The Imperial Dominion of the South's Legislature

[Yelnoc]

I know we're still in that "Holiday Season" between Christmas and New Years but does anyone have any legislative proposals?

[Yelnoc]

The problem with using infrastructure projects to bring down unemployment is nowadays the people out of work are more highly skilled workers who won't consider those jobs.  And it creates a major budget sinkhole.

With that said, if someone can point out somewhere that infrastructure truely needs to be improved I would support legislation to fix it.

[Yelnoc]

The roads around St. Francisville, LA suck.

As in bumpy, poorly planned, clogged with traffic, or what exactly?

[Yelnoc]

     Rather than continuing to focus on specific projects on the regional level, we could refer the remainder of the alotted funds down to the state level, allowing the make-believe officeholders there to dispense them as they see fit.

     After all, one of the major problems of real-life federalists is that they often will propose policy ideas as if operating under the assumption that the state & federal governments are the only two levels of government. Perhaps the region should just move the infrastructure funds to the next level down, since those folks are more in tune with what the people need.

So wait, we do have sub-levels of government?  I was under the impression that the region was the lowest? 

If so, that's a good plan.

[Yelnoc]

Ok then.  I have to go or I would do this myself; in the meantime, if anyone wants to dredge up how much federal money will still have left for infrastructure we can draft a bill handing that money over to the states on the conditions that they use them on infrastructure projects.  Or something along those lines.

[Yelnoc]

Judging from the debate surrounding the Duke Greenway, I believe we have $600 million left from the Federal Government for infrastructure projects.  Since I don't like putting all my eggs in one basket how about we just give $300 million to the IDS states for miscellaneous infrastructure projects?  Here is a bill to get us started.

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[Yelnoc]

     Sounds good, though we should release a specific amount to each state, based on need & population. I suggest:

Alabama: $15,500,000
Arkansas: $9,200,000
Florida: $60,600,000
Georgia: $31,100,000
Louisiana: $14,900,000
Mississippi: $9,600,000
North Carolina: $30,400,000
Puerto Rico: $12,400,000
South Carolina: $14,900,000
Tennessee: $20,400,000
Texas: $81,000,000

Sounds good.  I only put the second clause in because I wasn't sure about numbers.  Below is the amended bill.  Any other suggestions?

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[Yelnoc]

I must inform the legislature that due to health, I will not be able to be on all that often over the coming weeks.

Yelnoc-

So if I'm not here and you are, consider me "absent" and go ahead and start operating the legislature.

Sorry, everyone, for this on such short notice.

I am very sorry to hear that and hope you will get better soon.

Because we have run over the alloted time set for debate, naturally without any debate, I will go ahead and open up the voting which will close exactly 48 hours from the time of this post.

Aye

[Yelnoc]

The III Act has passed unanimously and is awaiting your signature Emperor PiT.

[Yelnoc]

It's very nice of them to give us more infrastructure funds but we just handed out vast chunks of money for that very purpose to the states.  Anything we can think of they will alrady be working on.  The $10 billion alotted in the first three bullets should either be held in trust until new infrastructure problems arise or given back to the federal government to pay off the deficit.  The last $5 billion is quite handy.  I will write up an education bill when I get home if Svensson or Miles already hasn't by that time.

[Yelnoc]

     I'm guessing that the money allotted to the states probably isn't going to areas under regional ownership. How about we use the additional infrastructure funds to renovate the regional buildings in various cities throughout the IDS?

What "regional buildings"?  The capitol?  Most other government buildings are owned by the states.

I'll PM the other two, maybe we'll get some input later tonight.

[Yelnoc]

     I'm guessing that the money allotted to the states probably isn't going to areas under regional ownership. How about we use the additional infrastructure funds to renovate the regional buildings in various cities throughout the IDS?

What "regional buildings"?  The capitol?  Most other government buildings are owned by the states.

I'll PM the other two, maybe we'll get some input later tonight.

     I'll confess to not being an expert on the details, though in my experience higher levels of government usually have administrative buildings in major cities. Here in San Francisco, we have a state building & a federal building downtown.

Right but you don't have a regional building.  Do we assume everywhere there is a federal and/or state building there is also a regional building or do we close our eyes and throw money at it?

[Yelnoc]

     I'm guessing that the money allotted to the states probably isn't going to areas under regional ownership. How about we use the additional infrastructure funds to renovate the regional buildings in various cities throughout the IDS?

What "regional buildings"?  The capitol?  Most other government buildings are owned by the states.

I'll PM the other two, maybe we'll get some input later tonight.

     I'll confess to not being an expert on the details, though in my experience higher levels of government usually have administrative buildings in major cities. Here in San Francisco, we have a state building & a federal building downtown.

Right but you don't have a regional building.  Do we assume everywhere there is a federal and/or state building there is also a regional building or do we close our eyes and throw money at it?

     The difference is that regional-level governments don't exist in the real-life United States. I don't think it would be much of a leap to assume that since Atlasia has a regional level of government the regions will have administrative buildings across their dominions.

Right.  I doubt it would take a lot of money to fund needed renovations.  Did you have a figure in mind?

[Yelnoc]

While we're thinking infrastructure, can we get some three-lane highways? Everywhere?

We just passed a massive infrastructure bill a page or two back allocating lump sums of federal funds to the states for precisely defined infrastructure categories.  I'm sure the states will make some of those now

PiT, I'm not a good numbers person, though I doubt this will take up more than a fraction of our budget.  If all we're doing is renovating a select few buildings though I wouldn't think it would take more than $1 million, $5 million tops.

[Yelnoc]

While we're thinking infrastructure, can we get some three-lane highways? Everywhere?

We just passed a massive infrastructure bill a page or two back allocating lump sums of federal funds to the states for precisely defined infrastructure categories.  I'm sure the states will make some of those now

PiT, I'm not a good numbers person, though I doubt this will take up more than a fraction of our budget.  If all we're doing is renovating a select few buildings though I wouldn't think it would take more than $1 million, $5 million tops.

     But it might be convenient to plan out any new interstate highways on the regional level. That would be a good place for us to come up with something.

     I was looking at the GSA website & I noticed that there are dozens of federal buildings. If we assume every city with a federal building has a regional building as well, we could renovate all of them, which would cost quite a bit. However, I don't think we could justify that expenditure according to any of the categories laid out.

How about $7 million?  I took the below quote from the GSA website...

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And divided 354 million by five and rounded down to 70 million and then assumed that each square foot costs 10 cents to renovate.  It's a very rough figure when you consider that not every square foot will be renovated but some will cost much more than 10 cents but I don't think it is too far off the mark.

As to highways, if anyone has a specific highway they would like to propose feel free to do so.  Should take the money out of the slush fund we just gave to the states or this new stack of cash coming down the tube?

[Yelnoc]

While we're thinking infrastructure, can we get some three-lane highways? Everywhere?

We just passed a massive infrastructure bill a page or two back allocating lump sums of federal funds to the states for precisely defined infrastructure categories.  I'm sure the states will make some of those now

PiT, I'm not a good numbers person, though I doubt this will take up more than a fraction of our budget.  If all we're doing is renovating a select few buildings though I wouldn't think it would take more than $1 million, $5 million tops.

     But it might be convenient to plan out any new interstate highways on the regional level. That would be a good place for us to come up with something.

     I was looking at the GSA website & I noticed that there are dozens of federal buildings. If we assume every city with a federal building has a regional building as well, we could renovate all of them, which would cost quite a bit. However, I don't think we could justify that expenditure according to any of the categories laid out.

How about $7 million?  I took the below quote from the GSA website...

You must be logged in to read this quote.

And divided 354 million by five and rounded down to 70 million and then assumed that each square foot costs 10 cents to renovate.  It's a very rough figure when you consider that not every square foot will be renovated but some will cost much more than 10 cents but I don't think it is too far off the mark.

As to highways, if anyone has a specific highway they would like to propose feel free to do so.  Should take the money out of the slush fund we just gave to the states or this new stack of cash coming down the tube?

     I think we should take the money that we have not handed down to the states. The purpose of sending the sum we did to them was to let them decide what projects to spend it on, after all.

Right.  So is $7 million ok?  And do any of our other legislators want to draft this bill?  I pulled a muscle in my neck so typing is slow and painful.

[Yelnoc]

With deepest apologies, I announce my resignation from the legislature. Although you've all been great, this forum has effectively lost all meaning to me.

It was fun while it lasted.

Sorry to see you go.  Will you still be hanging around in the other Atlas boards?

[Yelnoc]

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There is something to get us started.  I'll PM Miles, in the meantime, Emperor (or any other IDS citizen), do you have anything to add?

[Yelnoc]

FWI, if there aren't any comments by the end of the day I will put this up to vote.

PiT, if there is only one vote for it but no votes against and no Lt. Governor to cast a tiebreaker what happens?

[Yelnoc]

I'm trying to think of something else to put my name on. Any ideas?

Well, if you resigned from the Senate to work in the legislature you'd have a lot better chance of getting Duke Expressway's, Duke Memorials, etc.  You could also call yourself Darth Duke. 

[Yelnoc]

Welcome GPORTER to the IDS Legislature.  I will leave the debate on the below bill open for another day before putting it up to vote now that you're here.

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[Yelnoc]

Oops, that was a typo.  How about this?

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[Yelnoc]

Oops, that was a typo.  How about this?

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     I made a small typographical correction.

     It occurred to me though that a certain amount must be allotted to the salaries of those who work on the renovation project. With that in mind, 10 cents per square foot seems a bit low.

Wouldn't that be included under the $7 million "renovation" dollars?

[Yelnoc]

I still believe that there are better ways to spend seven million dollars. These buildings that supposedly need to be renovated, they can wait while the economy is in the tank. When the economy gets out of the tank and we can have prosperiety again, we can come back to those buildings.

Maybe at that time, we will have more money than just the stimulius money to spend on renovations and other improvements. Lets expand our thinking and be more mature in the ways that we spend our money. I still plan to vote no for this bill.

Well than, what do you propose to do with the money given to us by the federal government?  This is their second stimulus, the first one we used to revitalize infrastructure so that's out.

[Yelnoc]

     We could just send another bill to the states with more money to fix the roads, highways, & dams of the region.

They don't need anymore money.  We just, a week or two ago, gave each state tens of millions (or was it billions) of dollars for that.  Any more money we give them will turn into Highways To Nowhere. 

I still think renovating government buildings is a decent idea; they have been decaying since they were built decades, in some cases centuries ago.