The Governor's Council on Regional Activity (GCRA)

[Wells]

I recently signed this bill which calls for a council:

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Since it will be made up of Northern citizens, I would like to see any with an interest in joining announcing their interest in this thread.

[LLR]

I'm not a Northern citizen but I'm a fan of this (hint hint, GAWorth)

[Blair]

This can be a nice project for me when my term ends- sign me up

[Drew]

I'd be interested in contributing to this collective brainstorm.

[Wells]

So far we have two (not a lot) of Northerners interested in joining. I'll grant President Blair and drewmike87 membership of this highly inclusive committee. And I might even start a Fremont branch to allow Senator LLR in.

[Drew]

So far we have two (not a lot) of Northerners interested in joining. I'll grant President Blair and drewmike87 membership of this highly inclusive committee. And I might even start a Fremont branch to allow Senator LLR in.

I'm honored to be a part of this endeavor.  According to the legislation that was passed, I take it this Council will begin operations on Feb 1?

[Wells]

So far we have two (not a lot) of Northerners interested in joining. I'll grant President Blair and drewmike87 membership of this highly inclusive committee. And I might even start a Fremont branch to allow Senator LLR in.

I'm honored to be a part of this endeavor.  According to the legislation that was passed, I take it this Council will begin operations on Feb 1?

That is correct.

[Wells]

I'm bumping this because it's almost February 1 and we need more people to sign up. I do have plans for this, which will be announced January 31, but in the meantime let's get some more people to join.

[Wells]

I have some plans for this Council. Hopefully the other two members can share their ideas. Here is what I have:

1) Citizen involvement. I have experimented with this recently with my bill to come up with a new regional name. I believe that more decisions in this region should involve the input of the citizens in a similar way. We can also hold more referendums and encourage people to introduce legislation in the threads.

2) Encouraging activity. As we increase citizen involvement in our politics, we should also encourage them to be involved in our government as well. Increasing our candidates for all offices, including Senator, Assembly, and Governor should be one of our biggest goals. However, once we get these candidates elected, we should be holding them accountable and making sure they stay active.

3) Recruitment. New players in this game will be very welcome, and we should be actively searching for more posters who could make active additions to this game, encouraging them to join and be involved.

Also, it's not too late to join this Council. I would like us to be a little more bipartisan.

[Drew]

Good evening Council members! 

I'm glad to help get this Council started.  The Governor lists some great ideas above.  My ideas on the topics that the Governor highlighted:

Citizen involvement:  This was the main reason why I supported the effort to enable our citizens to name our region.  We have come up with many great potential names with the help of our citizens, and I look forward to a spirited ballot initiative to reveal the winning name. 

I would be in favor of occasionally having more initiatives for things such as regional symbols, etc., as these could bring a spark of activity if things slow down around here.  We recently had a bill brought by a citizen to repeal the regional primate.  Though I disagreed with the idea and indeed voted against the repeal, I do appreciate citizens like this who take the time to connect with their government and generate activity for government and other citizens alike.

Encouraging activity: I would love to see a 5 member Assembly in the North.  Per the Constitution, we would need at least 6 candidates running.  For the coming election, by my count we have 4 declared candidates, including myself.  I would love to see a couple more candidates run.  This would make for great competition, and would make me and others better candidates and better Assemblypeople. 

And yes, we elected officials need to stay active and accountable.  I was thinking that we could even create a new position for an independent officer to oversee and rate our activity levels, and could also serve as sort of a regional game moderator.  They could do much of what the federal GM does, but at a more local and regional level.

Recruitment: I agree that we should reach out and try to bring in new players whenever possible.  Unfortunately I don't think Dave would be too happy if we randomly spammed the non-Atlasia boards with recruitment ads.  One thing that we could do is use our signatures to encourage other Atlas posters to vote if there's an upcoming election.  This would encourage people to register and vote and possibly run for something (providing they get it before the deadline).  A couple of drawbacks to this idea a) some people hide signatures, and b) we may want to use our signature for other, non-Atlasian things.  But it's an idea. 

....

One other idea I had was to make some kind of exit survey for those who resign, decline to run again for office, or deregister.  It could be helpful for us to know why they're leaving the government or the game entirely.  If many people are complaining about a particular issue, then we know that we can work to solve it.  It would be PMed to these posters, it's of course voluntary, but we would welcome their feedback.
 

[Wells]

Okay let's bring this back. Drew Mike had some good ideas where we last left off, but there are just a few things that I would like to respond to.

Citizen involvement is something we appear to agree on. I think that we should allow referendums for more things. I would be able to do that by proposing another Constitutional Amendment. Once that's done, we could encourage citizens to utilize this mechanism.

Encouraging activity: I also was thinking of holding them accountable to their campaign promises as well as their activity. This would be a great tool to voters and I think it would say more about the candidate considering it would be less subjective. However, we should also rate candidates based on what they promise us. Active campaigners who make big promises will be active officeholders who do big things.

Recruitment can be accomplished in more ways than just advertising in threads on other boards. One thing that cannot be ignored like a signature is a PM.

Exit survey: This seems like a good idea. Ideas are what this council needs.

Let's work on these ideas in the coming weeks. I'm sure we'll be able to accomplish a lot.