 for the purposes of preparing the minutes. Dean, can I just ask a really quick question? Are we allowed to have staff on here? Or is that not allowed? Yeah, staff are welcome, right? Right. I didn't invite any of them until I got the permission. It's a public meeting as well, right? So there could be others tuned in listening to and watching everything that we have to say today. So of course, keep that in mind, right? OK, so to proceed with the meeting, I'll now turn it over to Chair of the Mass Gaming Commission, Kathy Judstine, for some introductory comments. Right? How about that? Well, thank you, Chairman Serpa. And before I let Dean dive into the great agenda he has for you today, I do want to take a moment to personally welcome and introduce him as the new Chair of the GPAP. Chair Serpa was appointed to the GPAP by Governor Charlie Baker in January of this year. Dean has served in the administration of four governors of the Commonwealth, filling key roles in the executive office, as well as various cabinet offices and agencies. During his tenure in state government, Dean brought his particular expertise in crisis management, event management, marketing technology, security, and internal compliance to his various roles. Most notably, Dean served as deputy chief of staff for operations and administration within the governor's office, acting director of the executive office of economic development, director of the Massachusetts Office of Business Development and chief marketing office for the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority. I personally have had the pleasure of working with Dean throughout my career. And I'm confident that he will bring his keen eye for detail and process and vast knowledge of business development to his new role. Congratulations, Dean. And welcome. I also. Thank you very much, Kathy. I also quickly want to introduce Grace. Join the meeting. Oh, if we have another member just joining. Good afternoon, Anne Margaret. Good afternoon. I also want to. And she said she told me to say quickly. I don't want to do it quickly, but I want to introduce Grace Robinson, who recently joined the MGC as chief administrative officer to the chair and special projects and external relations manager. And she will be really connecting with legislative affairs as well at the MGC. So note that. Join the meeting. Our legislative colleagues here. Grace is taking over for Crystal Bolsherman, who has moved on to an exciting new role as sports wagering business manager at the gaming commission. I know that many of you will share my appreciation for Crystal's work, assisting me in the GPAC for the last few years. And you'll hear from her shortly. Grace joins us after serving eight years in Governor Baker's operations department, most recently as the director of operations for the office of the governor. She joined the Baker-Polito Administration after graduating from the University of Richmond as the briefing coordinator. And like Chair Surfer, I also had the pleasure of working with Grace previously. And I'm so delighted she has joined the MGC too. Now, I'll turn back to you, Chair Surfer. Do you want me to provide updates now or do we turn to the minutes first? You're on mute. No, we're going to move along into some comments and minutes, and then back to you, Kathy. OK, thank you. Of course, I would like to welcome Grace as well, having worked with her a lot in the past. And I know that she will keep everything for the committee organized, well run, and make sure we are performing at the best that we can as an organization. So welcome, Grace. And Kathy, thank you for that warm introduction. I've enjoyed, of course, all of the time that I have worked with you and others in the recent administration and other administrations. And I look forward to working with the full GPAC members, the other gaming commissioners, of course, and all of the staff at the gaming commission as we continue the advancement of this important industry here in Massachusetts, right? So I am looking forward to that. I should mention to the group, as an introduction to my chairmanship, a few weeks back, I did take an introductory tour of the state's three gaming properties along with the chair and Grace. And I certainly left each property being extremely impressed with the work being done across the licensees, really. I experienced firsthand the obvious commitment and expertise of the gaming commission staff that I met in each facility. We had a person for each facility who brought us through, as well as other staff that I met. I experienced sort of an ever-present positive energy from all of the staff and facility employees that I met, which was fun to feel and see. And I would say, overall, what hit me was the large number and variety of employment opportunities that these facilities represent, right? Getting to see that firsthand, of course, we know it. We've seen the presentations. But I met dozens of employees of every different type and at every different level. And that just was energizing to me personally. We saw training activities in front of us for new employees. And almost every room that we went into, I heard stories from the staff there about job career advancement that had happened once they had come to Massachusetts and worked in one of these facilities. So those are good stories to hear. And I enjoyed it. For any of the other new gaming policy advisory committee members, if you haven't had a chance to visit one or all of the properties, I certainly encourage you to do so. But with that, let's move on with today's meeting. I guess I should check to make do a role to make sure we have the form, right? Is that right, Grace? All right. So Mass Gaming Commission chairperson Kathy Judstine, are you present? I need to unmute. Yes, here I am. Thank you. Senator Barry Feingold. I am here. Happy to be here. I'm present. Great. Senator Ryan Fatlin, representative and Margaret Ferente. I saw you on the screen. Representative, OK. Representative Marcus Vaughn. I'm here. I just couldn't unmute the button. I'm here. Great. Thank you, Representative. Representative Vaughn. Present. Victor Ortiz. Present. Commissioner Helen Colton Harris. Present. Present. Mr. Pignelli. Here. Present. Mr. McNeil. Present. Miss Sprague. Caitlin Sprague. Didn't see her. OK. And I, Dean Serpa, am present. Grace, I think that gives us a quorum, right? We can continue. Yes. Yes, we may. All right, great. And just generally, I should start the meeting, of course, by recognizing and welcoming our other new committee members, Senator Feingold and Representative Vaughn, Jamie McNeil, and Caitlin Sprague. So welcome to the committee, all of you. And I appreciate your commitment. Would any of you, would any of our new members, like to offer a few words of introduction of yourselves or your hopes for the committee? I'm happy just to say really quickly that I just am happy to be here. If you know my background, I've been the biggest fan of gaming, but that's OK. What I'm really concerned about is making sure that we don't hurt people and we move forward and we make sure that we do have protections in place. I will say I'm very concerned about what I see with young people and their online betting. So that's what I hope that we can at least talk about. I know we have a presentation about that. But as chair of economic development, I know gaming is now part of our fabric here in the Commonwealth. And I understand that. And we'll be as supportive as I can about that. Great. Well, thank you, Senator. Welcome to the committee. And then hopefully we'll be able to work together to help bring all the information necessary to bear. Any other comments, introductions by new members? Representative Mark McFawn here. I just want to say thank you for allowing me to be a part of this committee. And as far as gambling is concerned, not a big gambler myself, but I've been involved in the gaming industry for quite a while on the security side of the business. So I have some inner workings with regional stakeholders and casinos all across New England. But it's very much looking forward to learning more and making sure that we have the proper safeguards in place to assure that this is a thriving industry and people are protected. Of course. Thank you, Representative. Anyone else? Any other new members? Chair Sarp, I'll just introduce myself. Thank you for the opportunity. And thank you, Chair Juddstein, for all your help and kind of get me acclimated. My name is Jamie McNeil. I'm the general agent for United Here Local 26, where the union that represents the gaming workers at the Encore Casino. So it's about 1,200 workers and another additional 200 under Teamsters Local 25. So I remember when the law was passed and it was a much, I shouldn't say darker day because it's pretty gloomy out there today. But the real emphasis was on jobs and economic development. And as the senator said, particularly my focus I'm also on the board of a training center that has helped not just fill in the gaps of all the workers who went to go work for Encore, but trains workers for Encore itself. So it's an honor to be on this commission. And thank you so much. Thank you, Jamie. I know we'll hear more about it later today. OK, without any other intros, I think I will now turn the meeting back over to Chair Judd Stein for a quick update now, Kathy, on the Massachusetts Gaming Commission. And Kathy, you're on mute. I'm on mute. Thank you, Dean. And this time, I'd also like to acknowledge former G-PAC chair, Magnesia Cohen, for our record she convened this body regularly, helping to provide the MGC with valuable input and guidance and we appreciate our leadership. And I also want to extend my welcome to our new G-PAC members. Continue our introductions. I would like to take a quick minute to introduce our newest commissioner, Jordan Maynard, who officially joined the MGC on August 1st, 2022. That's the day the legislature laid the sports wagering bill on the governor's desk. Well, Commissioner Maynard has been serving our commission for nearly one year now. He has yet to be formally introduced to this body. Former Governor Charlie Baker, then Attorney General Maura Healy and Treasury Goldberg, Deborah Goldberg appointed Commissioner Maynard to the commission position slated for an individual with experience in the legal and policy issues related to gaming. Jordan most recently served as Governor Baker's Chief Secretary and Director of Boards and Commissions. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he served as the Washington DC Director for the Office of the Governor, working to coordinate state agencies' interactions with the federal government and supporting the procurement of millions of pieces of PPE for the commonwealth. A proud native of Kentucky, he is a graduate of Morehead State University and obtained his law degree from Northern Kentucky University's Salon P. Chase College of Law. Welcome, Jordan. And would you like to say a few words? Thank you, Madam Chair. First of all, it's a pleasure to be here. And I recognize a lot of faces and a lot of names over my years in the governor's office. And appreciate being able to be here today. Also, congratulations to Chair Dean Serpa, who I know is the most organized and the most detail-oriented person I ever worked with in my career. So I know we're in good hands, as well as Grace, who's also just fantastic. Thank you, Chair Judd Stein. And I look forward to hearing what we're doing today. Thank you, Commissioner Maynard. And so Chair Serpa, I asked to that I give a few MGC updates. We'll start with sports wagering. I want to acknowledge first the tireless work of my fellow commissioners, many who are here today, and Executive Director Wells, who's here. You can give a wave. And the entire team at the Gaming Commission to stand up the new sports betting industry within six months of the law's endowment to really maximize the benefits to the Commonwealth and minimize the risk. It wasn't lost on me as one of five commissioners. That while some may have been concentrating on the revenues that legalized sports wagering might produce for the state, as well as repatriating dollars from neighboring states, we also were establishing a regulated market in giving consumers of sports wagering that legal market, regulated market, before two significant sporting events, offering the consumer protections that come with the regulated market. And it's not prioritized in the very well-established illegal market. We have in the course of our sports wagering, we interviewed and assessed 14 applications. Five commissioners were from the start, united in our priorities and values. Over the course of lengthy public meetings that extended at times beyond seven hours, we evaluated the prospective operator's commitment to the high integrity, innovative consumer protections, and responsible gaming tools, the state of the art technology, and the applicant's commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and community engagement. Commission was united in viewing a sports wagering license in Massachusetts as a peerless privilege and expected invested community purpose. We've benefited from external input from stakeholders, experts, elected officials, and the general public holding over seven roundtables that produced guidance on a host of subject matters, including advertising, the players' associations perspective, marketing, and of course, responsible gaming. We have promulgated what we believe is a bold advertising regulation that pushes the limit of the sports wagering law and the First Amendment. And to Senator Feingold's important point, works to prioritize the safety and well-being of those not eligible to wager, particularly those under the age of 21 in our most vulnerable populations, including individuals who voluntarily self-exclude from gaming, including sports wagering. We continue to see commentary from stakeholders and the public and remain humble and nimble, poised to pivot to establish what we hope is a best in class regulatory framework and fulfills the expectations of the legislature and the governor who signed this into law. On the horse racing, my fellow commissioners and I were thrilled to attend Opening Day at Plain Ridge Park last month. We're looking forward to a great horse racing season this year and don't miss out on Derby Day on Saturday. We as a commission are also reviewing thoroughly our racing and regulatory framework and proposed regulatory improvements work that will be ongoing, but actually coming right up in future, our future public meetings. We also want to note that we celebrated at MGM Springfield a one-year anniversary of Play My Way, as well as acknowledging problem gambling awareness month. We did that in March. Celebrated the one-year anniversary of Play My Way, which is that innovative budgeting tool to promote responsible gaming. All five commissioners attended that celebratory event to mark the occasion and highlight our commitment and honestly the three of the casinos longstanding commitment to problem gambling awareness month. And then this month, the commission will be reviewing the community mitigation applications. In fact, we just reviewed two, perhaps one that changed one of our members. I'll let him speak to that later. And I'm proud to announce that this year we received a record number of applications. Paul, I know it's a great interest to you. We received 58 applications this year totaling a request for $16.2 million. So the community affairs team worked collaboratively with Mark VanderLinden and Dr. Bonnie Andrews this year on new development to develop a new category aimed at a gaming harm reduction. This category allows communities to create research proposals and conduct community engaged research to help them further understand the impact of gaming on their communities. And then the CA community affairs team also created a new category called projects of regional significance which was designed to address projects that could have a large impact on multiple communities surrounding the gaming establishments. You'll hear more from Chief Joe Delaney and his team at the next meeting to be able to give a little some update on our community mitigations. And at this point, I think I'll turn it back to Chair Silva. All right. Thank you, Kathy, for those updates. And of course, welcome to Commissioner Maynard even though it's been just about a year. I think I'm supposed to move to the approval of the minutes from the prior two meetings, but Grace, I think we're one short. Is that right? Yes. While we do have a quorum of GCAC members, we unfortunately do not have a majority of folks who were present at the previous two meetings. If Senator Fatman is able to join us during the meeting, I will interject and hopefully you can take that vote then but for now we will meet them in draft form. Okay. So we can move on then with today's agenda. So at this point, I will now turn the meeting over to Councilor Todd Grossman, General Counsel of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission for a review of the Commonwealth's ethics policy and how it relates to our committee and to us individually as committee members. Todd, feel free. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you all for having me. It's a great pleasure to be with you here today. As General Counsel of the Commission, one of my functions is to ensure that members of our team are familiar with the ethics laws that govern their conduct as state employees. And what we do with our full-time employees is offer an annual training that covers both the state conflict of interest law, gaming as, and I'm sorry if I just froze there, just to signal me if that happens again. I won't go through our full hour-long ethics presentation for you all unless there's a request to do so. Instead, I'll offer the presentation that I prepared for committee and subcommittee members. I've offered this a number of times over the years and I've refined it to include those areas that the members tend to find the most useful. So without further ado with your indulgence, I do have a PowerPoint presentation that I'll just put up here on the screen. I'll walk through all of these principles and certainly invite anyone who has any questions to just jump right in since I won't be able to see you along the way. Before I do that, I just also wanted to add that I am certainly available at any time after the meeting or over the course of the year if you have any questions specific to your circumstances that I could be of assistance but happy to help you navigate through some of these issues. So without further ado, here we go. Okay, oops. So advisory committees created pursuant to section 68 of the gaming law, which is what this committee is, is considered a state agency which makes the members of this committee a state employee for purposes of the conflict of interest law. And because you are not a full-time employees of the commission, you would be considered special state employees. Now members of this particular committee fall into a number of different categories. Some of you are actually full-time state employees whether you are elected or appointed to your positions and the conflict of interest law applies to you as a member of this subcommittee as it ordinarily does as part of your day job. If you are not a full-time state employee, you are considered a special state employee and the conflict of interest law still applies to you but there are some modifications that the law makes in recognition of the fact that you are not a full-time employee and I'll run through some of those highlights here as well. So the one thing that I do wanna note though is regardless of whether you're a full-time or a special state employee, you do have an obligation to complete the state conflict of interest law online training every two years. The state actually has the ethics commission actually just developed a really nice new system. If you're unfamiliar with it, I do have the link here in this slide. I'd be happy to share that with you offline if you haven't yet taken that training, we can work through Grace and others to make sure you have access to that link but you do have to do that once every two years to ensure compliance with the state conflict of interest law. I do need to update this, you actually don't have to send us a certificate anymore because the system tracks compliance digitally at this junction. As you may know, there are essentially two general types of conflicts of interest. There are financial conflicts of interest and then there are appearances of conflicts of interest. If you've taken the online course, you're likely fairly familiar with these two concepts. So I won't spend a lot of time on them but I do think it's always helpful just to mention them to help reacquaint you with these principles in the event you haven't taken the training in some time. The first is the financial conflicts and as a general matter, if you find yourself in a situation where you are experiencing a financial conflict of interest, you typically have to step away, recuse yourself from that particular matter and oftentimes file a disclosure with your appointing authority, signifying that you do have such a conflict. And the law says that you may not participate in any particular matter that may affect your financial interests or that of an immediate family member or a business organization that you're affiliated with. And I just highlighted a few terms within the definition and it says that it has to involve a particular matter which means it's a specific situation whether you're evaluating an application that has been submitted or there's a contract that you're working on or something along those lines. It's not something that might happen in the future or that is remotely possible or it's speculative as to whether it might happen. It has to be an actual situation that you're confronted with, a particular matter that is coming before you as a member of this subcommittee and as a state employee. And it has to affect a financial interest meaning something involving as the term suggests the money but it doesn't have to be that someone is actually offering money or something along those lines. It can be that the decision is going to affect an investment that you may have or your job in some way. It has to somehow implicate a financial interest and it can be both positive and negative. It's not just that you're going to benefit or a family member of yours is going to benefit from a particular decision. It might be that there might be some negative aspect to it or some harm that could result. That would be a financial issue as well. And so if you're ever involved here at the subcommittee or the committee level in any decision-making that could have a financial impact on you or an immediate family member, that should signal to you that you may be in financial conflict of interest territory and it is a matter that we should address. The second area it relates to what we call appearances of conflict though the word appearance doesn't actually appear in the law, it is generally something in which a circumstances arises in which someone may suggest that you may not be acting in a manner that a reasonable person could conclude that you've done your job without any bias. You have to be able to conduct your work impartially. And if there's anything that exists that a reasonable person looking from the outside in might suggest could affect your ability to perform your function here at the subcommittee impartially. But it's not a financial conflict then it might be an appearance conflict. And if you find yourself in that territory typically you have to just disclose that in writing to your appointing authority the facts and circumstances of the situation. And once you make that disclosure you are allowed to continue on in the work. Of course your appointing authority may ask you to step aside or something along those lines but once you have disclosed an appearance of a conflict as a general matter you can continue on performing your job duties. Next I'd like to just remind everyone of the gift restriction. I think you're all likely generally familiar with this. The law says that you may not accept gifts and gratuities of substantial value. And as you likely know the law and the ethics commission has to define the term substantial value to mean $50 or more. And you can't accept such gifts if they're given for or because of official acts that are performed or to be performed or given because of your official position. And just by way of reminder a number of smaller gifts added up together worth $50 or more may also be a violation. Someone offers you a cup of coffee every day you come in here and you come in here 50 times that would likely exceed the $50 gift expression. So it's important just to be aware of that. The other concept that comes up the conflict of interest law that's important to remember is the unwarranted privilege provision. And the law provides that you should not use or attempt to use your official position to secure for yourself or others unwarranted privileges or exemptions which are not available to members of the public. That generally just means that you can't go out and tell everyone that you are a member of the GPAC and accordingly you deserve some special attention for something. And the typical example that comes up in this context is if someone gets pulled over by the police and they give them the old, hey, do you know who I am routine? That is actually an unwarranted privilege and it violates the state conflict of interest law. That is amongst other reasons the main reason why that is compromised. The issue that comes up most with the committee members and subcommittees relates to what is referred to as the divided loyalties section of the conflict of interest law. It's section four of chapter 268 A. And it applies slightly differently depending on whether you're a full-time state employee, whether you are an elected official or whether you are a special state employee. And I'll cover each of those at a very high level here but I just wanted to draw your attention to these issues so you are aware of them and we can manage any situation you may find yourself in. As a general matter of course the Commonwealth is entitled to an impartial unbiased performance of your responsibilities where you are a state employee and that breaks down into a couple of different areas. As a general matter and this applies to full-time state employees, no state employee shall otherwise than as provided by law for the proper discharge of official duties directly or indirectly receive or request compensation from anyone other than the Commonwealth or a state agency in relation to a particular matter in which the Commonwealth or a state agency is a party or has a direct and substantial interest. So what does that mean? Well again, the particular matter issue applies here so it has to be an actual situation that you find yourself discussing here at the committee level and you have to be in order to find yourself running up against this. You would have to be receiving compensation from someone else in your, presumably in your day job to work on a matter that's also before you here at the committee because the state of Massachusetts and the gaming commission has a direct and substantial issue and pretty much- Brian Fattman. Join the meeting. In pretty much all of the matters that come before this subcommittee, the commission and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts have a direct and substantial interest. So if you're being compensated by someone else other than the Commonwealth, you could run into a divided loyalties issue by virtue of your sitting on this committee and discussing the issues that will come before you. Similarly, it's a section C below here. You'll see it's very similar, but it's slightly different. It says that no state employees shall otherwise than in the proper discharge of his official duties act as an agent or attorney for anyone in connection with a particular matter in which the Commonwealth or state agency is a party or has a direct and substantial interest. So again, similar to paragraph A, but instead of focusing on whether you're being compensated by someone else, the question is whether you're acting as an agent or attorney for someone else other than the Commonwealth in a matter that is before this subcommittee. So if you happen to be a lawyer and in your day job, you're offering legal counsel to your client about a matter that's actually before this committee, you could be running a foul of this particular section of the law in that your loyalties may be divided. Similarly, if you're not a lawyer and you're just offering advice or you're participating in a particular matter, maybe the disbursement or the application of funds from the community mitigation fund or something along those lines, you could be acting as an agent for that particular entity in a matter that the Commonwealth and the Gaming Commission have a direct and substantial interest. For example, if you work for a city or town and you wanna submit an application for a grant from the community mitigation fund, you can work on that in your day job, but you can't be the one who completes the application and signs the application, seeking those funds and then appears before the Gaming Commission to answer any questions about the nature of your request. In that event, you would be acting as an agent for someone other than the Commonwealth in that particular matter which the commission has an interest. So that would be a violation of the divided loyalties section of the statute. Now, I don't know if we have any municipal employees here so I won't go through all of these examples, but the most common area where this does come up is the one I just mentioned where folks would be working on mitigation issues and then seeking funds from the community mitigation fund. If you are a municipal employee, that is a signal to you that you should be just careful and cautious about proceeding in those situations. There are ways you can participate in them, but you just need to manage the situation. Now, for legislators or elected officials, and I know there are, we do have a number of members of the team who are elected officials. I just wanted to draw your attention to this section of the statute. This is in section four as well and there is a carve out from the general provisions of the statute that I just mentioned and I'll go through it quickly here. I'm not sure how likely these things are to come up but I think it's helpful just to be aware of them. And the law says that a member of the general court shall not be subjected to divided loyalties provisions and I modified this a little bit, but again, it's relating to that compensation provision and the acting as an agent or attorney provision. It says, however, no member of the general court shall personally appear for any compensation other than his legislative salary before a state agency unless one of the following three things are true. Either the particular matter before the state agency is ministerial in nature or the appearance is before a court of the Commonwealth or the appearances in a quasi-judicial proceeding. So these items don't necessarily directly relate to your work here on the subcommittee, but I think it's always helpful just to remind folks of these particular provisions. And then as you can see, the law also defines what a ministerial function is in the event that you ever find yourself intending to appear before a state agency on what you would consider to be a minor matter. The law actually defines what those are. The other area applies to special state employees and for folks who are not full-time state employees, I know you don't get compensated to be here, so we do appreciate your service, of course, but that makes you a special state employee by law. And it means that this section of the law does apply to you, but it's in a more limited fashion. The law recognizes that you have a full-time day job and you are providing a service here to the Commonwealth. So you are limited in some ways as to sitting on both sides of the table, if you will, but it makes the law a little bit more relaxed in certain ways. And the rule is that a special state employee shall be subject to the divided loyalties provisions, only in relation to a particular matter in which he has at any time participated as a state employee. So that is anything that actually comes before you here at the subcommittee. If that happens to come up in your day job as well, there could be a divided loyalties issue or which is within one year, which is or within one year has been a subject of your official responsibility. So if there's something that falls within the construct of the jurisdiction of this committee and it comes up in your day job, you could be in divided loyalties territory or which is pending in the state agency in which you are serving. So if there's something actively before this particular committee, even if you haven't taken it up yet, it could apply. Although that being said, there is also an exception to the exception which is here in clause C. It says that it can apply in cases of special state employees who serve on no more than 60 days during any period of 365 consecutive days, which would apply in this subcommittee unless you happen to meet way more times this year than the committee ever has in the past. So with all that being said, I know I went through that really quickly, but the aim of this presentation was not designed to make you experts in the conflict of interest law, but instead just to kind of train your intended to detect when you may be faced with an issue under the conflict of interest law, particularly as it applies to this particular subcommittee. Again, there are a number of resources available to you. If you have any questions, the state ethics committee, I'll pull this down here. The state ethics commission itself offers great advice. There's a lawyer of the day available if you ever are inclined to give them a call. That number is on their website. I can help you connect with them. You're welcome to call me or a member of my team here at the legal department at the gaming commission. And I know each of you likely have a legal counsel of your own who of course you can consult with as well. So with that, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, I'm happy to take any questions. Otherwise, I will pause there. Okay. Thank you, Todd. Does anybody have any direct questions for Todd? This information is complex for sure, but is important. So I would say, particularly for our new committee members, if you do have questions, it's worth reaching out directly to Todd and going through all the material because every situation is different. In every instance, I think Todd, you would agree is different between the different individuals asking, but do we have any questions now? A chair and server, this is Paul Piccadilly. Could the members of this board receive a copy of the... We would have to go to do the conflict of interest training and update it. I think it's been a couple of years since I went through that. So could someone supply that to the board members? Yeah. Certainly. Yes. And maybe I can send that to over to Grace. I know you did that on the screen. Oh, sorry, Mr. Piccadilly. I didn't mean to jump in there. No, I think you provided it in your deck, but I just didn't have the time to write it down. So if someone could just email that to us, that would be great. Yeah. Be happy to do that. Send out the link. Thank you. And it's an online. I actually did mine back in January. And yeah, we should check to make sure that everybody has done it within the past two years. Okay. I think we could move on, right? Just right before we do our next presentation, I do want to, I myself want to take a minute to recognize what I think we've all witnessed, but the impressive work, I think, was done by the gaming commission over the past several months at implementing the new sports wagering law in the Commonwealth. For my, for my viewpoint, clearly, I think it was a difficult and complex rollout. And I think the commission was successful at bringing the product. To Massachusetts with a steady hand. And with the necessary and. The paramount integrity necessary for the process. So I want to thank. I want to thank. Chair Judd Stein and fellow commissioners. The entire team at the gaming commission for their work on the project. And of course, I want to recognize the legislature's leadership. For affirmatively bringing sports wagering to the Commonwealth last summer. So I just wanted to note that for the group. But that being said, I want to thank the commissioners for their support. And I also want to thank the sports wagering business manager at the gaming commission for her presentation and update on sports wagering. Right, Crystal. Great. Thank you. I think. Handling the PowerPoint for me. Thank you, Grace. Okay. So I know many of you are already familiar with the sports wagering legislation and how the commission has prepared for the launch, but I just want to thank the commissioners for their support. And I just want to thank the commissioners for their support. And I'm just going to offer a really brief overview. And more focus on the insights from our first 60 days. Maybe. I'm not going to want me to. I think you're on mute. Grace, you're on mute. And I still only see just the cover slide. It's moving on my screen. So let me just undo it. And we should. So, you know, if you want, you can also use the packet. Everybody did receive right. The information in the packet. So let's. Yeah, I can do it myself too. I. Managed it before. Um, let's see. Oh, here we go. And I see it. I'm not sure if you can see it. I'm not sure if you can see it. I'm not sure if you can see it. I'm not sure if you can see it. Can you see the movie now. Yeah. Yes. No. Love. So. Just as a quick update as of April, we asked the two. 35 states. Which are not. I think the last two come online. I'm not. I had written that down. I don't have it here. So I'm not going to get guests, but one just came online last month. And I've got a new one. This one, and I'm not sure. I'm not sure if you can see it. I'm not sure if you can see it. Well, I'm not sure if you can see it. I'm not sure if you can see it. I've got a new one. So here we go. So the last chapter. 23 and which is ever been statute. For sports. We're doing in the Commonwealth highlights really are the three categories of licensees created. The two associated tax brackets and our particular legal parameters around age, credit card limits and restrictions really. And collegiate sports. A little asterisk there because we've been asked in the past. of Massachusetts teams for tournaments, which include four or more teams. This infographic, which briefly showed up and disappeared. So there we go. Is just a quick snapshot of the timeline from August 1st, 2022, when the legislation passed through March 10th, 2023, when our online wagering operators launched visibly. And as has been discussed, a lot happened in that timeframe, including around 80 as we've guessed, pre-launch public meetings, all dedicated to sports wagering, the review of 14 applications. And in that timeframe, the retail launch at our three casinos. Next slide. To prepare for going live, a significant number of regulations had to be developed and promulgated while house rules and internal principles all had to be approved. But in addition, several key processes have been ongoing, including coordination with the Department of Revenue to set up the interface for winnings intercepts due to the state, such as back taxes and child support. The licensing division and our investigations and enforcement bureau has not only been working on the operational licensing, but occupational licensure as well. Significant work has gone into developing the catalog of group events and wagers. A VSC list for sports wagering has been implemented and all operators are now integrated with MGC to redevelop the app. And notably Game Sense has found a lot of success with their live chat platform. In this world of mobile, that seems to be really beneficial. And of course, as we move forward, we're developing reporting processes, determining audit schedules and other regulatory procedures, compliance and oversight. Here, you can see the operators who went live on our official launch dates. So you have the three casinos for our retail launch on January 31st and these six mobile operators for the March 10th launch, which was just ahead of March Madness. As of May, we bring on two more. Better has already received their Certificate of Operations and Fanatics is preparing for launch in the next couple of weeks. And they all should appear on my slide. There we go. So better and Fanatics on their way. And then we will have the full spectrum of anticipated licensees for categories one and three on the final slide with the two on the way. And those are about that in that one. So according to Vixio's sports betting outlook for April, which just arrived like four days ago, the Massachusetts launch was the second largest on record. And their quote right there, it was not in your original slide because this report just came out, but essentially that was measured by the daily online handle with daily wagers per capita. We can also look at the first month's handle of comparable jurisdictions and markets. Important to note here that handle was the total amount of wagers placed where revenue is the margin of handle remaining after payouts. So what you see here is revenue and we'll talk about that a little bit, but the Massachusetts handle for the first month was approximately 584 million. And for reference, that's on par with Michigan's first month at 594 million. A lot of people ask about Ohio because that launched in January just ahead of us. And that was over a billion in handle, but for reference in March, it came down to 738 million, which is only a little more than we were at. So great reference points there. And as you're seeing on this slide, which is an example of the monthly reports we distribute, March was the first month we had both retail and online. So you can see the total taxable is fourth way during revenue here, had just over 47 million with 9.3 million in taxes collected and the hold at around 8.5%. So if you're wondering how that revenue weighs comparatively, you're talking handle, but as far as revenues. So I pulled some for some similar states. New Jersey was at about 69 million, Connecticut 16.5, Michigan 46. So it runs the gamut, Maryland 48. That's a lot of people were interested in Maryland and Pennsylvania, which was about 60%. We were right, really successful launch. The next slide will give you a picture of the taxes which have been collected thus far, which was February and March. It's the combined total bringing that total to just over 9.5 million. And April's numbers will be out around May 15th. So we'll have a new picture. And I included slide 11, just as a reference for anyone who will want to see how those taxes are allocated. I always find that to be a really great image that we put out of it here. So here's where we dig into the first 45 days. The gaming commission received this report from GeoComply, which is our partner for device and location-based monitoring and fraud detection. This is the first 45 days of online ledgering. You can see the largest areas of new users here, which was really interesting. And in that timeframe, in that 45 days, there were over 91 million transactions on 979,000 devices, the mouthful. Interestingly, GeoComply, as I said, they are monitoring location and fraud detection. So they also stopped over 187,000 accounts from placing bets outside of math. So I think this is a really interesting, it just shows you what they're doing and how that technology is accurate. Interesting to note from the data, I think, for this crew, GeoComply could actually tell that in Rhode Island and New Hampshire, where there's one operator, very limited competition, over 3,000 bettors tried to place a bet from Rhode Island or New Hampshire, and then later across to Massachusetts, where they could successfully log into their accounts. So it's really, really that accurate. And interesting that people are interested in the competition we offer. While that 45-day mark wasn't all that long ago, we did ask for some updated numbers for this briefing, so you'll see I also did include through April 30th. And at that point, there were over 950,000 unique sports-wadering users, sorry, and very close to 100 million transactions already. By my calculations, that's just under 2 million a day. And in that same 45-day time period, this graph really just shows you the market share by operator, Massachusetts is clearly very heavily led by DraftKings and Fandle. And of course, that also demonstrates how much of a race to market share and competition there was for user acquisition, which naturally brought with it a heavy saturation of marketing and a variety of promotions at the onset. We are already seeing that advertising scale back, which we've heard from many other jurisdictions is the case. What the commission was certainly prepared had researched and emphasized consumer protections all along and wrapped those elements into our regulations. Our regulations are robust and address issues from the gamut of marketing and advertising. From promotional and marketing language that isn't allowed, false advertising, restrictions for minors, events that consist primarily of minors and college campuses. Very particular in ensuring no messaging is distributed to individuals on PSE lists, our voluntary self-exclusion lists. Ensuring there's no intrusion at sporting events, having particular restrictions on endorsements, and of course, just cohesively ensuring responsible gaming and problem gambling elements or anything. So you can tell we've been busy. This wasn't originally the last slide in your packet, but I realized it wouldn't really be a proper update about sports related to finding an instance of division at the whole. So our carpenter is the operations manager, business manager and director band, who is also on this call, I should note. And we were formed as a unit in February, hit the ground running, though we'd all been previously involved through our formal roles in various capacities of the process of the work. So any of us would be willing to answer your questions or that I can take any questions you have right now. Crystal, I know it's kind of impossible, no one has a crystal ball on these things, but in terms of the other kind of remaining brick and mortar sports books, well, I guess it's two categories, the kiosks, right? I know there's gonna be a study and then there's the potential for kiosks coming out, kind of the timeline on that. And then the two remaining, paramutual brick and mortar sports books as well. Any timeline on those? I think Mark was, maybe he is on this call, but he could, Mark Van Der Linden could speak to you more about the timeline of the studies. I know they're undergoing, there's a lot around that. In fact, we talked about it a little bit today on public media. And he could probably dive into that. I think there's also some movement. I think on Monday, there might be some update on category too, I'm not sure, but we are, everything's in process, so. Yeah, I could address Steve. There was a study that was required in the Sports Wagering Act that we look at the feasibility of sports wagering kiosks and bars and restaurants. We are at the, basically at the finish line in selecting a successful team to conduct that research. So that should begin soon, assuming that procurement finishes successfully. Thanks, Mark. And the CAT2 properties are going through licensing and approval process now. So they're kind of going through that process. And to add to that, we will be coming, well, right now we have one that has submitted an application. That's the Rainham facility. Thank you, Jeff. I'm sorry. Thank you. I have a quick question, if I may. Sure. Crystal, great presentation and congratulations on your new role. Question, on the slide that you shared in regards to the percentage of new users or the number of new users in relations to cities and towns. Is there a possibility to get additional information from that, for example, it would be really interesting to see the number of new users compared to what the percentage of the population. So for example, you might have like 10,000 people using in Quincy, but Boston's a big city, but percentage-wise it might be higher percentage of folks in Quincy using, engaging in sports betting than people, the folks in Boston. So it'd be interesting just to kind of maybe drill down if that's possible. I'm not sure if that is possible, but that'll be great. And then obviously I have additional requests if we can get more data, specifically around demographics would be really interesting. Yeah, this is not our tool. It's Geo-Comply, and what they're showing in that slide that you only quickly saw is really just the users and then what percentage of that is our user base, but I'm not sure how deep they dive into the capital or anything like that. So we can certainly ask always, there's more data in some of these than you could ever imagine. So we're learning the system ourselves, but I will look into that for you. We also like, I'm sorry, I have another question. If I may mark. I'm wondering also who we use that data as well to maybe, I'm not sure if you find this helpful mark, but to determine the number of users and compared to how many folks are utilizing our responsible gambling tools, for example, voluntary self-exclusion and what's the percentage of, if you have 900,000 users, how many folks have voluntary self-exclude? I just think it makes interesting to do some analysis around the user base versus how people are using certain tools. You just feel great interest. Yeah, actually, just a couple of points on that. I think that's a really interesting question, Victor. And it seems like if we know the number of unique users within a specific town or city, we can, you can begin to take a look at sort of the per capita within that specific geographical area. And utilization of our G tools is very interesting to us and we're slicing and dicing that data. And so for example, we just passed a RG regulation today for plain management tools. And a key piece of that is that we have a carve out to make sure that we're collecting the data from operators on utilization of that tool, but also other RG tools that are available. Thank you, Mark. Thank you, Crystal. Okay. Thank you, Crystal, for the information. I found it interesting and also recognizing that I need to dig into the terminology a little bit more myself. So I might be in touch soon to do that. Thank you so much. Any other questions for Crystal or Shelley? Move on. Right, we'll move on. I'm gonna move to our research agenda. So for this segment, I need to reaffirm to the membership that our governing statute, Chapter 23 of the Expanded Gaming Act, Section 68, designates that our body will discuss matters of gaming policy, advises and makes recommendations. As such, we will now hear from Mark Benderlinden, Director of Research and Responsible Gaming at the Commission regarding the mass gaming commissions potential research agenda for fiscal year 2024. I encourage the fellow committee members to listen to Mark's presentation, offer any insight and input you have regarding his proposed agenda and the input provided here today at this meeting will be brought back to the commissioners for their consideration for the 2024 agenda. So Mark, with that, I'll let you go. I'll mention we do have two presentations, yours and one other scheduled today in a 4.30 end time. Maybe we can push past that a tiny bit, but just please keep that in mind. All right, thank you, Chair Serpa. And good afternoon, everybody. I'm Mark Benderlinden, Director of Research and Responsible Gaming at the Mass Gaming Commission. I have two documents in your packet today. One is the March 23 research update and the other is a memo outlining the proposed FY24 gaming research agenda. I'm going to try to truncate my presentation for you because I really am interested in the feedback that you have. So I'm not going into great detail in the research update, but just a few highlights or I guess updates. One, earlier today we had a presentation and released a final report. That's a public safety report assessing the influence of gambling on public safety, specifically looking at Everett and the surrounding communities. So this is the latest addition of our public safety research. Second, I wanted to just highlight in terms of knowledge mobilization. Yesterday we announced a partnership with the International Gambling Counselors Certification Board in order to use research that comes from this research agenda. It's being forwarded to gambling and gaming counselors, clinicians and helping professionals. There were specifically interested in our community-engaged research. Dr. Bonnie Andrews, who is the research manager here at the Gaming Commission has tailored some of our research and delivered it to that group and that will be an ongoing relationship. And then finally, just as a highlight of how this group is really important in advising the gaming research agenda, last year it wasn't on the research agenda when I initially proposed it, but there was a request that we do a deeper dive into casino workforce, taking a look at the quality of jobs and what types of jobs they are and what are opportunities for advancement. We included that in our annual research agenda for fiscal year 23. You'll see it briefly mentioned in the March 2023 research update, but it's exactly that. We're doing a deeper dive in casino jobs and trying to take a look at using payroll data to analyze patterns of hiring, compensation, mobility and turnover in casinos in the coming month. So I'll be looking for that report soon. Mr. McNeon, I'm sure that will be a good point of special interest for you. So moving directly then over to the next item in your packet is the proposed FY24 gaming research agenda. I'm going to try to kind of get into the meat and bones of this, but again, the expanded gaming act enshrines a role of research by requiring an annual research agenda. This is not a one-off. This is not an isolated report or study that's required, but this is ongoing and that is special in Massachusetts and there's no other state that requires this. And specifically this research agenda is to examine the social and economic effects that expand the game of gambling and obtain scientific information relative to neuroscience, psychology, sociology, epidemiology and etiology gambling. So I've spent a better part of 10 years wrapping my head around all of the different directions that we can go with this research agenda. And the beauty is we will continue to plug away at this very broad mandate. Next year and in the years to come. We have a research strategic plan in order to help organize that it's broken into seven key areas. It's economic research, social research, community engaged research, which that is a specific area with taking a look at groups and communities which largely are greater or risk of gambling related harm. We have a public safety research agenda, which I mentioned an example of that just a minute ago. We also have a component that does evaluation of responsible gaming programs that are being employed by the gaming commission to mitigate and prevent gambling related harm. We had a large cohort study that which took a look at the course of gambling behavior over time and led to and contributed to the internationally recognized lower risk gambling guidelines. And then finally, data sharing, which is sounds boring, but really it's about transparency and making the data available to researchers sort of around the world, giving them access to our raw data so they can do their own analyses. So the proposed FY24 gaming research agenda, it's included in your packet a couple of pages in. You'll see that the total of this estimated research agenda is $1,865,000. The research agenda is funded out of the Public Health Trust Fund, which is a portion of revenue from our category one licensees as well as an assessment across all gaming licensees. This is a larger research agenda than it has been in the past or specifically last year. And this is largely due because we're really interested in continuing an exploration of sports wagering in the Commonwealth. This is our great opportunity to establish some baselines to get some early information about the impacts of sports wagering in the Commonwealth. So to begin breaking it down into the specific deliverables, and I have this included in your packet, and you'll notice that I have the name of the study that we're proposing, a very brief description of that study and how it relates back to the gaming statute. And just a caveat, at this stage of the research agenda, we have a general description of it. We have sort of a general proposal of it, but it's not a detailed sort of spoken document going into details about methodology and overall goals and objectives. Once we get sort of the green light from your advice and the green light from the commission, at that point, we would put a lot more of this on the bones of how we would advance these specific studies. So under social and economic research, we're proposing an integrated social and economic impacts report. This is a big report. This is taking a look at the overall impacts of gambling in Massachusetts from 2000, from when the very first casino opened. It utilizes the follow-up general population survey, which takes a look at gambling behavior now compared to 2013 when we did a baseline of this. It also interestingly uses a matched community. So taking a look at communities that didn't receive casinos or don't have casinos and comparing them to communities that do so you can begin to say, what would have happened had a casino not been placed in Springfield? That will be a large comprehensive social and economic report. We're also proposing moving more towards online surveys. They're just in brief survey methodology is complicated and oftentimes very expensive. Online panels provide an opportunity to have lower costs to get a general impression of gambling behavior in the state. Online panels are typically representative of the overall general population. So that's an important piece, but we've spent some time over the past year trying to come as close as we can to get these types of online panels representative of the general population. So you'll see the next couple of deliverables really focused on these online panels. The first is what we call OPS online panel survey. This will be a report that will be released and using data that was captured in FY 22 and FY 23. This will align with the general or the follow-up general population survey in using that more expensive survey methodology that is representative of the general population. We are proposing using AirSage data, basically mobile phone data to understand and track how to state visitorship. Comparing this to a study that was done by a well-known gambling researcher, Clyde Barrow, that was done prior to the first casino opening in Massachusetts. This answers that question that goes way back to the 2001 of an expanded gaming act of who's coming, what impact does casinos have in visitorship to Massachusetts casinos? And then the broader question of what's the overall economic impact of this type of visitorship for tours and coming to the state. Moving on down, we will be administering another online panel survey in March of 2024, which continues that timeline of online panels to continue to monitor and understand sportsway during gambling behavior overall. The past couple of years, we've included what we call an ad hoc report, recognizing that research interests, research questions will attempt to prop up after the research agenda is approved. So providing some space and an allocation of funds so that we can take on additional projects as needed. Public safety research, I mentioned that we just finished the Everett and surrounding community public safety report for wrapping up Springfield Public Safety Report. We haven't done a public safety report in Plainville now for a few years. So we were proposing that we head back down to Plainville and that our prime analyst and their team do that survey. We're also proposing adding to the public safety category and assessment on the influence of expanded gaming on human trafficking in Massachusetts. And we had a long discussion about this and it's more to me. This is really difficult to assess for a variety of reasons. And it's not captured in your typical public safety study. You may get glimmers of it. You may, in fact, we got glimmers of it in some of our community-engaged research. There's enough evidence for us to say that we would like to have a better understanding of this so that we can address it more effectively from the commission but also from law enforcement in the state. For community-engaged research, a couple of things here. We're proposing that we continue an investment in this community-engaged research by supporting two more community-engaged research projects and that would be funded out of our traditional funding with the Public Health Trust Fund. As Chair Jett Stein mentioned, there's also an opportunity through the Community Mitigation Fund to provide some funding for community-engaged research from that. There's a couple of different types of funding from the Community Mitigation Fund. There's pilot funding for groups that haven't completely formed the research question but have some ideas so they can use that funding to come up with a more solid research plan. And then there's a type two, which is that implementation. So much more funding in order to conduct research for groups that have a well-formed research idea and plan in place. We're proposing continuing this commitment in data sharing. So we have what we call mode, the Massachusetts Open Data Exchange. We have several data sets that currently exist in mode and researchers can apply to use that. We're also continuing to plug away on what we call the Section 97 data set, which is all of the player data that exists within casinos anonymized, deposited into this repository and made available for research purposes. So that we've said last year we're very close. We continue to plug away at this requirement and hope to have that available very soon. And it's a collaboration with the Department of Public Health. It's a collaboration with GIA, the Center for Health Information and Inlettings. Responsible Gaming Evaluation. We were actually funding through the International Center for Responsible Gaming right now to do an evaluation of the Play My Way program that was mentioned. We are currently doing an evaluation of the GameSense program that should be wrapping up over the summer. This is an ongoing commitment. Responsible Gaming is something that is a high priority of the commission as we seek to prevent and mitigate gambling-related harm. So there's a couple of different options of evaluation projects that we're proposing. Either one, an evaluation of some of the sports, wage and responsible gaming tools, or two, there's, specifically, there's temporary prohibitions that are required and included in MGC regulation. There's an opportunity perhaps to do some pilot projects within those, within that requirement that we would want to evaluate the effectiveness of and consider it basic. Sports, wage, and research. It wasn't one of our seven categories that we identified in our strategic plan that we're proposing a series of studies related to sports, wage. First is an eye-gaming study, while not sports, wage, or high-gaming. It's not currently available in Massachusetts. It's available in a few other states. I think there's six states in the U.S. that allow for eye-gaming. And if we continue to look down the road of what is the evolution of gaming in this country, we want to pay attention to eye-gaming as a possibility and have a better understanding of what the potential public health impacts are of eye-gaming. I mentioned the kiosk study. So understanding the feasibility of kiosks in bars and restaurants, that is in the final stages of procurement will largely be carried out in FY 24. There was also in the sports, wage, or impact specific study looking at minority women in veteran business that are prizes in sports, wage, oring. That is something that we wanted to allow the sports, wage, oring industry to kind of find its footing over the next several months. And it seems optimal to launch a study like that in the summer where we fall FY 24. And then finally, the final study in sports, wage, oring that we're proposing is a study looking at different existing marketing affiliate payment structures. So basically it's a study of looking, doing a deeper dive of gambling advertising and ways that advertising is structured in the state and looking at its impact on players. We have a broader advertising study that is currently underway that was included in last year's research agenda. The research team at UMass Amherst is working on that study now. That bill of verbal was expected over the summer. So taking it broad and becoming a little bit more narrowly focused on looking at impacts of advertising on Massachusetts residents. Finally, a continued commitment to our research review process. We have a team of outside experts that review every single research project that comes to the commission. Reviewing those before we were considered in final, they often advise us on a range of research matters as well. And then finally is this continued commitment towards knowledge translation in exchange. We have over 60 reports and studies that have been published by the gaming commission. Our biggest challenge is making it, is mobilizing it. And so when I talk about the international gambling certification board, it's a perfect example of knowledge mobilization, looking at ways that we can continue to mobilize and use that research in Massachusetts to inform policy and to inform practice. That's the proposed research agenda. It's gonna take a breath and I'm going to turn it over to this group to tell me what they think and where they think we should go. Mark, thank you. It's certainly an impressive and substantive collection of projects that you've proposed. So group, I know that Mark is interested in hearing our feedback and commentary. So what did you think of Mark's proposed agenda? For some context, last year when Mark went through the statutory required exercise, this group did say and note that we didn't have sports wagering on as a research topic. For those who are on the committee last year, you remember that, that did get adopted by the commission and a study was done by UMass and was informed policies. So this committee's input is so valuable. Thanks for reminding me of that, Chair Jettstein. You're right, it was that study as well as the workforce study. Yes. I don't know if this is too granular, Mark. And I haven't read the study that came out today, but on the public safety, is there a dollar amounts attached? Did you attach like a dollar amounts that everyone's surrounding communities spends or I guess it would be the state police and local police spends per year on Encore? We didn't take, we took a look only a crimes calls for service and collision. So actual police data, we did not connect that to expenditures on public safety workforce. Okay, I know that there's a debate right now around the community benefits agreement, community host agreement, excuse me, getting renegotiated. So that might factor in there, but I guess having the hours in the call log is important too in calculating that. Okay, we'll take that feedback and as we think about public safety research, we could talk to our crime analyst of how our public safety team, how that can be integrated. We use a group called Justice Research Associates. There's a couple of individuals that are nationally recognized crime analysts with great experience, we'll mention that. Thanks Mark. Okay, other questions or comments from Mark? As I say, Mark, I thought it was, it's an aggressive and a comprehensive list. I'm sure you may get feedback from others over time, but I think as presented here, it's a valid set of projects that we should move forward with. Thank you, Chair. Chair, I have one question or comment if I may, and I know we're up against the time, so I'll be really brief. Nope. Yes. Please. Thank you. So Mark, thank you for the presentation. I really appreciate it. I just want to reiterate and also want to acknowledge that I know that you've been open to the comment that I'm about to make, but I just want to preface that by saying that. But I really want to continue to stress the importance within the totality of the research agenda that we think critically about equity in all aspect of the work, specifically because we understand from research that people of color are disproportionately impacted by gambling. And I continue to be concerned about the notion that although I appreciate the funding and the opportunity for community led research, it is also vastly not funded at the same level as a general research. And I think that there's an opportunity to continue to integrate those equity principles and specifically representation within the larger research. And I know that, again, I want to reiterate that you've been open to that. I know I stated that here and I know that you have looked at that and continue to work towards that, but I just want to continue to lift that up of the importance of that and the continued research moving forward. Thanks for carrying the voice for that, Victor. I do appreciate that. Leveraging and looking to the Community Mitigation Fund is an expansion of the community-engaged research you mentioned it. Chair Judd Stein is also a huge advocate of our community-engaged research category. We brought this to the Gaining Research Advisory Committee a couple of weeks ago, had a long discussion about this specific research category in ways that we can continue to evolve it to make sure that we are considering equity and inclusion, looking at alternative funding structures. So I appreciate your comments and it doesn't escape us the importance of that. Oh, thank you, Mark. And thank you, Victor, because those are important topics and we'll make note of them here. So I know that I am very interested in learning more about the Community Mitigation Fund. We are at our scheduled stop time, but if the group is amenable, if we could push through the presentation and do that, I'm happy to. Is that a consensus that we should do that? My very fast talk, if you haven't learned already. Typical boss. I got a few affirmative thumbs up, so let's do that. And Victor, Jamie, don't go fast. Let's do it right. But so I'll turn it over now to Jamie McNeil from Unite here, Local26, to speak about the Community Mitigation Fund and the impact it's had on his organization. Thank you so much, Chair, I appreciate it. And I am conscious of people's time. So, and please forgive my PowerPoint. This is, yeah, I missed this class in high school. I actually don't think there was PowerPoint when I was in high school, but I'll go through this as quick as I can. So I think you all know, you're familiar with the Community Mitigation Fund, what it is. I wanna really thank Chair Judd Stein in conversations with her. She really kind of motivated me to make this presentation and really put a face on the Community Mitigation Fund and who it really has helped in terms of workforce development. So here's some facts about the funds. I think we're all familiar, we can go to the next slide. So I'm on the board. This is actually a really great story and we're not that great at telling it, but back in the late 90s, early 2000s when I first joined the union, housekeepers and hotel workers started a training center. Union hotel housekeepers and hotel workers started a training funds that funded a training center that was established in 2004 and it was initially for the unionized hotel workforce. If anyone has worked in the hospitality industry, there is a constant kind of movement amongst the different trades and skills. So housekeepers often move up to be a banquet server which is slightly better paying. A bartender might wanna go over to banquet server or a banquet server might wanna become a bartender. So there's all these different skills and trades and hotel work is kind of unique in that way. You can have an entire training center just based off the different skills and the technology is also always changing. So we train on that, but it's a separate 501C3 minority owned nonprofit. I'm just one of five board members, but they are our training provider and the great thing about them being independent is they can get grants to work on special projects and bring new folks into the industry. That's what we're always hearing, especially lately from the hotels and the different food service providers. And this is about 70% of the hotels are in the union in Boston, including Encore. So we'll go to the next slide. So Best Hospitality has been lucky enough to receive funding for the last three years from the Community Mitigation Fund. And the way the fund works is the best partners with, I believe it's called a regional consortium, right? That's who gets the money, but then we partner with that consortium, whether it's the pick, excuse me, Private Industry Council, City Boston, Office of Workforce Development or Mass Hire, Metro North, we partner with them to do the actual training. So in the last three years, we've been able to serve 149 clients. And the caveat is the next slide. So 149 clients, but there's been amongst those 149 clients, 1135 enrollments. So enrollments is all the different classes. The reason I bring that up is a lot of the folks we deal with, excuse me, a lot of the folks we train, they have significant barriers to entering the job force, the excuse me, the workforce or the hospitality industry. So if somebody's coming to do an English class, they're also potentially getting a citizenship class as well. They are also probably trying to get educated on computers. So we work with technical goes home so they can get a laptop when they go home. A lot of hotels really focus on CPR and kind of active situations. Hotels have different protocols around what to do if there's an emergency situation in the hotel. And then there's the actual job itself, right? So hospitality, serve safe tips, whatever the job is. And some folks might have physical barriers working on their ergonomics, right? And this leads to a lot of retention in the job, focusing on things like ergonomics where a hotel might not have the ability to provide that. And then I put at the end, the biggest, and I highlighted it in the list is career coaching, right? Having somebody full time to follow up, did you send the resume? Did you make the phone call? Did you send another email? Did you physically go down there to talk to the general manager? Having those wraparound services is so important. So again, 149 folks, but over 1,100 different classes that they took. So you can go to the next slide. So this is a demographic slice here. This probably shouldn't come as any surprise, but this is fairly representative of the hospitality industry. People always are a bit shocked on the education, but so many of our members and folks coming in to join the industry are educated in the country they came from and they're learning a new language, they're learning new skills coming to this country. So go to the next slide. This is for those 149 where those folks came from. As you can see, it's a lot of folks from Boston working with the PIC, working with the mayor's office of workforce development, but you'll also see surrounding communities. Everett ends the surrounding communities to Encore, given the workforce development board. You also see Quincy's in there because it's kind of a bit of an outlier. Quincy's for folks who don't know is a fairly heavily, it's a hospitality city. We have an incredible amount of members from Quincy. It's just kind of an affordable place on the tee that a number of folks who have been in the hospitality industry for a long time live. And again, maybe I'm saying too much about this, but during COVID a lot of people lost their jobs in hotels and needed to get kind of read. They didn't know the new technology. They needed to either we're moving into a job at Encore, which opens much earlier than the hotels. And so they're getting kind of reconnected to the workforce. And I think that's where you see a lot of the Quincy residents there. So go to the next slide. So this is really what I was trying to get at, you know, and I think Chair Judson, you can correct me if I'm wrong. I really wanted to put a face on this fund and the work we do. And this is Songquin Lan Lin. He's an immigrant from China. He had very, he came to us as a friend of a member. He heard about our program kind of through word of mouth, had very, very, very limited English skills. He was cleaning Airbnb's, making less than $20 an hour through a kind of a temp agency that cleans these different residential units that are used as Airbnb's really wanted a full-time job, really wanted a good wage, really wanted benefits, really wanted to, you know, have a stable life and found out about the program through the community mitigation funds. We were able to train him in our English class. He was a quick study. He learned English incredibly quick, made him available for our hotel pre-apprenticeship program. And we're able to, he was a grade A student and got a job at an area hotel, making 27, 21 an hour with full benefits, a pension, you know, the legal, all the union benefits. And, you know, his motto now is I want to get everybody else, you know, all my neighbors, everyone else I work with to be able to get a similar job to me and go through the best hospitality program and is really our best advocate for working in the hospitality industry. So anyway, I just wanted to kind of put a face on, he's kind of the one of the many, many success stories that is possible through the community mitigation fund and the mass gaming commission. So I'm happy to answer any questions folks might have. Yeah, no, thank you, Jamie. That's super inspiring, right? The best program and seeing a real world example of it being used. So sure, are there others with questions about the program and how Jamie's organization put it to work? Chairman Serpa, this is Paul Piccini again. It's been quite some time since we've had a GPAC meeting and I don't believe the community mitigation fund would recap, if you will, for last year's expenditures were shared with the committee. And we're wondering if that could be shared with the committee at this point in time. And maybe someone other than yourself since you're new to the committee might have that information. Oh, yeah. We certainly can pull it and get it distributed. And Kathy, did you mention a number? Was it 38 million? Did I hear that number earlier today? We can, we can get the details and you know, Paul, I was remiss not bringing that today, because of course we didn't have that meeting last year during transition leadership and also our busy time. I would be remiss to try to capture it appropriately. So what we could do perhaps Grace has had Chief Delaney and Millie and Mary put together a summary of last year's and then be prepared for our next GPAC meeting to have that full sum report that I did mention. That would be helpful. Thank you. And it's just because of the timing of this meeting to the last meeting, really. Yes, that's really right. And Paul, for correct me, it's been a long day. I started at 830 and we had a full sum public meeting that moment until that quarter of three, but we did right near the conclusion of our last meeting award $500,000 to the type of training that Jamie just went over to the region B area. No, to the region A area that will, I think actually fund the program that Jamie just described and then 535,000 to the Western region B area for training. So I can give you that quick snapshot for today's work. Okay, terrific. That's going forward, but you need that report from the rear view. And I, and again, my apologies for not remembering you. I didn't have that. Well, thank you Kathy. I'm sure we'll look through it when we receive it and be encouraged by what we find. Oh, yes. I think you're right on the number. There's a lot of numbers that come through us and I don't want to be make a mistake. I think it was the number. It was your number. So if I'm right here, right? Okay. I guess I should check at this point. If there's no other questions for Jamie. You know, are there other members? Any other members who have a quick updates on their activities. Okay. So I'm just going to go back to that. Right now on behalf of the committee, anything that they wanted to share with the group. But your work or what's going on in your region. Okay. Great. So this kind of segues perfectly. We should probably talk about. The next G pack meetings, right? So it is May. I would suggest. That we have a specific request that they want to bring to bear. That we would meet early fall. For our next meeting. What do people feel like that's the right time for our next discussion? Oh, okay. Great. We'll say yes. And you know, if something comes up, we can reach out and get a hold of folks to put another meeting together. And for the future agenda items, I'm not going to talk about that. I'm not going to talk about that here. Or if you want to get in touch with me, but I certainly would suggest that we had a minimum, you know, focus on a report from one of the other two. Standing subcommittees. Particularly for the new members that would be useful. I could work with chair Judd Stein to figure out what would be appropriate, but. I would certainly have that happen unless people have ideas that would be appropriate. Everybody sounds good. Great. So we'll do that. Grace, I think we need to not move to the minutes, the approval of the minutes from the prior two meetings, correct? Cause we don't have our, our meeting attendee quorum. Is that right? Correct. Yeah. So we will keep those in draft form. Okay. So we'll do those at our next meeting. Next item on our agenda is to adjourn, but let me check to make sure there aren't other. Comments or questions that people want to. Bring out, bring out in this meeting. I certainly enjoyed the first meeting and went quickly. And there's a lot of information, a lot of good work being done. But I'd be curious to know if everybody else felt this was a. A good first meeting of 2023. Okay. Thank you, Paul. Thank you. Okay. Well, then why don't we move to adjourning? Do I have a motion to adjourn? Make a motion. Second. Second. All right. All in favor. Hi. Hi. Really everybody. This was great. I appreciate your time. I know chair Judd Stein appreciates everyone's time. And interest and concern for, for everything that's being done. So let's continue with that as much as possible. Thank you. Thank you. Really everybody. This was great. I appreciate your time. I know chair Judd Stein appreciates everyone's time. And interest and concern. For, for everything that's being done. So let's continue with that as much as possible.