SENATE STANDING COMMITTEE: Gov't Oversight and Reform (Recommendations)

[afleitch]

Senators,

I was appointed as a replacement SoIA and served in the position for two months; September to November 2010. I am not ashamed of my actions during this time. In the course of the debate during for the Fix Our Roads Act I spoke to the Senate confrming my position that 'road repair is vital for the economy and can provide much needed employment.' I also offered the Senate more realistic figures for road repair for their consideration. I agreed with the Senate's proposal to amend the Financial Regulatory Reform Act of 2009.

I made direct representation to the Vice President with recommendations for the following;

1. I have assisted the Vice President with suggestion to increase employment in Atlasia. As a week has now passed and to promote accountability in government you may review the text below;

There are two ways to do this (promote job growth); first of all to increase employment for those who have recently been laid off and secondly to tackle the issue of long term unemployment; those who remain out of work regardless of the economic climate and employment opportunities.

If we are going to spend money it has to be spent on public works. I favour job creation in the private sector, but if the government is going to commit to creating jobs itself it has to do so under its own initiative. This of course incurs an administration cost (which can cost more than outsourcing to private or third party providers) so these have to be kept low. Secondly we need a 'quick win'; job creation has to be immediate. While training, adult education and skill provision is vitally important this takes time and costs money. I think we have legislation on the books to deal with this at any rate. Therefore the focus should be getting those who are laid off and skilled back to work. The Hiring Incentives Act goes some way to address this and some of the responsbility rests with my office. However the legislation itself has no expiry built into it, so it needs to be canned as soon as the economy picks up again under it's own steam.

The Regional and Local Fiscal Relief Act has distributed funds based on regional unemployment as it stood. Presumably the $100 bn has been spent (?) Or indeed has it given that responsibility rests with the regions. Now while the bill allows us to make use of any rejected money, it is not clear what we can do if any regions have not enacted legislation to spend it. I don't think the law allows us to claw it back however we can use a 'stick' approach and reduce any further regional assistance planned through stimulus by the amount not spent.

The number one target for investment should be construction. Now there was a fair number of bills passed on large construction projects for example the High Speed Rail Act. In reality despite being passed over a year ago, it would still be in the planning stages, however route clearance, demolition and preperation should be at least in part underway. It is the biggest construction project in Atlasia and I would propose pumping funds into it to get it moving; it really should be providing jobs for construction, maufacturing, steel works etc for years.

In days of old you could pump money into building relief roads but those days are gone. It could be possible to fund local light rail projects to boost areas with localised high unemployment.

However a major new piece of legislation that could dwarf even the high speed rail project would be the renewal of city water pipes and sewerage systems. In older cities this infrastructure is nearing 100 years old (excepting the work undertaken to provide work during the last Depression ) and is in major need of overhaul. However this would result in major traffic disruption (as it requires digging up the road) and disruption to water supplies. This is why most cities in America and Europe are unwilling to undertake it; its not even a cost issue its the political fallout from disruption.

High Speed and Water Infrastructure renewal will keep construction and manufacturing ticking along nicely.

These recommendations to my knowledge were not taken on board by the administration which ended with President Fritz's election in November. This may have been due to lack of time rather than due to dismissal.

[afleitch]

As the Vice President at that time, I suppose I should explain why those recommendations weren't taken action on by myself personally. Around that time, Purple State and I were discussing what we privately termed our "second wind" brought about after feeling like the middle of our term had begun to stagnate a bit. As part of that, we focused on immediately bringing the Constitutional Convention to a close, delegating more responsibilities to the GM and SoIA (then Afleitch), and I was tasked with coming up with another basic set of economic legislation.

Within a couple days, though, my grandfather suffered a stroke and I immediately had to take some time away for family reasons, and asked some Senate friends and PS to consider putting together a bill or two. By the end of September 2010 I had my own health scare, which ended with September being quite the nerve-rattling month that led to be deciding against running for President, despite everyone assuming I was the next in line for the JCP. Lost in all of that kerfuffle, I had been too personally occupied to write the legislation we had planned and for that I apologize.

I don't think an apology is needed for something beyond your control. There was no reason why the following administration could not have picked up where you left off. To it's credit the Purple State/Marokai administration and the 38th and 39th Senates were heavily focused on the economy. A glance at the bills presented and passed proves that. Their effectiveness will no doubt be discussed by the Committee. The following administration passed the 2011 Federal Stimulus Act which did allocate sum monies for projects that the PS/M administration proposed.