Confirmation Hearing: Drj101 to be Secretary of Internal Affairs (Confirmed)

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I am happy to announce the appointments of Drj101 as Secretary of Internal Affairs and Snowball as Attorney General!

Senators have up to 72 hours to question the nominee.

[Mad Deadly Worldwide Communist Gangster Computer God]

May regional executives ask questions?

[Mad Deadly Worldwide Communist Gangster Computer God]

In case we are allowed to ask questions - Drj, if confirmed, would you grant the Northeast Region its request to be exempt from any federally mandated standardized tests?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

If confirmed, will you cooperate with the committees in their efforts to improve the position or functionality of government?

May regional executives ask questions?

Sure, you have to deal with him on a regularly basis.

[HagridOfTheDeep]

What will be on your agenda as Secretary of Internal Affairs?

[Niemeyerite]

Do you think the MidWest should be abolished?

Will you work hard to make the Midwest a more active region?

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

1. How do you view the role of the Secretary of Internal Affairs and what responsibilities do you believe the task entails?

2. What are your main goals that you wish to accomplish as Secretary of Internal Affairs if you are confirmed by the Senate and how do you plan to accomplish said goals?

3. Is there a point at which you might realistically deny a regional executive's request for funds; why or why not?  

4. What will you do to facilitate a strong working relationship with the various regional executives?

5. What game reform measures (if any) would you support if confirmed and how would you use your office to help promote these reforms and game reform in general (if at all)?

6. How much influence do you believe ideological inclinations should have on the actions of a Secretary of Internal Affairs?

[Spamage]

Do you have any specific ideas or goals for the position of Secretary of Internal Affairs, whether it be policy or projects?

[Kitteh]

Hi, and thanks for the questions everyone. If it's okay, I'm going to combine some of these questions which seem kinda similar to me and give one answer to them. If the person who asked any question feels like I didn't answer it appropriately or completely, let me know and I'll be happy to elaborate.

First off, on the role of the SoIA and how I'd carry it out:

1. How do you view the role of the Secretary of Internal Affairs and what responsibilities do you believe the task entails?

1  - There's always buzz about how this position ought to be eliminated. If confirmed, how will you use the Department of Internal Affairs to improve the game?

Do you have any specific ideas or goals for the position of Secretary of Internal Affairs, whether it be policy or projects?

In my opinion, the SoIA has two roles: that of regional event creator and news manager and that of internal administrator. The first entails the SoIA's job to create updates regarding regional events. With regards to the second, it is the Senate's job is to pass bills, and it is the SoIA's job to implement and carry out those bills. These two roles go together and fit the same purpose. The reason for having a SoIA, in addition to other cabinet roles, is to make sure that Atlasia is more than an endless cycle of elections followed by the legislature passing bills followed by more elections, etc. It often feels like legislating in Atlasia happens in a vacuum, where bills are introduced whenever someone feels like it, passed, and then forgotten about as the legislature moves on to something else. By creating events that legislators have to respond to and deal with, and making sure that bills are implemented after they are passed and then reporting on their effects and outcomes, the game becomes more dynamic and interesting and less repetitive and formulaic.

The first position doesn't really require any new innovations to carry out; it's more a matter of actually doing the job prescribed by the GM Reform Act by creating an update thread in the AFE board with regional issues and events. I intend to do this frequently and to make events that regions will have to address or respond to. An example of such events might be that a major manufacturer is planning on moving out of the region, in which case I'd report on the story  and also contact the region's governor and legislators about whether they'd like to offer the company tax incentives for staying within the region, as well as possibly do the same with one of the regions the company is considering moving to to see if they'd like to "sweeten the deal". Or a teachers' strike demanding higher wages or protesting a recently passed education bill, which the regional government would have to address. I believe this makes the game more fun and interesting.

For the other responsibility of administering and carrying out laws, I intend to carry this out through an "Office of the SoIA" thread on the AFG board. In such thread, I will post, when appropriate, official directives relating to acts that call for the SoIA to administer them, for example the SEDZI Act, which I intend to use extensively. If people are okay with this, I'd also create a "Directives of the SoIA" page on the Wiki where the SoIA (me) would post all directives issued so that there's a record of them. So, for example, if I were to create a SEDZ in  Wayne County, MI, then I would post a directive establishing such in the SoIA office thread and then make an entry on the Wiki "SoIA Directive #x, establishing a SEDZ in Wayne County, MI" with a link to the relevant post. Keeping records of all these will really help in the long term. It would suck to have some SoIA create an SEDZ somewhere where a past SoIA already did because the past SoIA's actions weren't recorded anywhere other than some long-forgotten thread.

By the way, this is an area of the SoIA's role that I'd like to see extended to make this position more meaningful. One idea I had in particular is making the SoIA responsible for the administration of the Atlasian National Healthcare Act, rather than the vague "Health Directorate" that controls it now. I'd like to, for example, draw up regulations on funding of "alternative" medicine so that government money doesn't end up funding all kinds of unscientific quackery (a personal pet peeve of mine).


I'll move on to some other questions now, but if anybody has any questions about what I've just said, feel free to ask in the meantime.

[Oakvale]

I'll be frank here - given the rolling catastrophe this position has been for as long as I can remember I'm so grateful every time we have someone competent nominated I'll gladly vote to confirm.

One thing - I second Senator Nix's question - could you pledge to resign promptly in the event you're unable to commit the time or energy the job requires? We've had SoIAs many times before - including our most recent holder of the office - who get off to phenomenal starts but quickly burn out. I don't think it's fair to saddle the government with an inactive Cabinet officer because they get bored with the job.

[Mad Deadly Worldwide Communist Gangster Computer God]

Drj, I'm going to need a more specific answer to my question, if you wouldn't mind.  Thanks.

[Kitteh]

Sorry for not getting to more questions yet! I have a busy week at school right now.

3 - Will you pledge to resign if you become unable to do your job?

Yes. No offense to previous SoIAs, but I honestly don't understand just going AWOL and not resigning. If I want to do this job, I'll do this job. If I don't want to do this job I'll quit the job. To be totally honest, I can't guarantee that I won't get bored with the job, but I can guarantee I'll resign and let somebody else take over if I do.

Do you think the MidWest should be abolished?

Will you work hard to make the Midwest a more active region?

No, I am against disbanding the Midwest because it is temporarily the least active region. I favor removing restrictions on registration for people moving into less active regions. The particular details of this I'll work out with the Senate, but it is definitely something I support doing.

I don't know of any other way to boost activity or incentives that can be offered to make people move. I'm against moving states from the Mideast or the Pacific to the Midwest to make up for this shortage, because activity is cyclical and I'd rather not be moving states back and forth all the time whenever someplace becomes inactive.

Btw, I'd also like to see something like this done for inactive states. As Griffin pointed out, we have a lot of those, which is why I've moved from Virginia, one of the most populous states, to Nyman, which had 0 people before I moved there. Regions are more important because they have their own governments and stuff, but having massively imbalanced states isn't great either. Maybe the restrictions on moving shouldn't apply for moving from a more populated state to a less populated one within the same region.

If I may, I would like to ask a question: How often will you contact Regional Executives for financial projects? This may sound like a pointless question, but when SOS was SoIA, in his short tenure before he went missing, was actually pretty active and consulted us fairly frequently, and was pretty useful. How many times will you contact us per month?

Oh, trust me, I'll be contacting you guys a lot. I'm relatively knew to Atlasia so I may be asking for advice a lot. The way I see it, the more I ask other people about stuff, the less I have to figure out myself, so talking with other people all the time = yay less work for me.

In case we are allowed to ask questions - Drj, if confirmed, would you grant the Northeast Region its request to be exempt from any federally mandated standardized tests?

I'm conflicted about this one. While I don't like excessive standarized testing in general, I do think it's valuable to have some way to make an apples-to-apples comparison across regions. I have to admit I'm not totally familiar with the circumstances of this. I'd have to hear why the NE wants to be exempt, if it's a certain test(s) you have a problem with or all federally mandated testing in general, what the NE has in place regionally as an alternative, etc.

[Mad Deadly Worldwide Communist Gangster Computer God]

My administration is working to develop a plan that completely changes education as we know it.  It is one that would, if implemented, resemble the very successful Finnish system, which only tests its students once when they get to their senior year in high school.  In order for the reforms to be fully implemented, the Northeast would need complete independence from any federally required tests or mandates that dictate how our teachers instruct their students.

Due to my lack of confidence in the previous SoIA in responding to my request, I signed an executive order that rejects these tests.  I just want to know if we'll have a new SoIA who's willing to respect that order.

[HagridOfTheDeep]

I'd be curious about that response, actually. My impression is that the regions have a large say in what their NTLEs look like... so I'd hope the regions could work with the federal government instead of against it. I believe in regional rights more than a good share of my colleagues, but even I thought Simfan's legislation struck an appropriate balance. As a federal cabinet secretary, it'll be interesting to see if drj stands behind federal legislation.

[Kitteh]

That does sound like a promising reform, Scott. We'll probably work this out more if/when I'm confirmed, but is the only issue that the Northeast doesn't want students taking standardized tests until their senior year of hs? In that case maybe we could grant a waiver for all federally required standardized tests before senior year but still require seniors to take the federal tests? I would be okay with that. Or am I misunderstanding?

[tmthforu94]

Despite some major policy differences, as someone who knows drj101 pretty well from our time together in the Mideast and as someone who, as Governor, works with the SoIA quite extensively, I would just like to re-iterate my support for this nominee, and urge the Senate to confirm.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Times is up (actually it is 22 hours over time here. ) and no extension has been motioned for so confirmation is now at vote, Senators please vote Aye, Nay or Abstain.

[Kaine for Senate '18]

Aye

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

AYE!!!

[Spamage]

Aye

[HagridOfTheDeep]

Aye

[Oakvale]

Aye.

[Franzl]

AYE

[Niemeyerite]

Aye

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Aye