 to you. All right. All right, go ahead. Thanks. So good morning, everyone. This is a convening of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission. We are holding this meeting virtually, so we'll do our roll call. Good morning, Commissioner O'Brien. Good morning, right here. Good morning, Commissioner Hill. Good morning. I'm here. Good morning, Commissioner Skinner. Good morning. And good morning, Commissioner Maynard. Good morning. All right, we'll get started. We have today, it's January 18th, my youngest birthday is tomorrow. Good day. And it is public meeting number 495. Five more big ones, guys, and we'll be at 500. We are not going to proceed with minutes. Commissioner Maynard, we'd like to roll that over to the next meeting. Yes, Madam Chair, we'll present those from March 23rd and April 13th, along with some from April 25th, May 4th, and May 8th. So a lot of minutes to the next meeting, but I appreciate everyone having patience with me. Okay, so it's the 23rd, April 13th, the 25th, and May 4th, and 8th. Great, thanks. That's great. Okay, great. So we're going to turn right to our administrative update and our interim executive director, Todd Grossman. We've got an interesting presentation today. Thanks. Yes, thank you. Good morning, Madam Chair. Good morning, commissioners, and to all of our team and all who are joining us here this morning. We do have one matter under the administrative update for your consideration and be presented by Deputy General Council Carrie Terese. She'll speak about cashless wagering at casinos and the plan moving forward. And so good morning to you, Carrie. Good morning. Thank you. And good morning, Madam Chair and commissioners. So yeah, we wanted to provide you with a brief update on the possible implementation of cashless wagering payment technology for slot machines. As I'm sure you recall, the Commission held a meeting at Llanage Park Casino in October, at which Penn provided you with information and a demonstration regarding their proposed use of cashless wagering for slot machines. During that presentation, they explained, you know, how the cashless wagering system works essentially by allowing a patron to use an app to load funds into a digital wallet to then use that app to transfer the funds to a slot machine and then to cash out from that slot machine and add funds back into the app into their digital wallet. You all raised several questions during that presentation and staff members have also followed up with Penn with particular questions. We did receive a response from Penn just before the holidays and we're reviewing that response and plan to bring that information and those clarifications to you at a future meeting and likely use it as a guide in drafting regulations should the Commission vote to allow cashless wagering payment technology. You'll recall as well that some of the Commission's main concerns revolved around responsible gaming issues. So before bringing a proposed regulatory framework to you along with certain policy questions, we'll be bringing a responsible gaming focused presentation to you at the next meeting on February 1st to give you a baseline on some of the main responsible gaming issues that are inherent in cashless wagering and also some of the ways in which regulators might address those issues. We would then be bringing a regulatory framework to you for review that will likely include some policy questions for the Commission to address. We anticipate a framework that would include several regulations. So we would be looking at possibly an operational regulation that would require that would outline how the cashless wagering system works, how it's used by patrons and the operators of the casinos. Also an internal control regulation that would require operators to have certain internal controls in place related to cashless wagering payment technology. Also a responsible gaming regulation that we would expect to have components similar to our clean management regulation on the sports wagering side. So that would include tools for the patrons to use to help them with any responsible gaming issues such as limit setting. And then there may be additional tweaks to some regulations. We're still in the process of assessing the needs. But for example, we may need details related to data privacy given the technology that will be used for these apps. And we also may need adjustments to regulations in which we've adopted GLI standards related to cashless wagering. Should we be straying in any way from the standard, particularly given that it's I think about 10, 10 or more years old. So that's where we are at the moment. We expect to come to you several times in the coming months on this issue, but happy to take any questions that you might have now. Questions, questions for Carrie. Okay. Thank you, Carrie, Todd. Thank you, Carrie. That is the sole item I had on the administrative update, Madam Chair, so ready to proceed further. Okay, we're going to move to item number four, the legislative update. We had Todd present the draft letter that was compiled sort of through a joint effort. Commissioner Hill, I'll turn it over to you. This letter that's in front of us is slightly different than the one that we first reviewed and might be helpful to remind us of that. Yes. After the last discussion, I had brought up one issue as part of the letter in the last discussion was the three year language that is currently in place where we cannot hire someone who has worked for a casino. There's a three year waiting period. And after the discussion, you know, I felt as did Todd, that there may be not a feeling that we should keep that language in. However, a couple of weeks ago, Madam Chair, when we thought we were going to be bringing it up again, I had suggested to you that I would like to revisit that language as I had talked to staff and they had given me examples of where the three year language hurt them in being able to hire some people that had very good experience and for timing purposes, which I would like to bring up with you again today, if that's OK. Todd, I don't know if you want to just quickly go over the letter one more time. We all have it, but just if you could share it and just go through it real quickly and then we can talk about the three year issue at the end, if that's all right, Madam Chair. Sounds perfect. Thanks. Thank you, Commissioner Hill. I'd be happy to do that. Would it be helpful if I actually share the letter on the screen and just kind of go through it? That that's what I would envision. OK, great. Let me just pull that up. I hope I shared the right page here. So this is the letter that you looked at last time. Could you make it just a tad bigger, please? Certainly. Made it so big. I can't even read it on the screen. All right. Does that work? Yeah. OK, so you'll see we've addressed it to, of course, the president of the Senate, Speaker of the House, members and the chairs of the committees on ways and means, and then the joint chairs of the committees on consumer protection and professional licensure. And then we broke down the proposals by category. The first category, you'll recall, relates just to sports wagering, both lining sports wagering with gaming in many ways. I these are my own highlights just to kind of direct our attention to particular areas. These are not highlighted in the actual letter, of course. So the first one here talks about creating a broader statutory exemption to the Massachusetts Public Records Law that would allow the Commission discretion to withhold certain documents that contain trade secrets, competitively sensitive and other proprietary information. As you were all aware, we do have some ability to protect certain information on the casino side of the house that ability is far more limited on the sports wagering side and the horse racing sides. And so this would propose that there be more clear authority outlining our ability to to do that. The second one gets into the Commission's ability to enter non-disclosure agreements. And there is language in Chapter twenty three K that discusses that this proposal would be just to clarify that language a bit to ensure that we're on the most solid footing possible in support of the non-disclosure agreements that we do have with our three casino gaming licensees. The second one would propose to allow the Commission and the IEB to obtain and provide pertinent information regarding applicants or licensees with other law enforcement entities or sports wagering regulatory bodies. As as you know, this authority exists under Chapter twenty three K and it is commonly made use of in the context of sharing information with other regulatory bodies and law enforcement agencies on the casino side of the house. So this proposal would expand that authority to the sports wagering operations as well. This next bullet pertains to what we commonly referred to as Section ninety seven data. As you know, on the casino side of the ledger, Section ninety seven is an important part of the gaming act. It's in the act itself. It's not in Chapter twenty three K, but it talks about the collection of customer tracking data or player data as as it is so that it can be studied and researched and a better understanding of gambling activities can be looked at. Such language does not exist in Chapter twenty three N on the sports wagering side. So the thought is that it the law could be amended to allow us to require that that information be provided as well. The next section and this is the top of page six in the packet, I believe. Addresses the community mitigation fund and you'll recall that this is actually the proposal for which there was a letter sent to the legislature in response to this proposal and the letter itself appears after our letter and essentially what our proposal is to expand the language in the community mitigation fund section sixty one B of chapter twenty three K to afford the commission greater discretion to distribute funds beyond the existing scope so that the commission may provide funds to potential projects that will just enhance post and surrounding communities in general and that it wouldn't be quite as limited as it is in the existing second statue. The next series of proposals relate to horse racing related matters and the one pertains to section sixty, which will recall is the resource development fund section and this proposal in general would authorize the commission to allocate a percentage of the funds annually for the commission's own administration of the horse racing division. You'll recall we talked a number of meetings ago about the changing economics of horse racing and the commission's ability to provide robust regulatory oversight. This would potentially provide the commission with one additional tool by which to ensure that we are able to do that on an ongoing basis. This this next one also applies to the resource development fund. This one, though, would similar to the community mitigation fund one that I discussed two bullets ago would allow the commission greater discretion to make use of the funds. And we actually should add in here the horse racing committee to some degree. But to those entities be allowed to make use of the funds in a slightly broader context, as made to be deemed necessary to enhance the racing industry and its participants in general. As you'll recall, of course, as the law is presently written, there are three buckets. There is the the purses, the breeding and then the health and welfare areas. And this would potentially entertain for greater ability to make use of the funds for other purposes, like development of a new race track and things along those lines. This next bullet point we've encountered a couple of times. You'll recall that there is language in Chapter 128 A that said deadlines by which applications for a racing license must be submitted. And that date is October 1st. This proposal would allow the commission to set a deadline on its own and not be required to abide by that October 1st deadline. Similarly, there's that November 15th date by which the commission must make a decision on an application. And the proposal would be that that be removed as well so that the commission can set its own deadlines based upon the complexity of an application and a variety of other factors that we can all envision that may require a greater time on our part to ensure that a sound decision is made. So that's what that bullet point gets at. This next one under Section five H, you'll recall, sets out all of the areas that the commission is to distribute the monies that are collected related to horse racing. And one of them, of course, is for the operation of the horse racing division. One of the others is for local aid. And so those two things, of course, are remain important, but there are a series of other things that could use a refresh and potentially a reorder that we may want to look at things that may have become outdated over the years that may require some attention. And then this this proposal simply draws attention to that and suggests that we have to look at the list. And then this final one here. Gets we've included it under responsible gaming. This gets into the monthly win-loss statement that you will recall is required under Section 29 of Chapter 23K. There are a few elements of it that could stand to be updated to ensure that they meet with modern understandings of responsible gaming and incorporate modern technology like email and things like that. And so that's what this proposal gets at as well. So that is the list. The signatories on this letter are proposed to be you, the commissioners yourselves. And then Commissioner Hill, of course, has raised that other item. And I'd be happy, Commissioner Hill and commissioners, if you'd like to just talk about that for a moment as well, I will stop sharing this letter for a moment. And I can share with you. Just give me one moment. The statute that we're talking about, it's only one line. I thought it might be helpful just to take a quick look at it. Yes, please. And let me see if I can. Can you all see them? OK. Yeah. OK. So where was it? Here it is. Give us a sign, Todd, please. Yeah. So this is Chapter 23K, Section Three, which talks a lot about the commission itself and the operations of the commission and the appointment of the commissioners and talks about the enhanced code of ethics and things along those lines. One of the provisions in here is this highlighted one here, which says that no individual shall be employed by the commission if during the period commencing three years prior to employment, that individual held any direct or indirect interest in or was employed by a license, a licensee under this chapter. And so I would just draw one important distinction just to help calibrate the thinking on this. This is not the post-employment cooling off period, if you will. We're talking about the pre-employment restriction here. So this language precludes anyone who has worked for a gaming licensee or anyone who is licensed under Chapter 23K for from being employed by the commission if they work for one of those entities three years preceding the time we would be interested in and employing them. And that is the point that Commissioner Hill was making earlier. So Commissioner Hill, if you'd like, you can jump back in on that one or we can be happy to talk about any of the provisions I just want. Thank you, Madam Chair, if I may. And thank you, Todd. So this issue was brought up by staff, actually, that they had had some concerns with hiring practices in the past. And if you don't mind, I'd like to share with you two emails that I received from staff and they've given me permission to read them. One is from Burke Kane and the others from Dr. Lightbaum. And one example that Burke had given to us, and I'm going to read it, said, our IEB Casino Compliance Coordinator had to wait a full three years to work with us as he was employed by PPC at the onset of their opening. Luckily, we stayed connected, but that time loss was valuable to such a knowledgeable employee from the casino industry. He has proven to be a high level asset to our team. Several other times to my recollection, casino folks have wanted to work with IEB only to be told of the three year pause. Several apps are kept from interviewing based on it with our licensee. And then Dr. Lightbaum also had reached out to us and said, thank you for the racing items you have in the draft letter to the legislature while it's fresh in my mind. I wanted to comment regarding casino employees needing three years separation before coming to work for the MGC. At Plain Ridge, there was a veterinarian who subbed for one day as Association Vet for PPC. Afterwards, she said she didn't want that position but would like to work for the MGC as blood gas vet. Because she had worked for the casino, we were advised she would have to wait three years. And there's a nationwide veterinarian shortage, as we all know. For this particular person, I think her three years will be up sometime next summer. For what it's worth, I can definitely support a one year separation, but three years seems too long, especially when it comes to seasonal and part time employees. So I wanted to bring this issue back up, Madam Chair, before the commission. I believe that the three years is a little extreme and I would be more than willing to and ask my fellow commissioners if we could add language to the legislative letter that would either lower it to the one year which was suggested by Dr. Leipam. I feel it should be zero, but that may be too extreme for my fellow commissioners. So I'm willing to put the one year as a suggestion but I wanted to bring it back up because I think it is an issue now. I understand why the legislature did it back with 23K, but I think now that we have been up and running for 10 years, that the three years may seem a little extreme now. I understand why back then, but I think today is very different from 10 years ago. So with that, Madam Chair, through you, I would love to hear from my fellow commissioners. So this is one of the occasions where I'm on the other side from Commissioner Hill. I understand why it was put in there. I think it still should be there. I think when you say we've been running for 10 years, you're talking about brick and mortar casinos. We just launched an entirely new industry last year. So the only thing that I would be open to is this idea of asking for an amendment that if the disqualifying employment was less than some period of time, where you're talking about the seasonal or part-time employment, other than that, I'm not inclined to lower it. I certainly don't want it eliminated. I think that's a bad idea, particularly with we have a new sports wagering industry right now, we could have eye gaming in the future. And so that rationale for why you want that cooling off period is still there and could potentially come as industries come online. So that's where I'm coming from. Well, I can hear a couple of examples that I do with PPC employees. It's quite frankly not something that's been brought to my attention as overly cumbersome in the past and the five plus years that I've been here. And I do think it's pretty important to keep the separation. So the only thing I would be open to in terms of requesting would be something along those lines of modifying the disqualifying employment. If it was a less than six month period or it was a seasonal, something like that to me, I think might be okay. Other than that, I'm not inclined to suggest that we change it. Mr. Leader. Thank you, Madam Chair. When we discussed this last time, I made an argument about agency capture. And I think the reason this is in here to begin with is to not allow the industry to capture the agency, which regulates them. And I support that wholeheartedly. And I'm for every reason articulated better than I could by Commissioner O'Brien. I would leave the three years. Am I open to, and by the way, I respect Burke and Dr. Lightbound's analysis and bringing this issue up. A one-off situation, maybe, right? I can see maybe making an exception for someone that's subbed in on a job or something temporarily, maybe putting that into the language. But I think the legislature and their infinite wisdom actually did what I think is right, which is separate the industry from the regulator for a period of time to make sure that the industry cannot influence the regular. And for those reasons, I still support the three years. Mr. Senator. I'd be open to a reduction in that three-year timeframe. I think that the justification, I guess, and I totally understand why the legislature stopped it to include that language in 23K. I think that the justification then made... The justification, I guess, has eased a little bit in my mind. And I don't think that the rule should be hard and fast. I think there should be some room for discretion. If the timeframe was reduced to a year, let's say, or assuming the legislature buys in, then I think it was you, Madam Chair, who during the last meeting indicated that we can impose a restriction beyond what's set forth by statutes just in terms of our enhanced code of ethics. And so I think that's always an option. And starting with the year, to me, makes sense as opposed to boxing ourselves in or continuing to have ourselves be boxed in by this three-year timeframe. I think it's easier to navigate if we reduce the timeframe and then talk about these one-off situations, as Commissioner Maynard mentioned, to really consider individuals who are qualified for the position, but may not pose the risk that was inherent, I think, three years ago, excuse me, but when the legislation was passed. Thank you, Commissioner Skinner. For the clarification, Todd, for some reason I feel that this does not extend to sports wagering. I think we hired somebody who came from an organization and it was within the three years, so I looked at that. Is that the thinking? So it doesn't, Commissioner O'Brien's point, right now the statute does not limit us on hiring somebody within a certain period of time. Is that right? Yeah, I think that's right. This provision just applies to Chapter 23K. I'm not aware that there's any such restriction in Chapter 23N, so we are allowed to do that, actually. And I do think my point that I did raise in addition to what Commissioner Skinner said is, I think it's critical right now that if we do hire somebody putting aside the issue that is on the three-year for our casino industry, I do think it's really important that the commission and all of our colleagues are informed through a disclosure of sorts when there is an employee coming in from the industry to Commissioner Rainier's point, Commissioner O'Brien's point. That's also just really good Chapter 268A compliance where it just takes care of any optics issue. So I do think it's important for everybody to be informed of someone's coming from the industry. And so putting aside sports, what are you doing? Right now, we're looking at the casino industry and I think Commissioner Hill, you're right, it's 10 years in. I'm hearing Burke Kane and I'm hearing Dr. Lightbound. And I suspect we might even hear at some point from our IT folks that this could be for the casino industry, just a tough standard to navigate. It's one year gonna help probably Dr. Lightbound and Burke maybe not, Commissioner Hill, we could still lose them, right? Given that we don't have this burden on sports wagering, I wouldn't mind putting reducing it to zero as long as I'm not sure I'm comfortable applying it to indirect, indirect interests that they just had with them three years. I'm not sure I really wanna get rid of that because that's actually sort of more connected with financial interests. I could be convinced otherwise, but if we wanna achieve parity between the two industries, I'm okay going to zero, but I do think we need to be really vigilant around disclosure so that the public knows and that all colleagues know so that we understand if an individual just came from a particular organization or had some kind of a financial interest and they probably, they might need to even recuse themselves from working on a particular matter. And that's just being vigilant around our ethics, not the enhanced the chapter 268, the state employee state law on ethics. So I understand why the three years was imposed, but it wasn't rolled over. So I'd be okay with reducing it and making sure we get people who have significant experience, particularly in the sports wagering, we could actually benefit from that experience as long as it's really, I always like to say back in my earlier roles, you manage conflicts, you manage appearance of a conflict. And if you do that well, with transparency, reduce really the risks that we're concerned with. So Commissioner Hill, I don't know if that's helpful. So Madam Chair, actually if I can respond to what you said, which is this is something I meant to bring up, which is that disconnect between 23 and 23K in this regard, I'm actually uncomfortable with it. I actually think it should be consistent across the board. And I would actually like, I would like us to have the same kind of prohibition in terms of bringing straight in from an industry. I mean, as Commissioner Maynard said, there's a rationale for why that happens. And it doesn't disappear because the industry is mature. So I disagree with you fundamentally on that in terms of why all of a sudden now it wouldn't appear. And this three-year period in particular appears in other statutes. I mean, I can think of even IG's office, right? Where you can't do certain things for three years after you leave. It's not an uncommon time period. And so I would like to have a broader conversation too in terms of if we're making recommendations like that, I actually think that the prohibition should be looked at to go across the board, cooling off periods and coming in. I actually am on the opposite side on this. I think on the cooling off period leaving, Commissioner O'Brien, the statutes address that. This is not about exodus. But for the rationale for why it was there, as Commissioner Maynard said, in terms of not having the industry co-opt a regulatory body and also putting a bright line. So there isn't sort of pressure put on the agency to make exceptions. I'm basically in another camp on this fundamentally philosophically. Well, I understand what you're saying. I don't know if we'd be inclined to add a new provision to extend this out, given that at least three of us are indicating that we'd like more flexibility. But I'm hearing you, Commissioner O'Brien. I think what I'm thinking about is, and you've raised a good point that it's not about the maturity of the industry. I do think we're not, we're a nascent gaming state. Both casino, it's more mature, it's 10 years mature. But it's still relatively nascent compared to the rest of the nation. And our sports wagering industry is really nascent. To get it done really well requires expertise. And I'd hate to shut the door to gaining that expertise when we can't establish guardrails to guard, to, I understand Commissioner Maynard's concept of industry capture or regulator capture. But we're pretty vigilant in Massachusetts. And I do think we have the tools through chapter 268A and our enhanced code of ethics to establish those guardrails to make sure we don't ever compromise on our ethics, our transparency, or our integrity. And if we message that through really strong training, disclosure, disclosure, disclosure, disclosure taught through your legal department, I think we can achieve a good balance without compromise. They didn't put it in for sports wagering and the wisdom of the legislatures that they may have decided we need that expertise. So that's my position. So in terms of drafting letters to it, I would wanna be heard in terms of it. I wouldn't, we wanna be putting my name on a request in this regard. So we might wanna have to consider recrafting this letter where that request might have to be clear that it is not a unanimous request and or under separate cover. Yeah, I'm happy to with all my signatures while I was gonna say Commissioner Brian. And Justice Douglas talks about this in the Sierra Club dissent. It's a fantastic case. And he says, the regulators weren't bad people and they weren't being evil. But it just happens, right? By the nature of friendly working relationships. And you gotta watch what comes in here and how it comes in. And so all the guardrails in the world doesn't change the fact that human nature is human nature. So I'm happy to with all the signatures. Well, I still believe that we could establish these guardrails that we are a commission and our colleagues are able to comply with the law. Sounds like Commissioner Hill, if we wanna have five signatures, we probably should keep this provision out and have it signed as is, unless we should now go back to the other provisions. Commissioners, do you have comments on the other provisions? And this way, we'll note, it's noted publicly here that the flexibility that our team has asked for, we're gonna deny right now, but maybe it's for something in the future, Commissioner Hill. Do you think that makes sense? Rather than having a letter of signed by three of us? Sure. Okay. Commissioner O'Brien, are you happy with that? Would you be willing to sign with the rest of the provisions? I don't have any issues with the provisions. No. Commissioner Maynard, would you be willing to sign with the rest of the provisions? I'm fine with the other provisions. Commissioner Skinner, do you have any concerns with the rest of the provisions? No, Chair. Okay. And Commissioner Hill, are you all set? I'm all set. Todd, thank you for your good work, Commissioner Hill. Thank you for your leadership here. We'll have it signed. And Todd, I do know that we have our ethics trainings and you will remind all of our employees of the needs to make sure to do proper disclosures along the way. Yes, of course. Thank you all. And so we will, in that case, with your consent to fix your signatures and circulate the document. Do we need a motion, Madam Chair, for this? Or are we all set? I think we need a motion. Madam Chair, I move that the Commission approve the letter to the legislature regarding amendments to gaming, sports wagering, and horse racing laws as included in the commissioner's packet and discussed here today. I second. I'll second it. I second it. Okay, Commissioner O'Brien. I. Commissioner Hill. I. Commissioner Skinner. I. And Commissioner Maynard. I. And I vote yes. Five, zero. All right. Thank you. Very thorough job, Todd. Excellent work. And thank you to Tom Mills for all of his help in this effort and Commissioner Hill again. Thank you for your leadership. And Todd, you did an excellent job. All right. Now we're going to go on to item number five back to Utah. And we're starting with regulations now. Yes. Thank you. We're going to turn the matters over to members of our legal team to walk through these regulations. And the first one up is 205 CMR 152 and Associate General Counsel Ying Wang. I think you're taking this one. Is that right? Yes. Yes. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning, Madam Chair. Good morning, commissioners. We're asking for a final vote on 205 CMR 152 today. This regulation amendment was previously approved to move through the regular promulgation process on November 16th, 2023. A public hearing was held on January 9th, 2024 and overseen by Chair Judd Stein. The commission has not received any comments on this regulation. We do not recommend any revisions to the regulation beyond its initial proposed amendments. This matter is before you for a final review. We're seeking a vote to finalize the promulgation process and file the regulation with the secretary of the Commonwealth. I also have with me, Caitlyn Monaghan, Interim Director of the IEB and Deputy General Counsel, as well as Mark VanderLinden, Director of Research and Responsible Gaming, if you have any questions. Ying, I want to thank you for your good work on this. And Mark, I know you've been working with Ying. I know that there's efforts to work with the District Court, Commissioner Skinner. Thank you for your context that you've established there. And I know we have finalized things today. I just want to make sure that your good work has been acknowledged. Thank you. Commissioners, do you have any questions for Ying? That's a good sign. All right. Do I have a motion? Madam Chair, I move that the commission approve the amended small business impact statement in the draft of 205-CMR 152 as included in the commissioner's packet and discussed here today. And further, that staff be authorized to take the steps necessary to file the required documentation with the secretary of the Commonwealth to finalize the regulation promulgation process. Second. Okay. Any questions or edits? Again, thank you, Ying, Commissioner Bryan. Hi. Commissioner Hill. Hi. Commissioner Skinner. Hi. Commissioner Maynard. Hi. I vote yes, 5-0. Now we're moving on to 205-CMR 16, a new one for us. Good morning, Paul. Can I speak, Justin? So, Todd? Good morning again. And yeah, so we're gonna turn this one over to our deputy general council, Justin Stembeck, who has worked on this long. Good morning to you, Justin. Good morning, Todd. Good morning, Madam Chair. Good morning, commissioners. This is a regulations appearing for the first time for you today to begin the promulgation process. 205-CMR 16, it was worked on by Paul Comner at Anderson and Krieger. Just briefly put in Paul's available to answer additional questions, but this is a regulation with respect to setting in place an approval process to approve the moving of any approved simulcast licensee to another location, as was recently permitted via legislative amendment to general laws 128C section two. Internally, I did have discussions with licensing, IEB and finance to discuss and strap regulation and incorporate any comments or concerns that they had. This would be simply a starting the promulgation process. It's not being done via emergency, so it'd be plenty of time to receive public comments and incorporate that within future discussions at the commission's behest. So if you have any questions, Paul is here with me to help answer. Otherwise, we'd be asking for a vote to just start the initial promulgation process. Commissioners, would you like to have Justin and Paul walk us through this new regulation? It's a lot. I would find that helpful. Yes, please. Thank you so much, Mr. Hill. Okay, I think I've got Commissioner Skinner shaking her head as well. Not exactly. I'll defer to Paul as he was the author of the accompanying memorandum if you wanted to just walk them through. Thank you. Thanks, Justin. Thank you for your work on this. Okay. Good morning, commissioners. The regulation picks up on page 24 of your packet. As mentioned in the accompanying memorandum, I'll say while you're getting to page 24, much of this language will be familiar to you. It's adapted heavily from 205 CMR 218 and other sports wagering regs. And also from the recent 205 CMR 15 pertaining to new meeting license applications. With some adjustments to compensate for the fact that this is a new context and already licensed entity seeking approval to conduct simulcasting into new facility. So beginning on page 24, we have 1601 authority and definitions as usual. This is a housekeeping section that defines applicant for this regulation as opposed to the many other regulations in which we have many other kinds of applicants. 1602 application requirements. These requirements are drawn mostly from the list of information that a new racetrack would be required to provide pursuant to 205 CMR 15. These are the basic vital statistics. What is your facility going to look like? When is your facility going to open? What conversations have you had with the municipalities where you plan to place this facility? Moving on to page 26. There's an administrative sufficiency review process that looks much like administrative sufficiency review for both sports wagering and racing meeting licenses. Review procedures should be is identical to sports wagering provision and the racing meeting license provision. This authorizes the commission to refer the application to anyone you need to and to seek input or expert advice from anyone you need to. On the next page, 1605 public meetings requires you to conduct a minimum of one public meeting in any community where the simulcasting facility is to be located. We're a little loose, where we're a little loose about the language because it is possible a simulcasting facility will straddle multiple municipal lines, although we don't expect that as a matter of course. The commission is also required to hold at least one other meeting to receive public feedback based on feedback we received from the commission about 205 CMR 218 and 15. Subsection two is a provision that should be very familiar with you, authorizing you to hold any other meetings, any other public meetings that you would like to receive presentations from the applicants and to receive public feedback. 205 CMR 16053 requires you to forward site approval application to municipal leadership in the host community prior to the meeting that is specifically held to receive feedback from the host community. Moving on to 1606 structurally, this again looks much like the rights that we've discussed. The list of factors to be evaluated is drawn mainly from chapter 128A and 128C. These are the standard factors for evaluating an application for a racing meeting license. With the exception we've focused on the factors concerning the quality of the facility and the ability of the operator to open and manage the facility, not some of the more general public interest factors that would be addressed in the licensing decision. Because again, we're dealing with entities that are licensed either by the commission or by operation of legislation. And so those questions are not before you in approving the simulcasting facility. 1607 simply authorizes you to approve or deny the application or postpone. 1608 is housekeeping about what the issuance of the decision looks like. 1609 is a standard set of conditions that in effect requires the licensee to comply with the relevant statutes and the relevant regulations. 1609 E requires the simulcaster to obtain an operation certificate from the commission. This looks much like the operation certificate requirement in the sports wagering regulations in miniature. And it requires that the simulcasting facility has been built complies with applicable conditions that they have an emergency response plan and of course a certificate of occupancy. And that they've commenced a confirmation that they've complied with any other conditions that the commission has in its discretion imposed. 1610 is an application fee as with sports wagering application fees. This is intended to defray the cost of processing the application and the fee can be increased if the processing costs exceed the original application. And 1611 on page 31 of your packet, very briefly is meant to ensure that to the extent that the facility is approved under another commission approval process, such as the sports book construction regulation to a five CMR 222, the applicant can reasonably rely on the commission's prior approval. So with that walkthrough, I'm happy to answer any questions that the commissioners have. Commissioners questions. Christian Maynard, do you have any questions about this? It's important regulation that we haven't had. Just wondering. I don't know if you have any questions about this. I don't know if you have any questions about this. But we haven't had. Just wondering. Well, I mean, if you're asking me specific, I was just wondering, we did, I believe get a comment via email. I would like that to be addressed. Yes, Commissioner Maynard. So I saw that come in late yesterday. So we were happy to consider any in all comments from and incorporate them as I noted at the outset. This is the initial propagation. This will be out for open public comment for quite a while to incorporate commentary from anyone in the industry and welcome that comment. So if there's specific questions or nuances that the industry wants to point out or we welcome those and there will be, there will be a subject of additional false discussion when we bring those back in front of the commission. And I expect that there will be parts of this that we will revise. So I did see that email. So happy to speak with the individuals on the email and hear whatever additional commentary they have. I don't believe he had had an opportunity to review this regulation though. And I think it's fair to give our legal team time to digest that inquiry, but certainly the messages to that inquire as well as all members of the public, this is the opportunity now to really review the regulation and Justin, thank you for reaching out to explain it to that inquire. That would be really helpful to answer questions. Todd? I was just gonna add, I think it's important to recognize that this is being done in response to a change in the law. And that's what we are commemorating. And I wasn't sure if the commenter quite was aware of that. So we can make sure that he is up to speed on all of that. And do you want to just, I think I know the answer but do you want to explain exactly what that change in the law was? Sure, I can show it to you if that would be helpful. Absolutely. I was just checking, it's an amendment to chapter 128C, which you'll recall is the simulcasting statute. It works in conjunction with chapter 128A of course, which covers most of what we're saying. And there were amendments to 128C section two specifically, which talks about where simulcasting can be conducted. And I'll show it to you here. It doesn't appear yet in the official version, but this is the special act that was enacted. And so this is, it's chapter 26 of the acts of 2023. And it's covered here in sections three through six. And I'm sorry, I don't have a red line prepared to show you exactly what this looks like. But the long and short of it is that there is language inserted that allows the commission to authorize simulcasting at any location in Suffolk County approved by the commission. And then there's also an amendment to allow for Bristol County and then Norfolk County, which is different from the existing version of the statute that requires simulcasting essentially on the premises where, well, I don't have the, I'm sorry, I don't have the exact language here, but it essentially required simulcasting to be tethered to where the actual racing operation is taking place. And so this affords the commission discretion to authorize simulcasting elsewhere. Period. The concern being raised was essentially, I believe the idea that there could be an off-track betting industry created, which is of concern to many folks, but that's not the intent behind the amendment to the law. This, it kind of goes, it's important to remember the broader context here. This goes hand in hand with potentially the sports wagering law that authorizes the commission to award licenses to racing licensees and allows them to conduct sports wagering activities on the premises where simulcasting is allowed. And this would broaden the scope of the areas where that is allowed if you were to move forward with this. So the regulation, just to kind of tie this up, is designed just to establish a process by which the commission can review a proposed change in location of a simulcasting operation. Questions. Okay, I think we're gonna wait then now for the public comment period and revisit this. Thanks. But this is not by, if we're gonna move on, this is not by emergency, this is a regular? That's correct. That's correct, Madam Chair. Thank you. So do I have a motion on 205-CMR-16? Madam Chair, I moved that the commission approved the small business impact statement in the draft of 205-CMR-16 as included in the commissioner's packet and discussed here today. And further that staff reauthorized to take the steps necessary to file the required documentation with the secretary of the Commonwealth and to begin the regulation promulgation process. Thanks, Mr. Hill. Okay. Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Commissioner Skinner. Aye. Commissioner Maynard. Aye. I felt yes, five-zero, excellent. Moving on, then Todd to 205-CMR-21. Yes, good morning. We'll turn this one over to Carrie Tilesi, who actually is. Yes, good morning again. So this is just a small tweak to 205-CMR-21, the regulation related to sports wagering license fees. It's essentially a clarification. And I'm going to turn it over to Paul Comaners just to explain that to you. I believe that this, so this is a housekeeping amendment. I believe that the problem originally arose as we tweaked how we handled the renewal of temporary licenses under 205-CMR-219. But to make a long story short, at the moment, the way that a temporary licensee renews their license is by submitting a new request as after the commission grants them leave to do so. And under the statute and so under the regulation, that request must be accompanied by a $1 million licensing fee. There was also a provision in 221 to address the earlier version of 219 that required the renewing operator to pay a $1 million licensing fee 30 days after renewal, which resulted in a situation where the opera, which resulted in a separate situation once 219 was amended, where the operator would have to pay $1 million with the request and then $1 million after renewal. And so this amendment would remove the obligation to pay an additional $1 million after renewal and ensure that the licensing fee comes only with the renewal request, which is, which more closely conforms to the statute as well. And so for that reason, we would ask that you amend, that you approve the amendment of 221. I should say that we are not putting this up for emergency amendment. So as not to throw off the process and the conversations that have been happening with the operators about this round of renewals, Carrie, I don't know if you want to give a little more context on that front. Sure, absolutely. So essentially, as Paul kind of indicated, we don't want the operators to feel that they have to pay $2 million essentially. So what we're suggesting is promulgating the regulation so that, and sorry, waiving the $1 million fee that's due with the request so that they can essentially pay within 30 days, which is what the conversations have been. And then once for the next round of temporary renewals or if there should be temporary renewals in the future, we would operate under the 221.01 that it would be due with the request for renewal. The timeline for public comment will get us through this round of renewals. And then this will be an effect in the proper form in the way that it should be working for any future rounds of renewals. So to clarify then, Kara, are we looking to have the commission provide a waiver as opposed, and waiver and we'll forward on the rank, would it be helpful to have both? I think it would just so that we have clarity because again, given the confusion where some operators thought that they may need to do so, we just want to make clear that they do not need to pay the million dollars twice. Of course, if they want to. Sure, that would be an interesting decision. That would be an interesting decision. So Paul, what do you think? Should we have, if the commission were to move on this to maybe have it be dual of waiver for any licensee seeking to renew their temporary licensure, that we waive this and then also move on the. I do think both. I do think moving this forward on a non-emergency timeline should be accompanied by waiver. I'm not sure whether Carrie was planning to bring the waiver up at another meeting. I'm wondering, we didn't specifically include a waiver on today's agenda. So I'm wondering, Paul and Kara, if we were to bring that on the first that wouldn't impact the timing, the waiver? I don't think it should. Again, given that we're having this in public and we've also been having the conversations and made it clear that our interpretation is that they can pay 30 days after the issuance. So I think timeline wise, we can certainly do it later. It's not gonna affect us. Madam chair, I have a question, just looking for clarification. So despite what's been marked up as the amendment in the regulation, we are allowing operators to pay within 30 days of submission of the application and not at the time the application is submitted. Is that, do I have that right? So it looks like we would need a waiver at some point. You know, I think Carrie has already acknowledged that. And then Kara, do you want to just clarify and remind us again of exactly when the $1 million is expected? So what we've communicated to the licensees is the, what is currently 22012, which is 30 days after the renewal of the temporary license, that's when the $1 million is due. And that's what we're gonna have final, final, final, final. That's what we want for this renewal. So for any subsequent renewals, it would be due along with the request for renewal. So then it would be 011. So the point is, is that right now, they're not complying with 011. So they would need a waiver. They kind of have an option, right? Do you want to do one or do you want to do two? And you're saying, you're advising them on two. So I don't know, in terms of timing, I get attorney Therese's point about the fact that the agenda doesn't say that, but are we okay, Todd, if we were to provide a waiver at this point in time or is that not permissible under our agenda as written today? You know, ideally something like that would be on the agenda. Does February 1st not work like Karen suggested? We could do February 1st. I think it's just that the timing, Caitlin, what does it matter to you? I think it doesn't. I think it would be fine to bring it back on the 1st. I think, you know, it's clear pursuant to the statute that they need to pay the $1 million through the temp. I think it's fine to have them do it within the 30 days. Again, it's really just a cleanup. No one is really expecting that they're going to be paying $2 million here. So I think it would be fine to move forward on this in the regular process today and then on February 1st, report the formal waiver. So that's just buttoned up for this round. Okay. I was just trying to take care of business all together right now, but I guess we'll segregate it, if that's best. Okay. So commissioners, we need to move on the, unless there are more questions, substantive questions. I mean, these things happen. And the good news is we are addressing it and we can do that nimbly. So I want to take care of moving on the substantive of the regulation stuff. So do I have a motion on that commissioners? Madam chair, I move that the commission approve the small business impact statement and the draft to 205 CMI 221 is included in the commissioners packet and discussed here today and further the staff be authorized to take steps necessary to file the required documentation with the secretary of the commonwealth to begin the regulation promulgation process. Second. Any further questions? Okay. Commissioner O'Brien. Hi. Commissioner Hill. Hi. Commissioner Skinner. Hi. Commissioner Maynard. Hi. I vote yes, five, zero. Excellent. Anything further on our Greg's carry and challenge? That's all for Greg's for today. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'll set, and thank you, Justin. This is your first new reg, right? Yeah, I'm coming back for, I have the next item too, Madam chair. That's why I just popped back in. So that's my first right. Give us a chance to say thank you. And of course to those of you who might be joining publicly, Justin is the familiar face. He came on board. He missed his earlier reintroduction, but we are welcoming Justin back. And it's nice to see him working on simulcast in the area that he's very comfortable with. So thank you, Justin. So now we're going to sports wagering division. I turn it to Bruce. I know Bruce that we are expecting that this, and hello Katrina, Kevin. The IT team is joining director band today. I know that we're anticipating an executive session and that's where the entirety of the discussion correct. That's correct. Okay. Madam chair, I just want to mention one thing because there was an accompanying memorandum, a brief memo on the high level audit issues for this item. And I don't see that in the packet that was circulated this morning. So I know it was provided initially, but it wasn't in the packet this morning. So we do have, there is a two page brief memo on high level, the sort of the nature of what this audit entailed. So we can, I'm sure we can add that. So Justin, I suspect that that was included as part understood to be also confidential. I don't, I suspect that I know that we have it and we've read it, but it needs what you're saying is it should be part of the public document. Justin, it's a short document. Do you want to bring it up? Sure. I can incorporate it into the public document. I'm looking at Tom Mills. Mills, if we can somehow address. Trudy is out today. And, and so things have just, you know, a little slow snap here or there. No, no worries. This is a brief memo and Why don't we bring it up? So there's no, yeah. Let's see, can I, can I share screen on this or do I have to send this to Tom? You should be able to do Justin. Okay. Here we go. You should say screen share. I see it. Okay. Thanks. And then what Tom will do is he'll incorporate into the public packet and we'll make sure that that's all taken care of. And you can see the memo now. Yeah. If you could make it a little larger please. Okay. Sure. Is that better? Excellent. Okay. So yeah, I'm just, I'm really just introducing this on behalf of Katrina and her team as the CIO. But this is the technical, the independent technical security control audit with respect to our sports wagering operators that was required under the regulations with respect to looking at their technical operation after they got up and running. And I understand you, Katrina and her team were in communications with these folks the entire time. So this, this memorandum where they just go through a high level overview of what was being contemplated by the regulation. And then the actual details of their, of the findings and everything else will be reviewed by Katrina and her team with the commissioners during the executive section. But this is, this is that two page memorandum which really is recounting the obligations with respect to the regulations. And then Katrina and her team are on and can answer any questions at a high level now. And then with respect to the details and the findings that would be something we would discuss in executive sector. Katrina, do you want to walk us through with anything in detail? Yes. Good morning, Madam Chair, commissioners and thank you, Deputy General Counsel Stempack. First, I'd like to recognize the significant efforts undertaken by the ITS team, specifically Kevin Gavro, our information and network security manager, Nathan Saylor, our gaming systems analyst and Christian Taveras, our gaming technical compliance manager. I'm actually going to pass this over to Christian to do the general overview of the memo before we get into further details. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning commissioners and Madam Chair, in your packet is a memo outlining the requirements of the independent technical security audit in relation to the 90 day security audit required of all sports wager and operators that went live in 2023. I will briefly summarize the requirements of 205 CMR 243.01 subsection X and subsections one, three, four and five. So starting up with number one, subsection one. The scope of the, actually, I'm sorry, Justin, I don't need the screen share anymore. Okay, yeah. But thank you. Yeah. Subsection one, the scope of the technical security control audit is subject to the approval of the commission or its designate and must include at a minimum all of the following. A, a vulnerability assessment. B, a penetration test of internal and external connections. C, a review of the firewall rules. D, an information security assessment. E, an assessment of the access and security controls of any cloud service provider in use. F, an evaluation of the third party service providers. And G, any other specified criteria or standards for the technical security control audit. Subsection three, the independent expert report must be submitted to the commission no later than 30 days after the assessment is completed. At a minimum, it must include the following. A, a scope of review. B, company name, contact information and qualifications of the auditor. C, report date. D, findings. E, recommendations if applicable. F, the operators response to the findings and corrective actions. Some section four, the operator can leverage the results from prior assessment such as ISO, IEC 27001 or an equivalent assessment that was conducted within the past year by the same independent expert in another jurisdiction. So long as it's noted that it was leveraged. Any other, oh, I'm sorry. Any critical components unique to the commonwealth will require a fresh assessment. And subsection five, for items identified as high severity or any other corrective action, the commission, if the commission sold direct stock sportsway dream operator, the sportsway dream operator must provide the commission with a remediation plan in any risk mitigation plans which detail the operator's actions and schedule to implement the corrective action. Once the corrective action has taken place, the sportsway dream operator shall provide the commission with documentation proven completion. The MGC's ITS gaming technical compliance and information security teams will review the independent technical experts audit reports and remediation plans and remediation plans if provided for the following operators. Category one, Plainville gaming and redevelopment doing business as Plainridge Park Casino, Blue Top redevelopment doing business as MGM Springfield, when MA doing business as Boston, I'm sorry, Uncle Boston Harbor, category three operators, Boston Sports Interactive, I mean, Penn Sports Interactive, the MGM, WinBed, Crown MA gaming doing business as Draftkins, American Wadring doing business as sports, as Caesar Sportsbook, Beth Fairey Interactive doing business as Fandall, Better Holdings doing business as Better, FBG Enterprise doing business as Fnatic, Spedding and Gaming. In accordance with this regulation, the team conducted a review of the submitted, of the submitted security audit reports, critical and high severity findings were communicated to the operators for immediate mitigation, which were addressed in their initial and follow-up mitigation plans as required by the regulation. Before handing it over to CIO Gomes, I am happy to answer any questions at this time. Any questions, commissioners? Okay. All right, thank you, GTC manager Taveras. So all other security findings must be addressed or resolved by their next schedule annual audit. And that's either April 30th or June 10th, depending on their launch date. We do have two operators that did launch in May. So I was remiss in putting, and we're including that in the memo for August 30th. These findings are sensitive in nature, as we discussed earlier, and we are prepared to review them in the executive session if we are ready. Okay, commissioners, any questions for Katrina? Before we consider going into executive session, I just want to again, thank you for calling out your team. Christian, you've taken on so many leadership roles in this space. Thank you for all your good work. It is super nice to see Nathan Zayler here today. I am understanding that you've made significant contribution. Thank you. We're always happy to see you and thank you for being in the public sphere today. It's nice to see you. And then Kevin has done some very significant work for us recently, and I'm going to just brag a bit about it, Katrina. We did have a significant cybersecurity issue and because of Kevin's astute work, his reaction, all the policies that were in place that Katrina, you're responsible with your whole team for setting us up and training us, we really were protected. And Kevin, you really were so instrumental in that and I just am so happy that we can today acknowledge you for your excellent, excellent work. And Katrina, do you want to add in? Please do. No, Madam Chair, you covered it all. We are striving for excellence in the security arena. Kevin has been spearheading that on our end and has been doing a fantastic job and we are growing and maturing as an entity and we take that very seriously. And so we are continuously improving our operations and Kevin has been fantastic in his role. Thank you. Okay, so now back to our business question of the 90 day audit. We do, in order to really learn more about where we are Bruce, we do need the executive session. So you'll bear with me as I have to read this into the record as commission decides whether to vote. The commission anticipates that it will meet an executive session in accordance with GL, Chapter 30A, Section 21A7 and GL, Chapter 4, Section 726N to review certain materials in connection with the sports wagering operators, 90 day technical security control audits conducted by a qualified independent technical expert as it relates to cybersecurity in the common law. And the public disclosure of which is likely to jeopardize public safety or cybersecurity. The public session, the commission meeting will be convened at the conclusion of the executive session. And I'm sure that our communications division will put up a screener screen so that the public is aware of our work. But at this point, commission, we would need a vote. Emotion, I'm sorry. Madam Chair, I move that we go into executive session on the matters and for the reasons just recited by the chair. Second. Thanks, Mr. Skinner. Thank you, Mr. O'Brien. Any questions on this? All right, so Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Commissioner Skinner. Aye. Commissioner Maynard. Aye. And I vote yes, so five, zero. This means that we'll go into the executive session. Mills, are you all set in terms of who needs to accompany us? Yes, Chair. Dave Sousa will be sending folks into a breakout room, just ask for your patience as it is quite a lengthy list. Once you're in, I will join you and let you know that you are ready to go. Okay, thank you to the public. We'll reconvene after this session. Thank you so much. I have opened the breakout room and I have added the people who I have on the list. If you are supposed to be in and have not received an invite, please feel free to message or give me a holler and I'll make sure to add you. Thank you so much. I think we can go ahead and take down a screen, Dave. I know those things. I'll stop. Thank you, Dave. Okay. Okay, commissioners. So this is a reconvening of the National Students' Gaming Commission. We just had an executive session, our meeting that started earlier at 10. So we're holding this meeting virtually. I'll have our roll call. Commissioner O'Brien. I am here. I'm here. Mr. Skinner. I'm also here. There you go. And Commissioner Maynard. I'm here. All right, so we'll get started where, again, reconvening is public meeting number 495. Thank you for that session. And now we're turning to item number seven and we've got two matters from our interim IED director, Caitlin Monison. Good afternoon now. Yeah, good afternoon. First matter that we'll be bringing before you is a non-compliance report related to fanatics. Zach Mercer will be presenting that report. In advance of Zach's presentation, I just wanted to remind the commission of what we'll be asking for at the end of the presentation. And that is for the commission's guidance in how to move the matter forward. And there are three ways in which the commission can decide to move the matter forward. It can decide to schedule an adjudicatory hearing related to the matter. It can refer the matter to IED to move forward in compliance with, excuse me, 205-CMR-232. Or it can choose to move through a process that is allowed pursuant to chapter 23-K, section 16, which allows the commission to decide that it would like to issue a civil administrative penalty, provide notice to the operator, and then the operator would have the opportunity to request an adjudicatory hearing. That's not a process we've used before or the commission's used before, but it's an option. So after Zach's presentation and any questions, that's what we'd be asking for. And with that, unless there's any questions on that, I'll turn it to Zach. So commissioners, I think on our draft motions, which were always given the drafts, this is a suggestion that we wouldn't need to vote, but I think we do typically vote on that or we move by consensus. I think we've moved, the commission has moved by consensus on this in the past. Okay, that's fine then. All right. So all right, turning it to Zach then. Thank you, Caitlin. Good afternoon, Chair and commissioners. Zach Mercer on behalf of the IED. On December 6th, 2023 at approximately 5.55 PM, fanatics betting and gaming or FBG, a temporary category three sports wagering operator notified the MGC sports wagering division that it allowed wagering on an unauthorized event involving a Massachusetts collegiate team. Specifically, FBG had allowed one futures wager on the Boston college versus Southern Methodist University football game scheduled to take place on December 28th, 2023. The wager was placed on December 5th at 2.21 PM. FBG reported that the issue was discovered at approximately 6.30 AM on December 6th, 2023 by a football trader who noticed that the event had been made available for wagering in Massachusetts. The IED has learned of the following facts during its review. The timeframe that wagering was allowed was from December 5th, 2023 and approximately 11 AM through December 6th, 2023 and approximately 5.50 AM. As for the amount and number of wagers, it was that one wager placed with a total handle of $50. And as for the reported reason for the error, DraftKings reported that it proactively sets impermissible in-state offerings to off in their backend system. The event in question was erroneously turned on by a trader during the FBG daily market offering process. FBG has a dual validation process which requires its trading team to contact the trading compliance team prior to releasing any events to confirm permissibility. However, in this instance, the second level of validation with the trading compliance team did not occur. In regard to remedial and mitigating information, upon learning of the error, FBG deactivated the event for wagering and notified the commission within 12 hours of discovery. Following communication with the MGC Sports Wagering Division, FBG canceled and refunded the wager. Additionally, FBG's trading operations compliance team reiterated to its trading team the importance of verifying permissible markets prior to making them available. Finally, FBG reported that as a newer operator, they're continuing to refine their trading practices and procedures. Additionally, as part of this report, the IED also provided a summary of a prior commission decision on a matter of non-compliance and following similar facts to assist in this review. Thank you. So, Caitlin, the facts on the prior precedent were actually the prior issue was actually something that I requested and I know at least one of the commissioners joined me in asking for that as well because we wanted to make sure we were thinking about these matters in a fair and equitable fashion. Is there a reason why we're not gonna go through that now? I think Zach is prepared to walk through that. Okay, good. Thank you so much. I didn't wanna put Zach on the spot. So thank you, Zach. I apologize, I can get through that as well. Just a moment, let me get my notes. Thank you. Thanks, and I didn't mean to put you on the spot, but we did hear, of course, commissioners about this and then we did ask for additional information and Zach's provided it plus the additional information about our earlier case. Certainly. So if I may, the commission has previously considered a violation of general laws chapter 23 and section three and 205 CMR 247.01 to a two in the matter of Angkor Boston Harbor potential non-compliance incident. A decision from the commission dated July 21st, 2023. The Angkor decision contains similar facts to those in the instant matter as it involved a single wager placed on an event involving a Massachusetts collegiate team once again, Boston College that was not part of a collegiate tournament and the wager was canceled prior to the game being played. In contrast to the facts here, the relevant wager in the Angkor matter was part of a parlay and placed at a kiosk at Angkor Boston Harbor. The error in the Angkor matter was attributed to the admission of Boston College women's basketball team from its event management vendors, quote unquote, blacklist. Following an adjudicatory hearing, the commission issued a fine in the amount of $10,000 to Angkor for that incident non-compliance. Okay. I think the main question we were asking at the time Zach was had the event occurred or not and this does remind us that it had not occurred. I think in the first case, it was a future is bad. So there's more time, but the event and the earlier case had not occurred. Commissures, we have some options after Zach's report. Anybody wanna start the discussion? Zach, can you go over again what they said in response in terms of the error occurred and then, and who, is that a, so a football trader? Can you also just describe for me exactly what that person's job is? If you know. Certainly, so my understanding is that a football trader would be someone who's responsible for placing the offerings, I believe, in odds for an event and that person would be specifically assigned to football in this context. And then in regard to the, if I made the second question, Commissioner O'Reilly asked. It was in response. So they said, we're new, we're sort of fixing our processes, but anything more specific in terms of how it happened and what they do, what they're doing to make sure it doesn't happen again. So essentially my understanding from speaking with fanatics, which I had an opportunity to do on a couple of occasions, is that this is an incident of basically a single person in their system making an error. And that basically due to that being human error, the focus was made on reiterating the importance of checking these things prior to making them available. That's how it was relayed to me. So they've identified the individual who made the error? I don't have that information specifically as to whom the individual is. My understanding from what they told me is that it was an individual in their process. That's the extent of what I know. Okay. I mean, I'd be curious to know what specifically they did in response. I'm not looking for that person's identity at all. I'm just looking for, in addition to sort of general reiteration of what, if anything, was done to an employee who did this. There's questions for Zach, before we go into our next steps. Where are options for next steps? I'll just turn to Bruce and Zach in terms of the mitigation steps. Sounds like it's human error, wasn't an automated error. It's not an automated process. Any concerns about their response, Bruce, for right now, where we are? Director Bann, I don't know if you were able to hear me. I think with this one, with the human error, I think it's that and they've taken steps to correct it. Again, we do have the earlier find that you have to take into account as well. So. Yeah. Right now, just in terms of where they are, the stuff that they've taken to mitigate against this happening right now seems reasonable to you, right, Bruce? Yeah, I think so. That's all, regardless of what we decide in the future. I just was warning sort of the status of where we are right now. Yes. Yeah, okay. Any other questions, commissioners? So the options that we have, it's to set this up for a scheduled adjudicatory hearing. To have IEB manage it or to take the third step, which would be to, I think kind of almost act today. Caitlin, in terms of figuring out any kind of a finer assessment. I do know, Caitlin, and you've made this public that there's another matter. And that X was interested in us maybe working those two together. How does that fit into our next steps? I think if the commission shows to have an adjudicatory hearing, that would be fine for this particular matter. And then at either the February 1st or the February 15th meeting, I believe you'll be hearing about the second matter. And at that point, if the commission decided to move forward with new adjudicatory hearing on that, we could consider scheduling them together because it takes a little while to get me scheduled. If the commission decided to refer to the IEB, I don't think that coordination would be necessary. They would be handled sort of those two separate matters by the IEB. And then if the commission decided to move forward with issuing the civil administrative penalty and notice, again, I think that could be handled separately. I think it's really in the adjudicatory hearing when you're calling people together and presenting evidence and going through a big process that it might be more efficient to either combine them into one matter or at least have the hearings on the same day. So Madam Chair, if I could, there was one other question that I would be looking to get an answer to, which is what if any audit did they do following discovery of this error in terms of that individual who made the mistake or whether they did some sort of spot check to make sure they didn't have anything else like this? Going backwards. Right. Because then we had one licensee who did that and then uncovered. Actually, they didn't do it. They saw that another licensee had had an issue. And so they spontaneously went back and looked and found some issues, which I guess that would speak to me sending this back to IEB. That's sort of where I would be going to to sort of follow up on some of these things and maybe join the two depending on what we hear on the first. And I might suggest there's two different ways the commission could do that, Commissioner O'Brien. If the commission shows to move this into the adjudicatory hearing, the IEB would take that into consideration for the report for the adjudicatory hearing. That would be fine. Additionally, if it was referred to the IEB, the IEB would certainly look into those facts in evaluating the case, deciding next steps. Right. I appreciate Caitlin explaining that because I'd recommend that this go to the adjudicatory hearing as long as we could get Commissioner O'Brien's questions addressed. I don't think the answers of those would, those particular questions would alter my feeling that it should be in an adjudicatory hearing. No. Commissioner Hill? I'm all for moving this forward in an adjudicatory hearing. Commissioner Stitter, Commissioner Maynard. Same. I'm okay with going the administrative, excuse me, adjudicatory hearing route. Okay, Commissioner Maynard? Yeah, I am too. I'm interested in the potential combining it with this second issue that may come. I'm okay with that. And that would work for you, right, Caitlin? Yeah, that would be fine. And I think the combining can be considered when the second matter is discussed. Zach and Caitlin, are you, and Kathleen, hi, Kathleen. Are you all set with Commissioner O'Brien's questions? Do you need any clarity? Anybody else have anything specific that you'd like for IAB to look at? So just to follow up on what Commissioner O'Brien's questions that you're already going back. I'm kind of interested in how much of this is automated versus how much is human error. This has come up so many times and what we learned last time and what we're learning now is that there are different systems in place, some belonging electronically, some belonging to a human and kind of seeing where they are with that. And are there any plans to automate these functions? Because the toggle switch on and off on the college sports has bothered me from day one, right? From our first conversations on this. So seeing how we can mitigate those going forward for them is something of interest to me. It seems like a lot of the systems are manually done. It kind of surprises me that it seems a little archaic, but it seems like that's kind of prevalent in a lot of the systems out there. Great, if that, I think we have what we need then. There's consensus to move forward with the New Judicatory hearing. So we will turn this over to legal to schedule the hearing. I'll say commissioners. Thank you, Zach, nice job. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chair and commissioners. Okay, then we'll move right on to the next item, Caitlin. You've got a team coming on. Yes, for the next item, we have requested an executive session to discuss the process for durable suitability, including timelines for moving forward with durable suitability. So we'd ask for the executive session to start that discussion. Okay, commissioners. I think we discussed this at our agenda-setting meeting that given that it would really reveal our investigation that makes sense if we sell votes to have an executive session. Commissioners, right now our agenda suggests that we would reconvene. There is one more matter related to legal and IEB after this. It's 12-20. I'll just do a check in with Caitlin. You had to guess the presentation. I think probably 20 minutes. Yeah, commissioners, would we reconvene or should we take our lunch break right after this executive session? Right after the executive session, Madam Chair. Okay, thank you. So legal and we'll have that shorter matter, Caitlin, after our lunch. Okay, I just mind for the fact that we have some guests for our presentation responsible gaming. We thank everybody for their patience. All right, so as you know, I have to read this into the record. Commission is anticipated to meet an executive session in accordance with GL Chapter 30A, Section 21A, Subsection 7 and GL Chapter 4, Section 7, Subsection 26F to discuss investigatory materials related to the durable suitability investigation process for sports wagering licensees, including estimated timelines for said investigations necessarily compiled out of the public view by the IEB, the disclosure of which materials would probably so prejudice the possibility of effective law enforcement that such disclosure would not be in the public interest. And as I said, when we just decided the public session of the commission meeting will not reconvene, oh, well, we will reconvene but after our lunch at the conclusion of the executive session. So we will reconvene, it just is gonna be the lunch break. So anticipate probably close to 130. Yeah, close to, thank you, about 130. So we'll reconvene, but just after our lunch break. Do I have a motion? I'm chair, I move that we go into executive session on the matter and for the reasons just stated by the chair. Second. Thanks. Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Patricia Skinner. Aye. Commissioner Maynard. Aye. And I vote yes. So we'll go into executive session now and Tom Mills and Dave Souza will convey us. Yep, same process. Well, Dave will be moving folks into executive session and this is a longer list. So thank you for your patience. Thanks so much. Same thing as last time, I've just sent out the invites if you do not get one and they're supposed to be in please feel free to send me a message and I can toss you. Dave. I'll cut. So much. So this is a reconvening up in Massachusetts Gaming Commission. We've had two executive sessions today. So we thank the public for its patience. We are holding this meeting virtually. So I will do our roll call once again. Good afternoon, Commissioner O'Brien. I am here. Good afternoon. Good morning, I'm here or good afternoon, I'm here. Good afternoon, Commissioner Skinner. Good afternoon. And Commissioner Maynard, good afternoon. Good afternoon, Madam Chair. Okay. And we will now turn to item number eight and we're turning back to Todd and Caitlin and Director Bann is involved as well. Yes, and Todd as well. So... Yeah, I said Todd, sorry. I'm sorry. Todd, Caitlin and Bruce. Thank you. Okay. So commissioners, today we are bringing, we're presenting to you a group one sports wagering compliance matter review protocol. As you'll remember a few weeks ago, we, the three of us presented a potential protocol for all sports wagering matters. And at that point the commission asked that we take into consideration the comments that it had and bring back just a protocol related to just the group one matters to start. So that's what we've done. And so what I'll do today is walk through the protocol as it currently stands. And as you have it in your packet which I believe starts at page 40 and happy to take any questions about moving forward. So again, this protocol applies to alleged group one sports wagering non-compliance matters and they may relate to operators, vendors, registrants, licensees, basically anyone that has a license or a registration with commission. And regardless of how that information comes into the commission, all of these matters should be reported over to the sports wagering division for processing. So the first thing that the sports wagering division will do when it gets a notification of a potential non-compliance event is that it will enter it into its non-compliance tracker. And that is the database that it maintains of all of these different events where it aggregates information about the event and keeps track of it in that way. They will also perform an initial review to determine whether the matter is in fact a group one matter. And in making that determination, the sports wagering department will assume for the purposes of making the determination that all facts presented are true. And they are also welcome to consult with anyone in the agency, including counsel and the IEB in reaching a decision. And group one matters involve relatively low level incidents which may be handled directly by the sports wagering department with reporting to the commission which we'll walk through in a minute. So in determining whether a matter is a relatively low level incident, there are a number of factors for consideration but the factors are not exhaust. The sports wagering department can take into account these factors and others in making that determination. So some of these factors include whether the issue was relatively promptly detected and addressed by the licensee, whether the matter was self-reported, whether the licensee has a previous history of violations, whether future occurrences of the issue can be avoided by instituting clear video measures, the total financial impact of the issue, and as I said, any other factors that the sports wagering department finds relevant. So we do have some examples of what these types of matters might be and these examples come directly from matters that these sports wagering department is seeing. So Bruce has given us some great examples here. And they might include an advertising violation where required language is missing from one advertisement, a failure to submit information required by the internal controls in a timely fashion, a patron complaint regarding compliance with the responsible gaming regulation, a patron complaint regarding promotions offered in Massachusetts, a patron complaint regarding technology used in sports wagering applications. So a lot of these, my understanding and Bruce is here to answer any questions too is that there are sort of individual patron complaints about aspects of the app or aspects of the processing tools. And as we discussed at the last meeting in which the different version of this protocol was addressed, the commission may determine that certain categories of alleged non-compliance events are not to be categorized as group one matter. So it's within the discretion of the commission to say, all matters related to just making this up, responsible gaming, it's never a group one issue, it always goes elsewhere. And finally, the sports wagering department in the IEV will meet regularly to discuss alleged non-compliance issues so that both parties or divisions are aware of what is happening with the operators or what is alleged to be happening with the operators. So if the sports wagering department goes through those steps and determines that the matter is a group one matter, it may resolve the issue in the following way. First, as we previously discussed, the matter will be entered in the incident tracker database and in completing the database entry, the department may inquire of any individuals with knowledge of the circumstances to gain an understanding as to what occurred, whether there was a violation of any statute, right? Condition our order and the cause of the incident. Upon completion of that database entry, the division will make a determination as to whether the issue is likely a one-time occurrence based on a unique set of circumstances or is likely to reoccur with the same licensee. If the matter is likely to reoccur, the division shall determine whether adequate measures are in place to prevent such a reoccurrence. And also, as a side note, if the division sees something where it makes them say to themselves, oh, I wonder if other operators are having this issue. They are empowered to reach out to other operators, ask if they've had any of the same issues or ask what protocols are in place to prevent that type of issue. So have that proactive role with regard to preventing potential future non-compliance events. So once the facts of the matter are determined and the satisfaction of the division, the matter may be resolved in a number of ways, including by issuing a sports-wavering notice of non-compliance form, which we're calling SWNCFs that describe the issue in violations. They may warn or reprimand the licensee. They may direct any necessary or remedial measures and they may set a deadline for compliance. The division may also communicate with the licensee in reaching its resolution and may also determine, of course, that no violation has occurred depending on their investigation of the facts. Further, after further fact-finding, the sports-wavering division may determine that the event is not in fact a group one matter and is a group two or group three matter, which, again, are not addressed in this protocol, but basically are more serious matters. The division will provide reports to the commission on a monthly basis or more frequently if requested by commissioners regarding the status of group one matters in order to keep the commissioners apprised of what is coming in and how it is being dealt with. And then finally, just a little bit about the incident tracker database. So that database will be updated by the division personnel to include all potential non-compliance matters and it will be made available to commissioners and the executive director so that you can all go in and look at it if you need to. Any commissioner may request that the commission meet to determine whether a particular matter should be reviewed by the commission. But of course, as always, care must be taken that the commission isn't deliberating on an issue in advance of what could be a potential duty to charge hearing. And so with that, we are happy to take any questions. Commissioner's questions. Commissioner O'Brien. I don't have a question more of a something I throw out for our conversation, which is I'm satisfied in general, the one area when you talk about carving something out that maybe shouldn't be in there has to do with promos. Because we've had some chatter in terms of other jurisdictions too, and even people making allegations in lawsuits, right? That some promoters violated or did unfair promotional offers. So that's the only one that I'd like to have a conversation in terms of whether it's over a certain amount or whatever that I would like to come to us. Other than that, I was satisfied with how it was laid out. I think promos would be a very sensitive area for us. It would have to be something really minute for us to handle it on our own before we'd bring it up to you anyway, you know, we know that's a sensitive area. So that's something that in all likelihood would bring most of them before you. Okay. Thanks. Commissioner O'Brien. So the suggestion is that you'd like to officially carve it out in this policy. Would that be helpful? Because, you know, Director Bairn is saying we're in agreement, but would you like it memorialized in the policy? I'm wondering if for now we can carve it out. And then as we go forward, maybe it's a, there's some further description that makes it clear what we think is de minimis. And then, you know, it goes back in there. I don't want it to be onerous on you, but that is an area that I feel like is still right. And it sounds like he's saying it's going to get to us anyway. Most of it's going to come anyway. Right. So I mean, only for the purpose of memorializing in the policy, Bruce, we could do that now. And then we'll see how it goes over time. And I have no problem with that. Okay. Commissioner Skinner, are you leaning in? I was nodding at what O'Brien was saying, because I think it would be helpful just as time goes on and we see more and more of these issues. We might further develop a sense of what else we might want to add to the protocol as our determination that it can never be a group one matter. Okay. Commissioner Maynard, are we at Commissioner Hill right now? I've got some thoughts, but Commissioner Maynard, go ahead. I was just going to say I agree with Commissioner O'Brien. And Commissioner Skinner, I think the biggest thing I would want to communicate to Bruce and his team is, you know, I just want whatever we do to wear the DNA of this commission, right? And to be thought about the way that we would think about it, that's something that's important to me, but it makes total sense to me to group these as category ones, so to speak. Commissioner Maynard, that's a really good point. And I can say that just recently we saw that in Crystal when she brought forward the issue around customer service hours, there wasn't a clear regulation, but she knew, as you say, our DNA and she brought it forward. So that's already been kind of tested and we appreciate it. And even you just mentioning the promo. So, you know, I think Commissioner Maynard has framed it a great, you know, really good way. I really like Putt Note One. It doesn't have to be a Putt Note from my perspective, but I do think that's in the sports way during division's interest and in the commission's interest to bring these matters to the other licensees to help on compliance. So I thought that was really a really good addition. One issue, and I'm going to also credit Mills. I don't know, Todd, if you've thought about this, but the establishment of a tracker database, it might not be protected. It might be subject to public records law. So we should think about what's in it. And Mills thought of that because, of course, he's thinking already of media increase. So I don't know if it's going to be sensitive. If it is, it might be protected in public records law. And then in terms of my governance background, and I've mentioned this, but right now, we do say that any commissioner may request that the commission meet, determine whether a particular matter should be reviewed by the commission. I don't think that that's great governance. We have the capacity in our public meetings for a commissioner to bring something forward and then have the commission vote as a majority to move something rather than having a single commissioner move. We don't, boards don't typically do that. Commissions don't typically do that. So I think it's a little bit of an outlier. I understand the intent though, because I think we want to be able to look at the tracker and say, ooh, we don't like that, but I would just take it one step that we could just come into the public meeting. And if it were commissioner Maynard, who was interested in bringing it forward, he would say I'm interested in bringing it forward. And then there would be discussion and then a voter consensus. I just think that's better governance. I agree. I think that's what was intended, actually, something along those lines, but we can clarify it more. Yeah, as opposed to just calling up Caitlin and saying, hey, we want this, we want this, or even at the agenda setting, it's more for debate. Because as Todd said, I think that was the intention was to bring it on to the agenda and then the commissioners can decide if they want to hear it as a group. That one commissioner could hear something for it necessarily. And we can definitely just clarify that. Yeah, I think I understand. Other? Commissioner Skinner, yes. Yeah. I wonder if the IEB or sorry, sports wagering providing the report on a monthly basis could be reduced to a shorter timeframe, not looking to unduly burden the team, but I would be interested in something like bi-weekly distribution. Does that make sense? Is that a reasonable request? I'll leave that to Bruce's team. Thank you. I think we can provide it as often as you would like. So bi-weekly is good. Yeah. Thank you. Commissioner Skinner, you just raised something in my mind. And I don't know if this has been thought about, Caitlin, Todd, Bruce, what if we have a situation where a licensee is told that something's resolved? Let's say a promo, for example. And then we see this matter on the sheet and we say it's not resolved. Is there some form or some language you can give basically to the licensees that says, here's a resolution subject to review from the commission? I mean, I'm seeing you trying to think how it works. I think any of these things is kind of an ongoing thing. They're never told it's totally resolved. It's something that once they say what they're gonna do to fix it, we're gonna observe it for a good length of time to make sure it is actually resolved. So it could be months before we would kind of feel that that situation is resolved because they could go back to it six months later too. So I don't think that's a statement we're ever going to say totally, Commissioner. I think we absolutely can say that it's exactly what she said. Commissioner, you know, resolves to review from the commission and that review sort of may or may not happen depending on the incident. And I think that's especially relevant here because the Sports Review Department can't issue any fines. It can't revoke a license. It can basically reprimands and tell the operator to sort of fix their plans, fix their procedures. It can issue a Sports Review during notice of death. Those are all things that the commission can take back up and say actually this is more serious than this and we want to move forward in a different direction. So I think that that's totally fine and we can make that change. Madam Chair. Yes, Commissioner. Commissioner Maynard, I can appreciate your line of thinking the reason I asked for a more frequent distribution of that report is as we're reviewing potential category two and three non-compliance issues. And I know we haven't ironed out what that process is gonna be like just yet but I think the group one matters may be relevant to an overall consideration of those more severe incidents and even if only tangentially I would like to have the benefit of just knowing about them. And so, I mean, we might be able to achieve that with monthly distribution but I don't wanna take any chances. That is something we have thought about and what we're working with sports, and when I say we have now IEB and sports, we're doing our working together to make sure that the IEB is aware of the incident happening with sports majoring and in particular, the sports majoring NCFs. So that when there is a group two matter as part of the report the IEB gives you, it can say here are the prior related incidents or here are the prior incidents with this operator. So that is something we've been thinking about and making sure there's not sort of both everyone's talking to each other. The right hand is not talking to the watchman. Is that helpful for me? Todd, go right ahead. Oh, I apologize, Madam Chair. I was just gonna say Commissioner Maynard, I think you definitely raised a really great point and we can come up with some language, perhaps for Bruce and his team to use when they kind of respond to some of these things. I think certainly and Commissioner Skinner, I'm not sure if this is exactly what you're getting at but I think that even if a matter were closed, if something else were to occur, there's no restriction on the commission looking back at some of these past occurrences and using them as part of the remedy and resolving future matters. I do think that everyone probably has some interest in finality with some of these matters for sure. And I think that that's the benefit of the commission taking regular looks at the list and presumably after a month or so or even after two weeks having had access to this information, the case could be considered closed to some degree, I would think. But we can certainly see how it looks when we roll it out and adjust that on the fly if needed. We have the challenge to, your last line points it out. We're only gonna be able to get certain information. This is an important piece of the puzzle. We are delegating to the Sports Waging Division. Important review and consideration out of both respect for their expertise and also for respect for efficiencies. And at a certain point in time, we can't get so much information. Let's say like, the two weeks and we get something and then Caitlin and her team sees it, I don't know, maybe you'd be working in concert so you'll never see it after it gets, you'll always see it before it gets posted on the tracker. But at a certain point, IEB could say, oh, it's actually more serious than what Sports Waging Division, but we have to just be careful not to have too many facts in front of us because of a judicatory bias. So it's a little bit of a dance here. I guess I wanted to just state that so that everybody's expectations are kind of realistic as to what we'll be able to deduce from the tracker, if that's fair. If you see trends, right? Yeah, and we might not have all the information immediately either, you have to give us a little time to put all the information together in our reports as well, which might take a week or so as well. So the idea would be once you get it, you're gonna at least put it into the tracker and then give some information. And then at a certain point, and it could be four weeks rather than two weeks before you, or eight weeks before. Exactly, because not all that is instantaneous and sometimes when you ask the licensee for it, it takes them a while, like there will be a report coming to you in a week or so. It took a while to put together because of the size of it. And it even takes the licensee a while to gather all that information. Even though it still fits into this quote unquote, lower level, that doesn't mean less important. And I think that's Commissioner Skinner's point. We really do care about these because they may inform us on the more serious matters. Kaylan, what are you thinking in terms of the tracker, what it might look like? So the tracker for sports wagering is more in the sports wagering domain. And I know they do have sort of a database that they're able to pull information from. And I hope we're not speaking out of school. I think they could pull it into the spreadsheet so that you have it. But what I would be envisioning is similar to the docket sheets we've been talking about for the category two matters in which I use working on, as we speak, where it has basic information related to the operator, the date of the event, a brief overview of what it might be, and probably a status so that you would know, sports wagering is still renewing it, sports wagering is issued a notice of non-compliance, that kind of thing. So you can see, oh, they're still working on it. They're not ready yet, they're not done yet. But that would be what I personally would envision, but I have to leave it to Bruce. And in terms of the description, because I think that's gonna have to be pretty high level, correct? Yeah, I think that's right. Any other questions? Can I ask the other follow up to Commissioner Skinner's question? And we did see in here that are here that they would be monthly reporting and now it's gonna be five weeks, every two weeks, right? Is that in addition to the tracker or, so you're gonna compile a report for us every two weeks? I think we're talking about two different things potentially, so there's the database, right? The technical title is the sports wagering incident tracker database. Everything goes into that as soon as they get it, right? They get a potential event, it goes in and then it's being updated as more information is obtained with sort of a live document. The tracker, I believe, Bruce, Crystal, Andrew would every two weeks sort of do a download of certain information from that database and present it to you probably in spreadsheet form. Again, can't speak for Crystal, but sort of that would be like the static every two weeks, here's where it stands and sort of a more general form because the database does have, you don't wanna be clicking through pages and that kind of thing. I think you want it all in one place. There's Crystal, tell me if I'm getting this right or not. Just here in case there's any direct questions, but that's what I had thought we were anticipating. So we do have the ability, as you said, to turn some of this data, well, any of this data into an Excel spreadsheet. So we figured that would be, we have to do some manipulation to make sure it is streamlined, pared down to a smaller report, but we can do that in any capacity. So we can get guidance on exactly how that report should look and distribute that. And that would not be distributed at a public meeting. Sorry. Would that be distributed at a public meeting or just available for our review? Anticipated it would be just distributed by email, but if you're looking at a public meeting, we can do it that way too. I know I'm asking my fellow commissioners. Okay. Thank you. I'm asking you too, Crystal. So commissioners? Madam Chair, I was envisioning just distribution by email if that's appropriate. That is what our initial plan was. I think there's a fairness element to that too that makes sense, because again, some of these may be sort of allegations that may or may not be true. And so you don't necessarily want those sort of in the packet every two weeks. I think a lot of what we seem to date was brought to you are actually self reports. So there's less of a concern about did this happen or not, but where the facts are not clear necessarily, I don't know that you want that out of meeting every two weeks. Any other questions? So there's going to be a few edits maybe? Yeah, happy to take this forward as happy to make these edits and just circulate it. I think they're relatively straightforward. Also happy to make the edits and bring it back to the next meeting for a final review and approval, whichever the commission would prefer. Let's do the latter. All right. I see Commissioner Bairn nodding her head. Okay, all righty. Thanks. Thank you. And just so you know, I know that for the course of the last several weeks, I referred to this as cat three and it's cat one. So I just want to correct myself on the record that the lower starts with one. I had reversed my head, so. Group one, we can rename it. I'm recognizing we have a lot of cats in this agency right now. So I'm going to give it a try. One, two, three, right? All right, thanks. So if I said that today, my apologies. It's kind of stuck in my head. All right, we're all set then. We have, thanks, Caitlin, and thank you to Todd and Bruce, thanks for getting that done. And then we'll turn next to the other two. I'm going to turn now to Director Bandelinen and Dr. Andrews. Hi, Bonnie. Hello. We're right outside. You can probably hear me. I should probably close the door. I just realized it's disrupting. Mark. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and commissioners. I'm going to turn it over to Bonnie and Dr. Prince, Dr. Andrews and Dr. Prince. Thank you, yes. All right, thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair and commissioners. I'm very happy to introduce today's research presentation. Massachusetts General Laws, chapter 23K section 71 directs the gaming commission to develop an annual research agenda in order to understand the social and economic impacts of expanded gaming in the Commonwealth. Included in this section is a requirement to assess the relationship between crime and the expansion of gaming in the Commonwealth. As part of the FY23 research agenda, the commission funded justice research associates and their principal researcher, Dr. Noah Fritz, to continue the examination between casinos and the public safety effects related to their operations. Christopher Bruce, who previously studied crime, calls for service and collisions in casino hosted surrounded communities at regular intervals following casino openings, has continued to provide technical assistance with data collection and analysis. This report is an analysis of changes in activity in the community surrounding MGM Springfield during the past decade and after the opening of the casino. The primary purpose of this report was to conduct an analysis of the crime distribution throughout the region surrounding MGM Springfield since the casino opened to identify which changes in activity might be attributable to the casino and to triage trends for more detailed analysis and response among the participating agencies. I am very excited to introduce Dr. Noah Fritz from Justice Research Associates who will be presenting the report, assessing the influence of gambling on public safety in Massachusetts cities and towns, crime comparison analysis of changes in the MGM Springfield region, 2013 to 2022. And now I'll turn it over to Dr. Fritz for the presentation. Good afternoon, everybody. It's a pleasure and an honor to be here. Good to see the commission. I'm excited about presenting some of our findings today. Can we start a slideshow? I can take over the screen. I've got it up if need be. Ronnie, you got that? You're going to run it? Okay. Thank you. This is, my understanding, is the 18th report on crime, the potential influence of gambling on cities and towns in Massachusetts. This is our second report on the MGM Springfield casino. And so we'll get right into it. I know you have a long day today, so we'll jump in next slide. So the Springfield area took a look at these major cities. What do we got? Eight are the ones we actually studied. The three to the west, Ludlow, Wilburham and Hamden did not provide data to us at the time this report began and we collected data and started the analysis. We will continue to work with those agencies. One was under a new chief and some changes in records management systems. So those are, we are focusing this decade worth of crime data, which is a really robust data set. When you think about crime across the United States and calls for service and collision data. So very exciting to have access to this kind of data. My team is myself, Dr. Fritz, Steve Hick, who's a professor and director of geographic information systems at the University of Denver. And Christopher Bruce is still a partner in the project, particularly gathering, helping us get the data from the agencies since he's more closely aligned historically. And he's actually written parts of some of the reports on drunk driving and last known location before a DUI. A little bit about me. For those of you that haven't met me, I was the director of the crime mapping and analysis program for the United States Department of Justice, a training and technical assistance program. And I am a charter and past president of the International Association of Crime Analysts. And we have affiliations with Arizona State University, University of Denver. I am an adjunct at George Mason University. And we look to get any feedback and answer any of your questions today. So we'll jump right in. Next slide, please. So the purpose of this report and the first report we did was to really focus, put an eye toward the future. We're trying to develop a number of different methodologies and take a look at different theories that are applicable to crime in and around casinos. What I would call applied criminology. There are a number of criminological theories that are macro, sociological, psychological. And many times they're great for academics, but they don't really provide good insight for practitioners or executives at law enforcement agencies. So we really try to zone in our analysis on what might be useful for developing strategies and crime prevention programs for the local agencies as they address crime, again, in their communities in and around the casinos. We did on the last report take a look at the effects of COVID-19. We did take a look at this region as well. We've got one slide on that. There was not much difference. I will share that information. And so we're really hoping to ongoing effort to build partnerships with you, you all at the commission, and the different agencies in the region to provide direct technical assistance and to help collaborate on crime analysis. You can find all of those 18 reports at www.massgaming.com. And we're really hoping to help continue to build a knowledge base around the crime and structural factors around casinos and the impact that they might have. Next slide. So our first report was really a benchmark for the future. This is our first report for Springfield in the MGM, but we want to put all of our reports in a historical context, a temporal context. By temporal I mean time of day, day of week seasonality. We did get looking at 10 years worth of crime data here. And we also, my area of expertise is crime mapping, using geographic information systems to look at the spatial context. What does crime look like geographically, if you will. We rely heavily on Jerry Radcliffe reducing crime for different strategies. He's a professor out of Philadelphia and does stuff on intelligence led policing. And we look at risk terrain modeling, which is another model that's out there taking a look at what is the risk factors around different locations or hotspots, if you would, and then we look at the crime triangle where you have to have a motivated offender, a potential target or victim, in this case the casino or people who are visiting the casino that crossed paths in space and time. When those things happen, that's when crime happens. Those provide different strategies and you can target the victim, focus on the victim, and get them to do things that prevent them from being victims. You can do target hardening at the location of the casino or the surrounding area, and you certainly can do things programmatically for offenders, whether that's arrest and incarceration or different programming that might get them out of reoffending, if you will. Next slide. The good news is crime is, it's still been going down this past year. We looked at, the last year we looked at was 2022, and it did go up a little bit, but it's still the second lowest in the decade, and so it did turn upwards, but it's the best in the last 10 years. These are all crimes that were reported in the area, so 27,000 offenses or incidents in 2022, down from 40,000 back in 2013, 10 years ago. So that's the good news. Crime continues to go down. We'll talk a little bit about that in some subsequent slides. Next slide. So we looked at violent crime, and it's certainly the one area that stayed relatively flat. It is down about 500 crimes from a decade ago, but generally speaking, it's been around 2,500, 2,400 over the last three or four years. So we're not seeing as many gains. Violent crime is typically murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assaults are the primary categories that the FBI uses to take a look at violent crimes, and then property crimes are burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, and typically arson, and we looked at all crimes, but those are the two major categories that you take a look at. So that's a significant reduction in property crime, again, with it turning up. So we're going to pay particular close attention in the subsequent years to see if that trend hopefully goes back down again. You can see the trend line there, and it did take a turn in 2022 after COVID in 2020 and 2021. So next slide. I know some pretty probably can't see these real good, but I'm not sure if you can see that. But I'm not sure if you can see that. All of the agencies or communities, all of them followed that same trend with the exception of Long Meadow, which was relatively flat. It did have a peak in 2020. And we've been in communication with them. A lot of that had to do with some things. But providing this report to them would be important for them to take a look at the types of things. Now, it may be a growing community. I'm not sure I'm not that familiar with that city. And that could explain why the actual counts of crime are going up, but this is kind of the resulting effects of the larger region. The majority of agencies around Springfield, Springfield being the biggest city in the region, and the majority of the city is in the region. We saw that 65% of the crime, two out of three crimes in the region happened in the city of Springfield. Next slide. So we took a look at temporal analysis. This was kind of an interesting, I don't think it's rocket science, but from a strategic standpoint and a crime prevention standpoint, you see this very, very consistent process. So you see in the months like July, one, two months, May again, June, August, July, then you had the COVID effect, and then we back to July again, it's the two peak times. And then in the winter around February, March, early March, and then January. And then we had a lag period, April one in the middle of COVID, and a bottoming the last two years of that. And I guess everybody, that was not a surprise to the agencies when we talked to them, but it is something to pay particularly attention to in terms of developing strategies, beefing up patrols or programs or target hardening in those summer months in all of those communities when the summer comes up. Now that's when police officers want to take vacation and do things with their kids. And then from a practitioner standpoint, it's really good and important to understand what that pattern looks like. So we shared that in the report and think that's significant to validate that kind of seasonality is occurring in the Springfield region. Next slide. We took a quick look and in the first report we went and really drilled down extensively for the effect that COVID-19 had on the crime in the region. This almost looks identical to the last report in the periods that we looked at for the last pre-opening, the first opening of the casino when it was closed, the restricted closing and then since that reopened again, what we found during COVID was it dropped off extensively, but it rose back up again, which we were surprised given when it was actually closed, it went back above average. Now that just suggests to us that offenders find ways to commit crimes, break into cars, steal. I know both in the Boston region, the Massachusetts region, and almost all across the country, theft of motor vehicle parts, and we talked to Springfield extensively is a major impact. They're stealing catalytic converters and airbags everywhere. I was working in Fairfax, Virginia at the time prior to this, the last two years and we were just slammed with those crimes. So a lot of that was driven by crimes of opportunity. I think a lot of cars got parked in the same place and people were working from home or not working or going out as much, and so their cars became easy targets or at a location where offenders could kind of put their eye out and take a look at the cars they were interested in. Those are typically fireworks and Hondas that have the more up-to-date catalytic converter and the precious metals in those catalytic converters are very profitable if you can extract the precious metals out of those and that's probably what drove that increase during the closure. You did see that it went back up again during the partial opening. The good news here is since it's reopened, we are not seeing rates that we were during the original opening and the pre opening of the casino in Springfield. So that's that downward trend if you will and so that's a good sign since it's reopened. That could be the economy, the low unemployment rate, a number of positive things that are happening that maybe there are a few people out there offending or stealing things because they're gainfully employed possibly working at the casino or at hotels in the region and that certainly could help explain that. I don't have direct proof of that but those are my, what I would call sociology of everyday life theories that I would offer to you. Next slide. If you've got any questions along the way let us know and I'll pause or we can come back to any of these. One of the applied theories that we rely on in our analysis is what's called crime pattern theory tied to routine activity theory which is an economic theory that basically people commit crimes very close to where they work, play and live and that becomes their activity space. That's true for law-abiding citizens and it's also true for offenders that's where they commit their crimes and when an activity space overlaps between potential targets or victims and offenders particularly where they live or work or where they park their cars on a hunting ground and that hunting ground provides opportunities for crime and their journey to crime how they get there and how they cross paths with offenders or particular targets and so we study that and we take a look at those the correlation between offenders and victims in space and time and it helps us understand the kind of criminogenic impact of crime if you will. Just a quick overview of that if you've got questions, more questions about that it really relies on some research that geographers did on predatory animals lions and tigers particularly in Africa it was called the animal movement extension so the concept of watering holes and hunting grounds and what we did is criminologists applied criminologists and we took those concepts and ideas for predatory humans rapists people who commit arm robberies aggravated assaults and so we're applying those ideas and theories on how individuals in this case humans hunt their prey or hunt their victims or pick their locations and it provides a really rational way to begin to make some sense out of when and where crime occurs and then develop strategies or locks or target hardening or programs that educate potential victims to keep them out of harm's way if you will or protect their property or themselves. Next slide. So we part of the geographic information system solution and our risk terrain modeling concept is we lay a net if you would like a fish net over the top of the jurisdiction and you can use hexagons instead of squares or cells you can use either one hexagons more closely represented circles so you have equal distance from the center of each one of those hexagons and as you can see on the left graph or map where the distribution the high crime hotspots are again the majority of those happened in Springfield and up in Holyoke and there was a small spot where we called a sea pattern which was very interesting we'll get that in a minute but it follows State Street and Main Street that turns into Belmont Avenue those were the high areas but those are the busy highways right in the downtown area in Springfield and the central city of Holyoke is the downtown region where the majority of crime occurred so we focused on that area particularly that pattern of crime to compare the casino hexagon to other hotspots in the city of Springfield and a couple of other spots that were in the region that's kind of the methodology we use to study the crime and crime hotspots next slide so we also rely on a literally an 80 year old theory you're seeing that would be very applicable but in this case this is the pattern a couple of professors named Sean McKay introduced social disorganization theory back in 1942 as a criminological perspective that seeks to explain the occurrence of crime and deviance within certain communities and neighborhoods the theory suggests that crime rates are influenced by the social and structural characteristics of a community rather than individual level factors primarily studying crime patterns in Chicago in the 40s particularly Springfield it applies to industrial towns and cities particularly in high density areas and you see this effect where crime diminishes the further you get away from the central downtown area or city central next slide it uses what are called concentric zones and central city and that's the core or the epic apex of the crime location and as crime gets further and further away from central city it diminishes suburbs or even just on the outer edges something has to do with economic development suburban regions where housing is in the case of Springfield there's a river that acts as a natural moat if you would on the eastern and southeastern edge of downtown Springfield and so that provides a natural barrier for criminals criminals coming across or into the city criminals today are very mobile they'll get in cars or public transportation but this theory does apply to Springfield so next slide kind of shows it more directly the C-shaped section that we talked about on the left we just labeled every single hexagon by letter and by number and you can see the counts of crime in the central city area of Springfield all of those dark red and lighter red regions or hotspots had at least 1500 crimes over the decade and it literally follows state street you can see the casino there in hexagon r37 that's that little gold icon or symbol that's where the casino is located and the river is to the south west of that where you see the gray the 136 right across the river and then it gets really small 9 and 14 is on another town on the other side of the river most of the criminal activity happens in Springfield and in the central district which is something the theory ultimately explains high density high number of restaurants bars and taverns that attract criminal opportunity and your downtown density aspects of density living and businesses so next slide so we looked at the 10 top 10 hexagons or hotspots in the region r37 is where the casino is and it had then we basically normalize that data by doing residential crime rates per population so that's per 1,000 residents and the casino had 1,440 crimes per 1,000 people the highest hotspot is at main and locus south of the central business district r37 that had over 4,800 crimes per 1,000 and then q36 was where mass mutual that's the convention center entertainment center there and a number of jazz and blues clubs along a major road up a little bit north of there had 3,254 crimes per 1,000 one of the things we were able to do we didn't do it for the entire area we don't have the data but for the casino and for r38 which is main street and locus we've actually calculated the effect of the casino based on the number of visitors that we do know come to the casino on a regular basis and the number of workers there and we recalculated basically there are more people around the casino and working at the casino and the hotels close by that raises that daytime population what we call daytime population and or evening population which provides more potential victims more potential vehicles parked in the area so we recalculate when you do that the casino itself drops down to under 500 actually to 405 crimes per 1,000 residents there are more people there so the rate of the ratio has a lowering effect if you think about that along with main and locus street where a number of casinos and hotels are at we don't have the data for how many people work in downtown at this point so we could recalculate that a little bit but it basically shows that when you do consider the daytime population for the casino from a rate standpoint it is much lower than it is based there's very few people that live in that hexagon that's part of the problem it's a business district we also looked at households English speaking the people crime prone years under the age of 19 potential victims of people over 65 people that were on medicare people the percentage of people that live below the poverty line and you can see in the main high crime areas that's what social desert organization theory implies that people that live in poverty and the people that have single female head of household or single households and or we also look at the people on disability and potential victims of crime and you can see that the theory does apply to at least those areas that the higher the people that live in poverty the higher the crime rate or the number of crimes that occurred there so that's a phenomenon that they're either more prone to crime and or in some cases they're more likely to commit crimes because of their poverty particularly theft or shoplifting I did my dissertation in the city and county of Denver I did a hotspot analysis using this technique and it held true in 2006 the same theory held true in Denver and then I spent six months doing an ethnography I lived in that area for six months and we went around and interviewed people that lived there, worked there different politicians and really talked about the effects of the structural social disorganization theory we did talk to the police department and we took a look at some of these effects here in Springfield and some of the strategies are urban renewal and we've seen that so we did do a site visit in Springfield, met with the police agency and their manager and some of their staff and they've redeveloped the train station there they've done a number of lighting projects along major streets particularly up around where the jazz club is and it's a billiards and a live venue for jazz and blues and we'll see that in a minute but this urban renewal is a positive effect and the casino seems to be and again it's a decade lowest second lowest rate since the casino's gone in this urban renewal and hotels and some of the things we've been doing seems to be having a positive effect next slide please and so we looked at the major crimes in the area and we use a technique called the dynamic cluster analysis with some mapping software we use that's the big circles and it's really a cool product we want to provide this and make it available or we'll help their local agencies but as you zoom in and zoom out at scale those circles and you can see where exactly the crime hotspots are within this downtown region and the first top left map is violet crime and the central business district that's where most of it that's for the whole decade we'll come back and look at robberies specifically and then if you work your way to the right that was vehicle crime and socialist organization theory says it diminishes the further you get away from central city and you can see that here with the graduated symbols the further you get away from the casino and downtown the amount of crime reduces the along the major streets and in the yellow areas and the light kind of the orange areas the further we get away again that's a natural phenomenon but a structural phenomenon when you look at vice crime that's fraud and con games things like that you see that same effect again following that sea shape which was very fascinating and then we looked at burglaries those would be residential and commercial burglaries and they're spread out a little bit more because there's residential areas but the further you get get outside the central district again they diminish it extensively so that we looked at those four crimes in that regard next slide please took a much closer look at robbery we think robbery is a crime that may be affected by a casino whether people are losing money and go out and rob a gas station or they rob a gas station or a convenience store before they go to get a revenue to go in and that or make up losses the upper left is where the decade worth of crime and there were 324 in a hotspot to the north west of the casino that's along the major thoroughfare there Main Street it's also close to the casinos and then to the south of that I know there's a couple gas stations right off of the interstate as you come into Springfield two locations two interchanges there to be prone to that we then took a look at the most recent year 2022 because we know the pattern or the trend is down and you can see that around the casino it has significantly reduced and we would argue the lighting and the environmental designs that have occurred and the urban renewal seems to have an effect there's 18 up around Court Street that location in a lower income neighborhood at 30 and when you zoom in even closer there's a specific hotspot of 18 using that dynamic clustering approach in crime that is far enough away from the casino we don't think the casino is having an effect on that so we compare and contrast different hotspots and taking a look at some of the socio-economic factors around those locations and the one location that 18 is a convenience store along the street a major street on Court Street up there it's also close to a court and some of the crime overall crime data particularly maybe domestic violence might be because people are going to the court there we talked to the local police department and their crime analysis manager and he was a little bit concerned that some of that effect might be that a lot of the arrests and some of the activity is happening at the court at the courthouse down on Main Street and at this particular courthouse a juvenile facility up there where there might be simple assault and assault behavior happening in and around that location when they congregate there so next slide and then we again we zoomed in on the robberies around an area called Stern Square area there were 324 in this area over the decade that's 33 per year in 2022 that number significantly dropped to under 10 per year in the vicinity near Union Station again you can see that 18 is over by the Court Street where that convenience store was the 2023 report talks about other hotspot hexagons that had more robberies than around the casino high street which had high in court excuse me was where that convenience store is located an area called the X which is where Belmont crosses it's kind of a major crossroads a five point intersection and then up in Holyoke in the downtown region was another hotspot there was one area in Northampton downtown as well that produced higher levels of robbery all of them had higher amounts of robberies than the closer you got to the casino so our conclusion would be the casino doesn't seem to have a direct effect unless by some correlation or understanding that we can't focus on that they commit their robberies near high street or up in Holyoke or near the X and then come to the casino or make up their losses but there's nothing in the data nor the police reports or by talking to the police agencies that makes that connection so from a spatial analysis standpoint at least the proximity of the casino and the location of the casino doesn't seem to have a direct effect on robberies which is a major crime we think might be related to gambling activity or gambling habits or habitual gamblers next slide please then we did a micro analysis in all the different jurisdictions on pages 61 to 80 of the report goes into a micro analysis of change over time we won't delve into that too much today you can look at look over the data for a comparison of the expected increases and decreases in the region but it represents a new methodology for predicting expected values and assessing outliers it literally takes a look and projects or forecast if you will what the next year would look like obviously in most cases we're in a downward trend so if you just took the average across 10 years it would be higher but since we're expecting it to go down because of the trend we actually take a look at that and in one example here where we're taking a look at chickapee is one example it was lower than the last two years all the way through 2018 and then during COVID it spiked and then 2020 it went below the expected rate and then the last two years it has been much higher than we would have expected it now we can't explain that per se but it's information that we provide to the local agency for them to take a look at and develop strategies or crime prevention strategies and would be more than happy to provide technical assistance to any agency that wants to come up with crime prevention programs or target hardening or what's called septic crime prevention through environmental design and take a look at any of their specific hotspots and develop strategies that help them with that practice so next slide please we also looked at drunk driving analysis and it rounds out the report it's the last section of the report by jurisdiction and while drunk driving arrests were down 8% in the MGM Springfield region the area did report a 10% increase in traffic collisions that resulted in a drunk driving charge those are two separate databases so arresting someone and the criminal incident data are two separate ones we did take a look at both of those particularly last drink reports that were attributed to the MGM Springfield had a slight increase in the historical average of 5.8 per year to 7 in 2022 so again it's a disparate databases that we can't discern the difference why we have a 10% decrease in traffic collisions we believe that's attributable to the fact that some of these traffic accidents don't get originally labeled as a DUI they probably go in just as an accident and then later after drinking alcohol analysis or they go to the hospital or get processed they get arrested for that but they don't go back and change the original incident report so the actual number of drunk driving charges did go up in the region but the overall arrest rate went down and we can take a closer look at that and see if we can better understand the agencies in the region to better understand that or improve their records management systems next slide please we're rounding out here this provides opportunity I'm sorry we want to focus on specific going forward specific opportunities and targets of crime we think crimes that are related to gambling or to casinos or to hotels nearby theft from autos in those locations or on street parking certainly continue our research on robberies, potential assaults particularly domestic violence maybe at hotels where people are staying one, say a patron loses money goes back to the hotel has lost all their family savings or money in their bank account and that creates stress on a family or a couple or aggravated assaults as a result. There was some research done in Vegas that we looked at. They're called door pushers and tub stealers. You don't have the problem with tub stealers because you don't provide buckets where the coins or the money falls into you use tickets. Now you could lose a ticket and people could steal tickets or if they drop them. But a door pusher is where someone has an old key and walks into a hotel like the Holiday Inn Express that's right around the corner from the casino and would go up the elevator. They look like a patron and they walk down the hallway and bump up against each door. And if the door doesn't quite close, these particular types of offenders would go in and steal maybe jewelry, maybe watches, maybe money that is hidden in a dresser door if you leave something behind, maybe a computer. And this was an active pattern that Las Vegas has experienced over the years. That's something you might wanna take a look at that would be unique to any of the hotels in and around the region or even inside the hotel. So we'll share that pattern or particular pattern of crime. We also wanna look at journey to crime, what are the routes that different offenders might be taking if we look at arrest data, where they're from, if they're from the region and most of them seem to be from what we've been able to ascertain or if the victims are coming from out of town, particularly in the summer, but understand where the victim and the offenders cross path, where are they from? And then we'll continue to look at hotspots like shuttles or hotel shuttles or parking structures or street parking or surface parking in and around the casino. And those provide opportunities for targets. And I know the commission and the Massachusetts Gaming Commission has put together a steering committee. I'm on that steering committee, particularly in specific look at human trafficking, particularly sexual trafficking and vehicle crime since it seems to be a significant type of crime that's being targeted both regionally and nationally. And we'll take a closer look at that going forward. Next slide. We're also gonna, we bought some software for risk terrain modeling for Rutgers University that developed this program that actually goes out and looks at all these different hotspots, these hexagons or areas, and you can break them down and actually calculate the risk. What is the potential risk of a particular type of crime happening in a given area or space? The best example I can give you would be bank robbery. If a particular hexagon or in this case, a triangle didn't have any banks in it at all or any ATMs in it, it's a park or a region, the risk would be zero. You can't have a bank robbery where there's not a bank. You can't have a gas station robbery if there's not a gas station or a convenience store. So what that provides you from a policing standpoint is if you're doing directed patrols or crime prevention strategies or surveillance is you could target the types of surveillance you would do if you're being hit by certain crimes. And the good news is it really tells you where you don't need to be as opposed to where you do need to be. So with limited resources, you can allocate police officers and patrols and things like that in those areas most likely to be high risk for crime if you narrow down that. So we would love to follow your lead on these concepts but we'll be employing risk-trained modeling as we go forward with our research in the future. Next slide. So that is our presentation for the most recent Springfield MGM analysis. Thank you. You can shut down the slideshow if you want. There you go. Hi, Bonnie. Thank you. Any questions, anything I can answer? Commissioners, first off, thank you, Dr. Fritz. Very, very comprehensive and clear, Dr. Andrews. Thank you for your translation at the beginning. Commissioners, what questions do you have? Madam Chair, I don't have any questions except to say this was a lot of great information. It had very, very well written report, Dr. Fritz. And I thank you for coming today and sharing it with us. Thank you, Commissioner Hill. It did go through a very extensive review process that I'm thankful for. We went through, I think three or four iterations to improve the report, to answer questions. I think it's more, the reviewers are more academic in nature. They want more theoretical, which most police departments want practical experiences. So we play this kind of tug-of-war and I'm an applied researcher. I'm an applied criminologist. I've been in crime analysis for 30 years. So sometimes we don't see eye to eye, but I think they provide very good insights into better understanding it. I would challenge them to develop better theories that apply to what I call sociology of everyday life. And so we've had some good and important conversations with that group and continue and look forward to doing that. The next one we're gonna do is in Plainville at the Plain Ridge Park Casino. We're starting that project now. It is not in an urban area. As you probably know, it does have a race track. It's close to the football stadium. And so it's gonna be interesting to see the amount of crime that happens in and around that casino. And one of the things we're suggesting we do is do a buffer around all three casinos and compare like a mile radius or buffer around and compare and contrast the different types of casinos. One in a town town region, the other one up in Boston that is up against the river up there and not in Boston, but off to the side. And then this more what I'll call rural or suburban area at the crossroads of 495 and 95. So we are starting that project as we speak, literally collecting data. It'll go through the calendar year of 2023. And I think it's the longest casino that's been open. So we're looking forward to studying that over the next six months and providing another report to you all sometime in the next six to 12 months. Very nice. I'm glad that you noted the human trafficking, Dr. Fretz. I know that there's some work being done, as you mentioned by the steering committee. And I know we've had reports in the past that the training that the casinos themselves provide to their employees. I know the GEU gets trained and I'm hoping that the MTC community, the employees get some level of training to Todd for just purposes of awareness of human trafficking. We're gonna be getting, I think the kind of research that Dr. Fretz has provided today from the steering committee. But I do think our own awareness of this important issue would be really helpful in some kind of training. And there are folks out there who I know would be willing and delighted to do that. Whereas I bet Dr. Fretz would know some as well. I'll let Mark or Bonnie speak to this other specific initiative that's going on. I do serve as a consultant and kind of an advisor to that group about crime. But there are people much more, have much more experience with human trafficking and sexual exploitation than I do, but I'm happy to serve as a consultant with that group. Mark? I love the idea of bringing a training to the commission. And we have an amazing advisory committee on the human or sex trafficking study. And perhaps we could drop on some of their expertise in a different way. So I think that sounds great. I have just have a few points to go on to me. There were a handful of significant concerns before the expanded gaming act was passed and crime probably sits near the top of that. And so as Dr. Fretz mentioned, we've done a number of studies looking at the impacts of casinos on levels of crime in the host and surrounding communities. And so I just want to say that we really want to pay attention to this issue. And we need to look at it in a variety of different ways much like we are looking at it from this angle as Dr. Fretz did such a great job of providing today. We look at DUI, we do community engaged research to look at it at a very neighborhood level. So for example, we also did a study of release within the past year looking at the immediate neighborhood or zip code where MGM Springfield is and the adjacent zip code and the community level experience of public safety. We looked at DUI. I think that it's just important to bring all of these different angles together to begin to triangulate the data. And we did see things bubble up from the community engaged research that wasn't necessarily bubbling up through this type of research. So I think it's just important to continue this research agenda so we can pay attention to where the issues may exist. I also just that rigor of this research is really important and Noah said it, I think very gently that we engage a research review committee and they ensure the rigor of our research. We also want to make sure that the data is right. And so what I want to just give a shout out to all of the post and to the Springfield Police Department and all of the police departments that were involved in this research both in readily providing the raw data to our research team to analyze it but also then contributing once we have a draft report to assure that there is anything that didn't seem right or have an interpretation of it that they can add to that. And Dr. Fritz did allude to that in and out through the presentation. So yes, and then just finally the other two reports that are on the horizon we're very close to releasing an RFR which will examine the influence of casinos and casino resorts on human trafficking in Massachusetts. I think it's a very important study we're taking this incredibly serious and want to make sure that we're engaging all the right call the right groups and stakeholders in that and the development of that RFR and how we're proceeding with that work. And then as Dr. Fritz said, it's time to circle back around to Plainville which we haven't done a public safety study there for a number of years. And so it's important that we head back there and our continued effort of just wrapping our arms around this issue because it seems it's an important issue and it seems very important to the commonwealth. So thank you. Other questions, commissioners? That's not a question, but just to go on more of what Mark said too, is that I'm excited about the human trafficking and the sex trafficking study that we're gonna be looking for getting somebody in here for because it's something that we've talked about for a long time. And to Mark's point, getting the anecdotal comments when we went out to have these reports reviewed in the surrounding communities that would indicate that there might be other issues that traditional reporting and coding in the law enforcement community don't pick up. So I think that we've learned from these baselines in these studies and hopefully this would be a step in diving deeper into that topic. So I thank Mark and his team in particular in the group that are working on the RFR getting this moving, but I'm looking forward to it. Thank you, Commissioner O'Brien. I have on my notes to call out the Public Safety Subcommittee, the GPEC Public Safety Subcommittee that you chair who has also been involved in pretty much all aspects of any of the public safety research that we're doing as well as under your leadership. So thank you. I would share real quick. I mean, I've got 30 years of applied research in law enforcement, mostly in Arizona, Fairfax, Virginia, San Diego County Sheriff's Department and sex trafficking, as you probably know, maybe just reiterating something you already know is very difficult to study because it is such a covert activity and behavior and it really does take good training and both for staff, not just for the commission but for people at the hotels, people at the casino to recognize something that doesn't look quite right. You see a lot of commercials on TV about traveling, people that are traveling, massage parlors and things like that. And we need to do a better job. It is such a devastating type of activity but short of a task force or something where we get very proactive. It's not something a normal citizen would just pick up the phone and call 911 like other crimes or accidents or collisions and report it to us. And so it's a very difficult one for us to wrap our head around and have a good understanding in terms of how much even, you know, how prolific is the problem like missing children issue. I did my master's thesis on that and it's very similar in that regard. And so I share that with you just, you know, as an insight because of how critical it is. Well, I am very appreciative of the efforts around that area. Remember probably the first three weeks I was here having a conversation on human trafficking with Commissioner Cameron. There's a lot of efforts in Massachusetts, a lot of agencies that are involved and given the industry that we regulate it has to be a paramount interest. So very excited to see this momentum grow. Thank you. And Dr. Fritz, thank you. I am assuming when you gave the vice numbers you didn't see any, like you say it's very difficult to detect. I didn't hear you particularly say anything about human trafficking. Did I miss that or just wasn't noted? It is again, very narrowly reported. I think the state of Massachusetts like the state of Arizona and the state of Virginia have just in the past few years actually put in specific legislation or laws specifically to human trafficking. It used to fall under kidnapping or other kinds of obscure categories but it was even hard to identify and like the missing children issue there are three major categories. They can be runaways, counted as a missing kid and their teenagers that just are strange with their families or their parents. There are parental abductions that are usually a divorce or a couple fighting or divorce. And then there's the actual, the guy under the bridge that's in a van that's kidnapping. And those are the ones that scare us to death because there's usually exploitation, sexual exploitation, maybe rape. And when those happen law enforcement does get behind those but so many of the other ones become, they get lost in the shuffle I guess, even when those get reported but there really isn't a lot of data. I would argue, I'd like to think part of this training effort and I'm willing to be a part of that is working with local law enforcement particularly in the casino regions but for the whole state of doing a better job of looking for it and proactively interacting. And there's a lot of good I think nonprofits and women advocacy groups in places like that that know how devastating this is but it's not your typical cop that sees it on the street or will take action. And I think that needs to be improved extensively. Not like terrorism, some suspicious activity, right? Well, how do those get reported? And then they wanna investigate it like a crime and if there isn't evidence there and there aren't witnesses or a true victim then it doesn't go very far. So that needs to be changed particularly with human and sexual trafficking. Happy to help in any way that I can on that education or that interaction with the local police departments or in there's some good associations in the region Massachusetts Association of Crime Analysts who care about this. It's not a matter that they don't care about it but I think it's just one of those that it goes under reported like the sexual assault used to go much more under reported until Title IX and Obama administration really put a microscope on those kinds of issues that we have to do a better job. It's happening, one out of four get reported and that means there are three victims walking around who have quit school. Same thing here. I think there are victims that just are afraid or don't know our system. They could be international. They're coming in from other countries, migrants, immigrants. It's crazy. It's really a very under reported phenomenon. What a discussion. Okay, not seeing any other questions. Someone's leaning in. Dr. Andrews, do you want to wrap up? I just wanted to thank Dr. Fritz for being here today and we're very excited to be releasing the RFR for the sex trafficking study and to hear again when we revisit Plainville. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Fritz and thank you for your patience today. I know we went long. Thank you so much. I had a good day. It made me get some other work done. So I very patiently waited but it worked out really well. So the win-win for everybody. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you. All right. Thanks, Mark. Thank you very much. Okay. Commissioners, I've got a couple more items on our agenda. Madam Chair? Yes. May I ask for a five minute break please? Absolutely. It's 304. Come back in 315. Even sooner than that would be fine. But. Okay. 310. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Madam Chair? Yes. You are not on mute. I am now. Thank you. Oh, she is not liking the cold weather. We can take down the screen. I think Commissioner Maynard is going to come right back. Thank you for that little mini break. My dog comes just running in after being outside and does like figure eights and goes up and down the stairs. And then all of a sudden it's like, okay, I'm warmed up now. Okay. We're just waiting for Commissioner Maynard. Okay. All right. This is a reconvening of Massachusetts Game Commission after a short break. They started early this morning at 10 a.m. It's still January 18th. We aren't holding this meeting virtually. So I'll do another roll call. Commissioner O'Brien? I am still here. Great. Commissioner Hill? Hello. I'm here. Okay. Commissioner Skinner? Hello. Also still here. Still here. And Commissioner Maynard? I'm back. And you're back and still here. Right. Okay. Excellent. And we are now turning to item number 11. We've got a few people joining in. I know that I'm not sure if Marianne is joining, but we, I'll guess Marianne's on the next item. Okay. Chief Mulgrew? We've got interim executive director, Todd Grossman, and we have our very own CFAO, Derek Lennon. Hello. Hello, Chair. Good afternoon. Good morning, Chair. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll jump in on this one. We're on page 174 and 175 of the commissioners packet. By virtue of the interim nature of my present position, the commission, of course, understandably put up some guardrails relative to certain personnel related decisions and matters. And in order to ensure the continued efficient effective handling of all types of personnel related matters at the commission's invitation, Derek, Dave, and myself collaboratively prepared the proposal that we've outlined in the memo for you. And I'd like to just go through it and then we're happy to address any questions or concerns. And so the proposal is that a compensation and classification working group be created by myself. And that's important because if the commission were to create such a thing, it would become a subcommittee subject to the open meeting law, which is what we're not trying to do that. So if the commission is so inclined, I would create this compensation and classification working group, which we'll talk about in a little bit more detail, which would allow the executive director in this group some limited authority over certain personnel matters during this interim executive director period. And we would work upon the advice and counsel of that particular group. So the group would be convened when certain issues arise, involving things like promotions or reclassifications, salary adjustments, or certain new positions. But it's important, and the memo describes this, that these would all be things that are relatively low impact, though they're very important to the individuals involved, but as a general matter, would not have any material impact on the existing organization chart or on any of the salary bands. And so the proposed group would be comprised of myself, Dave Muldrew as the chief people and diversity officer, Derek Lennon as the chief financial and accounting officer. And at the moment, Katelyn Monahan as the director of the investigations for some bureau, along with one commission. So the group would be designed to evaluate any of these matters that come before it to make these recommendations and to ensure that there wouldn't be any unintended consequences that could have any type of detrimental impact on the agency. And the other point that we've made here in the memo that these types of matters are not intended to relate to anybody who is in a major policy making position, as those matters would still need to somehow come before they commission and be looked at on a case by case basis. The only other point that I wanted to make, and then I'll ask Dave and Derek to jump in here, is that there really aren't any executive session provisions that we can comfortably make use of to address these types of personnel matters, which means that they largely go unaddressed at the moment. And so this is a proposal that would allow us to address these matters in this fashion. And so with that, Dave and Derek, if you'd like to add to that, I'll pause my remarks. Here, I'll take the next step. Okay, Madam Chair and commissioners, good afternoon. When we started talking about this committee and my thought here is that as we grow, there's a number of issues that occur that are not at a senior manager level and executive loan manager where folks we're dealing with are not dictating or can change policy. Many times it's everyday operations at a lower level. However, they're critical. And from a compensation standpoint, every time we have a salary that comes in, we have to look at the entire grades across the board to make sure we're not practicing anything that's gonna create compression within individual salaries. That's what initiated my thought on this project is the fact that having other eyes view it, having a larger view across the board to make sure that we are being consistent in our practices. I believe it's critical and we're at that time. And I thought it was a very good idea as we start looking at that. Also, there are operational issues that occur, not just employee relation, but operational issues that occur that could come to this committee along with a member which is with the commissioner that would come to this committee and we would be able to assess it properly. And certainly the commissioners have every right to communicate and get involved and as they should. But this at least would be a situation where we may be able to react quicker and look at all issues that may compromise it or are involved, get them on the table and assess them in real time. So that was my view. I thought it was a practical solution at this particular point. So that would be my thought along those lines. And certainly as Todd stated, this would not affect senior executive level, management level roles where someone is in a position to change policy or be in a situation where we're changing structure within an organizational chart. So that was my view and that was my assessment on that. I really only have one other thing to add to that. We really did look at this and the composition of the group, we are looking for your input, see if we've got it right, see if there should be additional people added. And the other part of it is even while we're proposing this from the interim time period, we think that a group like this, whether we're on it in the future or not, whether we're on it after this is actually a good group to deal with the things that both Todd and Dave talked about, right? Sometimes you make these decisions that you don't have other eyes looking at it. You're not thinking about some of the things coming down the line and having a group of five or six people to really take a look, have some input in the process and then determine if we need to kick it back. And maybe there's a bigger holistic change that needs to happen is a good policy process. So that's why we're coming. The current circumstances necessitate us bringing it forward. However, we think that this is probably a good thing moving forward for the organization. And look to the commission's input on what the composition should be, how it would work well for all of you as well. Madam Chair. Yes, Christian. So can someone just clarify for me if we weren't in an interim situation, how would this work? How do reclassifications work? How do the compensations get done? If we were not in an interim? Yes. If we were not in an interim, what would normally happen? They would be taken as one-offs. They would come to my attention. I would, the ED would play the role of decision-maker. My role would be to partner with Derek and assess the situation right up a, not a proposal, but what the circumstances are. And then we would sit down and look at the compensation payroll and the titles of the organization and make sure it's well within budgeted. It's been authorized from a budget standpoint and that it's not a newly created position. And if so, we would then look at that. The executive director would authorize it and we would normally just move on. That would be, that's how it's, that's how it's been handled in the past for positions that were budgeted. That's really important. So at no time it would come before the full board, a full commission for, for example, a reclassification of someone's position. That would never come. A reclassification, that's different. When we say reclassification, we're changing, we're changing a position. Promotion is what I'm talking about. If we're going to add a position to an organization, to a division or a department, that would certainly warrant review. So I guess defining sometimes this reclassification is takes on a different meaning with folks. In my view, when you reclassify, you are changing the structure of an organizational chart. That's different. I was talking about operationally folks being promoted, folks being approved, and that's the normal process for budgeted type of operational moves. Anything above and beyond that, I would imagine that the position, ED, would be then responsible for reviewing it with the commissioners if it was something that was going to change. And to put that into practical application, if you recall last year, we came forward with a recommendation to increase the IT division, to add some positions there, separate justification, show the existing org chart, how it would change in the org chart. That would still all take place, right? Because those are adding FTEs and those are adding divisions, adding, and the commission obviously has the authority on that. What we're talking about is moving the account one into an account two, moving something like that where if you take a strict interpretation of what the commission decided in July, those things aren't able to happen unless we bring them in front of the entire commission. And on some instances, and I'm not saying it happened with account one or account two, I'm just using those classification because they're in the financial world. In some of those instances, some staff had said, well, I don't want that in front of the full body out in the public. So we're trying to work within the situation, but saying that, and this is where I keep coming back to it, this seems like a good policy group to pull together moving forward. So you have more eyes on it. Madam Chair. Sure. Quick follow up for Derek. In the example you just gave, going from accounting one to accountant two, would that be considered a promotion or reclassification? I'm still trying to get my head wrapped around the distinction between what Dave Maldrew just described as a reclassification and what you just described as a reclassification seemingly. So for in the strictest HR terms, that would be a promotion. If you look at recent classifications, you look at a whole group. So you would take a accounting series and turn it from an accountant and a senior accountant into an accountant one, accountant two, and an accountant three. That would be a whole reclassification, right? So your old positions no longer exist and you've reclassified them into this series. So that would be the strictest HR, but we are being a little lenient here as far as, and those are some of the guardrails that we'd like to discuss. You know, if say you have an accounting series and you wanted to put an accountant three in, would that be a new position that we'd have to come back if we're not adding FTEs? Or would that, and, you know, those are the types of things we'd like to kick around at this group. And then, you know, having a commissioner there, especially would help us to get some of that guidance of where is that threshold where we really should be coming forward? And if there's any question, we'll bring it to the group. And we'll bring it up to the full commission. So I'm kind of struck by how you started off that that you're convening this because otherwise a working group would be subject to the open meeting law and you don't want it to be a public body. You as general counsel have worked with me for the last five years. And we, I've worked with executive directors to, for instance, COVID, great example, where we used the device of a working group to get stuff done, pursuant to my authority under section three, and we were able to convene and then bring all of our recommendations. Commissioner Bryan, you were involved on getting back to work. I have convened the DEI working group and it was never subject to a vote of the commission. It was pursuant to my authority to get stuff done. And so today I'm struck by the fact that you've decided that that's a power of the executive director and that you would bring in a commissioner kind of, because I have never been advised by the general counsel's office that we were doing anything that was out of store. So you didn't come to me on this one, that's okay. But I just wondered what, why this is a new model here. This is the first time I've heard of this model where the executive director would convene a working group that would include a commissioner. Well, we thought that first of all it would be important to have a commissioner as part of the group. No, that's not what I'm saying. Just, no, I understand that. No, just strictly on the legal analysis that you said, Todd, because I'm struck by it. What you said is right too. I think we have to be careful to make sure it's not the commission that is directing the establishment of this group. In this case, as you point out, the chair does have specific authority in the statute to organize and make arrangements for those types of assignments. Right. And if we vote today, if we vote today on convening this group, won't we be making it a commission approved body? So therefore it would be subject to an open leading long public body. Yeah, that's why I'm not asking you to vote on establishing this group. We have a motion back in that fight. So I guess it's authorizing you to convene it. Right. Okay, I just need to know, I'm glad that you clarified that, what we've done and what I'd understood was a legal approach for working groups. I just want to make sure that I understood that. Secondly, I guess I wanna know how this competes with all the extensive work that the second director Wells did to establish the framework. And Dave, you're the most knowledgeable about that. So how does that fit into this? This would be all the work as far as the fair pay act and things of that sort that a lot of work was done. That would not be touched. In fact, what I'm concerned about is as we start, these increases, the amount of people are hiring, I don't want that model to get destroyed or get suffered through compression because of salaries coming in. It would not change what was put in place by Karen at all. My assessment here is that the speed in which these things are coming in are quick. And having a group together that can get it done quickly and effectively is really my motivation. It wouldn't be that it's not to change an existing practice at all. So I think that for the executive director, that is actually one of the core functions of the executive director to make those decisions. And I guess to Derek's earlier point, I am wondering about the composition because I would imagine that the work would be very, very closely done by Todd, you and whatever division. Let's say it's a director band, sports wagering piece. And so if it's this working group, I kind of wonder if that's actually going to be as nimble as you would want for these really quick decisions. Madam Chair, may I answer that? Sure. I'm asking you. OK, since I have been here and in my past, I have worked very closely with finance. And when we're looking at any type of any level, when Karen was here, whatever, I would partner immediately. So that's what Derek too. That and the executive person where the proposed change is going to take effect, certainly. But normally at the very end, that person would move over here. GC would not be involved normally. And it would be Karen, myself and Derek looking at it. That's how that's the model that we have had in the past. And Derek, correct me if I'm wrong. But the operational person would not be involved. But it would be Karen, Derek, and myself that would be looking at everything. Karen would say, what about this? What about that? Certainly, Derek did the same thing. I'm looking at exactly this is what has been proposed to me. If there's a question, I would go back, speak to that particular ops person, come back and say, well, this is how it is. We would rarely pull the person in unless it was something that really needed to be happening very quickly. And we just didn't have time to collaborate and have meetings. But that's the model. Why not do that, continue doing that? Because that seems nimble to me. It is nimble, but there are times when you're creating new, you're creating new, we were creating new departments, new divisions. Movement is happening very quickly. And when that occurs, I just can't handle it that fast. And many times you have to be very careful not to get, I found myself making decisions to make sure I dodge the eyes across the cheese. Do I have enough eyes looking at this to make sure I'm not making a mistake? So I looked at it as a great way to collaborate and really get a handle with a group that says, listen, we are looking at X amount of changes in the next 30 days. We should stop working on this. And this is what we need to do, as opposed to taking one offs and then going in and getting it done quickly. That was my, I looked at it as a more tactical, approach. Got it. I'm sorry, Madam Chair. And one of the things that we did notice, and Dave and I should have noticed it, we missed some, right? So there should, we did have some unintended consequences and we don't wanna destroy the work or not destroy, but throw wrinkles into the work that we did do in 2022. That was a lot of work. And a lot of these things are coming quickly. It does make quick, and to have a few more eyes, take a look at it and say, hey, did you think about this consequence? Did you take a look at this factor? Did you make sure that this division isn't being impacted in a negative way? And Dave, Dave does an excellent job with that with his HR team. I'm looking at, did we have it budgeted? Are you trading a position? Are you not changing it for that? And to have a few more eyes to say, well, did you really think about this? I just think it helps. And cadence, we can meet weekly. These usually are the most pressing matters that come up when, especially when Dave's dealing with his clients, people that want these things to happen. So Dave is good at getting us organized quickly. There are times he comes down to my door and says, whatever you're doing, I need you to just drop it and pay attention to this for a minute. So we could keep it just three people or four people, but I think having more people involved in it makes sure that we're not missing something. And I'm not perfect. I'll be the first to admit that. So we have missed it. Having some more eyes, some more thought in there, I think is helpful. Michelle, Brian, Michelle Maynard. This is also from the interim executive director. And I know that your work is underway. I am wondering how you feel in terms of timing of this request. Yeah, so that was my question. Like we are hopefully done in the next several months at the outside with this going back to a full-time ED, you know, possibly the process of bringing in, you know, a chief of staff, first assistant, whatever you want to call it, an assistant at ED. So I'm just wondering about the need for it right now, given that posture. Commissioner Maynard. I have a question before I have a statement. My question is, Dave, how many, or Derek, how many people do we think we're bringing on, let's say in the next 30 days to Commissioner O'Brien's point, I'm trying to get a feel for this. One position, five. Based on the field, it's probably going to be more field than one-on-one federal. So I don't know, probably say five to seven. Maybe that's pushing it. That's a lot. That's a lot. And many of those are really hires. What happens, it's not so much that. It's the changes that occur. And we may have, okay, a perfect example is this. We're coming up with union contracts. A lot of information is going to start flowing regarding salaries, how it's going to affect us. They're going to be requesting. So a lot of intricate discussions are going to take place. That's in the field world. That's an example where the committee will be coming to you folks saying, this is what we have. So that's above and beyond. Without that, I'd say probably about three to five instances come up a month where someone would like to do X and promote someone to Y or feel that they're ready to do X and this person leaves and I want to backfill this person. But I think they're ready for this. That's how it normally comes up. And then we break it down and we find out if it's a position that we already have in the org chart or are you talking about the creation of a new position? And we had a little bit of a rush of that about three months ago, that new position approach, which was, you know, certainly that cannot be rushed. So I have a couple of dots, I don't share with that answer. Sorry, long winded. No, the perfect answer, Dave, I appreciate it. Obviously a lot of work has went into this and I appreciate the work that's went into it and I see trying to actually be in conformity with what Karen had put together and some outside groups and Commissioner O'Brien and others. I guess my thought is a couple of things. One is I would want the chair to bless whatever is coming out of this because anytime you talk about assigning a commissioner or doing this or doing that, I would want, no matter who the chair is to have, I think it's just a function, right? And that's guarding my colleagues and the authority of the commission. So that's the first thing. The second thing is I think that to Commissioner O'Brien's point, we're moving pretty quickly. I think we're gonna be able to turn some of those introns into permanence. I've heard Commissioner Skinner and Commissioner Hill say something similar on the IEB position. I would say that, you know, Dave, I trust you, I trust Todd in his interim role to take care of these matters as few as they're going to be before there's a permanent position, before anything like this would be put together. I also question the number one commissioner, right? There could be theoretically two commissioners on it, right? I'm just sitting here thinking. Again, it's something that the chair could think about. But those are my thoughts. I just think this is, I think it's good. I think I see the work that's been put into it. I appreciate it. I respect it. I hear what you're saying. I think I would just hold off to try to get some permanent folks in those positions. Because if those folks come in, now they're coming into a situation where work has already kind of been started and then stopped and then started, that's what I'm worried about. Okay. I think we're also kind of in a legal problem here. We really can't give a blessing to this committee. I see. Because if we do... Then it's your committee. We've triggered this being a public body. I see. And I mean, I see you nodding your head. I don't think I'm making this up. This is, the irony was kind of, that I think you were hoping to avoid that. Really creates that, yeah. I think it does. Commissioner Brown, again, you're nodding. I think I'm right on that, Todd. I, that's why I brought it up the way I did because I wanted to make sure you hadn't been doing it inappropriately before. I think maybe tabling it right now during the, just while this interim period for a bit more. I know that commissioners, I didn't really weigh in on the other issues. And Todd knows I didn't weigh in on the other issues. There were some parameters that some of you had raised for Todd in terms of what he should not be able to do or could not do during his interim. I don't know if that guidance is being lifted with what commissioner Maynard just said, like, we trust you to do what you need to do. I don't know. I actually don't remember the exact parameters. I remember it was not creating a new position. Is that the only thing we're concerned about right now? I mean, that's certainly one of those no salary adjustments, re-classifications, things along those lines. And we have paid high fidelity to these things. We have not touched any of that stuff. But I think we understand. I think we can withdraw this proposal for now and we can kind of carry on. And remember, and I definitely, I definitely counseled Heather on this. I don't think Caitlin, I've had a conversation about it. And you, Todd, as you remember, if I understand my colleagues correctly, they weren't saying you can't create a new promotion, a new position. You just got to come in front of the commission and I hear you saying, well, we can't do that in executive session. Well, sometimes you just got to figure out how to navigate things in the public session. And that might be all tricky. There is one executive session exemption for negotiation of a non-union member employee. There's that one. I know you've got that top of mind, I'm sure. But these are tricky things to navigate. And HR, you know, I think it's a novel idea to do it by committee. My experience would be down the road. I wonder if, as you expand your numbers of people who are invested and interested in these decisions, you're also expanding sort of that community that knows about really sort of how the HR matters. I agree. You know, we kind of always have to, when you think about HR matters, you, and I know it's only about pay. Well, you're right. Yeah. But, you know, I always think you want to keep it as close as you can. Confidentiality. A little bit of a switch. You're, you know, expanding and even Derek thought, well, you know, it's good to get input. But it's a critically private discussion too. So I'm struggling with just even that piece, but I think it's novel. I just, the reason why I started with the governance thing was I was wondering if we were gonna get ourselves into a boat trouble. No, I think we totally understand this was a little niche idea to try to address an issue that has come up a couple of times, but we can easily just kind of continue on and we'll be okay. So I took up a lot of time. Commissioner Skinner, you've got your audio off. Yeah, I'm just waiting to be heard here. My apologies, I signed. No worries. I did ask that we revisit this discussion. So I think I am owed a little bit of deference here in terms of communicating my thoughts. I think the proposal is sound. I know that there has been a legal question as to whether or not the commission, whether or not bestowing the authority, granting the authority to the interim ID to create this committee is in effect, the commission creating this committee. So I just, I'd like to have some clarity on that because I'm not hearing the request. And I think Todd clarified this as commission create this committee. I hear, I understand that the interim ID is asking for the authority to create this committee. Yeah, that's right. And I get the nuance there and I'm very comfortable with the idea that I would be creating the committee, not the commission, but obviously because of the restrictions that are in place, I can't just create this committee that is going to do this stuff. So there is a rub there for sure. And just to reiterate, this was really just intended to address very small, relatively small things that may come up. And I would suggest that even if it's just one person we're able to address over the course of the next few months, then to me, it was worthwhile. And that's why we propose this. There's no suggestion that there are going to be dozens of decisions that need to get made. But we don't have it, that's not what happens. As a practical matter, we don't have dozens of things that are coming through. There were a couple here and there that we thought it would be helpful if we could address in the short term. And that's what this was intended to do. Very narrow kind of scope. I completely agree, Madam Chair, with what you said about keeping a small circle when it comes to discussing these matters. And we do, we did not discuss personnel matters with any groups of people. Dave and I discussed most of them, just the two of us. And there are certainly some other things that may arise from time to time. But that is all this was just a very limited attempt to carve out some limited authority to address very small matters. So to that point, I do think it is necessary that the interim ED have that ability. I think it limits frustration in our senior staff. It boosts morale in a lot of ways across the agency. And the small circle bit that's been talked about, I for one would like to see the interim ED be granted the authority that the permanent ED held with respect to these items. We're not talking about hiring, folks, we're not talking about reassigning staff, right? We're talking about creating these small opportunities, granting these small opportunities for some advancement with respect to compensation as necessary. And I'm aware that there were a couple of issues that have come up in the past, or a couple of issues that have come up over the course of Todd's tenure as interim. And I think it's unfortunate that what would typically not come before this commission for a decision, I think it's unfortunate that we're now requiring that they do. And I don't see the wisdom in that at all. Mr. Skinner, I'm in agreement with you on this. Under the statute, the interim executive director has the same authority as what the executive director would have. I hadn't taken a position before because I read the room that there seems to be a desire to have some desire to cap that. And to the extent, the creation of new positions is something that the executive director would have been allowed to do or whatever functions. I myself, I don't have a problem with that. I thought today's was a little bit more of a, more outside the sort of the realm of normalcy in terms of how you deal with this issue than certainly what we've been addressing in the past. So to the extent, I think maybe I didn't object much when we first talked about these parameters on Todd's ability was because I also didn't know how long process was going to take. And I still don't really know. I'm hearing maybe several months now. To that extent, I'm with commissioner Skinner that we don't want to limit what would be the work of the executive director by statute. The interim has exactly the same authority. So if that's helpful, commissioner Skinner to your argument, I just wasn't really crazy about this working group because I was afraid it would actually do the opposite today and create something that would flag the open meeting on. Yeah, I was on the, you know, I know that there was consensus. I suppose that we would not be granting me that particular authority to the interim, but I was on the opposite side of that. I didn't see it as necessary then. I don't see it as necessary to limit that authority now. And I don't want to speak for Todd, but I do think that this proposal was a way to gain approval, you know, it's sort of a way to give some level of comfort to the commissioners that Todd wouldn't be making these decisions on his own or, you know, if that were a concern or that they wouldn't be made recklessly. So, you know, I do, as commissioner Maynard said, I do applaud the work that has gone into this. I think it's very thoughtful, but I do want to have us consider just allowing the ED to be the ED whether they're serving in an interim capacity or not. Commissioners, how do you want to respond? So my response would be that I actually agree with commissioner Skinner. So my question would be process wise, how do we do that? And maybe to make people more comfortable is we, what was described to us today as minor, we can get some wording that would allow us to do a motion that just includes those minor compensations, reclassifications, because I too have no problem allowing our interim director to make these type of decisions. I really don't. So I don't think a working group is needed to do it. I think we have a simple step. Yeah. And my understanding was that type of thing was not something that was off the table. That's something that was always there and under the interim authority. The question and what was put forth on the plurality consensus, whoever you want to talk about it was really consistent with our interactions with the full-time ED, which is restructuring, creating things, changing pay grades, all that. That was supposed to come back before us as a commission. And so that was consistent with the authority that we had. And so we were making that clear. So the historical things that have been referenced were really talking about reclassifying and creating new positions. So that to me, having to come back in front of us to in generalities described positions was not in any way inconsistent with what we would have done with the prior permanent ED. And so for a number of reasons, the open meeting law blessing this commission and that makes it a body that needs to worry about OML, et cetera. I don't think it's a good idea to move and vote and establish some sort of committee right now. But in terms of seeking the clarity that what you are talking about in terms of these small one outs, not regrading, promoting that sort of thing. My understanding was that was within the authority to do as has been done. I still have a concern about reorganizing, moving people within the grades in terms of where the pay grade of the position is, et cetera. That's something that came up in front of us as a commission. And I would expect it to still come in front of us, whether it be interim or whether it be permanent. That's really how to clarify, Commissioner O'Brien. If I could give amens a commission, I would amen what Commissioner O'Brien just said. That was my view too. And I just wanna make sure that we're not searching for a problem that doesn't exist, right? Because in my head, we were doing on the small level stuff, Todd, you guys were doing this anyways, right? And I say you guys mean you, Dave, Darren, others. But this was already happened. So I think I agree with Eileen. I agree with Eileen. I think if I may, Madam Chair, I would just add this has been very helpful for me. I certainly think the spirit of the intention has become clearer for me. And we can go from there. And Dave and Derek, if you're comfortable with that as well, I think we can work with this and we can address some of the things with a little more clarity than perhaps you have. This has been very helpful and informative. So thank you. Absolutely. I'll definitely work. I agree. Good memo, though. Team effort, team effort. Thank you. Okay, so we're good then, right? I think we're good. Thank you. We appreciate it, yeah. And again, if there's something where you're wondering about whether it's in that sweet spot or not, I think Commissioner O'Brien, Commissioner Maynard, and I think that you were the ones who talked about it. Again, Commissioner Skinner, I think I didn't ever really comment because I sort of read the room, but it seems though it's a really narrow piece of stuff that needs to come back. And as Commissioner O'Brien says, we'd expect any ED to come before us on it. Right, right. Okay, Derek, is that helpful? That's very helpful, thank you. Yep, thank you. Todd, on that? All right, okay, so now it is four o'clock and we have one more item and that has to do with our lease and we are expecting to go into executive session on that. Is that right? Yes. Getting there. Commissioner, before we turn to this, I just wanted to see if you have any commissioner's updates that we would address in the public. Commissioner Hill, can I just mention one thing that I forgot on our letter and Todd, on the letter that we approved that would be going out on the legislative proposals. We didn't include in the habit sent to the Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies and they really, we always include them in our annual report. They've very much involved in the gaming. So I wondered if we could include... That'd be fine. Senate Chair, yeah, Fine Gold and House Chair, Paracella. Yeah. Great, thanks. Actually, Madam Chair, in that regard, I wonder, do we normally CC our appointing authorities as well on this as a courtesy matter? We could do that as an appointing authority. Not addressing it to them, but just CC'ing them. That's a good idea too. So the Governor, Attorney General and the Chancellor. Yeah. And then Chair, I had a question. Was this letter going to be posted for public comment? Didn't we talk about that last time or has that already been done? We did get one comment of a success on the community mitigation. I think I checked in with Mills and we didn't receive anything else. Yeah, I didn't know if that was just someone being very astute in tuning into these meetings or if we formally put it out for public comment. Mills, how did you put it out? Yeah, absolutely. We posted this on the Massachusetts Game and Commissioned website under the Request for Public Comment page and we also sent it out via our social media channels letting people know that it was up and we did not receive comments at our comment email. Well, I think we thanked on the submitter in an earlier meeting and again, thank you. It was with respect to the community mitigation piece which they were still in support of. And just quickly, Dave Susan just let me know that he also put it in our latest newsletter. So went out pretty widely. And I also just note, those folks actually sent it directly to the legislature. They weren't even necessarily a comment to the Game and Commission. They submitted it right to those folks. Oh, it did? No, that's good. That's good. Okay, anything else? All right, thanks for that. I meant to mention it earlier. All right, so now, Mary and Julie, we gotta get you home. We have item number 11 and that has to do with the lease talk. Yes, so Madam Chair and commissioners, you'll recall the commission discussed the matter of the lease at a relatively recent executive session. And as we were prepared to take action, one detail emerged that we wanted to make sure the commissioners were aware of. Are we in executive session? Not yet. No, he's just setting the stage. I'm not gonna get into details. All right. But thank you. I appreciate it. That was good. I appreciate the chat on that. Thank you, Attorney Dooley. So with that, I don't really have a pursuant to Mary's point, I don't have much more to say other than there is one detail we would like to share with the commissioners relative to the negotiation of our lease at 101 Federal Street. And I do believe an executive session would be appropriate if you're so inclined to discuss it there. Thanks, Todd. So as you know, I have to read into the record that commission anticipates that it will meet in executive session accordance with GL Chapter 30A, Section 21A6, to consider the lease of real property specifically the commission's office space at 101 Federal Street in Boston and associated considerations as discussion at an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the negotiating position of the commission. The public session of the commission meeting will not reconvene at the conclusion of the executive session. Do I have a motion? Mr. Skinner. Can I just say that? So moved. Absolutely. Second. Okay, thank you. Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Commissioner Skinner. Aye. And Commissioner Rainer. Aye. Okay, and I vote yes. So that's five, zero. And I want to thank the public that stayed with us during this long meeting, lots of business covered and especially to our team. Excellent. We are very lucky to have the depth and richness of your counsel so that we can make informed decisions. It's not lost on any of us. Have a good day. We're gonna now get