All ministers should be able to withdraw funds from their own ministry accounts. I have never heard of any logical reason why they can't. This should also be a grant-able/revocable priv for aides.

Right now, in order to get money into a minister's hands, the chancellor has to consign the money, then the treasurer has to transfer the money to the correct ministry, then an leader has to withdraw the funds and give them to the minister. I think the first two steps provide PLENTY of check and balance without needing the third step.

This has been a complaint for years now - I can't quite fathom why it still works this way.

I don't see why we need more steps than just having treasurer budget the ministries.

too easy to steal from

I agree with Derian or whoever; it would seem that two steps with two different ministers are sufficient to prevent abuse of the system.

mitbulls is not in fact, Krellan.

False advertising!

Lies! I am Krellan! If ever you hate anything I say on the forums, feel free to take it out on my in the game.

What Doman said: it's too easy to steal.

First, I think there are only 2 ministries who can withdraw directly from their accounts.

Second, it would prevent the Treasurer from aiding anybody who's an aide to any other ministry, which just makes things inconvenient (Treasurer should have aides, but they shouldn't be excluded from helping the city in other ways).

Third, you can't grant aides certain privs, at least not that I know of.

Treasurers should not have aides! Hmph.

Unless they have to go awol for a couple of weeks; if you do your job as treasurer right, though, you should have all ministries with enough funds to keep on ticking for quite some time even if you miss a day or two.

This.

What about it makes this easy? You still have to get the steward to consign the funds, then get the treasurer to put it in your account. Then, of course, there is the whole thing where you have to convince enough of the leadership that you're trustworthy enough to be appointed...

Assuming the treasurer and steward are doing their jobs, the amount of money each minister has available will be limited. The one exception might be the power minister, who could cause some damage. But then, that is why only a trustworthy person should be appointed.



All I know of is the ambassador. This is the problem.



What Xenthos said. Treasurers and stewards don't need aides.



Right now, no. And that part is really just an addendum. Giving the minister the ability to withdraw funds is really the important part, even if aides can't touch those funds.

If your Treasurer goes AWOL, the CL should step in when it is necessary.

All I can say is, power ministry especially cannot be allowed to withdraw funds directly. Librarian is a close second, but the power ministry requires large sums of money be left in it (guard purchases, construct upkeep) unless you want to end up like Magnagora / Celest. And it would be far too tempting to just withdraw from the power ministry for contests, prizes, and the like... which only serves to make losing constructs more likely.

I really do prefer it the way it is, even if it is extra hoops; no one person gets all the power (well, except the CL) to run rampant with funds. It's seriously better this way, even if more of a hassle. The number of people who can take Commune/City funds really should be limited, and I don't see an issue with Ministries having to ask for a certain amount of funds for things beyond their day-to-day operational costs.

Helps keep things from just getting used up all at once, y'know?

Both Ambassador and Trade can withdraw funds. I'm fine with it this way. In Magnagora, the Ambassador is used for those needing to withdraw funds (notably the Power Minister and Librarian for contests, and the rest of the Iron Council and Steward for misc stuff such as furniture, paintings, statues, etc.).

This is the exact problem, though - everyone is okay with it as it is because everyone has come up with ways to work around it. In Mag, everyone always withdraws from Ambassador. So, everyone can still get the funds they want, and any one person could still steal all of that money. In Serenwilde, we keep money in a clan account for the literary and cultural clan so the minister can get to that money.

As for the concerns about power and library ministries - if you don't trust them, don't appoint them. It's true that they have the opportunity to cause a decent amount of damage to the city or commune, but nothing even close to irreparable. Let's say the power minister in Serenwilde suddenly decides to steal all of the money out of the account and run off to Glomdoring. All of our guards disappear for...what? An hour or two before someone transfers more money in and re-summons? And the power minister has now committed character suicide and life will suck for him or her.

I think we're making every-day things much more complicated and worrying about situations that don't happen often. As it is now, there's really no point in having separate ministry funds. Why not just let the city leader withdraw directly from the coffers? Or at least just have one lump "city fund" used for all expenses?

The emphasis really probably shouldn't be on making it so people can't get to the money, so much as, so that people can't get to the money undetected. As long as you know you're going to be griefed eight ways to Sunday if you steal, the big withdraw-and-run theft is really not going to happen much. A withdrawal-per-time-period limit is more effective than requiring extra people to prevent that one, but it's just not a big worry.

If anyone's really stealing, it's probably frequent trickles of small amounts, embezzling. Again, requiring extra people involved won't really stop that. All that would is an active treasurer who has access to all the relevant logs and reads them regularly.

In Glom, people withdraw through the Ambassador; but in order for the Ambassador to have funds to withdraw, they have to go through me (or Narynth). We do have that stopgap in place.

I also am not aided to Trade or Ambassador myself (though I am both Steward and Treasurer atm), so the only person in Glom who can take funds all the way through is the CL.

Also, in regards to your second paragraph-- if you run out of funds, you lose your construct and can't rebuild it for 30 RL days. Magnagora lost every single one of theirs at one point, heh. It's fine the way it is. The players have the choice of how much limitation they want on it. We can either give people aide-ship to all the Ministries and thus remove the security, or we can take advantage of it to try to be a little more secure. I prefer having that choice.

The way it is makes it more difficult for ministers and others to do their jobs.

Let's take a specific example - all I needed was money to purchase some sigils for security. There are only three people in the entire commune who can get that money - the ambassador, the CL, and the trade minister. In other words, those three people are essentially in charge of all of our non-guard security measures. Whoever controls the purse controls everything. You happen to be one of those lucky people who is involved in distributing the money, but doesn't ever have to be on the other side of things where you must go through all of the difficulty to do your job.

The way it is right now is a more controlled atmosphere where three people have control of everything, and individual ministers don't have the control to do everything they need to do. Both of these are bad things. An active steward and treasurer can collectively limit the damage that all of the other ministers can do. The power minister does still have the potential to cause damage, but like Lendren mentioned, it is not really a worry, and it will not cause long-term difficulty. Losing a construct for 30 days is kind of a pain, but hardly a major hit. I still think the benefits would outweigh the costs.

Actually, the ambassador, trade minister, and all of their aides, plus the CL can withdraw...I really don't see the big inconvenience. A little bit of extra bureaucracy to protect against people completely robbing a city or commune...