version, or something like that.

I finally got into the laws this morning and found why we had differing views of what they say - we are talking two different laws.

CDSL 16- 03 Citizenship Establishment Act

states:

...
2. Citizens shall be entitled to vote in CDS elections and/or stand for office if, on the date set by the Scientific Council in accordance with the Constitution for this purpose, they own at least one parcel of land and are current in their tier payments for at least one parcel. A citizen shall be an individual avatar whose name appears on both the Hippo list as being current in the tier payments and on a list of current parcel owners.

...

This is pretty clear, one parcel owned and current in tier maintains citizenship. By stating that it implies that there might be other parcels not current. Any amendment saying the Chancellor must seize ALL parcels contradicts this. I believe 16-03 would trump 13-03 for 2 reasons: first, 16-03 was passed at a later date and defines the relationship of citizenship and land and second, 13-03 refers to a system of payment no longer in use.

13-03 was passed in July of 2010. When the use of Hippo was passed in Aug 2011, 13-03 should have been amended to reflect the change in system, but it was not.

SO I believe amending 13-03 IS needed, but that any amendment should respect the law as stated in CDSL 16-03.

Calli

[cleopatraxigalia]

•Publicly listing which parcels are in arrears, and for how many day?

Where do we see publically which parcels are in arrears and for how many days?

[cleopatraxigalia]

•Maintaining a public waiting list for parcels

Where is this ?