Bill: Draft Clerical Exemption Act

[greymc]

CONGRESS OF THE
COMMONWEALTH OF REDMONT
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A BILL TO

ALLOW CLERKS TO FIX SMALL MISTAKES




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The people of the Commonwealth of Redmont, through their elected Representatives in the Congress and the force of law ordained to that Congress by the people through the constitution, do hereby enact the following provisions into law:


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PART I — PRELIMINARIES

1. Short Title and Enactment

(1) This Act may be cited as the `Clerical Exemption Act’

(2) This Act shall be enacted immediately upon its signage.

(3) This Act has been authored by Speaker _GreyMC.

(4) This Act has been co-sponsored by Deputy Speaker HatManMC.

(5) This Act amends the following acts:

(a) Legislative Standards Act
(b) Redmont Civil Code Act
(c) Criminal Code Act

2. Reasons and Intent

(1) The Clerk Empowerment Act and Clerk Powers Quickfix Act both amended the same section of the LSA, §6(8). However, the Empowerment Act was before the Quickfix Act, and was not recognized by the Quickfix Act, meaning the text amended in the Quickfix Act did not reflect the actual text, a legal grey area. This act fixes this issue by repealing the Clerk Empowerment Act.

(2) In some scenarios, someone may propose a bill and make a clerical error which is not realized until the bill is up for vote. Clerks are not currently permitted to amend bills with clerical errors, only passed legislation. This will allow clerks to amend clerical errors with permission of the presiding officer and bill proposer.

(3) This act also changes the need for a re-vote on a motion to amend. Now, if the change does not affect the “substantive meaning” of the bill (just like the changes clerks can normally do) it will not require a re-vote.

PART II — AMENDMENTS

3. Legislative Standards Act

(1) Legislative Standards Act §6(8) shall be repealed and replaced with the following:

(8) The OCA is authorised to make any of the following corrections to Acts of Congress, provided that such corrections do not alter the substantive meaning of the Act and are made with the permission of at least one Presiding Officer:

(a) Adjust the numbering of sections and subsections to correct errors, including updating references to such sections and subsections where it is necessary to reflect the corrected numbering;

(b) Correct obvious spelling errors that are not the result of regional differences in spelling, including capitalization mistakes;

(c) Update names of offices and organisations when the name of that office or organisation has changed since the passage of the original Act;

(d) Remove provisions that have been explicitly declared invalid or unenforceable by another Act of Congress or Judicial verdict.

(2) Legislative Standards Act §6 shall be amended as follows:

(9) The OCA may also make the amendments provided in subsection (8) while a bill is proposed, awaiting voting, or under voting, provided that the Presiding officers in both chambers and the original proposer of the bill agree to the change.

(10) The Presiding Officers shall fund the OCA's activities through provisions in the Legislative budget.

(3) Legislative Standards Act §11(11)(d)(i) shall be amended as follows:

(i) In caseIf the Motion to Amend changes neither the wording, nor the interpretation of a billdoes not alter the substantive meaning of the bill, it will not be required to restart the voting process in this manner under the discretion of the presiding officer with agreement from the proposer of the bill.

(4) Redmont Civil Code Act §3(2) shall be added as follows:

(2) Clerks may make aesthetic changes to this act, including, but not limited to, adding and removing vertical bars as a separation between offenses.

(5) Criminal Code Act §4(2) shall be added as follows:

(2) Clerks may make aesthetic changes to this act, including, but not limited to, adding and removing vertical bars as a separation between offenses.