Adapted from e-mail conversations with RLC of 29, November and 13, December 1999.
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To the greatest extent possible, I have included the required experts in the comitties themselves. There are three experts on the topic in different fields, a lawer, an experienced politician who presides and I'm sure could act to facilitate the process, and an administrator who can serve both as expert and as council to what is feasable in a beauracracy, this in addition to the committee member's power to call witnesses, hold public hearings, and present evidence.
Sir, most members of our current Congress are lawyers but this does not stop their very real need to have more lawyers on their staffs to give advise and draft specific legislation. Sir, I just see the need for Consenus Committees to need a lot of staffing if they are to be effective.
Agreed there, and fixed in the most current draft.
Sir, to me the important part was to insure in what was the real will of the members of the committees and not the machinations of their staffers with all the given special and powerful interests.
This is doubtfull, the comittee itself gives assignments to the staff, and their most important functions require little or no staffing at all.
Calling witnesses is a good example, all but the disinterested citizens will certainly have witnesses in mind on the topic, and the staff would only serve them the summons. Likewise the experts serve as a natural check on the filtering of research commanded to the staff.
It is assumed that the politician and administrator would have their own staff at their disposal, and quite possibly the experts might well have significant research of their own to present, since, if selected well, they would know the topic intimately from their own field's persepctive, and would likely have students and assistants of their own. The leagal expert may well have a whole law firm or department of a major university to consult with.
Of course staffing is provided, but at the discression of the comittee (well, any three or more members of the comittee under the latest draft) and purely under their rules.
you may want to say a little more in the Constitution about the required support given to the committess. Sir, were would this staffing come from and who would have the authority to organize them?
It's been addressed in the latest draft.
" The board of selectors shall provide staffing to assist the comittee in whatever reasonable way requested upon the request of any three members of the comittee." (II.C8, second clause)
Sir, it just strikes me that there could be a lot of committess in existance at any one time. Some called by Council or Parliament or constitutional mandate could add to many issues being on the table at the same time.
Yes, there may well be. This is no difficulty since each comittee addresses a single topic with a different set of individuals. There is a limit, since there must be a politician member, and 2 comittees would probably consume all the free legislative time of a politician, there can't be more than 224 comittees running at the same time without paralyzing the government.
Chances are there won't be more than 30 or so comittees running at any one time, though, since topics have to be rather broad and can't significantly overlap. Plus, how many issues of significance can iexist at one time? The major limitation is probably office space to hold comittee meetings.
Sir, I could easily imagine you having no committees in a years time to having thousands that are of supreme importance to some part of the population or the other. Sir, think of all the city, state, and national committees needed to run this country.
None is possible, but doubtfull, since some items are comitted to consensus comittees constitutionally, and the threshold for initiative calls is fairly low.
Thousands is possible but improbable, since a 3% threshold is high enough to cut out a lot of proposals even in an active area, and legislators wouldn't have time to (and would probably have the good sense not to) call them so frequently.
The government could be paralyzed by running out of that extra consenus committee just when it needs it the most. Sir, I think the Consititution needs to be more flexible here. Sir, too many committees will just whither away but serious issues should never be without a committee to address it.
There are other ways of making law, don't forget. If there are few comittees running, then comittees will be favoured, if there are many, then they'll be reserved for the issues which require them.
The constitution is *supremely* flexible on the matter, no number is ever specified beyond the limits of practicality.
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