 to bring together training and service providers, employers and educators, and for 12 regional summits across the state to learn more about the unique challenges and opportunities in each area. The summit's findings, which you'll hear more about in a minute, identify some common themes that can guide our state agencies and our partners as we work together to strengthen the workforce development system and better meet the needs of Vermonters and Vermont businesses. I had the privilege of attending a few of these events and what I saw was encouraging. They were very proved to be fruitful and worthwhile to attend. Because it's important for all of us, as you remember, that there's so much more going on outside this film to solve problems and help people than most realize. In every community, people are working to match the promise with the skills they need to be successful in today's workforce. These local efforts are key to ensuring our work at the state level, learns from, builds upon, and enhances the efforts and creativity of these on the front lines. That's key to bringing about real change. I'm thankful for the over 600 people who participate in these summits. Your engagement, the hard work that you do every day to serve your fellow Vermonters, will carry us into the future, where our workforce and economy will be stronger than ever before. So at this point, I'd like to invite our commissioner of labor, Mr. Harrington, to say a few words. Thank you. Good morning. In 2018, the legislature explored workforce development efforts across the state and found that there were many agencies and groups already working to improve Vermont's workforce. And that the players and programs change from region to region and town to town. And tasked the commissioner of labor with redesigning the system and aligning efforts for employers, job seekers, stakeholders, and service providers. As part of the process of implementing Act 189, the Department of Labor, the State Workforce Development Board, and other state agencies developed a five-part plan to improve collaboration, coordination, and alignment of stakeholders around the state's workforce vision and goals. One distinct effort of this plan was to host the 12 regional convenings or summits throughout the fall of 2019. Through a competitive bidding process, the Department of Labor secured a qualified consultant to help develop, promote, and manage this series of standardized workforce summits. There were over 10 proposals submitted from both in-state and out-of-state consultants. A proposal review committee came together, comprised of core partners, and reviewed the proposals and selected a collective proposal by the Vermont Regional Development Corporation. The development corporations were chosen because of their community-based experience, their understanding for regional partners and stakeholders that we wish to engage with through this process, and the unique dynamic that employers and employer needs have in each of our existing counties. At the same time, the Department saw an opportunity to deepen its relationship with the regional development corporations in addressing workforce challenges across the state. The department asked a lot of the development corporations and in that work related to the summits included facilitating the convenings and cross-training activities, soliciting and collecting targeted feedback to inform the development of Vermont's 2020 Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act plan. This will also guide workforce efforts over the next five years, provide employers with state and local tools and information about how and where to access resources to help them meet their labor force needs, and to create a directory of local workforce education training providers, programs, and relevant resources. We are extremely happy with the work the development corporations did and are still analyzing the 150-page plus report and data that they collected throughout the fall of 2019. This information will be used to assist our department and the State Workforce Board as we design initiatives that support each of Vermont's 251 towns. Additionally, I would like to offer my sincere thanks to the Regional Development Corporations, the State Workforce Board, and all those who participated in this process. Thank you. I'd now like to invite Fred Kenney, Executive Director of the Addison County Economic Development Corporation to say a few words. Fred? Thank you. Thank you, Governor. Thank you, Commissioner Harrington. I am Fred Kenney, Executive Director of the Addison County Economic Development Corporation. ACEDC acted as the lead Regional Development Corporation on this project, but I'm here representing all 12 Regional Development Corporations, most of whom are represented behind us, the other directors from around the state. Governor, the RDCs in Vermont appreciate your administration support and the support of the General Assembly for Economic Development, especially in the area of workforce development. The RDCs were pleased to respond to the Department of Labor's RFP to convene 12 standardized workforce summits around the state. It made sense for us, and I daresay we forged some new partnerships with and among some of the Department of Labor's core partners that we normally don't work with. One purpose of the summits was to provide a two-way lane of communication, one down from the state level to the region, and another back up to the state level. So we provided a venue to listen locally and report back up. Our report on the summits identifies actionable strategies specific to each region that will be implemented locally by the formal or informal workforce partnerships that have evolved in each region, such as the Addison County Workforce Alliance in my region. It also identifies five common statewide themes and prioritizes seven strategies to inform state level discussions. The Department of Labor has accepted our report and will be reviewing and considering our recommendations as they develop the state's workforce strategies and goals. While the report marks the end of the scope of work for the summits, the RDCs look forward to continuing this private public partnership with the governor, the Department of Labor, the State Workforce Development Board, and other core partners to create new ways to do workforce development and build an integrated workforce system. Thank you. Thank you very much. With that, we'll open it up to questions, maybe on the subject first, and feel free to ask anyone who's here any questions you might have. And anyone who's here who might want to add something that we might have missed, please feel free to come up and share your thoughts and hear from the state. Is there anything that we can do beyond what we're doing? I think, yeah, keep putting pressure on the federal government, doing everything we can. Again, with our congressional delegation, we've made those initiatives known as well. So we're hopeful that we can make some gains in this area. If the federal government, you said, you're pushing back on the federal government? Well, we've, you know, when there was a request for different states and so forth to sign on to different, you know, whether we wanted more refugees in our states and communities, we said yes, by all means. So we sent the letter back. We've been asking, again, I've sent a couple of letters to the administration asking for more refugees in our communities. There's been a change in leadership. So we've been different commissioners and secretaries in those. We haven't received a lot of feedback from those letters, but we'll continue to do whatever we can to advocate for that because that is important. What do you think the biggest obstacle is to having this materialized the way that you would like it to? Well, I think it's, again, as the federal government and President Trump, in particular, that it has not been as inclined to accept more immigration. It's been a big policy shift in our country. So I think that's a bit of an obstacle to see administration. And a lot of Republican governors have been reluctant to take advantage of the opportunity President Trump has given them to close the door. And I would think that has something to say about how governors, even Republican governors, view the economics of resummeling them. Yeah, well, and yeah, I think there are a number of governors, Republican Democrats, governors who see the value and see the need, especially in the Northeast and the Northern part of our country, tremendous workforce needs. We need more people in our state. This is a way, and we've been successful. And we'd like to see that grow. Could you talk a little bit more about concrete results from the summits that took place last year and what this is actually doing in terms of new businesses, hiring people from out of state or from in state? Are there some? Initiatives from this report. Yeah, well, we just received the report and we're hoping to put some of that into place. But a lot of what we heard, I think it's important that we get outside this building. And I've said this with our capital for a day for some of the things that I do traveling throughout Vermont and listening to people. Our expectation is that if you have a problem, come to Montpelier, tell us about it and we'll see if we can fix it. Well, sometimes getting out and really engaging with the communities gives us an opportunity to see what they mean. And we heard loud and clear that workforce challenges exist throughout Vermont. So that's probably not a surprise. But again, learning, getting everyone together and sharing a common goal and learning from other RDCs and other regions of the state I think will prove to be essential as we move forward in trying to do this, pulling in the same direction that I talked about a lot. But I think we learned it here, learning from one another. But I'll let, if there are other RDC members who would like to speak to that, come up and reflect on that would be helpful. Sure. And one thing that our report was the Department of Labor and they'll be looking at the five themes that we presented and the priority of potential strategies. But each region also developed strategies for their region and the RDCs will be taking those forward in their region. For instance, as I mentioned in my region, we have an Addison County workforce alliance which grew up, evolved just among people who need, thought, felt the need to have an organization to kind of be the bond between all the partners in the region. So we'll take, we have a lot of strategies that were recommended by employers and service providers in our region. But we're definitely going to take five of those and try to move those forward in our region. And that's, that will involve those service providers, educators, and employers all together working on those strategies. What if you add to Fred's point of the most, what you think is the most exciting proposal or recommendation out of this report that you've just submitted? It's going to move the ball forward on this issue. What is it? Well, I don't know if I want to pick one out as the most important, but, you know, just developing somehow new regional leadership and so that each region has somebody that's daily working on workforce development. It's one of the, it was the first team that we came up with and I think that's going to be important. But as, other times I can share this. To the question of refugees, there's some great programs happening very pilot-based around the state. So in Wyndham County, in Bellas Falls, there's an organization called the Community Asylum Seekers Project, and they're helping asylum seekers relocate to Wyndham County. So there's projects like that popping up around the state. So they need more funding. It's a completely philanthropic-based program, and we're helping connect them with employers to try to ensure that there's both a system and a network to support their needs when they arrive, but also have the ability to gain high-wage high-growth job opportunities. So I just wanted to share that. What's your name? Adam Mulk. And who are you with? The Brown World Development Credit Corporation. Thank you. Anyone else? I'm going to ask this maybe you and maybe someone from some other fun-flung outposts of the state, Southern Vermont, particularly in the kingdom. What's the biggest disconnect between what's going on in your communities and what the state is doing or could be doing? And what's the opportunities we're missing or the roadblocks? Or what, I know that's a big question, and I'm asking an amorphous group of people here, but if anyone has any thoughts, they'd like to share about that. Brett, do you want to talk about the communication piece? I said I came in. It's been great with you. I mean, I might want to come up here, but I'm really short on you. You got it? Sorry. Jamie Stewart on the Executive Director for Central Vermont Economic Development. There are obviously, there were common themes that came out. We all have to kind of digest some of that, and that's where that piece is in place. But the most common thing, and we've been hearing this now for a little while, is the communication. Employers knowing who to reach out to, if they have this problem, they want to know how to find somebody who can support and address that problem for the service providers, getting their information out on how they can be a resource, and then service providers within that group, how can they coordinate their efforts? Because the state actually does what we're finding, deal with a lot of the issues very effectively in many different ways. Well, I think we'll come out of this, and the big part of the process was in trying to develop that resource, and I would go back to Sarah Buxton in our initial meetings as we were developing this process. That was very similar to something that the Department of Labor and the Workforce Investment Development Committee are we're searching for, was that ability for Vermonters to find the resources they need, and that's from the employer's side, from the service provider's side, from the job seekers side. The old silo problem. Exactly, yeah. And while we were able to put together a room entry service-provided directory that we gathered from all the convenings, there needs to be a next step to that so that it's, you know, with an interface that's useful by clients and by employers so they can look at it, they can approach it with a problem. I have this problem, you know, and find the right resources that way instead of just having a list to look at. So that's kind of the next step we think to this project. Thank you. I'm Bill Colvin, I'm the director in Bennington County of the RDC. I think we ought not lose sight of the value in this process itself. I think Commissioner Harrington touched on the strengthening connection between the Department of Labor and the Regional Development Corporation. The governor has spoken about the importance of having boots on the ground for communication up and down. I think there's also real value amongst the RDCs in establishing this process to provide a real opportunity for the RDCs to learn positive practices from one another about what's happening in the region. So I think there are opportunities to further support what's happening regionally. I think this process in developing the report, convening the summits, aided that significantly. Questions on this subject? Is the, I assume the report is, will be up somewhere or is it up? If you'd like that, yeah. It's many hundred pages. We'll be able to get some copies if you want to be online or if it's online, yeah. I guess I do, it will be online, but I just send it around the link. It'll be around Thursday. Tell me the Department of Labor does it. Do you want to do that? Take the shot if you want to. Sure, yeah. Take all the time you want. Thank you. I'm Bob Haines. I'm the Director of Green Mountain Economic Development Corporation, Windsor and Orange County. We're all focusing on education issues as well and trying to introduce the notion of careers to younger people. So we're trying to start programs in elementary schools, junior high schools and not wait for people to grow beyond their ability to think seriously about a career that might be exciting. There are thousands and thousands of terrific jobs and it's frustrating for us when we find instances where young people in particular can't get connected with a good job. So it relates to the communication, but the education is critically important. Our regional technical centers are extremely valuable. We are all advocating for much more support for them and more abilities for students who intend to follow a career in college, maybe get exposed to some of the other options and vice versa. So thank you. Did we connect? Add something to it. I'm Brett Long. I'm Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Economic Development and I wanted to kind of follow on your question because there's a lot going on that winds up below the radar and something that just developed recently that might, is through convenes such as what has happened here we had a group of businesses come together that were interested in trying to develop capabilities and frankly just understand additive manufacturer or deposition printing is sometimes called. And over a quite a long process we wound up getting a federal department of defense in which we were able to work with VTC from our technical college. And through that they have recently completed the development of an additive manufacturing curriculum and this term has started to add that course or offer that course. And the second part of this grant is to actually get these businesses together and allow them to have access to deposition printing equipment so that they can try out prototype and use URD in this new area. And what's interesting is through that convening of businesses it looks like this group is going to evolve into a group that's actually pursuing all areas of advanced manufacturing, robotics, AI, working on cybersecurity together. So just the fact, as people have said, that you're able to get the group together it winds up with all kinds of ancillary bill of benefits. Thanks. Anyone else? So my job is to pick the one that I think can lead in the best way. And I thought he was the one who did. Haven't you said you want to get more women in senior justice positions? How does that help that cause? Well I think if you look at my track record I've been, I've appointed a number of female. I just chose a sheriff in Orleans County, female sheriff, which is the only one who is serving at this point in time. A state's attorney in Caledonia just recently was a female. So it isn't something that I always keep in mind but again, I want to choose the right candidate that has the expertise that can move that agency forward or whatever I'm choosing them to serve in. We'll see. I mean, we'll let it go through the process. I don't want to get ahead of that. But my feelings haven't changed in minimum wage. I think I can say vocal about it as well as the last three years that's happened. So I have concerns that I'll reflect on. I think Senator Beeney feel the time of the week. I'm sorry? Yes, yes I am. Senator Beeney. Rebecca said that your deadline was Senator Beeney and midnight. 11.59. It'll be before that. Just go back to the minimum wage for a second. I understand your concerns when it was $15 an hour over a five year period. This is less. It's a shorter period of time. Same trajectory. Doesn't go as far, right? Same trajectory. OK, so are your concerns eased at all by the fact that it's not quite as comprehensive as the previous plan or you're saying I had these problems with it before and I still haven't had. I'm still concerned about the rural parts of our state and what this means. This one size fits all is very difficult when you have two different properties in Vermont and you don't have to go very far. Convenience store, let's say, up in Luther in terms of this is far different than the convenience store in downtown Burlington or in Williston or in Shelburne and what may not have much of an effect on the daily traffic through those stores and the amount of revenue that's generated in their world. It's much different than Luhnenberg or Concord or pick any other small community, Ridgeford. So many other factors. So I'm concerned, still concerned about it. It's about half of what they wanted, but it's half the timeline as well. And I go back to, and I've said this before, I go back to when I was in the Senate. We had the debate on the raise and I was convinced to move forward on that because it tied it to the cost of living and it raised it. But the argument was, we'll never have to deal with this ever again if we pass it today. And this will mark the third time the vaccine has been taken on this issue. So I believe supply and demand works. I believe the wages are rising. I think the shortage of labor in Vermont is having an effect on that and their employers have to compete. But every region is different economically. Would it be advisable to have a separate minimum wage pricing system in Burlington as opposed to the rest of the states? Should we have a higher minimum wage in Chittenden County? Certainly in the greater Burlington area, the economy is much different. And I think that they could absorb it much easier than the Northeast Kingdom or other parts of the state. So would you recommend that that we have two separate? I think that was put forth. I believe that Senator Benning might have mentioned that in one of the previous bills, but it didn't get a whole lot of traction. So it sounds like you're a client of veto of the bill that's going to be handed down to you. Well, we'll see. But again, I've made my feelings known. I feel I have concerns, but we'll see. If they stretch it out another couple of years, would that be more palatable for you? I want people to make more money in Vermont, but it is sensitive at this point in time. And I believe that there are businesses in some areas of the state, massage the wages in some way. It's blind demand work. Democrats, do you see this bill as a compromise? Do you see this bill as a compromise? Again, it's halfway to what they want it to be. Is that a compromise? It's halfway in that it's the same trajectory, it's the same thing. And next year, I'm sure those same folks that say it's a compromise are probably writing a bill right now to raise it to $15 and two more years from that. What do you mean by the same trajectory? Because to my understanding, in order to get to 15, this system, we wouldn't get there until around 23. Initially, it was a four year, four to five year trajectory. And look at what they just shortened the time period. I think it was the 12, 15. It's the same trajectory. Right, but it's a much longer time. Yeah, but I'm saying that they're going to get these more languages. Have you issued an RFP for the paid leave? Yes. We expect them in the next week or two. Do you have a benefit like this? So you are, as you consider, this paid leave bill that was sent to you to actively moving forward with the voluntary app closing. Because I think it can be done much more quickly. We negotiated with the employees, the state employees, the union. They accepted the proposal. So we have 8,500 people. The most effective way to do this without a piece of legislation that would. I said, I think what we ought to do is take a lesson from what we learned with water quality. Assess what we're doing today, and then determine these goals that could be challenged. Could just take resources away from the climate initiatives themselves. What do you mean they could be challenged? Well, I think if you don't meet them, because again, I've said most of our admissions at this point in time that I'm concerned about are transportation related. It's going to change competition, technology. Everything's going to change. But I bet within 20 years, most of the vehicles will be either or maybe hydrogen or something of that nature. But that trajectory is going to be like this, not straight. And so if you put something in place that doesn't meet that, then there'll be a challenge from some environmental group. I believe that we can do this much more effectively if we go into it with the goal in mind of what we want to do. But then figure out how we're going to get there. You mentioned you used clean water as an analogy. Was it not the legal requirement in the form of the TMDL forced Vermont to have that conversation? Well, it resulted in the action. Yeah. It jumped started, no doubt about it. It jumped started in the conversation. So we went by the end of the morning and we came to the conclusion that if we're all on the same page and we want it to happen, let's talk about, again, what we're doing today, what we need to do, how we're going to get there. And I think that that's a much more effective way of doing business than to set a goal that we're not sure that we can meet or not and then lead up to future legislators and future administrations to adhere to. I mean, that's not a leadership. Why are you, what concerns you about the mandate specifically? Because we don't know, again, how we're going to get there. And again, my interjection, I think it's different. I think that it's going to be much deeper in the years to come, 10 years from now, with all the changes and all these hard manufacturers coming up with their EVs and they're competing against each other. And there's more acceptance and we have more charging stations that will, it'll be a sea climb from there, but we'll get there because I think that the competition will drive that. You're saying the state budget is going to do it. I think you might miss that. You might have an artificial goal that you can't hit because you don't have either the vehicles, the charging, whatever it is, you might not hit that. And then you see them open yourselves up to lawsuits that began to take away from the initiative. So you think that the free market is the solution. Well, it's hard, but we have to lead by example, which we're doing. I mean, some of many of the initiatives I've taken over the last two or three years with trying to incentivize EVs, more charging stations. We had a press conference this week with buses, electric buses, two in the Burlington area. There's two more coming here. There's been some in the schools. That opens up the door to all kinds of different initiatives. And again, it's endless. What might happen is not just about the transportation. Then you might need to utilize some of these vehicles to think about parking lots full of electric buses, for instance. That's a huge power supply in itself that when they're not being used, could be used to shave some of the people's power. I mean, it's all kinds of things that we can consider in the future. Do these electric buses, though, point out a problem? I forget the price tag. It was a million dollars. A million dollars. And for a diesel now, it's like 650. So for a million dollars, you had $3 million in your budget for EV subsidies and charging stations, right? So I mean, that would be three buses. So sure, those prices will come down as technology again changes, as competition drives those prices down. When they have different more bus companies building these buses, and they become more commonplace, the price will come down. I think the argument against your trajectory is that because the longer we wait, the longer that it takes for that sea slope to go up, the more emissions we're pumping out and the worse the problem gets, we need to take more action to push that trajectory. I agree earlier. I agree. But I think we should take action like we're doing now. We have to prepare ourselves for that. We need the infrastructure, charging infrastructure, for instance. And the whole game really is in battery storage. That's the whole game. And so technology is changing every single day. The life of batteries has exceeded expectations. And there's a competition to see who gets there first. So if it's a different type of battery technology that we don't even think about it, it probably won't be lithium. It'll be something else. And if we can extend the life or the longevity of that storage, so instead of having a vehicle that has, it's 200 miles per charge, you have one that has six or 800 miles per charge. That makes it much more feasible. And it's exciting in some respect. It's the new age. It's almost like the Industrial Revolution, when it's the electrical evolution. Some Vermont towns have been considering declaring themselves second amendment sanctuary cities. At least four or five already have some more considering how we end up. Just curious, do you have any sort of advice for towns or voters who are considering declaring that they own a subject to state or federal law? Yeah, I think most of them realize that when they take that action. It's just the advisory in nature. And it's more of a statement. I think there are some people who think it goes a little freaky. I'm stating that the law prevailed. So that's your advice. I guess I'm gonna ask you to give any advice to the voters who are considering these measures. Well, I think that if they have a sentiment on a local level, I just think that you should be advised that my advice is make sure that they know that a state by the law is going to prevail and these issues are going to be isolated and do whatever they want to do. They have to adhere to a state by the law. You expressed concern about what a TCI agreement could look like and how they could raise prices for monitors and gas pumps, et cetera. What would it take for you to support a TCI agreement? What would you need to see? What would you need to see? Well, the overall costs from my perspective of anything we do is a concern. We have a limited pool of resources. I think we have to prioritize what we need and what we want and make sure that we live within those resources. I believe like, what are called. I mean, when we first started having that conversation, most of the talk wasn't about what we do for projects. Most of the talk, at least in this bill, was what tax we're gonna raise, right? So I said, I think we could do it within resources that we have. Let's grow the economy and we'll have the resources in order to pay for them. Well, guess what? We didn't. I mean, we came up with a source, an existing source. We didn't have to raise taxes to do it. We're dedicating that to water quality. I feel the same way in this area because to get to a point, I believe again that within 20 years, most of the, 9% of the vehicles are going to be EV or hydrogen or something other than an internal combustion engine. If you believe that, as I do, then you know that the resources that you can reap from a carbon tax of some sort is gonna fall off because we're not gonna be utilizing as much. So why not just accept, prioritize what we want and need and see what we can live without? And if this is our highest priority and I put resources towards this in my budget, then let's just do it. You were in the US Senate right now. Would you want to hear a testimony from John Holt before and you know what you're about to do? I think, you know, I've said before, I have faith in this process. When I say that, I believe that most Americans want to have faith in this whole process. So I think that that includes hearing as much as it's really necessary to come to this conclusion, whatever conclusion you're gonna come to. This is an important time in history. We shouldn't take this lightly and we should have all the testimony we need in order for them to make the right decision and we can feel good about the process. So does that mean you want to hear John Holt? Sure. Absolutely. When you videoed the 24 hour of the legal period last year, the US Senate has a lack of research showing that it's effective. I think last week the two Harvard Business School professors came to testify that longer waiting periods do work and I'm just curious, given there's more research showing that some longer periods would work, would you be inclined to support 48 or 72 hour? Again, my feelings haven't changed. We took some historic steps just a couple of years ago in terms of the legislation in the state. Some of the provisions within that legislation, like the red flag provision, I think could be effective in some of the counteracting some of the suicides we're seeing in Vermont. One of them is if someone is in harm to themselves or others, they would have their guns taken away from them. So I think we also should improve the next system within that so that if someone is, the red flag provisions are put into the next system so that someone can't buy another weapon. So I think we can make some improvements within that. I think we need more education. I don't think everyone realizes how you can utilize the red flag laws that we have now. And I would also ask, and I also asked the experts from Harvard that they have compared states that have red flag laws and have done any research on how that has been. And when they say that the 24 or 48 or whatever, or three day wave wing periods are more effective, have they compared them to states that have red flag provisions now? Well, would that change your calculation at all? Given that if you were in maybe 24 hours, doesn't prove to be effective, longer proves to be effective for research shows? No, again, I believe the laws we have that we passed two years ago are sufficient and we should improve on those and make sure that everyone knows how to utilize them. And then I continue down this path as well and as far as suicides are concerned, I am in my budget for investments and more suicide prevention. So that's the track I'm taking and I'm not inclined to do anything more. In your budget address, allocating some five and a half million dollars to the ACO under the pretense that they become a nonprofit. I guess right now state and federal law are kind of clashing. They have to be a for-profit right now. I guess sort of what are your thoughts on that going forward? Ben, how about tomorrow? If they can't, in some way they can become a nonprofit, they have to become more transparent. I think that's the point. It's not the nonprofit status as much as the transparency status that they have to adopt because we want to know what's going on. There's a lot of money that goes in this. I happen to believe, I'm cautiously optimistic as far as how this would help and at least changing the trajectory of healthcare costs in our state. So we just need to make sure that we all understand what we're doing. Is this an open-transparency extent to salaries? I think it should be just like, yeah, I mean, when I say if they can't go to a nonprofit status, they should adopt all the transparency that's available through a nonprofit and that includes salaries, I believe, in nonprofits. So you recommend that that be written into statute? Either agreement. I don't know how it would work, to tell you the truth, but my goal would be that they become more transparent. If it leads to something in statute, I would be open to that as well, but I would hope that there would be some sort of agreement that could be done much easier. Does the agreement care work adequately and kind of oversight evenly? Is necessary for homeowners to understand how somebody's a large nonprofit is looking for a medical center and looking for an opportunity in the state? Yeah, well, certainly whether it's a green amount of care or there has to be oversight of some sort and use it through banking instruments that had oversight before, it needs to be oversight. So should it be a garden? It could, that could be a way forward. The agreement on care boards mission has changed since single parents have been taken off the table, so maybe the green amount of care board will need to change as well. Do you think that the agreement on care board has become one of those state agencies that is both regulating and promoting and therefore has a built-in conflict of interest? I'm not sure that they have a conflict of interest. I just think their mission has changed. But in the inception, it was going to be a single-payer system and now that isn't the case. And so, you know, I'm not... That hasn't been the case for so few years. Right. Right. But we didn't get to that point until maybe three years ago. Your budget book cited $13 million in savings from sort of different and other administrative reform for this target was satisfied with the results of the program. Yeah, never completely satisfied. I think we can always improve every single day. I think it's part of, you know, my background in business. There wasn't a day that went by that I didn't look for an opportunity to become more efficient, more effective, more productive. And I feel the same way as the government. It's an ever-changing process, but every day. Every day, we should be looking at ways to try to save money and become more efficient with the taxpayers' dollars. And way back when we both had less gray hair, you were talking about the potential for, you know, lean management and things like that to free up money to do other things in the state government. Do you think it's had that level of results? Well, I think that the rent or rebate program is a prime example of that of working because it was an inefficient process. Many just didn't apply because it was so rigorous and so difficult to get through and cost a lot to implement. So they've seen why in the process, they saw that, freed up, I think it's 800,000 more dollars to put back into the pockets of those we need. So it wasn't, we took those savings, it was that we were able to get that back. So those who were renting that are burdened can take a man to that. There's a bill that we're part of that we're sitting in St. George's Park and we're looking around this room, what got us here. Do you feel like many people of color should be featured more from St. George's Park? I think, I don't know, I didn't really heard about the bill, to be honest with you, but we can't ignore some of the history here. I mean, these, unfortunately, there wasn't as much diversity in that, but hopefully in the future there will be and then we'll see more across the halls of this institution. Do you think there were any, you know, I'm sure there were, I'm sure there were, and I think we should highlight them. Yes, I mean, but I'm just saying that as we move forward, we should learn from history and do better and provide for more diversity and that's what I'm trying to do with my administration towards my cabinet, with any cabinet or some of the appointments I made and not all of them, but I'd say a number of them, it's important to me that we have more diversity. But it sounds like you're comfortable with the, I don't do water, I don't determine the artwork in the state house, this is the people's house and I'll let them decide what they wanna do in terms of artwork, if we can highlight more diversity and throughout the state house we should. We'll have no problem with that. I mean, we need a board of trustees that are also hearing testimony about diversifying board of trustees and I guess sort of what your thoughts there is. Yeah, we need a change. Well, again, I think we should keep that in mind in any board or any appointment that is made. They, I applaud them for reflecting on that. But I think that as well, when some of the legislature, we make the legislature makes quite a few appointments to that board and they should reflect on that when they are around making their choices. You make appointments to that board as well, are you going to be considering that? I will absolutely, in every appointment that I make, I try and keep that in mind. A couple, are there any thoughts on the coronavirus and what students or universities with international students should do to handle that pattern? Yeah, well, our health department, we don't know many that know of unless something happened today, obviously we're watching this because right across the river in New Hampshire there are a couple cases or we think there are a couple cases that I don't know if they've been confirmed at this point. So this is something that we have to keep in mind as well. I think the message that Dr. Levine, Michelle Levine has sent to many is to make sure that you're protecting yourself, watching and just like any flu issues of that nature. The same holds for this as well. We're watching this and making sure that we do whatever we can to prevent this from spreading. Got it.