Carolyn --
The restricted forums are restricted to officeholders for a reason. We don't want announcements and discussions incident to office to be drowned out in the noise of posts and counter-posts. Therefore, your decision to post on this forum was the right one.
With regard to the discussion about expanding the SC's veto right, I think it is unnecessary to add a second veto power. Rather, we should handle the matter through Constituional amendment, which would allow the SC to act as an anchor of budgetary restraint through its current veto power. That is, we could add a "balanced budget" amendment, or somesuch, to the Constitution -- and the SC could then veto unbalanced budget items as unConstitutional. I would propose that we require every bill to include a revenue analysis (which is true to life) indicate whether it is revenue positive, negative or neutral. If it is revenue negative (involves costs to the CDS), then we should require it to identify a real source of funding. These items don't have to be part of the bill text itself, but should exist for the RA (and SC) to consider.
I would propose using the new guild, or the AC, to write the budget analysis. Alternatively, we can expand the office of the Treasurer, which already requries financial expertise, to write the budge analysis. However, this could be an additional and substantial burden on Sudane, so we might want to place that burden elsewhere.
IRL, Legislatures have professional staffs (code revisers, policy and legal and budgetary advisers) to do these tasks. We can accomplish the same thing through appointment of committees -- but they would be standing committees, not the usual and familiar ad hoc committees. For instance, under the Kill Bill as passed, we are essentially appointing a committee to serve the real life function of a Code Reviser's office. We can do the same thing to serve the function as a Comptroller General.
This discussion can and should be taken up as part of the Constitutional simplification and clarification process we are about to embark on.
Beathan
Let's keep things simple enough to be fair, substantive enough to be effective, and insightful enough to be good.
