 And we're live. Right, thank you. Good morning, everyone. I was just reminding folks that this meeting is being streamed, it's being recorded. And I'm also reminded that many of us are sitting at 101 Federal Street in front of screens and we are working hard to be able to really do a hybrid public meeting without restoring our public function as well as offering the virtual platform. But until then, we will sit in our separate offices in front of our screens and I'll do a roll call. Commissioner O'Brien, good morning. Good morning, I am here. Thank you, Commissioner Hill. I am here. Good morning and Commissioner Skinner. Morning, I'm here. We're next door to each other. Haven't seen you in person, good morning. Thank you, everyone. We're going to call to order today's meeting is it's May 12th already. It's public meeting number 379 and we'll start with the minutes. Good morning, Commissioner O'Brien. Good morning, Madam Chair. In the packet today, you have the meeting minutes from February 28th, 2022, which was a combined public meeting, public hearing having to do with the proposed wind development. I would move that the commission approve these minutes subject to any necessary changes for typographical errors or other non-material matters. Second. Okay, given your second, I assume you have no questions or edits. Commissioner Skinner, I don't believe you were here yet for that meeting. With that, Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Commissioner Skinner. Same, please. And I vote yes. So three and one abstention. Thank you. Okay. And we're going to move right to our administrative update. Good morning, Karen, Executive Director Wells. Good morning. Before we get into the items on the administrative update, I did want to just give the commission an update on our employee pay evaluation. I know this has been an ongoing topic and we've been discussing that both in the public meeting and we've been working on that behind the scenes. And I know that this has been a priority for the chair and the other commissioners in that we really want to retain our employees and we want to pay them fairly. So last year, we completed the Equal Pay Act analysis to ensure compliance with the law that was completed. And the evaluation did indicate we are in compliance with the law regarding the Equal Pay of persons at the agency. And then we're completing a subsequent pay fairness analysis to ensure that we're really doing the right thing for our employees. And as I said, able to recruit and retain top talent here at the agency. We had originally hoped to do that analysis through state resources, but that capacity didn't come to fruition. So we were able to do an intentional diversity spend and contracted with MCBI advisors for the project. The consultants reviewed all of our job descriptions and developed proposed salary bans and recommended nine distinct pay grades. We are incorporating those recommendations into analysis, which gives us comfortable bans with the Massachusetts Executive Branch. And the consultants also pulled information from other gaming jurisdictions on salaries. And we're overlaying that with the appropriate cost of living differentials, considering we live and work in Massachusetts. So we expect a final deliverable tomorrow on salary comps from Massachusetts quasi agencies. And our recommendation is to place our salary bans between the executive branch salaries and the quasi's for recruitment and retention purposes and also given the independent nature of the agency that doesn't rely on the infrastructure and support of the executive branch. So we're looking to implement any recommended modifications to salaries for the end of the month for pay grades one through six. So those lower paid employees are our priority at the agency. We're also looking at appropriate retro or bonus pay that's consistent with what the executive branch did last year. So we're at least mirroring what the executive branch did for that. For top level management, we will do a review that does not involve staff at those levels to avoid any conflict of interest. So I'd be looking for some commissioner assistance on that. So those top level people that would be a sort of a phase two on the pay fairness evaluation. The plan is after this is implemented to have the next pay raise cycle be in the fall consistent with the executive branch and the performance review cycle. So any increases then in the fall would then also be retrobacked to July 1st of 2022. So I just wanted to give you an overview of what we've been doing. I can either go ahead if you're comfortable with the groups one through six working with the staff on that or if you would like me to come back at the next meeting with further specifics if you want more of a granular approval process we can do that. But I expect to be ready to go and I want to complete this hopefully by the end of the month so that we can get that to our employees. So that's my update on that. I don't know if there's any questions or any feedback on process. Commissioner O'Brien, I know that you've been assisting it somewhat with respect to both the legal pay act and then the fair pay structure. So if you want to add any color to the conversation that would be helpful. So I did. I would be in support of what Director Wells is suggesting to keep this moving. I know I'm in an advantageous position in terms of having been involved. So I don't have any questions about the process or where it stands because I've been on the ground floor but for what it's worth in terms of the other commissioners and what she's asking for today. I think it's time and I think it's reasonable for her to move forward that way. Commissioner Hiller, commissioner Skinner do you have questions for the second director Wells? I have no questions and I'm okay with her moving forward with the proposed, what she wants to do. Great, thank you, commissioner Skinner. No questions. Just a comment around the level of detail you're looking for. You're asking that the commissioners would like to see. I'm fine with you Karen handling this at your level and handling it quickly. I think it's fine and I'm in full support. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, director Wells for bringing everybody up to date. I have been pressing Karen and team to move and I know commissioner Skinner and I shared a meeting together where we both expressed concern not about the process. I feel the process has been thorough and I feel the process has been really thoughtful and I commend Karen for that. It is really important to have a fair pay structure and look going forward, you're going to have a great model to work from but we really now want to see the fruits of your process implemented so we are very happy to have an implementation excuse me this morning implementation plan for the end of the month and I'm very satisfied that you'll continue to exercise the judgment that you've been employing in the structure with respect to the last bit of the analysis. So I think you have a full consensus from us as well as the process and a full consensus that we are looking forward to this being all culminated for this part of the process and going forward you've got a plan too. Exactly, so I am very grateful, thank you. I really would like this to be done. I just want to express I am very grateful for the help from the HR team, Dave, Trukty and the entire HR team helping with this and particularly our CFO Derek Lennon who put a lot of work into this and was the impetus for the diversity spend and also did a ton of the sort of detail on some of this and in such a way that I feel very comfortable that this analysis is fair and I just want to communicate to staff that the reason we're doing this we are very grateful for all the work that you've been doing and we want to treat you the proper way and the way you deserve. So hopefully this will be implemented quickly by the end of the month and we will go from there. So thank you. And thank you for starting off the day with that goodness. Yeah. So the next item on the administrative update is the onsite casino updates with Bruce Vance so I'll turn it over to Bruce. All right, that's going to be a hard act to follow after then. Right. This will be short. This was more of a restaurant update evidently. MGM will be opening up their Costa restaurant and Nacho Taco in the coming weeks. And Encore is going to be opening up night shift brewery beer garden on Saturdays and Sundays from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. out on the lawn out front of Encore. And that's pretty much my update for you unless you have any questions. Just a clarification, Bruce, I couldn't hear the first restaurant MGM, I'm sorry. Rasha, COSDA. Any questions for Bruce, Brad, Mephiesha, I mean, excellent. Well, thank you. You're welcome. A restaurant update is a good sign that they're getting employees in that food and beverage area. Yes. Up and running. Excellent, thanks. Okay, and then the final item on the administrative update, I'll just give a, just briefly, we are continuing to work on the office lease project. Mary Ann Dooley and Derek and team are assisting with that. The plan is, the commission so votes to go into an executive session. We did do a survey of the entire team. We got good response on that. Really interesting results. I know that we've been able to see that. So I expect that we'll have more discussion in the executive session. I wanted you to know we are at least moving forward with this. The reminder is that our lease is up at the end of next year and we're looking at various options and what we need for the agency going forward, but more to comment in the proposed executive session. So that's all I have now for the administrative update. Thank you. Thanks, any questions for Karen on that or any other matters, right? Commissioners, throughout the meeting, you can also think, is there anything that you would want second director Wells to report on in our next meeting as we move along? Okay. Good morning, Director Vanderlinden. Tell, are you? Good morning, Madam Chair. I'm doing well. Thank you so much. And good morning commissioners. I have two items on the agenda today. First in the research area, where I want to share with you and get your considerations and vote on the FY23 gaming research agenda. And then second, we will have a quarterly update for the game sets program. Let's see that we have several of our members from the game sets team here with us today. So first, the 23 research agenda. The expanded gaming act and trying to roll of research to comprehensively measure the effects of casino gambling in Massachusetts. Specifically mass general law chapter 23K section 71 directs the MGC with the advice of the gaming policy advisory committee to develop an annual research agenda to examine the social and economic effects of expanded gambling and to obtain scientific information relative to the neuroscience, psychology, sociology, epidemiology and etiology of gambling. To assure that we're working towards fulfilling the statutory mandate, the commission adopted Egypt plan in 2019 that outlines the research in seven key focus areas including economic impact research, social impact research, community engaged research, public safety research, responsible gaming program evaluation, the Massachusetts gaming impact cohort and data sharing. A short description of these focus areas along with a link to the completed studies and the respective areas is included in the memo that's in your packet today. Today I'll present to you the proposed FY23 gaming research agenda for your consideration. The deliverables in this plan incorporate advice from the gaming policy advisory committee when they met on April 4th, 2022. I'll share more about that meeting and how it was incorporated with you after I share the plan. The FY23 gaming research agenda, the cost is $1,438,000 if approved by you today. This is roughly half the adopted FY22 budget of $2,940,000. The major difference between the FY22 and FY23 is that in FY22, the Sigma research team fielded the follow-up general population survey and had a subcontract with the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago to complete that survey work. The survey phase is now complete and attention in FY23 would turn to the analysis and reporting led by doctors Rachel Volberg and Robert Williams. And a final report on that is expected in March of 2023. So in your packet, there's a table within that memo that organizes the proposed plan with a general description of each project, a specific deliverable or activity and a reference to this section of mass general law chapter 23K as well as the significance. So would you like Mark to share that? Is that be helpful or are you all set on the table? I'm prepared to share it if that would be easier. Would that be helpful for the construct of the discussion? Commissioners, yes or no? Yes? Okay. Okay, thanks, Mark. I'm looking at separate screens, so thank you. Okay. Here, hold on just one moment, please. I just took the table that was in that memo and I put it into a PDF. Can you see that now? Yeah, we'll just need to increase the size, please. Okay, very good. And as we go through this, Mark, you want us to be thinking about anything that might not be there as well as what's in it, correct? Yeah, that's right. If there's, yes, if you have any feedback about these deliverables, we can discuss those as we kind of move through them. We can certainly have a discussion as well about the overall plan after I complete the review. Okay, great, thanks. Great. Okay. So as you can see, the first category is social and economic research. And the Expanded Gaming Act requires the MGC to engage research to understand the social and economic effects of casino gambling in Massachusetts. Since 2013, the MGC has contracted with the University of Massachusetts Amherst School of Public Health and Health Sciences to carry out the social side of the research and also part of that stigma team is the UMass Donahue Institute to carry out the economic research. So within this table, you'll see the task which is the deliverable as well as the statutory and practical significance. So the first item in the FY proposed FY23 agenda is the follow-up general population report. As I said before, this was fielded. The survey was fielded in FY22. So at this point, attention would turn towards that report. And this report will provide information about gambling behavior, gambling attitudes and problem gambling prevalence in Massachusetts in 2021 and 2022. The report will also examine changes in gambling behavior attitudes and problem gambling since in prevalence since the baseline general population survey that was fielded in 2013 and 2014. I can't understate just how important this report is as we begin to take a close look at where what is the nature of gambling today? And especially compared to what it was before we introduced the first casino in Massachusetts. The next two deliverables are actually related to the follow-up online panel technical report and ministering a new follow-up online panel survey questions to roughly 200 of the individuals that participated in the follow-up general population survey. The primary purpose of this is, will allow the future online panels to be more generalized to the Massachusetts population. One of the online panels have a number of benefits and advantages, namely that they're significantly less costly to administer than the types of surveys that we're doing now with the follow-up general population survey. But they're not generally generalizable to the population in Massachusetts. So these two activities would allow us to move closer to be able to generalize findings from an online panel to the general population. This would be important because as we move forward, we could reduce the overall cost of this type of survey work if we're able to just do it primarily through an online panel. The next deliverable moving down is the Encore Boston Harbor Patron and License Flate Survey Report. The survey work, much like the follow-up general population survey was completed this fiscal year. In fact, they fielded that survey at Encore Boston Harbor in March and April of this year. The report will focus on information about patrons' origin, expenditures, and behavior. This is important for us to know to understand the social and economic impacts of family in Massachusetts, thinking specifically about the original intention within the statute to understand how are we repatriating dollars? How, where else, what else are patrons doing once before they come to the casino and after they leave the casino in order to understand how are they helping out the local economy? The next deliverable is the Encore Boston Harbor first three and a half years of operations. This report will focus on the first three and a half years of Encore's operation, both on the regional as well as statewide economy. Moving down, there is a deliverable that we are recommending that focuses on gambling advertising. This study will use an online panel to investigate the correlation between gambling advertising, gambling behavior, and increased gambling related harms among Massachusetts residents. And if you recall, the gambling advertising white paper that I developed with Marie Claire Florez Peugeot, as well as Lawn Fawn, recommended a research component to this. So this would align with recommendations that were originally within that white paper that graph white paper. Next is a study on casino jobs, employment, and impacts. And this study will analyze employment characteristics and conditions at three Massachusetts casinos to assess the extent to which Massachusetts casino jobs are benefiting the workers in the casino workforce. And a bit more on that as I talked to you about the feedback that we received from the gaming policy advisory. The final report for social and economic research would be the community comparisons and methodology updates and analysis. So back in 2014, the economic payment UMass, the UMass Donahue Institute set up a comparison study looking at Massachusetts host communities compared to other communities outside of Massachusetts or in the Northeast that do not have casinos. So we can begin to understand in a different, from a different way what the impact of casinos in Massachusetts were. Basically, if you look at a similar community in a different region that doesn't have casino, you can see where they are today compared to the comparable community in Massachusetts that does have a casino today. So there would be continued work in that area under the social and economic research. Are there any questions? I guess at this point, before I move on to the public safety. So moving on to the public safety, the intention of our public safety research is to demonstrate what changes in crime disorder and other public safety harms can be attributed directly or indirectly to the introduction of a casino and what strategies local communities need to implement to mitigate that harm. So we actually just recently procured, re-procured because procured a new research team to carry out this study, which had previously been done by Christopher Bruce, a crime analyst that we'd worked with for a number of years. So beginning in the next fiscal year, it's our proposal that we begin working with a team led by a crime analyst out of Virginia but with ties back to Massachusetts. His name is Noah Fritz. Noah and his team would focus on two primary areas in the next fiscal year. One being a study of looking at to assess the influence of gambling in public safety for Springfield and the eight surrounding communities and producing a four-year report, as well as a report looking at gambling and public safety for Everett and the seven surrounding communities and producing a three-year report. And then providing ongoing technical assistance for those communities as needed. Moving on to the community-engaged research, the objective of community-engaged research is to more deeply understand and address the impact of casino gambling in Massachusetts communities. The specific research topic or question being developed is done through a community participatory process. Basically, this is, I'd say, in short, our community-engaged research is community by the community for the community. It would be our proposal that we would work towards two additional community-engaged research projects in FY23. Again, we don't have that specific topic of those projects. We would look to the community based on the available funding to propose those projects. And just a little bit more, we want to assure that it continues to hold the same academic rigor as our other projects. So a lot of times what would happen is it would be a community organization or group that would partner with a research entity to carry that research out. Moving on to data sharing, we would look to maintain the existing data sets in mode of the Massachusetts Open Data Exchange. That a link to that is on our website. We would also look to increase the number of data sets that we have in mode as they become available, including the section 97 data, which section 97 requires any commission to collect player data from each of our casino licensees and make it available for research purposes. Mode is an ideal location to access that data. So we would be, we are working actively with our licensees as well as other stakeholders to launch that program. And I hope during fiscal year 23 that we see significant progress if not launching that. Responsible gaming evaluation. So you are well aware of the responsible gaming initiatives that we have underway in Massachusetts, including the overall game sense program, play my way and voluntary self exclusion. Ongoing an independent evaluation of these programs is important for their future, as well as improving the overall functioning and operation of those programs. So in fiscal year 23, we hope to have two specific projects underway. One is an evaluation of the play my way program at MGM Springfield that launched, as you know, back on March 31st of this year. And there is an evaluation study that's currently underway and will extend into fiscal year 23. The good news about this project is that it's funded by the International Center for Responsible Gaming and being carried out by Dr. Michael Wall at Carlton University. The goals of this project are to really understand what is the general uptake and what is the general impact of play my way on players decisions about setting a budget. The second is an evaluation of the game sense program at all three casinos. We are working just awarded a contract as well to Dr. Michael Wall, same individual that's carrying out the play my way evaluation, but with funding, this one would be with funding directly from the gaming commission. We just awarded that contract with FY22 research dollars, but it will continue and really get underway in FY23. This study will measure the effectiveness of the game sense program at meeting the goals stated in the game sense logic model. One, how do we make sure that we're creating a responsible gaming enabled workforce? What are we doing to promote positive play and what are we reducing, what are we doing to reduce gambling related harm? I apologize, I wasn't keeping up with the screen here. The last two, the research review. So the gaming commission a number of years ago in order to assure that we get the highest quality research that we can, assemble the research review committee. Basically, this functions as the gaming commission's peer review process. Outside independent individuals with deep expertise and research reviewing, primarily reviewing deliverables, but at times advising in other areas of research, including the research plans, research proposals, that sort of thing. It would be our recommendation that we continue to support these individuals who work under contract for the gaming commission for this specific purpose. And then finally is knowledge translation exchange. And this is moving to implement an important piece of the research strategic plan that I mentioned earlier in this presentation. How do we make sure that MGC research is meeting the needs in reaching key stakeholders in a way that it's informing their policies and practices? We've been doing this to a certain degree, especially with Marie Claire moving our research staff forward. We've done it in a variety of other ways as well over the years, but I think in FY23, we would like to move this forward in a more significant way. And that would include working with continuing work with Rio, which is a gaming research exchange of Ontario to advance this work and improve our ability to make sure that our research is reaching the right people. So that is the extent of the FY23 gaming research agenda. Just before we move on to questions, Madam Chair, would you like me to just update the commission on feedback we receive from the GPAC? And I'll take my screen. I think you can certainly, because it sounds like you're going to make a suggestion that you incorporate that into this proposed framework. So why don't you? So as I mentioned before, chapter 23 pay requires that we obtain the advice of the gaming research, or I'm sorry, the gaming policy advisory committee. And as such, on April 4th, we met with them in order to get their advice on the FY23 gaming research agenda. Following a presentation much like this of the FY23 agenda, there was a suggestion by one of the members that we do a study on the casino workforce. And this would include measuring such things as salary and payroll benefits, as well as the degree to which these are quality jobs in Massachusetts. It was recommended that if the research dollars were strained that we would consider removing one of the other research deliverables that were recommended. And specifically the gambling advertising study was mentioned. So we took that feedback and tried to figure out how we can incorporate a study of the casino workforce in the FY23 research agenda. We met with the Sigma team on April 13th, following that meeting obviously. They came up with a way that we could adjust the community comparison study in order to accommodate both. So at this point, we were able to, with their suggestion, incorporate a study on the casino workforce, keep our recommendation of a gambling advertising study and keep the community comparison study without increasing the proposed budget. We were really pleased with that and we're excited to, I think that the idea of a study looking at the casino workforce makes a lot of sense to us. And so we're excited to include that in this proposed agenda as well. So with that, that is the FY23 research agenda and a nutshell and they welcome any feedback or comments that the commission has. Just to set the stage of a couple of questions. First off, commissioners, we are going to be asked to approve this. So this is the opportunity for input and adjustments. Mark, why don't you go over how the budget is set? It's the reason why this is an important vote. It's a significant amount of funding. Sure, so another part of the expanded gaming app specifically states that the research agenda is paid for out of the public health trust fund. And so $1,438,000 to fund this research agenda would come from there. Is that, I'm sorry, Madam Chair, is that what you wanted me to cover? Well, that's the number, but why $1.4 million? Because we could probably come up with $2.5 million worth of ideas, so I'll wait until the $1.4 million comes out. Sure, so would you like a breakdown of? Well, I think that we haven't, I think maybe we can explain that we do have an MOU in place. Do you want to go over that just from a high level and explain it? Sure. Thanks, that's where I'm going, Mark, thank you. Understood, I'm sorry, I was, I would just like to. No, my apologies, it's an important framework for all commissioners to understand that we do have a budget and a budget limit based on that, so thank you. So the public health, as I said before, the public health trust fund specifically states that the research agenda is paid for out of those dollars. The public health trust fund has two sources of revenue. One piece of it is tied to the gaining revenue from the resort style casino, so MGM and Encore, and another is an assessment that would be spread to across all three licensees. The Secretary of Health and Human Services is the trustee of the public health trust fund, but led by Chair Judd Stein, we have an MOU with the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Secretary Souters, to split the public health trust fund in order for the gaming commission to operate our research agenda and our responsible gaming initiatives, and for the Secretary for Health and Human Services and the Department of Public Health to carry out a number of other activities to fulfill the requirements of that public health that are outlined in the public health trust fund. And so, again, going back to the research agenda that I presented to you today would be funded in whole out of that public health trust fund. And so it's just important for us to understand that the beneficiary is a good collaboration, all consistent with the statutory intent. So the 1.4 is derived through that arrangement. So your framework gets into that budget. Correct. Okay. So that's the budget side. In terms of the breakdown, just one, I'll just start real quick to get the ball rolling. Mark, I don't see ad hoc. Is that not part of the proposed framework this time around, or is it somehow a subset of these? Yeah, so this year we did not have an ad hoc report outlined within the framework. Just given the amount of dollars that we had available and the research, what we felt were the research demands that that was not going to work out for fiscal year 23. I love the ad hoc reports and my hope would be that we would bring those back as well. Just the reason why I wanted to mention it first and I'll go to each of you is that you may remember that we are expecting, if I'm right, you'll correct me if I'm wrong, Mark, an ad hoc report on sports betting. That was the request of the GPAC last time they met. And we also said that sounded like a great idea. So I think it's a deliverable expected in June. We were able to ask for that sort of mid-year because ad hoc reports were part of the framework. So I just love that flexibility. What I'm hearing now is that we might not have that flexibility going forward. So that's something for me to think about as we discuss this framework now. But on sports betting, at least we are expecting a deliverable this fiscal year because of the ad hoc component. That's correct. We just met with the segment team, discussed that sports ad hoc report and that is on track. And they're on track for that deadline. Do we know if it's beginning of June or the end of June? The end of June by the end of the fiscal year. We'd be really happy if it were moved up a little bit, but that's okay. Commissioners, what do you have the questions for Director Vandal and them? I don't necessarily have a question, but more of a comment. And it again, it has my concerns around the advertising. But I think what I'm confusing myself with is that we have two different types of gaming that I'm looking at the advertising. One, of course, is casino game advertising and then the possibility of sports betting advertising, which are two very different animals. And I have to keep reminding myself of that. I was a little taken aback that the GPAC was willing to take the gambling advertising study out of FY23, but then of course, after your further conversation and funding it, we found that we could keep it, which I think is important to do. But moving in FY23, I'm really pushing for more help in helping me understand how advertising is affecting these gamblers. And more importantly, how's it affecting the young people in ways that we could maybe get information that would be helpful for us moving forward as we put together regulations and things of that sort. So I just wanna put that on your mind that's still a concern of mine. And I think if and when we get sports betting, this is gonna be quite an issue. And I've actually seen some of the conventions and things that are happening throughout the country. This issue continues to come up over and over and over. So it's not just something Massachusetts is thinking about. It's something that the entire country and internationally people are thinking about. So I wanna keep it on the front burner, not the back burner. Again, I know I said this already, but I was taking a little bit of back when I heard that this would be the one you would remove if we had to remove one. I certainly did not agree with that assessment, but do you wanna make a comment on that? I'm not sure there was a consensus. I think that was recommended perhaps, but I don't think there was a consensus to remove advertising altogether. And I think, Mark, you were able to work out a way to keep advertising in, but to Commissioner Hill's point, Deliverable, what is the breadth of it? Will it encompass both casino play and sports betting and advertising, as well as perhaps even lottery and other gambling? Yeah, I think that the intention would be to understand gambling and advertising generally that would span all gambling types. This is a very sort of high level conceptual of at this point, I would be happy to include Booth Commission as we begin to work with this stigma team on the exact scope of that as well. But my intention, if I think about how can we make this as useful as possible, it would require us to not just look at one specific type of gambling. We would need to look at all types. Commissioner Hill, I don't wanna put, we're just gonna mouth, but I'm assuming you wanna know about the impact of online advertising. When it pops, well, bets are being placed on local as well as when they're being presented on the television and for both sports betting, casino play isn't so much in that, I think it would be a lost opportunity here, right? If we don't go granular enough, Mark. Commissioner Brown, you're shaking your head. Do you wanna add in? Just to reiterate what Commissioner Hill had said, I agree with him in terms of, and we're also at a point where I think not to do a pun on the word impactful, but being able to look at the impacts now before we get sports betting into me. I do think that that is a priority. I don't know if there's a way to put in the budget even. I know you're talking about, it is what it is and you've sort of been able to work this with Sigma in terms of preserving the concept within the existing budget, but even if we were to allow for, given the fact that we have sports betting coming if priorities were to shift, would there be a way to magnify the amount of money's going to that part of the studies? Sure. Commissioner Skinner, would you wanna add in? Yeah, I think all of these proposed research projects are worthy. They all are, I think, very relevant to informing our work as policymakers. I just had a question about the study that GPAC recommended around the casino workforce. How does that differ, Mark, from what you have here on the list already relative to casino jobs and employment? I think the casino jobs and employment focuses in a different area. It's, I'm gonna try to explain this as best I can. It looks at what's motivating individuals to move to working at a casino. What types of employment did they have before coming to work at the casino? What are their, there's a number of different ways that it looks at it, but it doesn't necessarily look at salaries and benefits and retention within the casino workforce. And it was the feedback from GPAC to look at the overall quality of these jobs within the casinos, not what is driving individuals to working at casinos and what they're hoping from this work at casinos, but the actual casino jobs and what are the quality in looking at retention within those positions. So pre and post employment. I think that that's- In that shop, yeah. All right, and then is there a prioritization of each of these projects or is the conversation about this being the entire agenda and for FY23? Is there a ranking of which projects take precedent so there are certain projects that we made because they span two fiscal years, we've made significant progress on them. And so to me, it seems like those are very high priorities that we continue to fund that to finish it up. So for example, the follow-up general population survey, we spent a lot of money this fiscal year in order to field the survey. It seems we would absolutely want to see that through. What was the other, there was another one that, oh, the patron survey. We did the patron survey at Encore this fiscal year. We certainly want to make sure that we see that through to the finish line and get that final report. So there are certain pieces that are currently underway that we would certainly want to see to the end. Public safety is another area that I think we, as we've transitioned between Christopher Bruce and Noah Fritz that there's been a gap in our public safety research. And it would be important to me that we pick that back up and get caught up with examining the public safety impacts. Yeah, I mean, those are my priorities. Commissioner, I would say it's all very important, of course, but making sure that we take a look at what do we currently have underway? What is the research that we've taken a break from that we've really to refocus on that those would be my house. So a vote on the agenda isn't necessarily, doesn't necessarily mean that each of these projects will get completed in FY23. Okay, all right, and then my last, sorry, Kathy. I'll just clarify that, I'm sorry, you're confirming that these are to be completed, right? That these are the research projects that we will be looking at in FY23 in completion? Yeah, actually, I'm taking a look. That's a very good question. I hadn't thought about how much of this would then run, would potentially fall into fiscal year 24. So I hadn't really thought about it from that perspective. Typically we do have projects either just by design, span two fiscal years, or because there are delays slip into the next fiscal year, but it, you know, as I look through this, I don't- But it's a framework you're planning on implementing them all, and then I guess it's kind of up to us to keep you on a timeline, is that right, Mark? That's right, and I have to say, as I look through each of these deliverables, I think these are all reports, studies that can be wrapped up in fiscal year 23. Yeah, I guess. I'm sorry, Kishore Skinner, I just wanted to clarify, because I couldn't quite hear. Thank you. No, thank you for doing that. So that sounds great. My last comment, I guess, would be that, Chair, I agree with your concerns around the ad hoc piece not being included. I think that's a very important aspect of, you know, kind of being able to, you know, spin on a dime where issues come up that need some attention to further research attention. Thank you, and we'll see if we can carve out some space for that. But I'm back to, I want to make sure we have finished the conversation about advertising and scope. So when I read the language here on advertising, Mar, oops, I gotta find it again. Is it, in light of what you're hearing today, are we committed to how it's framed here with respect to the research team? This, it's a, well, so what I can tell you as far as we've gotten is that we're looking at doing this as an online panel. And the areas that we're examining are very broad in general. If there are specific questions that the commission has, specific types of advertising or specific groups that we would be interested in focusing on, I think that we have plenty of time to focus on that and to take that back to the research team. Which we typically do, you know, I think in the life of any one of these deliverables, we start off with sort of a general description of what the project would be. And then we move towards receiving a research plan and providing feedback that would be sort of the specific plan of how we execute that specific study. So Commissioner Hill, I would, I hear your feedback on that. And would welcome as much feedback as the commission has on that study or others. Oh, put my thinking cap on. Okay. Just a bit more probably. So the, so far, there are just some tweaks to the framework I'm hearing. Commissioner Hill, Commissioner O'Brien, wanting to maybe think about the scope on the advertising idea the same way I'm wondering about the implications with respect to particularly mobile device use and advertising was also mentioned the ad hoc public safety. Is it my, is it, are we limited to public safety in crimes, the impact of casinos on communities and the crime levels? Are we limited to that in scope because it's a statute? Or could we also use a research agenda, maybe not this year, but maybe in the future to address crimes that might affect the integrity of gaming like money laundering or crimes that could occur at the casino with respect to, I know Commissioner O'Brien, you're looking closely at human trafficking and you're gonna be focusing somewhat, on that for your public safety committee. Is there a way to expand on the research agenda into those areas or is it really, are we really always looking at the impact and that's a very important piece of research, the impact of the casinos on the public safety of the communities? You know, chapter or section 71 does specifically call out public safety and I don't have it in front of me but I think it's relatively general. If there's an area of public safety that we wish to focus on beyond just sort of general what is its impact on crimes, calls for service, collision, which we're looking at, I think we absolutely, we can go there. In regards to the issue of relationship between casinos and human trafficking, that was actually something that was specifically called out when we drafted the RFR for this and it is very much on our agenda to take a closer look at it. We had a discussion with Noah Fritz to kick it off and asking, you know, what types of crimes, what types of issues should we be looking at that we can go ahead and begin rolling into our data collection so that we're set up to, you know, maybe do a deeper dive in that specific area down the road. Anybody wanna weigh in on that, Commissioner Bryan? So I've been in touch and touch and communication with Mark and Marie Claire, et cetera, as looking at Noah coming into a place Christopher Bruce and one of the things that I wanted to do before we went too fast into that research and I do wanna prioritize it though is we have a vast swath of data that Christopher Bruce has compiled since we started getting the baseline and going forward and that has not been something that he has alerted us to as an impact at this point. However, anecdotally, there are issues and patterns being raised by some of the local chiefs of police that I think we need to look at the data we have to see what is it exactly we should be mining out of that and what should we be looking for maybe differently going forward on that particular topic. And so we had talked about that in terms of going back to know if it's and talking about what we can do in the next fiscal year because I want to do it in a way that's fruitful and gets to an answer that to make sure we're not missing something in what we've produced thus far and making sure we're asking the right questions. And so that was the jumping off point for the company and I don't wanna put words in your mouth Mark obviously I was not on the phone with you and Noah but that was the framework for this fiscal year in terms of putting human trafficking on the agenda for public safety research. So for right now fiscal year 23 you're satisfied. I feel like we needed to do some groundwork and it may entail retrospective with data we've already collected. There might be the possibility and we're talking different stakeholders public safety subcommittee being one of the examples of pulling in some of the other stakeholders in law enforcement to look at what exactly should we be looking for and can we mine what we already have? Excellent. I think- Right, we did a Christopher's last study was looking at OUI operating under the influence and its relationship to casinos and I think that that's a good example of we have our monitoring function with public safety but there are very specific issues that we wish to take a look at to get a better understanding of whether that's human trafficking OUI or something else as we move forward. The important thing is to have a structure in place in order to understand public safety impacts and then begin to kind of add in, add into it. Okay, those were my questions. Commissioner Hill do you have other questions besides advertising at this point? Okay. Madam Chair, can I make one other point on advertising? Oh, sure, sure. Just provide a little bit more color to the gaming policy advisory committee. At that same meeting, we shared the advertising white paper and it was very well received and I think many of the members of that group would share your concerns, Commissioner Hill around advertising and so it wasn't that they were saying that it wasn't an important issue. I think they very much thought it was but it were very supportive of the paper and considerations that we shared. Very helpful, Mark. Commissioner Skinner, do you have, you raised a couple of good points. Do you see with respect to besides the ad hoc anything that you'd like to change in terms of scope? No, no, grateful for Commissioner Hill and Commissioner O'Brien's suggestions relative to the advertising piece. So Mark, we've got some feedback. We maybe tweak this. Is there any room to reserve a little bit of an ad hoc? It's right at that penny. I'm hesitant to commit to that. I can say why don't Marie Claire and I can go back and take a look at the overall budget and where we may be able to adjust and how much we can carve aside for an ad hoc. On the community, community research, that will go out to bit, correct? Correct. And right now you're imagining two. Right, so I don't have the specific dollar amounts for each project but for community-engaged research. Very important. It is important and I think two projects would make sense especially as we're well underway with a few projects. Now we envision that those will be wrapping up this fall. So to keep that arm of the research agenda active and moving forward. So commissioners, I guess we need to think about do we give Mark some permission or discretion to address what we raised today and still give him a go ahead or do we ask that he come back in two weeks for our approval with maybe insights as to our requests? I think we could move forward today, Madam Chair. I think he's heard what we have to say and I hope would be that we need to make some changes. We can leave it up to him to make those changes moving forward. I would have no problem moving forward today. Patricia Skinner. In here. Okay. Commissioner O'Brien. That's fine. I'm okay with that. Yeah. So any further questions, discussion for Mark and Marie Claire, thank you. And mom, all right. So I think that he's looking for our go ahead. So do I have a motion in Mark and Marie Claire and mom, thank you for taking the consideration some of our points today. Absolutely. Madam chair, I would move that the commission adopt the annual research agenda for fiscal year 2023 in accordance with general law section 23K section 71 as detailed in the memorandum in the commissioner's packet. Thank you. I would move to amend that to say and as discussed here today. That's fine. Okay. And do I have with that amendment? Do I have a second? Second. Thank you. Any further discussion, edits, recommendations for amendment? All right. Then take our roll call vote. Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. I think commissioner Skinner. Aye. And I vote yes for zero. Thank you. And well done. It's always an important discussion. And thank you. A very critical part of our mission and statutory authority. So thank you. You're right. To move the research agenda forward. Right. I have no idea where we are in the timing. It's an important discussion, but we're gonna move commissioners. It is 1110. Are we okay to continue on with game sense? Okay. Mark? Long? Great. I think you've heard enough from me for right now. I'm going to just turn it right over to Long to kick off the game sense quarterly report. I have chair and high commissioner. So we do have the game sense game sense and the Massachusetts council on gambling and health with us. So I'm going to turn it over. Chelsea, do you want to share? Thank you. And I will send this over to Ray. Oh. And Chelsea, I don't know if you want to format it so that we get the full screen. You can play with it. Thank you. Good morning commissioners. My name is Ray Flouette. I am the supervisor for the game sense program. And I have a star-studded team here with me today. I got a game sense advisor. I got a Romero, a director of communications, Phil Sherwood. Our newly promoted scene of game sense advisor, Ken April. We also have our recovery and outreach liaison, Jody Neely and our director of programs and services, Odessa Doriga. We're going to be going over today the numbers. That'll be my role in this. And what we do as far as the data we collect and how we get there. I think Otto is going to go over the, recognizing the champion awards that we are, we recognized for the casino staff. Phil will go over augmented reality. Ken has the paramutual role that we're playing in the different paramutual facilities. And then we're going to prepare for sports betting. And then we got Jody is going to go into the TRS and VSC follow up that she does. And we're going to end it off with Odessa going over the community justice centers and the upcoming national council on problem gambling conference. So here are the numbers. They're broken up by property here, but I just, for everybody's clarification, what everything is, a simple interaction is generally, we're, first of all, I'm going to say the game sense of bias track everything they do. They say they talk to anybody we call that in real time. So a simple interaction is simply just somebody saying hi to them, they say hi to our guest as they walk in the building to giving them a quick direction or something. And then we follow up that with the casino related interactions that are more involving what the casinos to whether we're talking to somebody about their promotion or helping them with their free slot play or something like that or running around looking for that infamous slot attendant that they can't find or something. So we assist the guests and then try to be an extension of the casino's customer service that they do it themselves. But those interactions lead into the more involved in interactions which are the demonstrations, which go into us talking about the games, how they work, what the rules are the games and then where the casinos advantages built into the games. And then they could also lead to the exchanges which are more involved. They are now we're talking about the gambling habits and the resources that we have available to help them including the voluntary self-exclusion. So in this quarter, you see that on course numbers are mostly I have increased over the year before. The year before we, let's just plain and simple we had COVID, the casinos were held to a very strict COVID protocol that caused them to redirect the guests to a more controlled area that they could have the guests entering the buildings. Well, what that did was it kind of deterred them away from where our centers are. So the game sense advisors got very creative and they were out there and not more on the floor trying to engage with the guests. But now it gets easier. Now that we're fully open, every casino has taken down those stanchions and got the entrances back. They're no longer just exits, they're opening and entering and coming in that way. And that's where we get to see the guests before they actually get out there and get them. And we have those interactions. So our interactions from this year to last year definitely increased at Encore. But you may see a little drop off in March for our simple interactions. And that's simply because we put a lot of focus on back of the house because March is our problem handling awareness month. And we put a full effort into working with the casino operators to get back there and engage with their staff. So we were doing table events in the back of the house. The operators were also promoting the QR codes that we were had for our online quizzes. And then we also got into their pre-shifts where we're back there talking to the casino employees, prior to them going up into the casino floor. So we may have dropped off our numbers in simple interactions, but we definitely increased our demonstrations with the guests. The exchanges may have dropped off, those more involved conversations, but everything else has gone up. Especially if you look at our numbers for our actual voluntary self-exclusion. Now, for a person to join into the voluntary self-exclusion, it's a big step for them. It's the major step that they're taken to try to fall into recovery for their problem of gambling. What they're recognizing it themselves. So we are signing up people and it has increased tent hold in March. Numbers, I mean, normally we're in the high teens, low 20s, but we actually did 34 voluntary self-exclusion enrollments in March, which significantly is the highest number we've ever done here at Angkor. And then we follow that up with our tracking of the overnight exclusions. We're still doing a lot of those because we are now 24 hours here at Angkor. So between the hours of 1 a.m. and 9 a.m., we're still doing plenty of exclusions that these people we wouldn't have reached if we were closing at 1 a.m. Now remotely, I mean, there's one good thing that happened out of COVID is the ability for everybody to master their technology skills. And it's not just the young and hardy, it's the older generations too. They were forced into knowing how to use a QR code, how to do these Zoom meetings that we're doing, these docu-signs that we had to do. And all this led to us being able to a program to help people not right in front of us, but keep that same interaction, the same face-to-face conversation, the same making sure that they know what they're signing up for and remotely. And with that, they can call the casino and they operate it to direct in the calls over to us or they're being done initiated by LiveChat. LiveChat is another program that we're just getting into our second year of doing and we're tracking how many VSEs are actually coming from the LiveChat. And I wanna say pretty much 90% of our conversations in LiveChat have led to somebody doing a remote exclusion. The reinstatements have definitely jumped up at our core. And that's because now we're getting into our third year of doing this. And I think some of the people that signed up for one year, I'd wanted to get back into gambling. So at the beginning a year ago, we weren't seeing these kinds of numbers for the reinstatements because they were simply just not eligible to come off the list, but now they are. Many of those reinstatements are actually finding out that they needed to sign back up. And that happens quite often. That they didn't know what they were getting into when they got back into the gambling and they fell right back into what they were doing before and they decided to re-enroll in the reinstatement. Now at MGM, you got the numbers are all across the board higher than they were the year before. MGM, if that counter is just inviting for somebody to come over to them and they led the whole, all three properties as far as the increases in their numbers from a year before. And if you wanna look at the one major thing that they were doing there is they started to play my way in March. And that number 257 enrolled into the play my way, that was done in one day. Yeah, that's, I mean the numbers are far more significant for April and we'll show you that in the next quarter. But MGM has taken on a role. You'll see that the remote VSCs, they're doing them also. When we first started the program, it was strictly the staff at Encore was doing the remotes and any calls on that the other properties were getting, they were redirecting them to the Encore team. But because they were starting to get overwhelmed, they were doing two or three of them at the same time. The need for all three properties to getting trained to doing the remote VSCs was there. So I'm happy to say they're all doing them and helping out the Encore team. At PPC, they're again, follow the same routine as far as their numbers. There's a little hiccup in there with some of their exchanges went down during the month of January and March. You see some red in there. And that's, they're no different than our companies, no different than every other company that ran into staffing hiccups. And that I wanna say is been corrected. So they are full staff, they are now unable to engage with the guests. They also are doing the remote VSCs and the live chat just like the other properties. They're playing my way, numbers are dropping and that's been consistent from month over month from looking at the previous years and that essentially is coming from saturation. They're new clientele that's coming into the building. You know, it may be a lot less than what it has been in the past and they're talking to a lot of the same guests over and over that have either already signed up or they weren't interested. Now I'm gonna turn it over to Egato here to talk about our casino staff, excellent. Good morning, everybody. My name is Egato, I am against that bar. And as a GSA, one of the most joyful things that we can do is build relationships with the casino staff and to see it come full circle, it's satisfying. In an effort, we wanna recognize our standing performance and we wanna share some of the stories and a prime example is one of our security guards here at home for his name is Raquibor Rahman. He was approached in the floor by a patron who's asking about self-exclusion and instead of just giving them directions and sending them on his way or make a right take a left, he escorted the guests and make sure he won't hand off to the game sense advisor. We also have Diana Salgado. She works back at the house. She's office service. And this lady has a smile and the attitude that just like super boom. And she treats our mailing and our packages like it's priority mail or currency. She's always pressing in our back of the house activities. And for our property, last but not least we have Norma Forester. She's also security. Sometimes she's stationed at the East Lobby. That's where we're located. And she's always making sure she redirects traffic towards us, having customers taking our quiz, our participating members spin the wheel and she's always up to date with what's going on in the game sense. For MGM properties, we have Jeremy Voltolaro. He works the slot departments and he makes sure he coordinated play my way training with all his staff. And this helps ease the introduction of play my ways to the users in the casino floor. And we have Kaye Caroline Lagarde. Kaye is training and development. She helps us coordinate new hire training and getting ahead on boarding and being first there. It's always helpful introducing, how we introduce responsible gaming to the staff. And we have Matt Regan. He works security at MGM. He has excellent customer service and during our trainings for play my way, he was very enthusiastic and this actually shows through his ability to assist the customers. At Plain Beach Park, we wanna recognize Luigi Preclodge. He works security and he's always walking the floor. He's always making sure to find people, looking out for distressed people who might need help from game sense. We appreciate that very much. We have Jennifer in HR. She actually coordinated how we introduce problem gaming awareness month and back at the house to all the employees. And we got Grant, my heart, he's also security. And he was working back at the house during our PGM. He also redirects traffic towards us, making sure the staff knows where they're, what we're doing. And we wanna recognize all these ladies and gentlemen as for that, these are our formerly rock stars, as we call them ambassadors of the game sense program. And we also wanna thank you madam chair, Kathy. The employees, they appreciate your handwritten notes. You know, we also gave them a $25 gift cards and provided with them. We posted their stories in our newsletters. So if you wanna find out more about them, you'll find it there. And I believe that's it for me. Next up, we have Phil. He's our director of communications. It was a pleasure talking to you all. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it. Good morning. My name is Phil Sherwood, I'm the director of communications and marketing at the Mass Council. And I'm here to talk about augmented reality or AR. So a large mission of the GSAs is to capture the attention of the patrons in a friendly and conversational manner to teach the rules of the games, the odds, the bunk gambling myths and the answer general questions. And frankly, they're good at it, but let's be honest, they have a lot to compete with, right? There's flashing machines in the casino environment, there's entertainment, food and a general atmosphere to pull patrons in. So that's why the GSAs are constantly so creative and innovative in the way they sort of engage folks by doing the quizzes and the raffles, the giveaways and the awards. And an AR is the latest innovative tool that we're using to gain the attention of the patron and increase their gambling literacy. So what is AR? Well, if you have a kid that plays Pokemon Go, just ask them, they'll tell you what it is. It's very similar. In late people's terms, it basically superimposes digital images into the real world environment, right? And it's interactive, whether it be your smartphone or a computer. And according to the GSAs, the most challenging concept for them to explain and for the patrons, frankly, to understand is the concept of the house edge. It's complex to talk about. And AR creates opportunities for the GSAs to help patrons grasp these concepts. So the house edge, it's the casino's built-in advantage, right? The percent built into each game that allows the casino to have an advantage and frankly, stay in business. So if we're gonna play the video here, so you can sort of see a sample of it interacting. So using this AR tool, we addressed house edge for three popular casino games, slots, roulette, and blackjack. And we began conceptualizing this tool, frankly, before COVID, but with COVID, the ability for the GSAs to interact in close proximity with the patrons, it just, it wasn't safe. We also thought it was unwise to be handing out sort of tablets for people to use it on their own and handing it back and forth. So we've created an option for people to use it on their own, on their own devices, or to see it displayed at the large TVs in the Game Sense Info Centers. And currently it's active in all three Game Sense Information Centers and the GSAs are testing the best way to approach patrons with it. Though generally, you know, in our observations, people are like a mock to a flame. When they see this interacting on the TV or on someone else's device, they just, they run to it. It's different, it's innovative. And frankly, it allows us to reach some of the younger demographics who are in the casino, who are most undoubtedly, they're a priority population we strive to increase the gambling literacy of. This AR tool also can be used offsite as well. It doesn't have to be used in this casino. And so we made sure there's options within this tool for people to be able to click through, learn more about the games, and even initiate live chat and talk to a Game Sense Advisor, which they can do 24-7. So you're gonna see this in action at the three brick and mortar casinos and stop by and check it out when you're done. Thank you very much. I believe next up is the talented Game Sense Advisor, Ken Averill, Senior Game Sense Advisor. My apologies, Ken. No worries, thanks, Phil. Good morning, Madam Chair and commissioners. So I'm gonna be going over a couple of collaborations we've had with the Paramutuals over the last quarter. Myself and Senior Game Sense Advisor, Lynn Ho, had done training that both Suffolk Downs and Rainham Park. We basically gave their staff the same Game Sense training that we give to the new hires at the casinos. So it very much went into what we do. It gave them access to how they can get in touch with us, to chat information, VSE information. We changed it a little bit to fit in more with the Paramutuals with some of the stories we tell or some of the verbates we use. It was very well received. Phil is currently in development with our digital signage at the locations. They were also very interested in future tabling opportunities. They wanted pamphlets. They wanted, like I said, previously the digital signage. So I know Phil and Suffolk and Rainham are both in the process of working out a way to get signage up that although we won't have Game Sense centers, per se, at the tracks, there would be signage directing players how to get in touch with us through the virtual, through our chat and some of those things. So if people were at risk, they could get hold of us. And they were very interested in, with the sports betting on the horizon and that both of them hoping to be licensed, they were looking forward to the potential of possibly some sports betting training that I have been working on. So as I said on the previous slide, in my previous career, I had 26 years of just operations experience, mostly table games. In a few of the properties, I did have oversight on sports book. So with that said, I have been preparing a sports betting training for the MACGA staff. It's very much a sports betting one-on-one, more or less to get the Game Sense advisors and the rest of the staff at least comfortable with the verbiage of common sports bets, how to have conversations with these people, getting into how the house edge works in sports betting versus slot machine to table game, which they already understand. I will also be presenting this sports betting one-on-one presentation at the NCPG conference in July. So unless there's any questions, I'll be passing it off to Jody Neely, who will be getting into the VSE, Designated Agents Training and the TRS. Thanks, Ken. Good morning, everybody. I'm Jody Neely. I'm the voluntary self-exclusion recovery and outreach liaison. And I have the amazing job of being able to actually talk to folks out there and continue the relationship building that the Game Sense advisors do. I mean, one of the amazing things about Massachusetts and thanks to the commissioners and the legislation and all the works up and done by the council is that we have some unique programs in this state. So Game Sense is an amazing, unique program and they start what no other place does. They start building relationships with patrons and these things, the VSE and the TRS are continuations of that. So let me start with the first box. So the Designated Agent Training, we have been working for over a year presenting trainings to members of the community, clinicians, caseworkers, most recently people in the Office of Community Corrections and training them how to conduct voluntary self-exclusions right there in their office. So as you can see for Q3, we did four trainings. We trained 44 people. The responses are always good. The great thing about this field is that people are always surprised because not many people know about gambling. So they are like, what, really, really? And they learn all this stuff and they're just amazed. So voluntary self-exclusion, the fact that it exists, that people are being trained about it is really an amazing part of our program. And then in addition to my work that I do with the Designated Agent Training is a TRS. So TRS stands for Telephone Recovery Support. Again, it is probably, I imagine, the only program in the United States that does this. And essentially it's a follow-up to the follow-up, okay? Let me drop down one box. So when someone does a voluntary self-exclusion and you saw some of those numbers, they're amazing, they're going up because Game Sense is so terrific at doing that. They ask them, would you like a follow-up with Jody? Now, if those of you who don't know me, I'm a gambler in recovery. I've been at the council for 10 years. So I get to have the honor of talking with someone who maybe has recently done a voluntary self-exclusion. So if you looked out at that box, you'll see 17 follow-ups were requested in this quarter. And sometimes I can reach them, sometimes I can't, but I am nothing if not persistent. I attempt many times to reach somebody either by text, by email, by phone. Phone is always the best. And then once I reach them, I talk with them. And we sort of, I ask, how are you doing? How are you feeling about voluntary self-exclusion? Do you have any questions? Where do you live in the state? How old are you? Would you like me to send you some resources? Sometimes people are like, you know, I'm good, best decision I ever made. You can see Steven here wrote, thankful for the option of self-exclusion. I'm grateful for Game Sense. I get a lot of that. Sometimes I get specific thank yous, you know, like so-and-so was so great. And it's just another step in the relationship building. And then sometimes people are really, really were on the edge of the amazing hole gamblers can fall into. And they want some more information about recovery. And that's my thing. So that's what we talk about. And then often at the end of a follow-up, which is usually a one-time follow-up, I'll say, hey, would you, we have this unique program called Telephone Recovery Support. Would you like me to check in with you, you know, in a week? And the official outline of the TRS is that I will check in with somebody, as long as they want me to, for up to 10 times. So that's potentially 10 weeks or longer, depending on how, you know, how much I can make contact with them. And, you know, it works out in strange ways because, you know, a lot of times these people, they're trying to be in recovery like this guy, Patrick. And I had two of them this quarter because it was tax time. Two folks that I was in Telephone Recovery Support with, they wanted to get their win-loss statements, but they did not want to go to the casino. So they brought that up when they talked to me. And so Patrick, in particular, I, you know, I called Game Sense in Plain Ridge. And Ronnie went over and got it and mailed it to him. He was so grateful. And there was another guy. I was a little more complicated at MGM, but ultimately helped them. So, you know, there are so many barriers for gamblers. One in terms of finding treatment and finding recovery and wanting to do it. That sometimes having someone that they've had a phone conversation with two or three times, they can ask a question and I can try to help them in a personal way. I mean, I love when I get asked a question and then I can direct them to Game Sense or get a Game Sense person to call them to help with whatever. You know, they're getting marketing materials and they don't want that anymore. You know, that kind of thing. It's this connection that we have in Massachusetts which, you know, it really is unique. So you can see the data for the TRS. So in this quarter, I started it with 10 new people. And then I've been doing this, you know, since, you know, we started in July, so to speak. And it takes weeks and weeks to finish a program. So I started with 10 new people, but I did finish 11 through the course of the year. So right now there's 21, well, there's more now, but the end of Q3 there was 21 participants and you can see the attempted context. That's, you know, that means I've reached out to them. Sometimes I get back to them right away. Sometimes I have to reach out again. But you know, it is so worth it because relationship building is so vital to making people feel heard, to giving them hope, to giving them support, to knowing that they're, you know, they're not alone. This whole thing about building community and relationships. And that's what the Game Sense program does and that's why what I get to do as, you know, the recovery person in addition to the other recovery work that I do. So there's a lot of good things happening and Massachusetts and the commissioners and everybody at the Mass Gaming Commission and those of us at the council, we're all, we should all be very proud of this amazing work that we do. And Odessa will talk about this, but we are also presenting a session at the National Conference on Problem Gaming, specifically about telecom recovery support. So all the people who are going to be very envious of our program are going to come to that. So with that, I'm going to hand it off to Odessa. Everybody, can you hear me okay? Yes, I can. So thank you. Okay, so I'm going to give you a little background for this slide for our GambleSafe initiative. We partner primarily with interested social service organizations. So we offer them a menu of training and technical assistance options. They can choose which ones they want to participate in. All of the options are designed to increase awareness of problem gambling and harm minimization strategies. And we just want to make sure they have resources that are appropriate for the communities that they serve. So as part of this initiative or partnering with the Office of Community Corrections, we have worked with the OCC in the past. So it's really a continuation or renewal of a long-standing relationship. And as you can guess, corrections involved individuals experience disproportionately high rates of gambling disorder. If you look at the studies nationally, regionally, you kind of see a range of statistics. Depending on which study you look at, the research suggests that between 30% and 50% of this population are likely to meet the criteria for gambling disorder. So that's incredibly high. And we would probably describe most of the rest as being at risk. But what we do know for sure is that if somebody is caught involved with an unidentified gambling disorder, this is a setup for recidivism and incarceration. And we don't want that. And if an individual is on the cusp of an issue, we really would want a provider to help them like dial it back. So the OCC oversees 17 community justice support centers across the state. As you can see in this picture, they were previously called community correction centers. And so these are really jail diversion programs. A judge can assign people to receive services at one of the centers in lieu of jail time. And so leadership at the OCC felt it would be helpful if we partnered with the support center staff just to make sure that they have the adequate knowledge and the resources that they need to help their clients. So to this end, Jodi and I trained 146 staff members across 17 of the centers. We, I mean, the feedback was so positive, so enthusiastic, and we did evaluations and staff overwhelmingly felt these trainings significantly increase their understanding of risky and problematic gambling and significantly increase their ability to identify and help a client with their gambling. So that was really good to hear. We held technical assistance meetings with program leadership at the centers to identify further opportunities to increase gambling awareness at the centers. As Jodi mentioned, the community-based designated agent trainings, our goal was just to have one staff person at each site be able to process VSEs, but more than double the amount turned out for trainings. We have 21 people now at the centers approved to conduct the VSEs for the clients who choose this as one of their recovery supports. So we were just really happy that more people stepped up than we initially even asked for. Right now we're working with OCC to create supplemental educational materials that really speak specifically to corrections involved clients. And, you know, we wanna build on this good work. So we're looking ahead to the next fiscal year. We're hoping to start training probation officers. We're looking at different curriculums to see how to better integrate gambling awareness activities into the groups that they do at the centers and just looking for more opportunities to reach more people and more staff. So next slide. So with the national conference on gambling addiction and responsible gambling, it's gonna be held in the Seaport in July. I hope all of you are gonna be there. There's gonna be about 130 presenters, dozens of amazing sessions, fun activities, networking. As Jodi mentioned, several of us from the council were selected to present on Gaming Commission-funded initiatives. We're looking for volunteers to join us on July 21st and 22nd, but at the very least I hope you can attend and see all the good stuff that's going on around the country and then there's also some international presenters as well. And that's all I got for you. We just wanted to say thank you to Commissioner Cameron for all her support and best wishes in your retirement. And if anybody has questions for the team, we're here to take them. Missionaries, do you have questions for the various speakers? You might be helpful. Thanks. I'm sorry, I'll start with you. Do you have questions? I don't have any questions. I just wanted to say a particular congratulations on the live chat conversion stat. That's impressive to get 90% that then follow through. I knew it was having success. I didn't realize you had that kind of hit rate on it. So that's great. As always, I love hearing about this. It's, you know, one of my favorite parts of the job, but I was really impressed with that stat. Excellent. Thank you, Commissioner Hill. Another great presentation by you all. And I love seeing you when we come touring the facilities. Actually the last couple of times we toured, a few of you have been involved with clients. So you've been very busy and we see that when we come to our property. So great job on the work that you're doing. But what I saw with the numbers at the beginning of your presentation is how they've increased. And I know we had COVID and I know that that's a big issue, a big reason why you weren't so many in FY21, but the numbers you're showing for FY22 are a pretty significant jump over the year before, but more importantly, as the year progresses, I see these numbers getting bigger and bigger. So congratulations on reaching out to these folks and getting them involved. And even the simple interactions and the demonstrations, the numbers are through the roof, as far as I'm concerned, which is great to see. So great job, as always. Thank you, Commissioner Stettler. So no questions, I agree, excellent presentation. I just want to take the opportunity to thank each of you and your work on behalf of Game Sense. I had the pleasure of meeting remotely with Chelsea, Marlene and Odessa last week. And I want to say I am looking forward to meeting the folks on the ground the next time I'm at the facilities. Great work and just a big thank you. Excellent, thank you to each of you and your presentations were all excellent, as always. Ray, I want to specifically thank you because you really set the stage so nicely for us to really be able to analyze those numbers. You're welcome, thank you. And I guard them, thank you for highlighting the senior champions. Jody, you always inspire. So thank you. I am particularly pleased to see how folks are really taking advantage of the remote opportunity, as I think really you envisioned when it got rolled out. So that's great. Of course, Ken, thank you to you. I'm looking forward to hearing more at the conference from you. You're going to have to specter on Game Sense what's running. I really will appreciate what you can bring to the table. Thank you. And Phil, you I think raised this a few meetings ago, maybe a half a year on the augmented reality. Again, the follow-through very much. And to the extent that you can see me educate us on that, I think all of us would welcome that. And then the only other thing is for them, I'm really interested in also your presentation at the conference because I need to learn more about the PRS. In terms of sort of connections program, I was aware of that, Adessa. I hadn't been briefed on that. And so I'm going to circle back to our director and learn a little bit more and follow up with some questions down the road. So thank you. Right. Yeah, it just started this quarter. So that's probably why you didn't hear about it before. Right, right. So very interesting. Thank you, everyone. We appreciate all the attention and most of all, this is your, you'll, you'll receive this very multidimensional piece of business and it's an expensive piece of business for the gaming commission. So thank you. I look forward to hearing more from you. What's funny is that you're right outside my office and here we are staring at each other in the computer. So here we go. I love seeing Ray and then the next week, Devon is great. So thanks. I think Mark, we're all set commissioners then. All right. Thank you. And if I miss anybody again, thank you all of your individual presentations. I think then, Mom, are you all set? Yes. Okay. Mark, I'll set. Okay, then we're gonna move on. It is 11.49. We have plans before lunch break. The communities of their sufficient presentation on the transportation construction on the patients are we set to continue with like a brief file break? Like a five minutes? Five minutes just to take a quick break before we hear from Joe and team and then we'll have a lunch break and all of that. Does that sound good? Okay. We'll reconvene in 11.55. Thanks so much. Babe, I think we're all set to take down Okay, I'll set. Thank you. We'll just give a few more minutes to folks to get back, excuse me, charging devices. Just waiting for it to get started. Here comes Karen perfectly, perfect timing. Okay. We'll get started then. Good morning. Just barely 11.59, Joe. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Madam Chair and commissioners. So today we have before you our community mitigation fund transportation construction grants. What I would like to do if you recall at our last meeting, we had one piece of unfinished business from that where we deferred one application which was the Medford Wellington Rail Trail Study. So I thought I would just go through that one first and maybe we can vote that item and then move on to the transportation construction. So on the Medford Wellington Rail Trail Study we had some late sort of breaking information at our last meeting. So we have revised our memo, which is in your packet. But essentially they're requesting $70,000 to fund the study of the feasibility of utilizing an inactive freight rail right-of-way to construct a multi-use trail that would help with connectivity in the Wellington and Glenwood neighborhood. We did go through all of this and we were recommending this application but just based on that further analysis we are recommending a full funding of this grant to the amount of 70,000. But what we are recommending also is to split this into two phases that we would have $25,000 upfront and then $45,000 in a second phase. And essentially we would ask that the after that first phase which is really investigating the ownership and the levels of easements and other things that they carry on the railroad that once they get through that effort if there's a reasonable likelihood that the railroad owner will allow the conversion of this into a multi-use trail then that second piece of it can move forward. So again, so and again, if the first part if we spend that first amount of money and it's determined that it's really not feasible the project will end and that money will get reverted back into the community mitigation fund. But so I guess at this point, we're asking you to approve the full $70,000 and we can take care of those machinations of how the money goes out with the grant documents and the contracts and so on. Any questions for Gemma on that? So the request is to do 70 at this point as opposed to delineating within that I guess I feel more comfortable if there's language in there that the MGC and it can be in the form of your team deems that it's feasible to continue to move forward because I don't want to be in a situation where they have someone positing that it is and you guys look at it and feel obligated to turn this money over but in your opinion, you know, it's not real. We kind of use the term that there's a reasonable likelihood. You know, we're not saying that somebody has to have a sort of a written deed that turns it over to them, but we need to have some, you know, sort of levels of assurances from probably from the railroad itself, some kind of a ladder that says, oh yeah, we're okay moving ahead with this thing and something to that effect. You know, exactly what that's going to look like we probably don't know today, but that's another one that we probably know when we see it. You know. Am I comfortable 25,000 is the right figure? Yeah, they had broken down their budget pretty well and you know, if anything, this might be just a tad on the high side. I just don't want to, I don't want to short change them on it. I think when you added up all of their stuff associated with that it might have been, they might have been 23,000 or 24,000 or something like this. We just sort of rounded it up to the 25 just to make sure that there's a little bit of a cushion there. You know what I didn't do and Commissioner O'Brien you usually tell me to is I didn't do a quick remote, remote roll call. So before we go and turn it about before we do that, I'll just ask for that roll call, Commissioner O'Brien. I am here. Commissioner Hill. As in. Commissioner Stinger. Here. We are here. We're all here and we're here, Virgil. All. So on that, do you want us to move on that now, separate and apart? You could do it either now or at the end, it doesn't matter. I think we sent a late breaking a draft motion on that to you guys. Yeah, I saw. Why don't we take care of that piece of business before moving on? Commissioner O'Brien, I wouldn't, I wouldn't mind if you added that piece, if you wanted to just add that clarification. Commissioners, I assume. Yeah. Commissioner Skinner, it gives a little bit of protection for Joe and team. Okay. Madam Chair, I would move the commission approved the city of Medford's request for funding from the community mitigation fund for a total amount of $70,000 for the purposes of studying the feasibility and then designing and constructing a multiuse trail as described in the memorandum of the commissioner's packet and is discussed at the last meeting and today, provided, however, that the city shall be initially provided with $25,000 to conduct the feasibility study and the remaining $45,000 will be released to the city upon providing proof satisfactory to the commission in the form of the community mitigation fund team that the project is feasible to move forward and further that the commission staff be authorized to execute a grant instrument commemorating this award in accordance with 205-CMR 153.04 and I would also ask that the team come back and present that finding of satisfactory proof to the commission prior to the disbursement of the additional funds. I'm a second. Second. Thank you. All right. I thought it was gonna die on the vine for a minute there. A very short body. We have any questions on that motion? I'll set. Okay, Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Commissioner Skinner. Aye. Yes, of course, Sarah. Thanks. Okay, we'll move ahead on the others. Thank you, John and team. Okay, thank you. So on the transportation construction grant applications, I think we will do the same process that we did for the transportation planning. We'll go through each one, open it up for questions and I think then just take motions at the end if that's okay. So there's one thing that I wanted to mention sort of in a blanket for this whole category, for most of the ones that are in this category. So a lot of these grants or these projects that are being proposed are currently being designed and are only have associated with them some fairly rough cost estimates. They're kind of preliminary in nature. Now, what we do with these construction grants is we allow them essentially a year until the end of June, 2023 to get these projects under construction. So the idea behind that is with any construction project, the hardest thing to do is to find the resources that you need to build the thing. So this gives the community some certainty that the funds are available. But with that said, we don't know the exact final project costs. Now our guidelines require two things. One, we set, we established a maximum dollar value of a grant at one and a half million dollars. But we also say that a project that a grant can only fund up to one third of the project costs. So we have a kind of an either or here. So, and we have to satisfy both of those. So what we're suggesting is that on all of these construction projects that the grants be sort of capped at the dollar value that they've identified, but also with the understanding that we can't fund more than one third of the project costs. So what we're saying, we gave an example in our write up that say, say a project cost estimated at four and a half million dollars and they're asking for the maximum one and a half million dollars. We would vote the one and a half million dollars, which is a third of the total construction costs. But if, for instance, that project were to come in at something less than that when they go out to bid, say four million dollars, we would have to reduce that one and a half million down to sort of the one third of the total project costs. This just basically puts us in alignment with what our guidelines say. It's either one third or a maximum amount. So you'll see in all of these recommendations that we are doing it in that fashion, particularly on the ones that are doing really sort of hard construction. So I just wanted to set that stage upfront because you'll see this as a common theme throughout. So the first application we have is Agilom, the town of Agilom. They're requesting 833,300 dollars for the reconstruction of the Suffield Street, Cooper Street, and Rowley Street intersection. Suffield Street is also known as Route 75. And again, this project is currently under design and they're looking at some of the feasibility of certain things. They're looking at traffic signals, but they're also looking at the possibility of a roundabout there. So the 833,300 is one third of the estimated $2.5 million cost of the entire project. Last year, we gave Agilom their reserve funds that they used to design to this intersection, which as I said, is currently under design. So, and at that time, what we determined that there certainly wasn't impact of the casino on this stretch of roadway. Route 75, Suffield Street connects between 147 from the north and Route 57 in the south and the earlier environmental impact reports estimated that about 6% of the traffic would use Route 57 and about 3% of the casino traffic would use Route 147. And considering that this road is a state numbered route that connects between those, we thought it was a reasonable assumption that a fair amount of that traffic would also use Suffield Street, which constituted that nexus to the casino. So the purpose of this project is to reduce traffic congestion that currently exists there and that has been exacerbated by the casino related traffic, but also to provide some better emergency response times and also to address complete streets portions, which include pedestrian and bicycle safety. So the review team agreed that all of these improvements would address the identified impact. So again, at this point, we are recommending the funding of $833,300 with the understanding that the community mitigation funds would provide a maximum of one third of the total construction costs. So with that and MGM Springfield and MassDOT both supported this project. So with that, I will open it up with questions from the commission. Commissioners, questions? Offset, question kind of benefit of the briefing. One of my observations on this one was the route is along where the big E is. And so my hope in Christian Hill, you're shaking your hand. My hope is that MGM really is able to leverage the big E by subversa. So that was another compelling piece of this project from my perspective. Yeah, and I know in the past, they have done some partnering with the big E and as I understand those big E times of the year were also some pretty big times for the casino as well. Yeah. Commissioner Hill, are you leaning in? No, okay. I did mention the big E and I'm my conversation. So I'm laughing that you brought it up as well. Yeah, yeah. So there's some synergy there. That's great. Thank you. Okay, so the next one is Everett. It's the Mystic Riverwalk. Again, similar to the Agilom project, this project we awarded a transportation planning grant last year to do the design work on this. And this section of the Mystic Riverwalk is over on the gateway center side from Encore. So Encore was required to build walkways, bike paths to connect over to the gateway center. And these paths kind of go around the gateway center and connect back out to Route 16. But they don't really connect to any good bike paths or anything in that location. And what they're proposing to do is to make a connection from that up to some of the improvements that were done as part of the Route 16 bridge that goes over the Maldon River to better access that, which would give much better access to well-intention and certainly other points to the West that are connected with bike paths and other multi-use type trails. So the review team definitely agreed that there is an impact from the casino and that providing this connection, closing this gap in a section of bikeway will certainly encourage folks on bikes to use this path to either get to Wellington or to the casino directly. And of course, if you get to Wellington that has the shuttle buses that go to the casino. So again, we felt, the review team felt that there was definitely an impact of the casino that this would address. This whole notion of bike paths, it's a little bit difficult to try to estimate how many vehicles this would take off the road. But what we have seen is that, particularly with employees, a lot of employees already use, already bike to Encore. And we think that this would really encourage some of those less brave bicyclists to use these paths to get to the casino. Some of the routes right now are through, Sweets of Circle and Santilli Circle and anything that we could do to eliminate those fairly dangerous routes for bicyclists would be a great benefit to them. So it would certainly encourage people to come to the casino in that group. So similarly, we are, let's see, Everett has asked for $1,335,000 to complete this section. That is one third of the total estimated project cost. And similar to the others, this is under design now. So we have that same caveat that we recommend awarding $1,335,000, but with the community mitigation funds providing no more than one third of the total construction cost, which will be determined when the bids are open. And with that, I will open that one up to questions. Well said. Okay, I think we can continue on, Charles, thank you. Okay, the next one is Medford, Haines Square. The city of Medford's requesting $136,000 for safety improvements to Haines Square to improve safety for all modes, especially pedestrians and bicyclists, and trying to bring the sidewalks and ramps and so on up to the Americans with Disabilities Act requirements. So in this case, we are not recommending this one for funding and I will go through the reasons why we are not doing that. So this location is about 3.7 miles to the northwest of Encore, Boston Harbor, and it is located on Route 60, about 650 feet sort of southwest of the intersection of Route 60 and Route 28. And Route 28 is also better known as the Fellsway roads. Now, the Fellsway and Route 60, the intersection there was studied as part of the original environmental impact report for Encore. And they looked at that in its current condition or its current condition back then at that time, but they also projected traffic for the year 2023 under the build condition that means with the casino and under the no build condition meaning if the casino were not built. And the impact that Medford has identified on this is saying that the increase in traffic from the casino is causing sort of increased problems in this Haynes square neighborhood. And just, and what they are saying is that under the build circumstance, this approach to the Route 60, Route 28 intersection was estimated to operate at a level of service F during the peak Friday afternoon peak hour under the build condition meaning to see those there this would operate a level of service F. But interestingly, I went back to the environmental impact report and under the no build circumstance, this leg of the intersection was still estimated to operate at a level of service F. And I think the community themselves had said that, this is an area that definitely backs way up on Friday afternoons. You know, the studies show that the delay at the intersection would increase a little bit by about a little under five seconds going from about 98 seconds under the no build condition to just under 103 seconds under the build condition. So is there a very small impact associated with the casino traffic? Yes, there probably is, but it's really probably not measurable under these circumstances. And in fact, there's a couple of footnotes in the EIR that says that this is really beyond the capability of the model to really effectively model just because the backups are so significant at that intersection already. So in doing that, we looked at that and was saying, is this really contributing to a safety impact at the Haines square intersection? Or, and we really couldn't come up with a connection to an increase in traffic causing an increase in safety issues there. You know, those safety issues existed before the casino came along and would have existed without the presence of the casino. So trying to say that it's the casino that's causing this issue, we found that to be just a little bit beyond a little bit of a reach and that we didn't feel that we could make that connection to the casino. Now, with that said, you know, Medford has gotten a grant of $400,000 for this intersection from the Complete Streets program at MassDOT. You know, we think this is a great project. It's just that we can't find that nexus to the casino to really justify the expenditures out of the community mitigation fund for that. And so with that, I will open that one up for questions. Sure. Notably Encore does support this grant, but they didn't necessarily have the benefit of your analysis, right? Correct. I mean, it's, again, I think the project itself is a good project. It's just that making that nexus to the casino is difficult. I think that's why both MassDOT and Encore supported this because the project itself is certainly is laudable, but you know, we just couldn't make that connection. Okay. You want to continue on? Okay. So the next one is another application from Medford. They want to do some blue bikes installations. And I assume you're all familiar with the blue bikes. You see them all around downtown Boston and many of the surrounding communities, Cambridge, Everett and a few others, some of them like they have joined that blue bike system. So Medford does not have blue bikes right now. They are asking for $192,500 to establish four blue bike stations in Medford. Now the interesting here, they are asking for a waiver from that one third requirement of our transportation construction category. So here we are recommending awarding this grant and we are also recommending waiving the one third, two thirds requirement and funding this in its entirety. And I will explain the reasons for that. So firstly, I guess again, with the connection to the casino, one of these blue bikes installations is proposed for Wellington Station, which of course is where many of the shuttles go to the casino for patrons and employees. So folks who are in Medford using these would be able to get to Wellington Station to go to the casino. And of course, if some of these bike connections, bike path connections that we are talking about get closed in it will be a nice easy ride all the way to the casino itself, which also happens to have two blue bikes installations there. So we definitely agree that there's a connection to the casino. And now Medford has a plan to do a much larger program. They'd like to do 13 total blue bikes installations and maybe as many as 15. And at the time of their application, they didn't really have any commitments for those other blue bike stations. So we were a little bit reluctant to recommend granting the waiver since there didn't seem to be at that point any firm commitment towards providing these other stations. But since that time, they have gotten a grant from the state under the community connections grant to do three more stations for 2022. They've applied for a 2023 grant for three more stations. And they've also been working with some private landowners, particularly some that own some of these larger residential developments in Medford to provide some additional blue bike stations. And while they haven't fully gotten them, those folks to commit or we haven't seen anything that says that they're sort of signed on the dotted line, those all sound very promising. So if you count those, this would certainly be actually less than, if they get all the 15 that they're looking for, four stations would be less than a third of the total project cost and actually close to the 25%, somewhere between 25 and 33% of the total project cost. So given how much work that they've done and the likelihood of this blue bikes network really expanding, we think that it's really appropriate to waive this requirement. And so I think just with respect to a motion on this one, I don't think you really, I think if you agree that the waiver is appropriate, you could say so. And I think just if the doalla value is voted, that sort of creates the waiver, I don't think you need to vote a waiver separately or you could certainly do that if you'd like to. But so with that one, I will open that one up for questions. Questions on Prisha O'Brien? Mine's more procedural in terms of, I feel like we had this conversation a year ago in terms of the waiver, like whether we needed to vote on it or not. Kathy, do you remember that? I'm trying to think. I kind of stumbled on that even during the two by two. Thinking about the waiver. I think it's probably okay to treat it separate and say that in this instance, the waiver of the really wise rule that we've developed now, be put in place and then fund procedurally, I mean. I mean, this one's a little funky because in theory, when you look at the total amount, they're not probably in violation of the one third. And so this is kind of a peculiar one, but I have a memory of us having this conversation last year in terms of the waiver. I was just trying to remember if you'd be called. No, I don't, I just, maybe that's what I was recalling, but I did sort of stumble during the two by two thinking about the waiver. I think perhaps if the motion, and I think believe the motion does reference what's in the memo, and the recommendation in the memo is to grant the waiver. So if you're accepting the recommendations of the memo, that might suffice, but I guess I defer to Todd on whether or not we think we need a particular motion for a waiver. I don't think it was required. My memory is it wasn't required, but it was discussion of whether that was the preference of the commission to do it, which of course we now have new members, maybe it's another conversation for another day. To me, this one conceptually, it was easier for me thinking when you look at the totality of the plan, we're probably not even needing a waiver, right? And I think they are on the side of caution at the beginning by requesting a waiver because they didn't have anybody signed on the dotted line, that would provide some additional blue bikes. So they couldn't sort of take credit for that. And now they've sort of, they've gotten further down the line. Now they still haven't gotten everyone to sign on the dotted line. So there still really is a waiver in place, but given, ultimately it might not be a waiver, after the fact sort of, you know what I mean? Absolutely, it's not needed, but practically speaking what they don't, they're over the one third potentially. Yeah. Appreciate it. To me, this is two different votes, it's two different issues. So I think my suggestion would be that we vote for the money and we would vote to give them a waiver. That would be my suggestion. I think it makes a clean record. Yeah, I appreciate the confusion though, that it's close here, but I think it'll make a clean record. Yeah, so I think you could add in, you know, as of right now, we've crafted motions that do approvals, sort of a blanket approval for all the ones that we're recommending. And then once we're not recommending, and we could do a third motion, I think just to do a particular waiver for this application. Right, okay. Any questions though, other than on the process? Well, I think that this really, really is consistent with the works that the gaming commission has done to promote the cycling biking pathways and so to the extent that people adopt this mode of transportation and it's a safe, and we also take care of some of the safety issues for the effort proposal. It's all really consistent with past work and builds on it. So I love this proposal and I want to make sure we support it. Okay, so. And Joe, to your point, the other is really scary without those connectors. We are definitely improving the bikeway network. Okay, so the next one is Springfield and this is resurfacing East Columbus Ave and Hall of Fame Ave. So East Columbus Ave and Hall of Fame Ave run to North South on either side of I-91 as it goes through the Springfield. And MGM did repave portions of both of these roads as part of their mitigation, sort of those, really those stretches right sort of in front of the casino or what they were required to do improvements for. But this is not for that piece of the road. This is for sections both to the North and to the South of that road. So most of the traffic, probably more than 70% of the traffic, I would say, and that might even be on the low side, we'll use one or both of those routes getting to and from the casino. Most folks are coming in either from I-91 or from those surface roads and into the parking garage at MGM. Probably the only folks that would not use either one of those roads or some folks coming from the East, most of those people from Springfield or maybe from a couple of towns beyond that are just using the local network and will come down State Street and could access the parking garage from that direction. But really most of the folks are using these roads. And the first traffic study on MGM is being conducted even as we speak, which was delayed due to the pandemic and so on. So we don't have a lot of hard numbers on exactly how many folks are using these roads. But we certainly know from the original environmental impact reports that it is very significant. But one of the things that the city has said and in the many times that I've been out there, I would tend to agree with is that people are using those roads for longer distances that might have been expected under the environmental impact reports. If you're using I-91 and just say if you're coming south and coming from 291, you have to cross three lanes of traffic to get to an exit and then you're crossing other lanes of traffic as you come around. So it seems that people are getting either getting off the highway earlier or getting on the highway later because of these merges that have to happen and crossing multiple lanes of traffic. So that certainly seems to be a realistic assessment of that, which means that these sections of Palofane Ave and East Columbus Ave are being used for longer distance than might have been expected. The city has gone and evaluated all of the roadways in their community and they use a term called pavement condition index, which is very similar to getting a grade on a paper in school, you score 100, you got a perfect score, you're below 60, you're a failing score and these roads came in at a range of 48 to 52 on that pavement condition index. So they definitely are meeting a lot of work. So, we definitely agree that there was an impact associated with the casino. We agree that this will improve the roadway conditions to better handle that traffic. Again, they're asking for one third of the total estimated costs of $2.3 million. Now this one here, the city is in the process of bidding their annual paving contract. So they have really good prices on theirs. So I feel a lot more comfortable with this dollar value, but this one will be bid, if this is approved by the commission, they'll be out to bid on this before the end of the fiscal year. So we'll have real dollar values, not a year from now, but within less than a couple of months. But regardless, I think the vote on this is the same. We wait until the bid prices are in before we establish the final dollar value and make sure that it's no more than the one third of the costs. So again, we're recommending the 766,700 with a maximum of one third of the total construction costs. MGM and MassDOT were both in favor of this one as well. Any questions? I don't know, I imagine any of us who have driven out there have driven along these roads. So the index alone speaks volumes down. Thank you. You wanna go on to the next one? The next one is also Springfield. So Springfield requesting $1.5 million to construct improvements to the court square area. And these will be roadway improvements, hardscape, landscape streetscape, and some underground infrastructure. And so we are recommending this one for funding. It's again, one third, it's actually this one is a little bit less than one third of the total cost. This would be our, this reaches our dollar maximum. The project itself is about $5 million. So that's sort of caps it at 1.5 million. Now this, the court square area of course is that area right across from the MassMutual Center. It's really the common in downtown Springfield. And directly adjacent to that is the 31 Elm Street project, which is the housing project that MGM is participating in to satisfy their housing requirement. MGM providing $16 million towards that important project. And then of course the next block over is MGM itself. And there is a walkway through court square out to State Street that does connect right over towards the MGM property. So in this application, the impact that's identified by the city relates to what we had talked about last year. And I think even sort of the year before that was that the construction of MGM was expected to be a catalyst for redevelopment in the area. And while a couple of small projects have moved ahead, this hasn't turned into a sort of a large scale redevelopment as the city was hoping. And I think a part of that is due to sort of some unrealistic expectations of the landowners. I think early on they thought MGM would buy their properties for maybe a premium. And then that didn't happen. And then the property owners were looking for rents that were sort of higher than what the previous areas had supported and that didn't really pan out. So the sort of these expectations, a lot of people moved out of these buildings. And in fact, the city's actually purchased a couple of the buildings for redevelopment themselves. So the whole idea behind this is that these unrealistic expectations actually kind of led to these buildings kind of lying fallow and not being redeveloped. And the city is looking to try to jumpstart that to sort of make that unrealized expectations to happen by taking things into their own hands a little bit. And what these improvements to Court Square will do is they will actually improve the access to 31 Elm Street when that is constructed. So 31 Elm Street is expected to have retail and restaurants on the first floor. And this would actually reopen Elm Street, which is now currently closed to traffic and routed through and around the common, which would provide additional access to the church, the church that's located at the back of the common that the city also owns and is looking to redevelop. Also looking at the pedestrian improvements. Again, that walkway that goes through from Court Square over to MGM, they're looking to make improvements there, lighting and widening that and making that a little more pedestrian friendly. Again, we look at this whole thing. We agree that this sort of unintended consequence of the MGM construction is an impact and that this does help mitigate that impact by making these improvements, which will hopefully encourage further redevelopment in the downtown area. So again, we really like this project. We think that this is great. And, there's a whole bunch of things that this is attempting to do. And we think this will go a long way towards that. So with that, I'll open up that one for any questions. Kishor Skinner, do you have any questions? I don't. Okay, Kishor Joe. I don't have a question about the proposal that's been put before us, but I do have a question about the property across from MGM that is being worked on, that I think this would connect to. 31-0. 31-0. Can you refresh my memory? Has the gaming commission actually put money toward that project at all? Or is that state and community only? We have not. So as part of the original approvals for MGM, MGM had a tower for their hotel that they ended up not doing and they ended up putting the hotel along Main Street. That area where the hotel is was originally supposed to be housing, market rate housing that MGM was going to develop. When that change happened, both the commission and the city of Springfield agreed that they could provide that housing offsite. And MGM actually had a property that was owned by the city that MGM purchased from the city to build, not all of the units that they were required to do, but a good portion of them. And then when this idea of redeveloping 31 Elm Street happened, the city asked MGM to participate in this rather than build their housing at another location. So MGM is contributing, I think the final dollar value was $16 million towards this project, which is substantial. But of course, this is a very expensive project. It's a historic building. So they got money from, they got historic tax credits. They've got money from MGM. The city of Springfield put up $4 million to prep the site. They had to do remediation of lead and asbestos and things like that on the property. So money came from mass housing and now I'm scouring my memory banks for all of these sources of funds that were cobbled together for this project. And actually even I think mass mutual put up some money for this project and others. So it's been this really wide-ranging project to really took a tremendous effort to cobble together the money to do that. But no, the short answer, we have not put money directly into this project. And you could almost look at this as being sort of a contribution towards that because it will certainly improve that whole project itself. Well, that's my thought, yeah. Thank you. And we were advised along the way because of that being that tradition, but it was actually a superb collaboration for that financing with some creative innovations on that financing mass housing should be credited there. Joe, I have a question because I'm wondering if I'm, you could just walk me through the memo because I'm probably just not reading it right, but the numbers seem in mass dots piece. Mass dots supports the city of Springfield 1500, but then it goes on to say the project's five million, but then it's full estimated project cost of four million. Is it, do you see what I just... Yeah. The whole project for what Springfield is managing is five million. Yes, yeah, when we looked at the cost estimates, the whole, the all-in cost for the project was five million. And then ask us, I'm not exactly sure Oh, I think what they did was they had included four million on their 2022-2026 capital improvement plan initially, but they hadn't, you know, so this funding, this funding essentially, you know, makes it whole. But you know, the capital improvement plan isn't the final dollar value. Those are all just sort of planning dollars. Yeah, and so the bottom line, Mass Doty saying the city has secured funding opportunities in excess of project needs and may reassign loan funding if needed. The thing that presumes our contribution as well. Yeah, yeah. Well, certainly I think we need to do a tour of that area. I know that Commissioner Hill, you've taken a glimpse, but we do need a tour and probably an update on 31M. And how it really, with that, as I'm imagining this proposal, how it will really connect MGM through 31M to that wonderful court square and provide that foot traffic that they're imagining that will really be that economic driver. So I think this is a very exciting proposal. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. So we'll put that on the tour list. Yes. Yes. Okay, thanks. Okay, so the final one today is town of West Springfield. They requested $1.1 million for complete streets transportation improvements on Elm Street, which is Route 20 through West Springfield. So this is kind of a common theme here. We gave them a grant initially to do design work out here. We gave a transportation planning grant a few years ago to study this and to do some design work on that. And that's now leading to a transportation construction application to implement those improvements. So we are recommending that we authorize a maximum grant of $1.1 million. Again, they are asking for one third of the total construction costs here. Now the original application on this one was for $1.3 million. And when we went back to them during the process, we had looked at their construction cost estimates and they had added in not only some contingency factors but some cost escalation factors over several years. And they went back to the drawing board and sort of revised those a little bit. It seemed like, you know, we understand that you have to carry a construction contingency but the contingency seemed kind of excessive on this one. So they did go back and recalculated the amount. So that's why we are recommending the $1.1 million that reflects those revised dollar values. So the impact here, about 5% of the casino related traffic uses group 20 to access points to the West. And back when we did their transportation planning grant we agreed that that constituted an impact. And of course that still continues to constitute an impact on those roads. What they are proposing to do is again, they're still in the design process on this. Where group 20 kind of does a jog through West Springfield and where it turns out of West Springfield heading to points West, there's a traffic signal there that's quite problematic. They're actually looking at potentially doing a roundabout there or some traffic signals, not final determination hasn't been made at this point. So, you know, that will happen during the final design process. But again, you know, these improvements are designed to improve traffic flow. They're designed to improve pedestrian and bicycle access, public transit and all of those things. So, you know, we're always happy when folks do complete streets improvements and improves, you know, bike access will help, you know, bike access to the casino and to other places, but also improve traffic flow through there to ease the commute of, you know, patrons and employees to the casino as well as the general public. So again, we are recommending that one in the amount of 1.1 million with no more than one third of the total construction costs going towards. The visual on that project was very helpful and it really is a continuation of an earlier project. So, thank you for the briefing. Any questions for Joe on this? I'm assuming you saw the same visual argument. All right, Joe, those are your proposals. Yes, that's it. All right, Commissioner, there's no questions that you've thought about since Joe and Mary and Lily made the presentation. Okay, so we have some motions that we need to make. That's up to quite a bit of funding, right, Joe? Yes. So why don't we start perhaps with Medford and I'll just make the comment to Harry that, you know, we really appreciate Medford's making this application and I know that they've participated in the brown bags and that the Medford mayor has actually also shown up at our public meeting. So we really appreciate their being active partners in this process and to the extent that we can't necessarily award every application, we very much appreciate their participation in this process. So we look at the pain square almost so first. Any thoughts on that? Whether or not we want to move to either award or deny the recommendation in this instance from the team is to deny that particular application. I'm ready to make a move on this particular one, Madam Chair. Okay, thank you. I would move that the commission deny the city of Medford's application for funding from the Community Mitigation Fund for safety improvements in Haines Square as there is no clear nexus between the requested funding and any impacts created by the operation of the gaming establishment. Second. Thank you. Any questions or comments on this one? Okay. Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Mr. Skinner. Aye. And I vote yes. Before yeses, and again, we appreciate the application. We have some, we've already addressed some Medford applications prior to today, I remember correctly. All right. Now, I suspect that we can do this in somewhat of a collective manner to be practical and helpful. Should we be moving on the waiver first, Madam Chair? Let's do that. I think that makes sense. Yeah. Council. That's the blue bikes. I actually have a question, Commissioner O'Brien. I've been thinking about this as we've been talking about these grants. Can we award the money and further move that a waiver be granted in the same motion? Or I know I just said that I would rather have two different ones, but to make it simpler, could we? You can find it, but I think sequentially you'd want to grant the waiver first. Okay. Because I don't think the second follows from the first. I don't think you can go until we've agreed that we want to do a waiver. So we can either do it separately. It seems there's a consensus on it. There was an indication there wasn't. We'd probably want to move separately on the question of waiver, but. Commissioner Skinner, do you agree that it's okay to do it in one motion? Yeah. I think we're actually right. We have a consensus on that. And I agree with the sequence. So. Brad, are you passing it over to me again? Or would you like to take it? I was actually going to take a shot at it, but I'm just so good at it. Oh, no, no. Let me see if there's a general council here who can help us go a ride. No, I think he's good. Let me take a shot at it. And then we'll fix that, right? So I would move that a waiver be granted for the full cost. And I just, this is where I would need some help for the full cost of the city of Medford's requests for their blue bikes for the installation, for the reasons described in the submitted application and material to include it in the commissioner's packet and for the reasons described therein and discussed today. And further move that the commission approve the city of Medford's funding application for the community mitigation fund for 33% of the total project costs, excluding any design costs up to the maximum amount of $192,500 with the final figure being determined by the chief of community affairs upon receipt of a satisfactory documentation for the purpose described in the submitted application and materials included in the commissioner's packet and for the reasons described therein and discussed here today. And further that the commission staff be authorized to execute a grant instrument commemorating this award in accordance with 205 CMR 153.04. Do we have a second with the, in any friendly amendments? Okay, so I'll second. Okay. Do we have any? Was I close time? Yeah, any edits or friendly amendments? So my question for possibly editor friendly amendment is, is the waiver from the 33% cap? Yes. Okay, so I would just tweak the language rather than the waiver for payment of the total amount. It would be the waiver of the 33% cap of the total amount. And I would agree to that. So yeah, a waiver of our policy if I can make, yeah. That's just a clarifier not to change the language but our policy of funding up to one third. Okay. So with that friendly amendment, is that clear? Council Grossman, are we okay? We've got the, the question. I think it's well understood what the intent is here. So I think that's fine. All right. So with that amendment, do I have a second? Thank you, Mr. Skinner. Any further questions or edits? All right. I'm just delighted that we're continuing to improve the bike path as we roll out more bikes. Makes me happy. All right. Mr. O'Brien? Aye. Mr. Hill? Aye. Mr. Skinner? Aye. I vote yes. Thank you. Thanks. And now we have the other one, two, three, four, five proposals. Do I have a collective motion for those? Mr. O'Brien, you're carrying the load. I'll turn to you though. I was leaving the floor open. People are probably sick of hearing me move all the time. I was trying to be gentlemanly just for the record. You were, you were. Mr. Skinner, I, I, I'm too new to do. I'm happy to move. I'm happy to move. Thank you. Thank you so much. Get it, get it right. I know that the commission approved each of the municipalities application for funding for from the community mitigation fund for 33% of the total project costs, excluding any design costs up to a maximum amount as discussed here today with the final figure to be determined by the chief of community affairs upon receipt of satisfactory documentation for the purposes described in the submitted application and materials included in the commissioners packet and for the reasons described there in and discussed here today and further that commission staff be authorized to execute a grant instrument commemorating this award in accordance with 205 CMR 150304. Do we have a second? Second. Do we have a friendly amendment? Commissioner O'Brien. I don't believe so. Okay, good. I guess that now I would only say do we need to clarify that we're talking about Agalom City of Medford City of Springfield for two and the town of West Springfield discussed today. I don't know if that needs to be incorporated into the motion but for the record those are the outstanding municipalities. Okay, any further clarifiers? Mary's shaking her head. Did I get that right, Mary? We've got, yeah. Okay, any other clarifications or edits? All right, thank you, Commissioner Skinner. We've got our second and Commissioner O'Brien. Hi. Commissioner Hill. Hi. Commissioner Skinner. Hi. And I vote yes for Sarah. Thank you very much. So, well done to the community mitigation team. Thank you, Mary. Thank you, Lily. And thank you, Joe. So well prepared. I'm just looking at our agenda now. We are a little bit behind on our timing which Crystal does an amazing job on because we are only 10 minutes behind. Not bad. So, oh no, I'm wrong. We're half an hour behind. We're half an hour behind. Sorry about that. So, you did a great job. In terms of our lunch break then, it's now one o'clock, 1.30. Does that work for everyone? Top an hour? Commissioner Skinner, you're going to be off set with that team? Karen? Okay. Thank you very, very much, everyone, all the team members that stayed on throughout the meeting and throughout the preparation. And particularly for the community mitigation, that's always very exciting. So, we convene in a half an hour. Thanks so much. Dave, I think we're all set. Okay, back to normal. Thank you. Thank you. So, I'll do a virtual roll call. Commissioner Bryan? I am here. Commissioner Hill? Present. And Commissioner Skinner? I'm here. Okay, great. We'll get started. Again, thank you to Crystal for organizing us. Our apologies for getting off schedule, but excellent morning session. We're going to now turn to our legal division. And Todd, I know you've got your team ready for today's presentation and our required votes. Yeah, let's go. Good afternoon, everybody. We'll go right over to Carrie Currici, who will be presenting both of the, well, the first two, I should say, issues under the legal department agenda. Thanks, Todd. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and commissioners. So, first up, we have for you a small change to the approved table game rules for the game of pie card flush. Just a reminder on the table game rules that these aren't promulgated as regulations. 205 CMR 147 is the regulation that governs how the table game rules are authorized for use. So once they're approved by the commission, they're posted on the website, and they go into effect immediately. So there's just one small change, and I can just share that here. So we're all looking at the same thing. And this, can everyone see that? This is on page 52 of your packet as well. So this is just an updated pay table. So just because of the way they're inserted, I couldn't do a red line and delete it. But this bottom pay table will be deleted, and this top pay table will be inserted in place of that one. Scroll is here and available if you have specific questions about why that change is being made. I will note also that the licensees aren't currently offering this game at the properties, but it has been previously authorized for use. So the rules are approved and posted on our website. So they could theoretically start using it at any time. So we just want to make sure that we have the most current version approved and posted for use. So if you have any specific questions about the change, I think Sturrell could answer those for you. So I'll turn it over to Almy for any questions. And if not, we would just be looking for a vote to approve. Does anybody want to ask Sturrell what this all means? Not that I'm going to necessarily understand a quick explanation, but yeah, if you could give it a shot, Sturrell, that'd be great. Sure. So we were contacted by Psygames that the bottom row where you see in the pink, where it says four card flush, it says one, two, two, two, one, one. So the data entry in this chart, probably my fault, was incorrect. See how it goes one, two, two, two. Down here it goes one, one, two, two, two. So the numeric value is just off by one as the bottom row. So we just fixed the bottom row. And that's it. That's the reason? That's the only thing. Yeah, we just want to make sure we try to go through everything. And this actually was the vendor actually reaching out to us saying your table is a little bit off. So we want to make sure this will probably not be offered. In the commonwealth, but we want to make sure if it is, we're correct. Okay, great. Thank you. I actually understood that. That was good. Very, very well done, Sturrell. And just to be clear, the Psygnos don't have to actually ask in advance to introduce a game like this, or would they? They would tell us we want to put high card flush in. Now, there's the difference. So in the compliance report that you receive, we have the new game section, right? Those have to go through a test period, a lot of pre-authorization. Like right now, there's a test game going on at Encore. But they have to go through certain steps. These that are already in our rules are pre-approved games. Craps is everywhere. Blackjack is everywhere. They don't have to tell us they're going to put the game of Blackjack or add a game of Blackjack. They have it, right? So we know what the rules are in Blackjack. So high card flush is just one of those novelty games that they can offer, but nobody does right now. I see. That's helpful. Commissioner Hill, you all set? Okay. Commissioner Skinner all set? Okay. But we do need a motion. Madam Chair, I move that the commission approve and authorize for use the version of the table game rules for high card flush as included in the commissioner's packet. Second. Second. Thank you, Commissioner Skinner. Okay. Any questions? Pretty straightforward. Thank you. Commissioner O'Brien? Hi. Commissioner Hill? Hi. Commissioner Skinner? Hi. And I vote yes for zero. And thank you, Carrie. And thank you, Sterl. Appreciate it. All right. Thank you. So next, thank you, Sterl. Next up, you have three documents in your packet related to our public records law policies and procedures. You have a public records policy, legal department procedures, and a flow chart related to process. So we've seen a bit of an uptick recently in records requests, and specifically this sort of large-scale records request. So we just want to make sure that all of our procedures are at the policy and procedures to make sure that we're being as efficient as possible, while of course still operating within the confines of the public records law. So I just want to note before we get started that there was going to be a technology piece of this discussion today related to these really complex electronic searches and the potential of using a vendor, but Katrina is unavailable today. So we'd like to put that part of the conversation on hold. If that's all right with everyone, as her knowledge and expertise on the technology side is really important and valuable for that discussion. So as we go through the policy, I think I've drafted it in a way that you could still vote on it today if you want to, or we can delay the vote to another meeting if we want to finalize that issue first. So in terms of process, I don't know if I'm prepared to sort of run through the policy red line first, if that's the way you'd like to do it. And then it can kind of walk you through the flowchart and you can ask questions as we go if you have any, but I think I'll share the policy red line first if that makes sense. Carrie, can I just ask a clarifier? So we have the red line and the second document is the clean version of the red line. Is that right? Or is it a different document? It's a different document. The second one is more just legal department procedures, more of just an internal document that we use in responding to requests. So that one's not a red line. It has existed in the past, but it's not something that requires a vote or is there real formal documents, more of a living document. So I included that in the packet so you could see a really detailed description of all of our procedures. But I think if we walk through the flowchart, that sort of references back to certain points in the procedures. So I thought we could run through the flowchart and then if that raises any specific questions, we can talk about those as well. But I don't necessarily think we need to walk completely through the procedures unless somebody wants to do that. Okay. But they are different. All right. So let me. Do you want us to ask questions along the way? What's best for you? Yeah, that sounds great. And they come up. All right. So let me just get the policy up. All right. So everyone can see that, right? Yes. Okay. Perfect. And is the size okay? Glue it up a bit. All right. So we do have an existing public records policy that's part of the Human Resources Manual, which is this document minus the red lines, of course. So we've gone through and made some small changes. All of these are, of course, open for discussion. If you have other suggestions, it's happy to make any other changes or remove any of these, particularly if things seem like they might be too specific or more appropriate just for the procedures document. But so just getting started here at the top, these first couple of changes are really just cleanup clarification changes. It started, you know, just referencing the MTC. So I've just inserted the gaming commission here. And then throughout there are a few times where it says General Counsel, and I've just changed that to Legal Department, because that's really more accurate in terms of how these are handled. This one here, talking about sensitive, oops, sensitive information about applicants or recipients. Recipients just seemed like an odd word choice. I wasn't entirely sure what that meant, but it seemed to mean licensees or registrants. So just changed the language there. This line as determined by the General Counsel. I don't think that's incorrect, but I did delete it because it might not always be the case. There might be more people involved in making these types of decisions to determine that there is a specific legal requirement to disclose or not disclose a certain document. So it seemed a little specific for the policy and more procedural type language who's going to be making those types of determinations. And then I added the sentence at the end, commissioners, directors, and staff should presume that all materials are public records. Just to reinforce, you know, the fact that everything is presumed to be a public record. And then that's the first step. And then if an exemption applies, or it's covered by attorney client privilege, excuse me, it might be exempt from disclosure, but the presumption is that it's a public record. So scrolling down here, there's this paragraph that existed in the policy already discussing exemptions. And there was one sentence here, one such exemption is for sort of an internal personnel records. It didn't seem necessary to call out just one exemption. There are many exemptions. And of course, they're in the public records law. And we've also outlined in our procedures, the ones that we tend to deal with the most. So I did delete that. But I added the attorney client privilege language that comes from case law that privilege documents are exempt from disclosure under the public records law. So I did put that into the policy here. And that's also in the procedures. This next section deals with how requests are actually received and processed. So we are in the process of working on making this more uniform uniform in terms of how we actually receive requests to try to make it a bit easier for our tracking and record keeping purposes, and also to ensure that we don't miss any requests that might not come directly to us. So we do currently have an MGC public record mailbox that we encourage requesters to use. And we are also working with the communications team to create a portal that will be on our public records page on the website that essentially will be a fillable form for people to enter their contact info and their request. And then that info would automatically be sent to the public records mailbox. So moving forward, we'd really like staff to encourage requesters to submit via the portal or the email address rather than just forwarding to us. But in the interim, and this is a point where I don't know if we need this in the policy or not, but I do want to make sure that if a request is coming into staff and they're sort of saying to their requester, please submit via the portal or the email address that while we're sort of moving into this new process that that staff member also forwards the request that they received to us. And I say that only because we have a lot of requests or sort of, you know, regular requesters and this would be a new process. And I just want to make sure we don't lose any requests while we're sort of transitioning to a new way of receiving them. So it may be that this is something we won't always need to do. We might not need to do in the future, but it seemed like it would make sense in the interim as we're getting used to the portal and that process. So I think you can see I've just written Shell Direct to the requester to submit via our public records email address or via the portal. The portal does not exist yet. So I've included that or so if you were to vote on this now before the portal exists, of course, they can submit via the email address and then once the portal is live, they could submit that way. Can I interject here? So the statute does set up, presumes what we call the records access officer and that carries position officially to the gaming commission if I'm right. Whether you want it or not, right, Carrie? Currently, Carrie is the official records access officer. So the law presumes that public records requesters go to a single recipient. And the reason why that's so important is because it triggers a timeframe that we need to be responsive. And so if we don't really discipline requesters, there could be a lot of confusion because if something goes to various folks across the commission, the requester is going to think they've made a timely request and it really should not start until it gets to the records access officer. I've spoken to Carrie about this. And it's because many of us, particularly who have been lawyers and state government have dealt with this and it's really hard to be in that role. This is probably the, for me, the most important initial step to take for us so that you have that protection, Carrie, knowing what's coming in front of you, how you're going to delegate may not mean that you always handle them, but you get it and then the time starts ticking. So I am so appreciative of Mills helping to set that portal up. And if we do it in a kind way, you know, Karen on our website, very, very clearly, requesters want to do it, they want to get it right, and they just want clear guidance. And that would also be pretty much for sometimes it's those requests for information, that's not really a public record, but you would still handle those. But it's only for the clear. That's why this is an important, these are important red lines. It's not just make work. It's really to help you. So thank you for the conversation that we had and I'm hoping that you're going to find that helps you or whoever in legal gets assigned that role. And again, that doesn't mean you process them all, but it triggers that time. So thanks. Yep. Okay, so just any more questions on that piece? Sorry. Yes. No, how do you feel about, you know, sort of minor requests being fulfilled by, you know, by staff? So for instance, I'm going to use crystal in the annual report as an example, because that's what's on my desk right now. So let's say, you know, someone that crystal is very familiar with working asks her for a copy of the commission's annual report for FY 20. And she has it available because that's kind of been her role. So she has a PDF and a file and she just says, okay, sure, I'll send it to you. Are we okay with that? Or are you really looking for folks to route every single request for any document through to the legal division? Yeah, that's a great question. And I would say the latter, we really would like people to send us any requests that they receive for documents, or even for information, if it seems that we would be giving them a document that contains that information. And the reason is that at the end of the year, we are required to submit to the secretary's office information on every records request that we have received. Well, there are two reasons. This is one, we're required to submit information for every records request that we've received. So we want to make sure that we are, you know, properly tracking all of the requests that we've received. And if they don't come to us, then we don't know that we've gotten them. The second piece is that every records response, even if we're providing documents is required to include appeal language. There's specific language related to their right to appeal that needs to be included in the response. So I wouldn't expect, you know, staff members to know what that language is. So we want to make sure that if the requests are coming to us and we're getting that language out in the response. Thank you. Yeah. Anything else? All right. So a few more changes. You'll see a few times throughout, I just replaced these pronouns Hishi with they, this is something we've also been doing as part of the reg review to just remove any gender specific pronouns for inclusion purposes. So I've just, whenever I find an opportunity to make those changes in anything in anything that I'm working on, I do make those changes. This language, if received through a medium other than email, just want to be clear that if someone happens to mail us something or hand deliver something, they can do that. That's still a valid records request. And we just want to make sure that it's dated when it comes in. So we know when the clock has started ticking on our required response time. Number six here relates to requests from the media. So there is more detail on this in the procedures in the flowchart as well. But any request from media, we do promptly forward to our communications. And we work together on any responses to those requests. Section eight here, I just deleted this. It says that the legal department shall set an outlook task to respond with a compliance reminder for 10 business days after the request was received. I think we all do this. It just seemed very specific for a policy. It is in the procedures, but it seemed perhaps too specific for policy language. So I did delete that here though, of course, if anyone is so inclined to keep it, we can. This section 11 is really just duplicative of this earlier section, just determining that documents are public records. And then this reg site, I'm not sure what this might have been to at one time, but it doesn't currently exist. So I did delete that section. Section 11 is new and relates to searches. And this is the piece. I did write it in either or language. So you could vote on this policy today if you want to, but we certainly don't have to if we haven't finalized this issue. But the issue is the way I've written it, where the requested records are not easily identifiable. So if someone's asking for specific documents, we can just go grab those documents and produce them. Those are easily identifiable. But if they're looking for something that would require various searches as the way I've written it right now is the legal department shall work with the IT department or contracted third party vendor to run an electronic search of the agency's data storage system to locate responsive records. So again, this is the part of the discussion that we'd like to just put on hold until we have Katrina available for input on it. Friendly amendment. This is the time I've used it today. Next week or two weeks, maybe from now, I'll say unfriendly amendment. Maybe like, I don't know if it's commission approved, contract third party vendor unapproved. Does that give you that maybe the green light? We have this discussion later. Do you have the LSAT? Commission approved instead of contracted? Approved contracted third party vendor. Gotcha. Yep. Yeah. That sounds good. That just means we'll give the green light to either do the process or actually want to know who. All right. This next section 12. We are, public records law requires us to respond to our requests within 10 business days. So this section just deals with, and there, I'll get to this a little more in the flow chart, and there's a lot more in this new procedures as well, but deals with situations where we've received really voluminous requests and don't feel that we can produce all of the records that they're seeking within 10 business days. So in those situations, we do reach out to the requester to see if they'll agree to a production date or timeframe. And if they don't, I've added this language at the end as well. We can petition the supervisor of records for an extension of time within which to respond. And that needs to be submitted just within 20 business days of receiving the request. So it gives you a little buffer time to figure out what you might need to do. We haven't had to use this petition option to date. We typically are able to come to an agreement with the requesters, but it is an option if necessary. This section 13 is, oh, sorry, question. No. I heard something. So this section 13 is new, but with some of these larger requests we've received lately, we talked about wanting to set a threshold number of hours where we might consider assessing a fee. We typically do not assess fees unless the requests are so voluminous that they will take months to complete. So we're suggesting that threshold be 100 hours. If you think about generally a request, you might spend one day a week on a particular request. So that would end up 10 weeks or something like that. Over that amount we would consider assessing a fee. Open to any thoughts or opinions on that, that's just what the legal department had suggested. Can you give a little bit of guidance on what the statute provides on that in terms of charging? I think the first 10 hours are non-chargeable or that sort of thing. Yeah. So you can only charge a fee for search and segregation time where the search and segregation is required by law, which typically is when you're using the statutory exemption, and required by law has also been deemed to include things that are subject to the attorney client privilege. So that's sort of the first step in us determining how long something might take and what the fee might look like. And yes, Commissioner O'Brien's point, you can't assess a fee for the first four hours of that search and segregation time. So there is a provision. Eileen, did you want to speak over to happy? It's more in general in terms of the number of hours. I actually think it's pretty generous in terms of we don't have an enormous general counsel group. So if you're saying that you as a group felt like that was the appropriate threshold, that's fine. I actually think it's actually had that number be lower because going over 10 weeks for a production, that's a lot. That would seem to be a lot of commitment on the part of the attorney. I think I'll clarify a bit that I think this is what we have sort of been doing without setting a specific amount. These are somewhat routine and we can handle them within a couple months or wow, these are going to take a really long time. So we didn't really want to come out now just with an initial thing and say, well, what if we put it at 20 hours? I think what we've been doing is this is really if it's a very large number of hours. But as we're setting this in policy for the first time, it can certainly be lower if that's what we'd like to do moving forward. So for those who don't know that Ms. Eileen and Kerry point out, it's only expected to first four hours for the state to give away its time. There is some language and I can't really remember Kerry, but it is there's some effort for agencies to think about the public benefit or the public purpose. And I think that's why generally often agencies give journalists free service and don't charge because of the public interest. But I can't remember if that's language that would be helpful. And then there's also some language that if the I can't remember the details, but if the requester just makes two of the luminous other requests, you can seek some some relief from the secretary of the Commonwealth if they don't reduce themselves. I think I'm with Eileen, I think 100 hours even for us today, you know, knowing it's too much. And it may be a factor of needing more tools to be more efficient, right, Kerry? So putting out of the parking lot today, right? I think that's too much of your time to give. I don't know. I don't know what the solution is. I'll tell you that, Brad and Mckisha, I don't know if you have some thoughts. No, I agree with you both. 100 hours seems very generous, you know, and it seems kind of arbitrary. 99 is a lot, 98, 97 hours. So, you know, that is that is a lot of work. So I wonder if it would make more sense to just, you know, use some just add some discretionary language there that that suggests that, you know, the commission will make efforts to accommodate requests without assessing a fee. But then to make the point that assessing the fee is entirely discretionary, rather than even putting a specific number in the in the policy. Maybe even referencing the language in the statute about whatever that public policy is. And yeah, that is discretionary. I mean, you could say, however, you could say we, however, we reserve the right to assess a fee within the limits of the public records law if the request is so is, you know, so voluminous that it will be, and then whatever the statutory language is in terms of, you know, overly cumbersome, overly burdensome, require excessive out some sort of language in there that indicates because I was the one that wanted some sort of nod to this because I didn't want it to be arbitrary that sometimes we charge and sometimes we didn't. But I do think the hundred is a heavy load for you as a group. So I think I was sorry. No, I'll say I think the statue also has a cap on how much they would expect the state agency to spend on a matter like this each week. I think it's 7.5 hours a week. So one day, if, yeah, so one day, it might have said eight, but it's, you know, generally one day a week on an individual request. And of course, that is even not always possible, depending on how many, you know, if we have six different requests that are all voluminous, of course, can't spend one day a week on each one. Right. Okay, so I can play with this language a little bit and remove a specific reference to number of hours if that's sort of the consensus. You'll see, and you know, we don't have a discussion again, but you'll see in the book, the reference as well. I can play with the language there also, although that again, like I said, is a little bit more of a living document that's just for our own internal use. Right. And then it may actually be even more apparent to you that the statute works when you've got the right electronic tools. All right, good. Carrie. Yes. While you're considering amendments, perhaps, you can consider one that speaks to the point I made earlier about having all of the requests to be routed through legal no matter what. I don't know if what you've referenced earlier is strong enough to address that. It might be. Yeah, I think you say encourage and I think we're moving towards bust, right? Okay, yep, I can do that too. Oh, but that's with respect to staff. Yeah, I think Nekisha's point is good. We probably end up getting a lot of them forwarded anyway, but this one will just be clear. Yeah, I did. I do wonder, and maybe it will make sense to remove this sentence from the policy and only keep this in the procedure because at some point I don't think this will be necessary. I was just was concerned about in like a transition phase where requesters have been, you know, sending us things for years and then suddenly we asked them to do something different. I just want to make sure we don't lose anything in the process where then someone comes back and says I sent a request to this person three weeks ago and I haven't heard anything just to try to make sure we're being as efficient as possible. So perhaps that sentence isn't necessary in the policy and is a little less formal in the procedures. And as we're talking to staff about how to handle anything that they might receive, I'm just going to highlight that here while we're on here just so I want to come back. Okay, so I will make some stronger language there as well. And then just see where we, I think that is it for the changes. Just some cleanup things down here as well. And that's it in the policy. So are there any other questions on that? Brad, I can't see Brad. No, the only comment the only comment I had is when you were looking at the hours when I first thought of 100, I thought 40 because it's a week's worth of work. So I thought 40 would be a good number. But if you want to put something that's a little more gives you the opportunity to pick and choose, I would go with that as well. It's funny, we all saw that one. Yes, I appreciate that. All right, so if you'd like to hold on a vote for this, we can bring it back when we'll have Katrina available as well. And I can make these changes and we can look at it again if that makes sense. Is the only piece that, oh, I see I mean shaking your head because the only piece would be on, unless we want to add maybe some more language about electronic searches, we can hold, right? Either way is fine. Yeah. Commissioners, I think you said the poll was good. Well, because we'd have to circle back for Katrina's portion anyway. So that gives Kerry a chance to just tweak the few things and we need to do it all at once. Okay, we have a consensus. Yes. Okay, sounds good. Thank you. Thanks, Kerry. Excellent work. Okay, so I'll take this one down and then next I will pull up the flow chart. Just give me one second here. All right, and thank you very much to Crystal for her help with this. I like to joke that I made a kindergarten taped together version of this and she made it beautiful. So thanks to Crystal for her help here. Just sort of at the outset here, you'll see there are basically two sides to this flow chart with the initial question being is this a request from the media? After that point, the sides are essentially the same. The only difference is that when we have a request from the media, all of the communications with that requester are done through our communications department and not through the legal department. So I think what I'll do is I'll walk down the left side here when they're not media requests and as we go, the same thing would be happening with respect to a media request. But when it says legal sends a letter, it would be that legal drafts a letter and gives it to the communications director to produce or the communications director speaks with the requester instead of the legal department speaking with the requester. Sorry, one second. Okay, so is there a request from the media? Carrie, do you need to get some water? I think I'm okay. Thank you. I've just cut a tickle. You know, brush over and give it to you. I made that same reaction last night when I saw the Celtics in the last seconds of it. It was that look, wasn't it Brad? As it was. Okay, so the first thing we do is we confirm receipt with the requester and in the procedures I've written out that we do this within three business days. That's not a requirement, but it is something that we try to make sure that we do just so that requesters aren't sort of left out hanging, wonder if it's been received, if we're working on it, that sort of thing. So we typically just email them once we get it and say, we've received your request, we'll be following up shortly with a more formal response. So after that, legal interprets the scope of the request and estimates cost of search, I'm sorry, that's supposed to say estimates the time of search for search and production, not cost, that's my mistake. So at this step, what we would do is we would take the request and first, if there are, if it's for any sort of identifiable documents, we would reach out to the appropriate people who might have them and see if they can either let us know what the volume looks like, or actually get the documents to us quickly so we can see ourselves what the volume looks like that would require review. So we would do that and then if it requires a search, we would also run the search at this stage or the multiple searches so we could get a sense again of what the volume of potentially responsive documents looks like so that we could figure out approximately how much time we think it's going to take to actually go through them. So at this point, we hit this next question, do we think that it will take more than 10 business days to produce responsive records? So I'll run down the no side first because of course that's the easier side. If we think, you know, we can get through these documents relatively quickly, we gather them, we review them for any applicable exemptions or attorney-client privilege. At that point, we make determinations as to whether anything is going to be withheld or redacted and if not, pretty simple, draft a cover letter, get the documents out within the 10 business days and the responses. If there are going to be documents that are withheld or redacted, I'll just pop that up to the question here. Same thing, we draft a letter to release with the documents, but within the letter, we identify any documents that have been withheld or redacted on the basis of privilege or exemption and if we're withholding anything or redacting anything pursuant to be a attorney-client privilege, we also produce or require to produce a log of those emails or documents. So I'll come back up now to the will it take more than 10 business days to produce responsive records? If we think that it will, this is where we then begin asking the question of if we were going to assess a fee or not. Before we get to that exact question, we would reach out to the requester to see if the scope could be narrowed. If we could narrow it to a point that we no longer think we need to assess a fee or if it gets us under that 10 business days timeframe, then we could go back up in the flow chart and we wouldn't need to continue on with this part. If we can't get it narrowed enough, then we would reach this question of are we going to assess a fee? Of course I have this 100 hours language here again, which I will either just delete or play around with, but I'll come down to the no sign here first. So if we can't produce within 10 business days, but we don't think that we need to assess a fee, you know, say it's 15 business days, we think we can get it out. We don't think we need to assess a fee for that. We would send a letter to the requester proposing this production date or timeframe that's outside of the 10 business days and wait to receive confirmation from them on that. If they do not agree to the proposed production date or timeframe and we can't produce the records within 15 business days of receipt or request, this comes right from the statute. The response letter needs to go out within 10 business days, but the 10 business day response letter could say we received your request. We're working on it, you know, it has a few things it needs to include, which are all laid out in our written procedures. We will get these documents to you by X date, which would be the 15th business day. If you can get the records to them within 15 business days, they don't need to agree to that production date or timeframe that's still allowed under the statute. So if they don't agree to the production date or timeframe and the records can't be produced within 15 business days, we also have the option to submit a petition for an extension of time to the supervisor's office and we can do that within 20 business days of receipt of the request. So some of this doesn't fit perfectly in a flow chart, but of course this would just depend now on whether the requester had agreed or we had had to submit a petition and it had been awarded or not, but sort of just depending on what happens here. We know same thing that happens above, we gather the records and review them for any exemption or privilege material. We release them with a cover letter. The cover letter includes information on anything we've redacted or withheld and then if the requester has agreed to a rolling production, which we do occasionally with these billy voluminous requests, we would repeat this step as necessary. So we do sometimes work with requesters to set rolling productions where we'll say something like we'll get you the initial production by this date and then every four weeks or six weeks, whatever it is after that on a rolling basis until all have been produced. So we've had a request to things like that before. So I'll come back up here to this initial question. Will we be assessing a fee? So if we would like to assess a fee, we are still required to send this 10 business day letter to the requester. There are again certain things that need to be included in that letter, one of which specifically here is what the estimate for the fee would be. You can only charge a fee if you get that estimate out within 10 business days. So if we missed the 10 business days and we wanted to assess a fee, we would have missed our opportunity to do so. So we would get that letter out and then the same process happens. We wait to see if the requester agrees to the production date, timeframe, also to the fee. And then upon receipt of payment, we would begin gathering the documents and reviewing for exemptions or privilege and, excuse me, same thing, continuing to do so on a rolling basis if necessary. So are there any... In your big block where you're dividing between yes and no, I think you've got the 100 hour reference. That's just a little... Up here? Yeah. Yep. I'll take that out. I don't have to figure that out. Any other questions on the flow chart? I have a comment. Sure. What I think should come through in this exercise is that Carrie, again, her official role as Records Access Officer, doesn't have to do this process in a loan or in a vacuum that it really takes... To borrow the term, takes a village where often our communications director will be completely involved and then the possessor, whoever is most relevant in figuring out the document production itself. The ones who own the most or possess the most responsive records will work with legal to sort out and then to really digest all the exceptions. And then, I mean, the whole analysis around legal privilege is always complicated. So it probably requires lots of lawyers, your whole team sitting around and thinking about it. It's a big effort, but it's such a fundamental function of government that taking the time to do this is so important. And I'm hoping it was a helpful exercise for you, Carrie, to kind of as painful as it was. No, that it actually will be. When you pass this job along, whoever becomes... When you get to be not the Records Access Officer, you'll have a great roadmap to give them. Yeah. And I think it also has reminded me that it's helpful to remind staff of sort of what we look for and what the expectations are because, of course, there's no way for people to know if no one has mentioned it to them. So to your point, I think one of the most important things is that when we do reach out to someone and say we've received a records request for these type of documents, can you let me know what you have or can you get it to me if they can respond to us as quickly as possible? It really helps us to prepare that letter that's required to be sent out within 10 businesses. It helps us to assess how long it's going to take us to respond to the request and then in turn, if we think there should be a fee assessed or not. Yeah. And it sometimes may take legal a little bit like pulling teeth a little bit. Oh, you know, to say, do you have anything actually that's not electronic? Do you have it in hard copy? Anything that we're missing? That exercise and then people get better and better educated. One final observation, I think it was Nikisha's excellent question about, you know, whether the team can just go ahead if they have something that seems pretty standard and put it in the mail almost like courtesy. I loved your answer that, you know what? No, let's go through so that when you get credit on your metrics. The other thing that I thought about after that discussion is we on the team may not know that there's something in the document that really can't go public. I mean, the annual report is probably not a good example of that because it's our document and we are circulating it publicly. But there may be another document that contains something that's protected that a member of the team may not recognize but legal would. Sure. I think, can I add to that? Oh, yeah. I think the other issue to look out for too in that is one division might not be aware that there are other documents that are responsive to that request. So they're providing documents in their wheelhouse, not really fully understanding the nature of the request and that there might be other documents available. So that was my pet peeve when I was GC. So I'm raising it just as a consideration. Yeah, that's a great point. Legal has to really be thinking broadly at the beginning. Yeah, narrow. But again, you know, it can it should be a collaborative process and a supportive process for you. It's excellent. Everybody has to share on this. Thanks. Yeah, it's excellent job. Any other questions? I didn't share the procedures. They're quite long. But if you have any questions on those, I'm happy to answer those as well. Karen, I'm going to turn to you. Do you have any questions? You worked with the team on this, but also, you know, as sort of kind of those who possess the responsive documents. Is there any guidance or anything you want to add here? Well, I think two things. One, as I put a note in my to-do list, we should probably address this at a town hall just so we can familiarize the team members about some of these issues. And I'll give an example is, you know, we may, you know, know that attorney client privilege documents are examined or notes are examined or something personal notes are examined. But the legal department needs to get all the documents anyway, and then they do an evaluation because they have to let the requester know what we're withholding. So those kind of communications are really important. And going through this process was certainly helpful to me because I do not come in here as an expert in the public records process. So I've been very grateful to all the help to get into the legal department of the new county on this. And yeah, it's just, it can be complicated, but having the system in place is critical. So communicating that to everyone at the agency, I think it's going to be very important. I would just make one small clarification on what Karen just said. If I do, if we reach out to staff members and ask, again, we can address this at a town hall, but just want to make sure it's clear. If we do ask for, if you have any notes, if you have personal notes, those do not send them to us because once you've sent them to us, they're no longer your personal. Just tell us that you have. Thank you. Good cash, Karen. It's a good cash. All right. Any other questions? Great work, Todd. Thank you to your entire team, Judy, and Carrie. Excellent work. And Crystal, she's not showing video right now, but a nice document. So thank you. Very helpful. Thank you. I'm up and down and up and down, so, but actually Carrie did most of the work. I did just make it pretty. I didn't know how to do it, so. But you learned the process too. I absolutely learned. I mean, I asked an awful lot of questions, so good process for me too, because as Crystal pointed out, I do get a lot of questions about sending documents. A lot of times they're right. And I have sent them to Carrie and Todd. Yeah. And when they're easy, you get a quick metric pick, but it is important for us to keep track of what we're sending out. So great presentation. Thank you. Anything else, commissioners? All right. Thank you. You're all set then, right? Carrie and now we're moving on to Todd and Joe. Thanks. Good afternoon. Joe, you're on mute. Todd, we're not hearing you. I would have put some problems. I apologize in advance for any background noise here, but I'll try to move as quickly as I can. So you have before you a draft memo relative to the decision that was reached at the March 10th public meeting of the commission as far as the project proposed across the street from the Encore Boston Harbor. And this memorandum is designed to capture the findings that the commission made on that day and go through the legal analysis that the commission went through as part of that discussion. So I'd be happy to walk through that with you just to point out some of the highlights. It was the commission's desire at the time to commemorate the decision in this format. So that's why it appears before you as it does. And you'll recall that the conclusion, of course, was that with the inclusion of certain conditions, which are laid out at the very end of this memo, that the commission felt like the project and all of the amenities and elements of it would not be included as part of the existing gaming establishment of Encore Boston Harbor. So that's the ultimate conclusion, and you can see that that is reflected at the end of the introductory paragraph. At that point, we skip we move into in the overview section of the commission's broad authority, which I think is always important to include in any memos or decisions issued by the commission. We cite to section one paragraph 10, which talks about the broad authority of the commission and then into section four of chapter 23 K, which talks about the commission's powers to carry out and effectuate its purposes and just hammer home the idea that the commission does have very broad discretion to make these sorts of decisions. At the top of the second page of the memo, we then lay out the four part test that the commission employed to make this decision. And of course, that four part test was initially developed is as part of the 2014 review of the boundaries of the gaming establishments for this wind property as well as Mohegan Sun property. And the four part test is fairly familiar at this point, of course, it looks at whether each part of the proposed area is a non gaming structure, whether it's related to the gaming area, whether it is under common ownership and control of the gaming licensee. And then fourth, if each of the three aforementioned elements are satisfied, the commission looks at whether it has a regulatory interest in including any part of the new area as part of the gaming establishment. And the commission has applied this test, if you will, on a number of occasions, of course, when it set the actual boundaries of all the gaming establishments. And then there have been a couple of instances over the years in 2018 and 2021 when it's applied this test to include certain other elements included in a gaming licensee's operation as part of the gaming establishment as well. And of course, with then we note that courts, a couple of courts have looked at the application of this test and essentially found that it is a valid test consistent with the law. So all of that is noted in the first two pages of this memorandum. And if there aren't any questions or comments up to that point, the next couple of pages run through the analysis that was applied for each of those four elements. So I'd be happy to walk through that if that would be helpful at this point. And of course, pausing along the way, if there are any edits or comments that any of the commissioners would like to see made to the document as we go. And Joe, I include you, of course, in that. So the first is the non-gaming structure piece. And the commission has essentially just looked at whether it is essentially a traditional structure. The commission also, of course, looked at each component of the project individually. In this case, there was specific discussion about the pedestrian bridge as there was some suggestion that it was not a structure in the traditional sense. And ultimately, the commission concluded that all of the components of the proposed project are non-gaming structures in the traditional sense, including the elevated footbridge. So that first element of the test was deemed satisfied by the commission. I should add, and we noted this in the introductory parts of the decision, that each element of the test is rooted in chapter 23K and based upon different provisions in there. And that's where the four part test came from. In part, it's rooted in the definition of the term gaming establishment, which talks about non-gaming structures and their relation to the gaming area. And then there are other provisions of chapter 23K that, for example, talk about the registrant and licensure of employees of the gaming establishment that are considered the element of control over the operations and other similar considerations that are embedded in chapter 23K. So that's where the test was born out of. So the second element, and now I'm on basically the middle of the third page of the memo, talks about the relation to the gaming area. And again, this comes from the definition of gaming establishment. And the commission in its 2014 decision identified that when reviewing this particular element, it was looking at whether the particular component or the project as a whole was intended, at least in part, to support the gaming area by making the entire facility a more attractive destination. And we note that right here in this memo. And then we, in this memo, look at historically some of the components of gaming establishments that have been included as being part of the gaming establishment in that they did support the gaming area by making it a more attractive destination. And then we also noted a couple of instances where the commission found that an element of a proposal was not related to the gaming area. And one of those examples that's identified here is the race track at Suffolk Downs that was part of the Mohegan Sun proposal. And the commission noted in that 2014 decision that it was excluded, at least in part, due to the lack of proximity between the entrance to the track and the entrance to what would have been the gaming area, that there was no infrastructure connecting the structures and a lack of ownership of the toll. And so that's important here, of course, because all of those issues are relevant to the commission's determination in the present situation. So we included that in the memo. And then we, of course, go through the analysis where the commission ultimately concluded that each component of the proposed project across Broadway from the Encore Boston Harbor are likely to draw more visitors to the gaming establishment and enhance the overall destination. And accordingly, the commission ultimately found that this second element, the relation to the gaming area, was satisfied. So that brought us through the first two elements of the four part test you found that each was met. Moving on to page four in the third element was the common ownership and control of the gaming element applicant. And you'll recall, of course, that the land itself and the proposed operator was an entity other than WinMass LLC, which is the actual gaming licensee. But the commission ultimately found that the property was under the common control of the parent company to both WinMass LLC and the holders of interest in the proposed project. And that WinMass and Widen Resorts as a qualifier and the parent was subject to the commission's regulatory control. And in part, the commission based that decision on a series of cases, one of which we cited here, that go through certain zoning related provisions of the law and in a practice that was referred to by the courts as checkerboarding, in which the ownership of parcels of land is placed in the ownership of different individuals for zoning related purposes. And the court ultimately looked at in those cases, whether the landowner had within their power, meaning the legal control to use that parcel of land so as to avoid or reduce the nonconformity with the zoning laws. So the commission based in part anyway, its decision to find that there was common ownership and control over the project on this body of case law that courts have applied in the zoning context, as there are direct parallels between what was going on in those cases and then what's going on in this particular situation. And ultimately concluded that by virtue of the parent subsidiary relationship between all of the entities here that Win Resorts limited as the qualifier, ultimately does control the land and ultimately will have control over the operation, which would give the commission the ability to assert its regulatory jurisdiction over the project if it so chose. And that was the ultimate finding on this third element of the test. So that said, up to this point, the commission found that each of the first three elements of the four part test were satisfied. And because of that, the commission moved on to the fourth part of the test, which is whether it has a regulatory interest in including the project or components of the project within the boundary of the gaming establishment. And of course, as you'll recall, ultimately the commission expressed the number of concerns, regulatory concern with the project and the impact and implications of it. And those were certainly discussed at length. The ultimate conclusion, though, was that in lieu of including the project and each of its components within the boundary of the gaming establishment, the commission could satisfy its concerns and ensure proper oversight of the gaming establishment and the principles that are embedded in Chapter 23K by just including some conditions on the gaming licensee relative to this project without including the project itself within the boundary of the gaming establishment. And of course, as described in this memo, the commission has engaged in that analysis in the past. And we give one, a couple of examples, actually, here of instances in which the commission decided that it was not going to include certain elements of other properties within the boundary of the gaming establishment. One of the notable examples is the racetrack at Plain Ridge Park Casino, which the commission has regulatory control over through a different body of law, Chapter 128A. And accordingly, it's not considered part of the gaming establishment under Chapter 23K. Another example that we offer here in the commission considered in making its decision is the boat dock at the Encore, Boston Harbor property, which is also not considered part of the gaming establishment at Encore, in part because it's subject to government oversight and other respects. So there are other examples, there are parcels and parts of properties that are related in some way to the gaming establishment that are not considered part of the actual legal boundary of the gaming establishment. And again, the commission ultimately concluded here that the development across the street fell into that category, that it need not be included within the boundary of the gaming establishment, because there are a series of conditions that would be able, that we would be able to satisfy the commission's concerns by imposing. So those are the four elements that were described here. That's the main body of the memo. And then of course, the last two pages of the memo are what we referred to as exhibit A, which are incorporated into the memo and outline all of the conditions which the commission has seen before. And I believe you actually formally approved all of these conditions and the actual language that was contained in here, but they are included here once again, because they're part of this decision. So the only last thing we should talk about before I just pause is there's a part of exhibit A. It's provision number seven, which talks about the submission of a plan relative to the proposed pedestrian bridge within 90 days of execution of this decision. So we should just clarify whether that refers to 90 days from today or 90 days from the March date when these conditions were implemented. But otherwise, I think everything is all in alignment. Well, let's just go through that again. So on number seven, the licensee shall submit a plan. My memory was supposed to be from 90 days from the date we voted. And this was just memorializing the decision. That's right. That's my memory. I think, Todd, if I'm not mistaken, this happened at a regularly scheduled meeting on the 10th, but I think we have a special meeting on the Monday afterwards where we actually voted the conditions we routed drafts around. So I don't know if it's really the 10th or the 14th. Can I just ask a question about the form of this document? It's entitled memorandum at the top. So who's the, is this a decision or a memorandum? And or is there a difference? Are they one in the same? I'm not sure how to take this document. Where is it going? Are we issuing it to the licensee? This was memorializing the rationale that was underlying the basis of the vote that then provided the legal analysis for exhibit A. So it's not a decision per se. Commissioner Skinner, I don't think in the past there were always memorialized in writing somewhere. It's like, right, I think you kind of asked how do you memorialize it. It's a very good question. I do think it memorializes the decision, right? So I suppose maybe the word decision might be better. I do think our decision, I think we all decided it would be really helpful for Todd and team to memorialize it this way because it would serve to help future commission decisions that are similar, rather than having to go back to the tape. Is that fair? I think we, I feel like we had a little bit of a discussion on this. Yeah. And I just said, I just, I was just, you know, looking for that. That's very fair. And we also knew that Commissioner Cameron was leaving. And so we had this timing conundrum of you could draft the decision to and not have her signature on it. But it was more, we were all very clear on the rationale verbally. And so in this one, it was executing in the vote because we had talked about delay and memorializing it and then voting on this after it was memorialized. And we elected to vote to put the issue to bed and then write something after the fact. It could, in theory, have been a memorandum of decision and order. But I think we'd all agree to just do a memo in this instance. That's right. That's right. Thank you. That's a clarifier. Thank you. So she wouldn't be signing off, but in other words, I don't think it's, it's not necessarily essential, but it's probably a good practice to memorialize it in this way. But we were having a question as to the timing of the 90 days. I feel like it was intended to be 90 days from the decision, right? Yeah. So to Joe's point, whatever the date of the vote was, whether it was the 10th or the 14th. Crystal, maybe she can find that for us when she gets a chance. But I think it was that we came back and we had, we had our decision. And then it was to attach conditions. And if I remember, Joe was really eager to do it that moment. And I said, we're going to do it a different way. So the conditions were done on that following Monday. And so that would be the, that's when we would have talked about the 90 days. I was kind of with you at the moment though, Joe. So I think that whatever that second date was. Right. The 14th. Yeah, I believe it was the 14th. Yeah. The 14th. Yeah. We'll add that into, thank you for refreshing my memory on that point. We'll add that into, if there's no objection, the first paragraph as well that it considered it on March 4th, you consider it on March 14th. And then we'll add it into the conditions. Just clarifying number seven. Can we, do you think it would be helpful just because people may not scroll all the way down to remind in your first paragraph that conditions did attach as well? You know, after we via the commission included an inclusion of certain, oh, oh, you did put in the right apologies. Okay. Well, we can cite exhibit a right in there. Okay. I'll just read over it. Sorry. Sometimes you need to read it out loud. We're good. And then to commissioner Skinner's question, I guess the next part would be once the commission is comfortable with the language, obviously we'll change the date up top. And then it may make sense to circulate this to the licensee so they're aware of the final decision. And then it'll just be a record of the proceedings, essentially. Do we have a consensus on that? I mean, they know what the conditions are, but I do think memorializing it like this and doing it just another under separate cover just to keep the record clear. So we do need a vote though, right? No, I don't think we do. Right. I mean, I don't believe it's marked up for a vote either. It's No, it wasn't only because I think the commission already made the decision. This was really just We don't have to worry that this up. We don't need I think we have a consensus that this accurate reflects the decision. Right. Yep. Yep. I would also be remiss if I didn't recognize Judy Young is the chief drafter of this decision, even though I got to present it. So thank you, Judy, for nicely done. Thank you, Judy. I feel ready. Judy, is it what he said or would you like to do any clarifying? He referred completely. Excellent. Very well done. So congratulations on that, Judy, and nicely presented, Todd. We didn't work that for the vote. So now if everyone's all set on that discussion, commissioners all set, and we'll move to Greg review unless we need a little bit of a break. I must say, I'm finding the length of our meeting today a little bit. So are we all good? Anybody want to freshen up their waters or anything? Maybe after this, maybe after the next one, we'll do that. Okay, great. So we'll move right on to Greg review the whole team and an important exercise. So, Karen, turn it to you and there's a question. Yep. So just want to thank everyone who's been working on this because this really is an agency wide effort. And then particularly the legal department has a heavy lift on this, and thanks to Crystal for coordinating the effort and tracking all the developments because those metrics are important in keeping the process moving forward. As you may recall, back in December, I think it was of 2021, we directed the commission directed the agency to do a red review. There were one, two, three, five different criteria for the red review. One was ensuring regulations are clear, well written and understandable. Two, eliminating duplicative or contradictory requirements. Three was eliminating unnecessary and minimize overly burdensome requirements. Four was ensure reporting requirements are necessary and provided information is used by the regulatory agency. And the fifth one was eliminate barriers to equity and inclusion. So we have been going through the process. Each division has been starting to look at their rates, and then they bring those forward through the electronic system that Crystal has created. And that system does produce information. And she's got a slideshow for you today. So I'll turn it over to Crystal to give you some of the updates. Thank you, Karen. I'm going to share my screen, literally. Good. So as Karen said, we do start the process we have developed an online form. And from that form, we get all of the information about what needs to happen with the evaluated reg. So far, we have received, I think it's either 12 or 13. This might show 13, and one of them was more of a test. So you see that heavily we're getting them in from IEP right now. We've had a few from racing, one from research which you guys just saw last week come through. So we actually get some of the metrics to track as well. And which this is actually the criteria that Karen was mentioning. And so they actually queue that for us when they're submitting the reg so that we have a little bit of an idea of where and what to look at. The general process is once the form is submitted, we are taking a look at it and adding it to a queue. I'll actually show you what that tracker is looking like in a few slides. But we, someone usually I take a quick peek at the submission and contact legal and try to get some of their feedback as well. And then we have a formal meeting where we're looking at the reg and discussing what needs to be happening with the submit whoever submitted that actual reg. We are continuously updating the process tracker. And we also have regular updates through email going out so that we're not constantly meeting just for status. And I'm actually going to turn it over to Kerry to talk through the rest of the legal process as they're reviewing. All right. Hello again. So at this point, legal drafts any revisions to the regulations. And as you know, we bring them to the commission at a regular commission meeting to get approval from the commission to move forward and begin the promulgation process. And we'll get into a lot of detail here, but the promulgation process generally takes about two to three months. At the outset, we prepare a schedule of all the required filing and notice states. So we know exactly when the public hearing is going to be, and we can get that scheduled. Just for the examples, we're required to file a notice with the local government advisory committee. That needs to be done 14 days before we can file the notice that's appearing. We need to file a notice appearing and small business impact statement with the secretary of state. And that needs to be published in the register seven days before the public hearing. For anyone who's done this before, you know that the register runs on a two week schedule. So the date of filing and the date of publication is all sort of dependent on where you fall within that two week schedule. And then it also needs, the notice also needs to be published in a local newspaper and on the website 21 days before the public hearing. So these dates are all why it generally takes about two to three months to get the whole promulgation process done. So then at the end, we would have the public hearing. We typically do that on the day of a commission meeting, as you know, just before the meeting. And then we would bring the regulation to the commission for final approval at that meeting. After that vote is taken, we file an amended small business impact statement that day. And then the following day, we can file the final regulations with the secretary of state's office. And then again, they're published in the register on that two week schedule. So the final effective date depends on where within the schedule that filing falls. That's generally the process. Someone's in it. Go ahead. Can I ask a question or would you rather we save them to carry just on the process? Do we, does the commission hold public hearings on each of the regulatory amendments? Yes. Rather than, so why was that forced? I guess, how was that decided? How was it decided to hold the public hearing as opposed to just putting them out for public comment for a period of time? I think maybe 30 days, I think is what, what I'm, it's required agency, a public hearing is required. And is that by commission regulation? No, I'm not sure. Todd might remember exactly where the requirement comes from. But there's a required, that's where the notices of public hearing that are required to be filed with the secretary's office and the local government advisory committee. Those are all the notices of that hearing on the reg that we hold the day of the commission meeting. No, my question isn't about the notice itself. It's just about the decision to hold a public hearing as opposed to just publishing the, the amendments on the website, let's say for public comment. Commissioner Skinner, I can jump in on that one. It's all required under chapter 30a section two. It talks about what's required and then it gets into section five where it lays out how you go about adopting a regulation. And our regulations require public hearings of the sort that we conduct. So it is a statutory requirement that we're following and that's why we do it the way we do. Yeah, yeah. And it's, it's the nature of the, of our business, of our work at the, at the commission that requires the public hearing as opposed to just public comment period. That's, that's right. Sometimes, by the way, we've done kind of both. The commission has opened certain proposals up for public comment, even in advance of moving through the formal process, if, if you feel like that would be beneficial. So that is an option that's not required, but sometimes the commission has elected to hear from the public before even deciding to move forward with the proposal. So that's always something you can do as well. Yeah. So no issue. Just in my experience is a bit different in past jobs. So I just wanted to clarify. Mr. Skinner, if I could just add in to and, and Carrie and Crystal, you run this process, but when we do have, when we get to that stage where there's a public hearing requirement, what happens, and you may not have seen this yet, we have a revolving schedule and a commissioner is asked to sit in for the public hearing, I think alongside a member of the legal team, and they actually preside over that hearing on their own. We, we could hold a full public hearing. And I suppose we might do that for a particular regulation, but typically it's with a single commissioner presiding, and that's by, by statute that we're allowed, allowed to, to assign that, but rather than one person doing it, we do a revolving. I think that's worked out pretty well. That was a new development over the last few months, right, Carrie? Yeah, yeah, I think the last couple have been the revolving commissioners, which has been great. Last couple of hearings, I should say. So you may, your name may come up and you'll know. Well, Carrie's already tapped me. I'm up next. I'm gonna say she's up next. I'm very excited about it. Of course, the, the practice is if you have a conflict, just somebody else will go. The idea was that it would be both sharing the burden, but also having the experience of, of being part of this process. Although often, I think our process is so transparent publicly that we don't necessarily get a lot of action with these public hearings, but we have, right? Carrie, certainly people have shown up. Yep. Okay. Thank you. So this is just a snapshot of the way that we are tracking these and the process we're looking at. So each time a regulation comes in, I'm entering it into this database. We then tag for after the, so you'll see a column that's looking like, yeah, we have two complete. So that's the starting point for us to see exactly where we are aligned in that process on that particular regulation and what's the comes. So the review that you're seeing, that's actually our very next meeting. But we are also looking at different levels of it, the, the estimated length of change required for the document, whether there's some policy, if it's something that's been identified as an immediate change, or something that's also very complicated and likely to take longer. This helps us not to just have a color coded picture here, but it helps us to figure out how to move these through and where we're at. The actual update, to date, we've received 11 regs. The regulations I put out every, I think I'm doing this about biweekly, but each time I let everybody on the team know if anything new came in, so that we're aware that that's the next piece in the process. Now we have two that have been complete on that last public hearing that you all then voted those, the ones on the keys. And both of those IED regs that Judy had brought forward, those are now finally complete. We have not received any at this point that have no change necessary. We've mostly looked through and everything has required review. So we're working on getting some of those no changes in so that we can up that and make sure we're moving through the regulation process on those pieces too. We do have nine remaining. Three are in various places for the in-progress piece. You will see a few coming on the next couple of meetings. We do have three that we've taken a look at, two that are on hold, and the only one right now that we haven't had a chance to see yet. And just as a brief overview, like I said, the two that are come to be 138.26 and the calls on wagers regulations of 147, we are moving towards the public hearing which Carrie has scheduled and Commissioner Skinner will be sitting on. And that's for those revisions to the volunteer or voluntary self-exclusion list. And I think 116.03, is this, I think this is Judy. We had taken a look at this and realized, or is this Carrie? Sorry, I should have put the names down here. They're on the tracker back here. But we are moving forward on these two particularly. And then there's another one actually in process that we had just identified that we will be able to close out soon. And we have a couple in review. These you will be seeing come your way for the meetings. I think that's all I have for you. I didn't know, Karen, if you would want to add anything in there. Yes, I was just going to say, Kathy, as Crystal noted in that, I think at the beginning there has been sort of a influx of ones that team members have been thinking about, oh, this needs to get the right review. The next step and what my next phase I want to work on giving some parameters to the individual division heads to check certain ones because I expect a lot of them are going to require no changes. We do have very good, very comprehensive regulations. So putting those through the queue, there's no right, no update required. That'll clear the decks a little and then we can focus on the changes that we need to make. So that'll be the next phase and I'll be working on that. Mary Ann's going to help me with, she's actually working on something with me now on sort of getting a spreadsheet of all the regulations we have. I think it'll save a lot of time and energy to not put those through the forum just to say that they don't need a review, but we still want to make sure we're tracking them on our back. So we developed a sort of new alternative process. But that is the update on the reg review unless anyone else has anything to add. Great, great job. And Karen, I'm sure now that you've kind of reset the approach where it's coming directly from the reg owners, it feels more natural, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's an important exercise. I think at some point the commission maybe give guidance or Karen will make a recommendation as to how frequent this exercise should be done. I do know other jurisdictions are constantly, you know, upping their regulations because I see them sharing them like with the AGA. So I think this is an important exercise and I think this is a great structure. And I think the factors, the criteria are solid. Commissioners, any questions? We should get it all set. Any questions? Okay. All right, thanks for the update. And thank you to the team for engaging in it. It's, again, it seems like additional work, but in the end of the day, we are a regulatory agency. So we've got to make sure our wrecks are respond on. So thank you. Thanks, Crystal, to devising the system. I think a lot of us would not have that skill set. So thank you very, very much. Okay. Commissioners, before we get to commissioners updates, do we want to take a break? I like it when I see absolutely no reaction. Like just I suggest we move forward, Madam Chair. Okay. Do we all agreement? I'm trying. I like how that was done with authority, Brad. I'm trying, Brad. There we go. Okay. So then we're moving on to commission updates. And for those who are familiar with our agenda, often that's the last item. But today we are anticipating an executive session relating to the lease. But at this point in time, we'll turn to our commission updates. So we, I'm going to turn first to Commissioner O'Brien, because it was an important suggestion that we consider the procedural aspect of our statutory requirements under Chapter 23 case section three to that address the two statutory positions of Secretary and Treasurer and in the process for election. But I'll turn it to you, Commissioner O'Brien. Certainly. Thank you, Madam Chair. I had brought this up back when Commissioner Stebbins left. As you pointed out, there's a statutory requirement that annually we elect the Secretary and the Treasurer. And when I first got here, there had been a practice of the same people cycling through the same seats. And the other two commissioners not taking any of those elected positions, which was not best practice. And so part of why I wanted to bring it up is I'd like us to be doing best practice. The other issue that came up is sort of the timing of it. We've been doing it kind of ad hoc. Sometimes it was based on someone leaving, coming in, that sort of thing. I do think the better practice is that we pick a time, and the way we're doing it, even with agenda setting, of having something recurring annually, every quarter, whatever it is, I do think we need to put this on and pick a time and ideally pick a time that doesn't coincide with any of our scheduled ends of term. And I know they're all a little bit different. I think there's a handful of us that have April 1st of any given year. Some have, I think Commissioner Skinner's got an end of March, but not March 30th date. So being mindful and chair, I don't know when yours is. My memory is it's around mid-March, end of March as well. So my recommendation is better than mine. I have no idea. So I guess, so I think we should check those before we sort of say that we want to do a particular date, but based on my memory of it, I would say that probably having rotations that start on March 1st and then run for a year and maybe you put it on for the vote a couple weeks prior is the better way to go. I also think there's been confusion about who's going to take what when someone leaves. And because hopefully our intention is to keep cycling these, I do think we should have a default order of succession that you come in and the expectation is everyone cycles through in this order, you know, secretary then treasurer then off. But in doing that, I did also want to bring up something else that we do. It's not statutory and we don't elect this person. But I do think this dovetails with these two positions, particularly with treasurer, which is I've been on the compliance internal audit and compliance group since shortly after I got here. Commissioner Zuniga was also on that. We both had compliance backgrounds, which is why we did it, we were getting it up and running, making decisions about whether to do as an independent compliance group, that sort of thing. That group, it does a lot of work, it's incredibly important. But I mentioned this to Director Wells, it is large. And I think that when looking at compliance, the better approach is to keep with that group. But I also think we need a smaller compliance committee that is much more narrowly drawn from that group that addresses internal compliance. And my experience has been when you look at segregation of duties, we want to make sure that someone is different from any other sort of compliance responsibilities. And to some extent, Secretary and particularly Treasurer are those very obvious compliance responsibilities. And so I would also suggest that we not have whoever is in the other two positions also be on that. Now there's no statutory prohibition against it. And I know there might be times like when there were only three of us on the commission, we may not have a choice. There was a time when I was Secretary and I was also the only person on compliance that we just didn't have a choice, we didn't have enough bodies. But it would be good, I think, going forward to make sure that those roles are all separated out. We have to address the designation of the internal control officer. I know right now Derek Lennon has been fulfilling that, but better practice would be that the CFO not be part of that very small compliance committee for the segregation of duties, conflict of interest, that sort of thing. So given the discussion that we had about the confusion that has led to the last couple of, not Gail, but both Bruce and Enrique leaving before their terms were up, how someone was going to be tapped to be interim, who that would be, how long that was going to last, and the succession as we go through. I thought this was a good forum as we move forward on voting on that today to really have a discussion about best practices in that regard and making sure again we have not only the succession cycle to deal with departures that happened before the end of a term, making sure the elections are timed to not coincide with the natural end and departure of anyone, and then also to make sure that there's this sort of segregation of duties as we go forward to make sure that each of us as commissioners have some sort of role in terms of compliance for the commission that is that is a segregation of duties. The rub is really going to be, there is hopefully very shortly another commissioner and the question is what if anything that commissioner could do, and we do, I mean there is the broader audit and compliance group that has an in and out looking face and an inward looking face, and whether that person could sit with the commissioner who's designated for the compliance committee but not be part of the compliance committee might also be the better practice so that you have sort of the depth of bench in terms of who is getting to know what function in the office. So that was my recommendation in terms of process that I wanted to bring forward for discussion before we then dive into sort of moving and voting on the actual two statutory officers that we have to do tonight. So thank you for that. I want to make sure I want to first speak about the the ancillary role of secretary and treasurer. I do feel that the rotation of those roles would be to ensure that the commission gets a benefit of each commissioner's unique skill sets and unique talents and that we recognize the statute does say annual annual election. Did we lose? I don't know. My battery is dying. I'm going to have to switch. Okay. I just talked to Brad about this earlier. My iPad only has so much of a life. I think it's a lesson to all of us on how long our meetings are. If my iPad starts dying, we've gone too long. So I can still hear you and I'll join on the other device. Well, I can see you now though. But I just want to, I thought I had to assess who would like us that the rotational annual basis probably makes a good deal sense. I have to say in our instance, we're really lucky because people are interested in committing and contributing and wanting to play an important role to make that an impact. We're so fortunate on that. Quite frankly, there's a lot of these positions that you'd have to twist arms to do and we don't have that situation. But I do think the fact that it says annual work before it really was the same individuals who had the role. I do think there is a check and balance that's that is put in place if we if we make these an annual election and perhaps rotational. We may not always have that luxury. But to the extent we have that luxury, that would be what I would think is the best practice as to setting up a a compliance committee. You know, that's a that's a new concept, Commissioner Bryan, and one that I truly appreciate. I have never really been part of the working group on internal compliance and audit. And it felt odd to me that I didn't understand that work except to the extent it informs the internal control plan in that I sign off on in my position. So I've had awareness, but I know that Karen has agreed to give routine updates to the commission as a whole on that work and that you've informed that work along the way. Commissioner O'Brien, my sense of that work. And again, without being part of it has been that it's been really the risk assessment group to help us be able to make, you know, the team make good judgments as to policies and procedures through an assessment of risk and then for us to be able to to test that through our internal control plan. I think what you're talking about a compliance committee is is a different a different work and service. And I'd like to give that some more thought. I want to think about how that assignment goes and who would be on that committee. But I what I think I don't want to put words in your mouth when I'm hearing you and it's kind of when I said checking balances. Derek has been quite transparent about this. He wants to make sure that he's got protection and that his work is being tested, audited if you will, separate and apart from him and his team. So is that what you're thinking? So there's two, right? There's an audit function. Derek and I have had these conversations. There's the audit function. There's a compliance function. People's definitions of those shift because of my IG background. My concept of compliance is broader than audit. So I absolutely think that that is a function of a compliance committee, but there is a broader compliance concept that is out there and quite frankly growing. And we as regulators, I think, have a responsibility to look at ourselves internally structurally. Do we have what's sufficient if people want to bring up issues, not only looking at sort of internal finances and controls, but just broader functioning of the office and expenditure funds, etc. And set up with in such a way that if someone has something they want to bring up, making sure they can reach ears, if they don't think something will get quashed up through staff level, but then also in terms of commissioners, how you want to make sure that the Constitution of that committee is such that people have the ability to go up and make sure it's getting to a body that will hear it objectively and adjudicate it. So it's not something that, clearly, I'm not suggesting that someone, we create a position today and say there it is, it's going to require thought in terms of how big who's what's the Constitution, the cycle of it, that sort of thing. I brought it up with Karen, you know, very briefly, conceptually, and I don't want to speak for you, Karen, I know, but it's while that the depth of the experience that goes into that risk matrix in the broader group is great. I think the smaller question of compliance and maybe what to test from a pure compliance perspective shouldn't be necessarily broadcast in a bigger group, not necessarily up to vote of the broader group, so much as a smaller who, you know, cycles through what they're testing. So that's, that's my, that's been my gut on auditing compliance for a while. And I think this is, that's why I brought it up, because I do think it dovetails with the positions that we have to settle today. Okay, so I'm seeing kind of two issues there in terms of the issue around rotating these ancillary positions. I'm thinking of it in a couple of ways. One, it really does give opportunity for us to benefit from lots of perspectives and different talents within our commission. And then second, and probably most importantly, that provide that checks and balance. It's a checks and balance not only on the treasure, with respect to the treasury. It's also with respect to the secretary of role. And Eileen, you can attest to that better than anyone because you've had it. Maybe you want to elaborate on that because you did a little. And I'm sure Todd's face will fall when I say this, but even for even handing that baton off at this point, you know, we still have, Todd, you probably know the actual number eight or nine in the log backlog that I'm still going to be working with general counsel's group to get out and up to vote for us. But the idea being and then whoever a secretary will then, you know, be prospective in terms of looking at that. But it's a lot of work. It might seem mundane, but it is the memorialization of what we are doing. And it is transparency, best practice again. So it is an ease of access. And so, you know, that's part of the reason we hyperlinked with the timestamps on it, that sort of stuff. So Commissioner Hill, Commissioner Skinner, Commissioner Hill. Well, I'm all for rotating these positions. I was brought up in the political world back in 1989 or 1991, when I got put on the Hamilton zoning board of appeals, where all the members were going to get an opportunity to be able to either be a chair at some point, be a vice chair or a secretary in the case. And then when I was elected to the board of selectsmen in Ipswich, it was the same process that we followed that everybody was going to have an opportunity to be put into different positions, even though we may all have had different skill sets in different things. And I thought that that was very important at the local level. And then I moved up to the state level. And we followed the same exact procedure, where, you know, a newbie state representative got put on committees that were maybe lesser known to the public. I remember one of the first committees I got put on was banks and banking. Had no clue about banks and banking. I learned more about ATM fees than I ever wanted to learn in my first year there. And I might remind everybody, I was a staffer at the state house before I became a legislator. And I thought, well, I'm going to get, you know, because of my experience, I'll get on some good committees. Well, guess what? I got put on some committees that again weren't as known to others as some others. And then my second term, I got moved off that committee and put on ways and means, you know, a term later. Taking turns, you know, we did, I didn't stay on the same committee for 23 straight years. I had a rotation of different committees that I was put on, as were my colleagues. It's just something that's been embedded in me that this is rotation is a good thing. And that everybody should have an opportunity to do something if there's an opportunity. So we have two positions before us that are elected. And all five, if we ever have five again, all five should have that opportunity to do that, you know, in different years, as they get more experience in the field of gaming. So I always thought that those positions were something that changed yearly. I was a little taken aback when I found out that in the past that some people have those positions for 10 years. We all together, we all vote on every single issue in front of the gaming, we don't vote on different things because of specialities. So I am absolutely for rotating these positions yearly. And I hope that that we as a commission would support that. I certainly do. I want to learn as much as I possibly can about the gaming commission. The only way to do that is to be put in these different positions in my opinion, as I have seen both locally and you know, my other world and my other life, you know, you get to rotate through different things and you'll learn a lot by doing that. So I'm all for rotating. And I hope that as a commission that that we can agree that that's what we should do moving forward. Again, as I've said in the past, we're a new commission. And we do may want to do things a little different than the past commission. That's okay. It's nothing wrong with that. And I think this is one of those changes that we should make is everybody gets an opportunity to get in these positions. And certainly those who have been here for a long time and have the experience should get those opportunities, especially if there's a possibility that their term may be coming up sooner rather than later. Yeah, I don't have too much more to add. I do agree that the rotation in these in these roles is important. I think, you know, once we have a couple of cycles under our belts, Commissioner Hill and I will be pros at making motions, right? Just as speedy and articulate as Commissioner O'Brien. You know, I do wonder though, because I seem to hear this suggestion that, you know, there, there, there should be sort of a nod to more senior commissioners for certain positions. I do not agree with that. There's no seniority here. While I do certainly respect the years of service on this body that, you know, each rings, I do not agree that there is a, there's this concept of seniority. We are all equal. We are all peers. And I would like to see the rotation happen without regard to how long a commissioner has been serving on this body, because we all do bring unique experiences. We have different backgrounds that are all very relevant to the work that we do in each of the areas. And I see no reason to penalize anyone, you know, simply to deny anyone, you know, role as either treasurer or secretary just by virtue of the fact that, you know, they're new. I think that, you know, that's a slippery slope because if that's the case, the new commissioner wouldn't be doing any work and the expectation would be that, you know, that's more, more senior quote unquote commissioners are making all the decisions. That's not something that I can agree to. Well, I'll clarify this and that I think right now we're only talking about two ancillary statutory positions and that it certainly is my goal that all commissioners have the opportunity to contribute in a, in a substantive fashion, ideally in areas that they're, they're interested in. And sometimes it may be that, you know, we share those obligations where we can do up to two without violating the open meeting law and sometimes it'll be where we, where we actually serve on a working group with, with Karen and team. It's as full time commissioners, it is a challenge to make sure that we are all making, making the best and biggest impact that we can and that are putting officials imagined for us. So we, you know, right now, I think if I understand correctly, we were thinking about these two positions, rotating them or on an annual basis, then I guess we would have to think about the next steps of electing them because our CFAL does need a treasurer in order to move forward. If I could just stop for one second, there was, there's another, so there's a wholly apart from, you know, seniority, that sort of thing. A lot of organizations have what's just a succession in terms of there's just an order to the cycle. And so even if this year's going to be out of what we might consider as in what we want to see or adopt as a cycle, I do think we need to have a conversation about it so that going forward, there's sort of a natural process where, especially if someone leaves early, we know how people are going to be cycling up and through. I used to, for planning purposes, for the planning purposes on what I hope will be a compliance committee. Even if we don't decide that today, I would ask that we have another discussion about the cycle and the timing of it because I do think that is part of having a better practice when you look at interacting with some of these sort of non-statutory roles. So when I hear you saying succession, are you saying that you would like to have, of course, I wish we had our fifth commissioner, right? Right. It would be ideal. We don't have that right now. But you're actually imagining, okay, this is how these roles would play out and who would be slotted in during the course of 10 years. Is there a cycle of, to Commissioner Skinner's point, do you have the new commissioner come in and not take a role while they're learning the organization the first year? Or do they become secretary? Or do they become treasurer? And traditionally, you would see secretary, vice chair, vice president, president, and you would cycle up that way and then out. So we have two statutory positions, five year terms. But I myself have identified one position while not statutory that dovetails with those. So I think at some point in the near future, if not today, we need to talk about that and how do we want to cycle it so that we don't run into a conflict with, okay, we've now happened into treasurer and that same person being, say, Compliance Committee, the small group. That's not a best practice. So is there a way to cycle these so that you know they don't sync up at the same time? And I wish, and I wish, and I wish there were a fifth, you know, where we could be like everybody's cycling through this way, so that we know there's no overlap in terms of best practice. But I really only identify three possibly fourth is being attending the other broader meetings. And six, just to be clear on the succession, it is, it is not unusual to have these kinds of succession plans and organizations. I certainly just was that a board meeting on something that's private to me over the weekend. And, you know, I preside over that and no new member can serve on a committee for one year. I mean, so these are not unusual concepts. I know that I, but everybody is equal on the board, but it's just that that's been a policy. So I sort of hearing that there's an idea that we either decide that's not important or we decide that there's some succession, but it's certainly not unusual. But, you know, these concepts are not unusual to organizations. With that said, I agree with Commissioner Skinner we're all equal. Absolutely. It's just that we happen to have for today, we're talking about these two particular statutory functions. And one is one, I'm quite aware of the fact that Commissioner O'Brien, you know, accepted the position with and, you know, recognizing that you didn't want it to be a like appointment as it had been in the past. And we accepted that. And that's how you voted in. It was not a given that we were going to be in that room forever. Actually, it turned out that you've been longer, and you've done an extraordinary job bringing us up to date. And for that, I just want to, again, I said it before, I want to say thank you. And then we have a position of treasure. What I'm hearing you say, Commissioner O'Brien, I may not have this right, because I'm trying to figure out how I've sequenced that with the need today to elect a treasure in the idea that at some point, and maybe this is what we say, at some point, maybe we decide to have a compliance committee. And if it turns out that the person who's elected treasure should be the person on the compliance committee, then we will just have to reelect somebody new on the treasure. And, you know, as that may be a perfectly okay process. But what I really am hearing you say is that you're addressing those checks and balances that we haven't had in place. Because really, we have a treasure and a CFAL to work together for almost 10 years. Right. And they were aware of that. They, too, were aware of this need. That's why- No, this is not something that has not come up in conversations prior to this time. So it is- It's a matter of best practices you've repeated, yeah. Right. And I, because of my background, too, I am very interested in moving forward with the idea of the much smaller targeted compliance committee. I do think it's a best practice for this commission. So we have the Commissioner Bryan, to honor your earlier request, are you in a position now where you would be ready to step down from Secretary, and so that we would need to elect the Secretary? I want to honor that because you- Yeah, no, definitely. I've been in about a year and a half. So, like I said, I want to clean slate. So the nine, eight that are left, I will continue to work with the general counsel's group to try to get that. I want those done before we get too far into the summer. I want to make sure we're up to- We're going to have great cadence right now when we look at the agenda-setting meetings, and I want to get in that cadence going forward, which I think, you know, whoever the Secretary is going forward, they can do prospectively from today out with a clean slate. Okay, so that's a piece of work that we need to address. We also need to address the election of a treasure. Do we have a consensus that these two positions could be annual and that they would be a rotation? I guess I should say we all agree it has to be an annual election that's the law. We've got our counselor there nodding his head for us. That's a gift. Are we in agreement that it's a rotation? Do we have a consensus on that? I'd like to see that moving forward. Yeah, and Commissioner Skinner? Yeah, I would just ask us to define a rotational just a little bit more clearly. I mean, what does that mean exactly? My recommendation is it's an annual, the annual election by its nature signifies the rotation and that we pick a date that makes sense to not ideally conflict with what is the natural end dates for some of us, for some of the terms. So it would mean that everybody does, and I actually have to ask, I am, I'm talking, I am assuming that the chair, and this is not about me, but let's just divorce it from Kathy Judstine. Is the chair not in this mix? You know, it doesn't say, and I defer to Todd, it doesn't say specifically, but I would think particularly when it came to the treasurer appointment, that would not be best practice to have the chair run through that at all. I agree. I also feel that because it's a custom in this particular organization that the chair doesn't move, I would probably not want to be moving on minutes. I can tell you with all truth, I have been secretary in many organizations, and often that's becomes a very key role and actually leads to roles above secretary. So it has nothing to do for me personally about the role of secretary. I take it as Todd, he knows how serious I take that position. So I, when I say everybody, I'm going to say that the chair is removed if we're in agreement with that, because I just don't see how that works for a future chair. I really don't. So does that mean that when you say revolving, are you saying that everybody would serve each role? Ideally, yes. That's what you're thinking? That's what I would envision. But that's, so they're imagining rotational meaning probably setting up, I know in organizations they'll have, you can tell the vice vice president is coming up and moving it to become president. You've seen it in our organizations, I'm sure. But in this case, it would be involving that if Brad Hill is secretary at some point, his time will come up to become treasurer. And it would be some kind of a flow chart of sorts with this succession where we have to integrate new commissioners. But then does that create a situation where you cannot have a commissioner serving in any one capacity, two years in a row, for instance? Yes. Ideally, you wouldn't do two years in a row unless there was either a compelling substantive reason or personnel reason. Like we found ourselves like we did last year with only three of us, right? And so there was no choice. But that Gail and I each had to take on one of those roles. You might find that circumstance again. But the preference would be everybody cycles through so that you wouldn't be seeing that again for at least a couple of years before you'd cycle back through. But it wouldn't be a preference, it would be a requirement, right? So it would be a practice that we have as the better practice, yes, that we would do. So what you're saying is, I would, for instance, serve as or be elected secretary, even though I might not have any interest in doing so. You're saying it's required. Correct. That's what that's rotational. That's what's being described. Go ahead, Commissioner Hill. So I'm going to put a fly in that ointment. There may be someone who doesn't want that position. I mean, not just for secretary, there could be someone who doesn't want the treasurer role either. I mean, and we're going to force that individual to take on that responsibility against their discussion. That's where we're talking about it. I think it's the better practice. And no one dives in and says, I want to be secretary, but it is a key functional role. There are a lot of people that may say, I don't want to be treasurer. It's a key functional role. And when we're looking at best practice and we're looking at what has turned into what might be a banal discussion into this in-depth conversation, looking at best practices, I really think the best practice way and the equitable way of doing it is everyone cycles through. Now, I'm dovetailing with what I would like to see as a compliance committee slot in terms of conflict of interest. There's two slots. So you'd be talking about rotating those in. And in a five-year term, you would have them possibly twice with a down year. Might be more than that if we don't even have five or if people leave before they rotate in. So it's hard to say for sure. One thing I absolutely don't want to see is five years of the same person being in there. And certain people just not having that role at all, because they do think that it is critical for all of us to participate in as much of the running of the commission as possible. But if someone didn't want it, they could not accept it as well. They could. Just putting it out there. I do like the idea of rotational. It is a statutorily required. There are no skills required to it. But it is statutorily required. In other words, there's no in the statute. There's no guidance for us. There's no guidance. But it does mean that our organization requires someone to do that. And we're trying to develop a policy that is fair. Fundamentally fair, maybe. And also, as I said, also gives everybody a chance to participate. That wasn't the case necessarily before. And then it came down to people didn't have a choice, right? Because of our numbers. So it gives everybody a chance to participate. We see different perspectives. The commissioner Skinner brings to a certain position versus what commissioner Hill brings to a certain position will be very different. All really critically important to the overall health of the organization. And to the team, because you're going to be working with the team. So they get to work with different commissioners. And that's really an important part of the experience. I know that when Todd works with you, Nakesha, and works with Eileen, and works with me, he hears all different things and probably it's confusing. But it's up to Todd to figure out how he's going to do his best work. But he gets the advantage of full time commissioners. And then when Brad goes in, that's when he really listens. But, you know, we bring all different perspectives. And that's why we are an organization of five with different appointing officials. In terms of the policy that we're trying to create, I think maybe maybe the circumstances we have here had highlighted that it might be nice to have to be rotational, just to be there and get the best from everybody. And then in the back of my mind always, particularly with respect to treasurer, but you know, I'm convinced by even Eileen mentioning it, that secretary too, it is a check and balance on our part. And I think, you know, Derek is here, but probably not listening. Derek would say that that's something that he was acutely aware. So another way to deal with it now. He's not only here, he's here. So I do want to say, I do want to say that while the treasurer is an important check and balance, we have multiple checks and balances. So I don't want there to be any discussion about time period as treasurer for 10 years, because the whole commit, the whole budget goes in front of the commission. There are quarterly updates. We post all of our financials to the website. We've been through two state audits where we've had zero financial findings. So there are multiple checks and balances in place that I do look at it as, it's interesting to see so much, so much desire because we have had annual elections and it's just no one has actually wanted the position. So it is nice to see everyone wanting the positions moving forward. But you know, there are a lot of checks and balances in place outside of the rotation of the commission, including the biweekly finance meeting with the executive director of the chair and the treasurer. So there are a lot of checks and balances in place. There are. And this would be an additional one. And I did want to talk about that before. It really was only one individual. So we're permitted to speak about that. That's fine. But even Enrique said, and, you know, we said, you know, there's room for additional checks and balances on that. Derek, we are always working to make sure that the best practices are in place and you are a leader of that. So that is not intended. But that certainly came up during the discussions, even with Enrique and me. So in terms of going forward, and I think you probably gathered from what I'm saying, but I, you know, I'm not impugning any of the work that was done in the past. But my background does come from compliance. And Derek and I do have a slightly different definition of what that is as well. And to me, having the same individuals in the same position repeatedly is just not a good idea. I would really love to see the compliance committee take shape, have a really intense discussion about it, et cetera. If I do want to do that, then I would not want to be treasurer because I don't think I should be that person and then also be treasurer. So, you know, I like to work with Karen and, and, you know, the four, hopefully five of us to get something like that going. And I, I lean on and I appreciate that today, the compliance committee and I see that you'd like to be on it. And I'd love to understand what that's going to be and who's going to be part of it. I would love for you to be part of that. That's what you want. I'm not sure it would be, you know, just even working with Karen. You know, I might decide that I would like to be part of that as well. The compliance committee is something. I think it has to, it has to be a broad discussion and it has to be set up by all of us. So that we know that we have a balanced representation. So what I'm saying is, if we as a body want to move in that direction, then I would really want to keep myself open to being able to do that. Right. So let me make myself clear. I am turning over the baton to Secretary today, no matter what. But I do want to make clear sort of what I see in terms of trying to get the body to move forward with the business in hand. Right. And I stepped into that because I really, when I hear compliance committee and what that function is, it means something in a way of significance to me that we really want to understand the charter of that and what it means to our team. So, and I appreciate you saying, and I appreciate one, you bringing it up. I think that's really a critical and a very innovative piece of work. I know that Karen has kind of struggled with, we've talked a lot about compliance and how we can do good testing and ensuring compliance. You and I've worked closely with, of course, the independent monitor. We think about compliance all the time with respect to our licensees, all of us. So when I say that, I'm saying, I'm not sure I need to be part of it, but I certainly would want to make sure that whatever this is that the commission really thinks very carefully about its charter and what it is intended to be. Right. And I would envision a process where we're voting on that at some point in terms of what do we want it to look like? And what's the constitution of it? Yeah, I am. Is it safe to say, though, that we wouldn't be having that vote for a few months? I don't see that happening. Yeah, no, yeah. That's accurate. So in terms of secretary, we do need to have a back to rotational. The commissioner Skinner, I think I had kind of a consensus on, and I'm pointing to this side of the room with Commissioner Hill and Commissioner Bryan thinking they're comfortable with rotational. I heard you're not necessarily so comfortable, but when you heard a little bit more, what do you think? Yeah, I still have to give that a little bit of thought before I can get on board with it. I'm just not sure. Particularly around this notion that you can't serve in the Secretary of Treasury or capacity unless you've been a commissioner for a year. I don't think anybody said that. I think that was raised as a possible approach. No, we talked about the order of succession. You're going to have down years. We could decide as a body we wanted to do that. That was me throwing out these other ways you could do succession. But no one is suggesting it. And to be blunt, we don't have the bodies sometimes to even have that luxury. So it is really talking about knowing what is coming. If people are leaving, how is this going to move through and how is this going to cycle through in a manner that's best practice? Yeah. And I think I could get on board with rotational as long as it doesn't depend on seniority in terms of who can serve and who can't because with all due respect, we've gained our professional experience many, many years before we were appointed commissioners. So I don't think that our prior qualification should be completely discounted based simply on the order that we've arrived to this body. So if we can get, you know, sort of separate the rotational from this notion of seniority, then I can get on board. Yeah. I think it's more happenstance of where's the, it's like a wheel. It's like, where's the rotation when you happen to come through going forward? So you slot in wherever it happens to be rotating in that moment. That's the way I would see it going forward. So I think as for today, you know, obviously we can take the official votes and the consensus, but I think just getting forward with the business at hand, if Secretary, if Commissioner Hill is going to be secretary and Commissioner Skinner is going to continue this term as treasurer, then we can keep, you know, keep going forward as long as I have an understanding that the work and the compliance committee is something that we as a body are going to pursue in the near future. I just want to clarify just so that everyone's clear. This is an election and so we've got to go in the right order, but I appreciate what you're doing. Commissioner O'Brien, you're helping out here. We have Commissioner O'Brien is secretary right now and she is stepping down I think and we all want to be very appreciative of that. And so thank you. In that that creates a vacancy and I know it's the last meeting, the last meeting Commissioner Hill expressed an interest and I don't believe anybody else expressed an interest in Secretary, am I right? So it would be a one-year election, Commissioner Hill by statute under section three. And so if you are interested, then think I would want a motion if somebody could support his interest. Will the legal team be able to put up with me? That's the question. Is there anybody who wishes to move to elect Commissioner? Madam Chair, I would move that the Commission elect Commissioner Hill to take over the responsibilities of Secretary. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you. Is there any discussion besides a huge thank you to both Commissioner O'Brien and Commissioner Hill? Commissioner O'Brien? Commissioner Hill? Commissioner Skinner? And I vote yes. So thank you Commissioner Hill. Now you also have indicated Commissioner O'Brien before that you were interested in treasurer. Now in light of the idea of the compliance committee, I'm hearing you say that if you were to be treasurer, that would be a direct conflict. We had Commissioner Skinner also expressed an interest from the start. I expressed an interest in recommending her at the time. Then I got the update that we had two commissioners interested. It sounds as though Commissioner O'Brien is willing to step aside with that. But right now we do not, it's not a continuing role. So I just want to make sure that that's clear because we want to make sure if we have Commissioner Skinner become our treasurer, it is an election. That's the proper process. Okay. So Commissioner O'Brien, are you saying that you are less interested in being treasurer now? I'm not less interested. I just think that for the work of this body going forward, I would rather put my efforts into that. And I don't see how I do that and treasurer at the same time. So I think the best thing to do is move forward with Commissioner Skinner finishing out a term as treasurer. And if I'm here next year, I'd probably take a different view on what I want to do next year. It remains to be seen whether I'm here in the spring. And this is a one-year election again. You may understand that I'm hearing today we are not going to adopt a rotational policy, although that's still on the table. But right now, Commissioner Skinner, you are still interested in treasurer. I am. She is. So with that said, and the understanding Commissioner O'Brien has stepped aside, do I have a motion? Before I make that motion, I just want to be very clear that we will be working as diligently and expedite the request from Commissioner O'Brien that we set up this other committee as soon as we possibly can. And I'm in agreement with that Commissioner O'Brien is spot on and that's been a whole. And I express, I just want to make sure that, and I think I don't even know what I'm getting at, we want to make sure it's exactly right. Yep. Okay. I appreciate that. Yeah. And we'll make sure that we come back to the commission and maybe we'll have five. But yes, and I'm very fair point. I think we can work expeditiously because I also know Commissioner O'Brien, you've made a decision today on behalf of the commission, which I appreciate very, very much. And in terms of Commissioner Skinner, do we have a motion for her to be treasurer? I would move that commissioner that the commission that you like Commissioner Skinner to serve as treasurer of the commission in accordance with chapter 20 to be K section three F. Thanks. Okay. Any further discussion? Okay. Commissioner O'Brien. I Commissioner Hill. I Commissioner Skinner. Same place. And I vote yes. So three and one abstention. And of course, the good news in our society, you get to vote for yourself and you can also abstain. So there we go. We have our two elections. I will revisit the policy because I do think we might have a majority that may support a rotational. I want to honor Commissioner Skinner, because she's giving it some additional thought. We may come up with some more to inform us on that. And then Madam Chair, point of order in terms of when these when these appointments will be up again. I do think we need to pick a time to do this on a regular cadence because sometimes they get forgotten about. Well, maybe that can be brought up in sort of the rotational discussion, but I do think we need to pick a recurring time of the year for these. I have to ask our general counsel to help us on keeping that timely, please. Okay. I think I think the end of the third quarter would be the time that we would we would revoke one or one year when it's today is whatever that we're not going over one year. Yeah, my only like I said, you have to be mindful of when people's terms ends and when you're going to have gaps. And historically, we have now had gaps where when someone leaves either early or even at the end of their term, you have a gap. And so I think it would be better to have the term be before the March, April turnover so that you've got someone seated who's going to be here taking over so that you know you have continuity. Well, for today, I'm going to stick with the fact that the statute says annual election. And so they each have one year term in their position in terms of the rotational and the succession. I think that that discussion is still being one that we need to put back on the agenda for process. I think Commissioner Skinner's get some more thought. Maybe we all get some more thought. Maybe we come up with a framework I mean that might be helpful for us to visualize how it's going to play out. And that might give everybody a level of comfort. All I know is that I am not as chair, I'm not part of this discussion. And I can just say how appreciative I am of all of you expressing an interest and a willingness to serve in each and every capacity. I mean, I know that you're willing to serve as both secretary and treasurer for that and forever grateful. And now we have something more to look at that's really a critical component. Appreciate that tension for conflict very much. Commissioner Skinner, I appreciate your excitement and interest in this current position. Commissioner Hilt, thank you for stepping in on this. We didn't ask you right when you came on, because there was a lot of backlog into that and Commissioner O'Brien has done such a superb job. So thank you because really she served over her commitment. So thank you so much. Okay, we're going to move on if that's okay, everyone. All right, that was a yes from everyone. We have the Mills has been on with us all day and he is going to with along with Commissioner Hilt and in Crystal, the two of them keep us well informed on legislative updates. Mills provides that in also unique and qualified because he also worked at the state legislature. So he has some good insights and just to tee it up. As we were thinking about the outstanding piece of legislation, I did ask Mills and I think Karen was in the office whether we should come to the commission to see if folks were interested in the letter or the ask that Mills will tee up for us. That's the first question. And if so, should we submit the letter and he drafted something for us to work from? Is that fair, Mills? Yeah, I think that's correct chair. And I know it's been a long day, so I don't want to take up too much time. But I know I think everybody has had a chance to take a look at what I drafted. I know that Commissioner Skinner was able to offer a couple of helpful comments to me, which are not included just yet, but I have them and I will include them. They're small, grammatical changes. So would you like me to share my screen? So we're all looking at the same letter or I think so. Okay. Thank you. You bet. So, you know, just to tee this up very quickly, you know, for the last two years, like everyone, the Game Commission has conducted our business with the benefit of a virtual connection just as we are today. We're able to do so while complying with the open meeting law due to provisions in the governor's March 2020 executive order, which suspended certain aspects of the open meeting law. Those remote meeting provisions were also extended earlier this year in a new session law, but are set to expire on July 15th, which is just about two months away from today. So thought it might be a good opportunity to discuss if the commissioners would be interested in sending a letter to legislative leadership, requesting that these changes be made permanent or at least extended. Keep friends. I think he froze. I'm sorry, Chair. I was pausing just for your reaction. I'm happy to read the letter as it's written, if you folks would like, but, you know, that's just me teeing it up, you know, how we got to where we got. Could you make it just a bit bigger just? Of course. I'm familiar with it. I just want to make sure everybody is comfortable with one the topic. That actually made it worse. Let's do this. Page 78 of our packet, if that helps. Oh yeah, I've got it in mind. Is it the same letter that's in the packet? It is. Okay. So let's just talk about the topic to begin with. Do we agree with the position that's presented that right now it would expire by July 15th? At the very least we would sort of recommend to the legislature that they extend it, but even perhaps make it a permanent change. And then we can discuss the tosses and minuses. I think it might be helpful to be on the record about our experiences to when we think it works well and when we, if we find there are challenges. Maybe we can take it down then so we can see each other now. Thanks. I don't think everybody's had a chance to read it. Commissioner Hill. I think it's absolutely appropriate that we send something to the leadership. I think the technology has worked and benefited us very well. Certainly in the time that I've been here, I can't speak to the time before that. If I'm not mistaken, I think the legislature actually is extending their remote stuff past July 15th. So there should be no reason why we shouldn't be able to get that same that same thing happening for us. So no, I would, I'm okay with the letter and I'm okay with sending it out. Very well written letter actually. Yeah, Tom showed this to me earlier. I gave him just one small comment. I think we should send it out. Commissioner Skinner. And I agree. I think it's very well written. And it's absolutely something we should support as a commission. Yeah, I think it's important for us to emphasize that as a statewide agency. We benefit by being able to reach all corners of the Commonwealth, particularly with respect to the subcommittees as Mills points out in the letter. We have not faced the corner issues that all of the subcommittee chairs used to really have to deal with. And so the legislature's vision has been accomplished much more clearly. And also in terms of just being able to have diverse voices from across the Commonwealth. Now, if you're here in Williamstown, it's a long haul or if you're in British Columbia, we used to use just phones. Now we get the benefit of the virtual platform where we have the benefit of international voices. So if we can go ahead and then if everybody's in agreement, Crystal would arrange, right? And Crystal, you've been able to also work with Mills on the letter as well. I think that you were the one who reminded them of the G-PAC success. It's been really, really, but I think Joe Delaney would and Mary Thurnault would say it's like night and day in terms of what they dealt with before in terms of getting the G-PAC together. Madam Chair, the only suggestion I would make, and of course it's up to the Commission if you agree or not, I would actually put in a couple of examples of people who would, for example, we've been able to get our updates from MGM without having them come all the way from Springfield for an hour discussion. We have had meetings with people who are in Vegas. We've had meetings with people who are from Kentucky who this platform has been very helpful in getting us the information that we've needed. So I'm just wondering if maybe you might want to just put a couple of examples of where this has been beneficial to us. I know we kind of put in a generic sentence or two here, but I think if you put in some examples that might go a long way. All right. I suppose that's a good idea that one that stands out in my mind that because it was when we instituted virtual technology for holding our meetings because the governor issued that executive order stating the state of emergency and legislature allowed for the virtual. We had our round tables. Well, first off, we had the immediate March 14, 2020 meeting, but we did have that very successful two-day series of round table discussions where all three licensees met with us as if we were in one room, of course, public. So that's an example. They were from around the country and around the state. So there are some examples. Maybe circle back to Brad. Does that make sense on Nekisha and Ani? Are you guys all right with adding some examples? Nekisha? Excellent. Ani? Okay. All right. Great job. Is the timing right from your perspective, Brad, Milsen, Crystal, to go out right when is there any magic to what day it goes out? I would do sooner rather than later because we're getting up to that July 31st deadline and that's when it's probably going to pop. I know they can do it in an informal session, but something like this I think they would do probably in a formal session. Okay. So in hard coffee, correct? In the mail? All right. It's great to have Brad's immediate expertise there. I might have taken about 15 minutes' conversation back in the day. Email, hard coffee. Email, hard coffee. Thanks, Brad. Okay. Is there anything else for commissioner updates? I'm just curious for commissioner Scherr maybe give us just a real, I know it's late, just a really quick of what the conference that she went to. Was there anything worth sharing here? Yeah. You're talking about the Iagra. No. Yes. Iagra. No, I am GL maybe. I am GL. Sorry, there are so many. International Masters of Gaming Law. So the panels had a more of a technology type focus. One of the things that was really big was not sports betting, but kind of what comes after sports betting online gaming was what was cited. Is that the next wave? And along with that, there was a lot of questions around how, you know, what does responsible gaming look like for the online gaming world? How do you implement a program that is effective? How do you, you know, monitor certain things relative to, you know, the things that we would monitor, Mark and his team relative to gambling in the casino? How do you put that into practice in the online gaming world? I thought that was interesting. A lot of international participation, which I thought was very helpful. There was a tribal gaming arm, you know, which is, I think, a foreign language to me at this point. I know we don't have, we have tribal communities, but I don't know, you know, sort of the history in terms of what the commission's role would be. So I have to come up to speed on that if me or ever to have to consider that as a matter. On the sort of social side, I did get the opportunity to meet the folks from GLI, which was very helpful. I did meet folks. I was able to put a name with a face with a name for a lot of folks that I dealt with in my role as chief of licensing. So that was very, very fun. Overall, very good experience. Very first gaming conference. So I do, I'm very grateful to have had the opportunity to attend. I do want to let Commissioner Hill know that that same is planning a new regulators conference for some time in July. I don't have any specific information about it yet, but I expect to get that soon. And I'm looking forward to sharing with you in case you are interested in attending. Which, which conference, Nikisha? It is, I don't have a lot of detail. I was just approached by the president of IMGL, Mark Elinger, who mentioned it and he indicated that I would be receiving an invitation by email, but it is a new regulators training that they're putting on no information other than that. So it may or may not be helpful, just throwing it out there as something that we should keep an eye out for. At least I will be as a new commissioner. I wonder if it's better if Crystal, maybe we have Crystal just reach out proactively and see what's what for scheduling, because I know Crystal you've been tracking all the others. So yeah, I certainly can do that. Anything else? And Commissioner Skinner, that's been a tradition in the past when somebody attends a conference that they might provide an update. So thank you for that. I hope it was helpful. Yeah, it looked like it was technology centric and I thought that was very exciting. Yeah, they talked a lot about cryptocurrency and sort of, you know, moving in that direction where casinos are accepting that as a form of payment. So just, you know, it was a lot of information, but not all of it was directly relevant to Massachusetts. Okay, all right. So it is 416, everyone. It's been a very long day. Karen, should we proceed? Well, I wanted to just ask the commissioners if, I mean, I recognize this has been over six hours and that's exhausting for you being on. Do you, I was just looking at the calendar, the other option potentially, if you're interested instead of doing this today would be maybe before the agenda setting meeting next Wednesday at nine, we could do it then instead, but you know, I'm available, you know, however you want to do it, but I just thought you might be tired commissioners. I mean, unless there's a timing reason if we can squeeze it in before agenda at like 930 next week, I don't know, that would be probably the better way to do it rather than do this while we're all fried right now. Agree. Commissioner Hill. I'm fine with me. I thought you were going to go, I'm not fried. I love six hour meetings. When you see my face go from white to red, it's about, I'm done. I'm done. Commissioner Hill, all you're going to do is go home and see the local news and replays on the basketball game. It's just not healthy. Don't turn on that local news. All right. The procedure, we already have a public meetings potentially scheduled for that day, but that starts at 10. Do we start the time now, we amend the time to nine and then do this first or start the agenda setting at nine and do it right afterwards. But we only have, we had a half an hour allotted for this today. But I tell, I mean, you tell, you tell more than half an hour to think or it could be. I mean, I think the, the information, I mean, if you've had a chance to review the information, so there's, you know, survey information and, and then the information that Marian, I believe Marian sent out, just being careful that there's a reason this is an executive session. So I don't want to speak about it publicly. I mean, we could do a half an hour and then I expect this is going to be a continual conversation. So it's not as if it's going to be resolved on that day. So I just, from an administrative standpoint, I need some direction on where we're going because I could just say that we're going to have Jacqueline and Crystal explore the calendars of all those essential to the discussion and we'll decide if it's a 930 start or a 10 to 1130 or noon or whatever. But we'll look at our calendars. That's a great idea to add it to the agenda setting. I know that there's a standing meeting that usually comes in right after those. So I want to be cognizant of that. And for some reason, a commissioner really couldn't be there a little bit earlier than 930. We want to be cognizant of that. So we'll just leave it to the specialists and they will find us a scheduled time. And Crystal, I think it works in coordination with Todd that as long as we, because you haven't posted anything yet, right? So we can just get, we can set it up for public meeting and it's okay to start with the executive session, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but it's the timing that we need Jacqueline and Crystal smarts on. Right? Okay, we'll work on it. I think, like you said, chair, it's usually complicated after. So it's likely I will make sure that works for staff and everyone too. Yeah. And I don't want to presume either Commissioner Skinner or Commissioner Bright or Commissioner Hill are thinking about their schedules right now on, you know, in a way that's smart enough to make a decision. So, and I have, I don't know what mine is that Wednesday, but it's probably clear. So, all right. Are we, are we good? We didn't get, we don't normally do this, Nikisha. This is the first, I think, where we didn't exhaust our, maybe not, our agenda, but it was a busy, busy day. And so thank you, Karen, but to your team who stuck around Mirian in particular, I am, I guess I can extend my apology because they stayed here today, but I, I think the commissioners, I think it's just too long of a day now. So, all right. So thank you. I need a motion to adjourn. Move to adjourn. Commissioner Skinner, you missed the opportunity. I think. Commissioner O'Brien, I was getting so good at making motion. I stepped on your toes. I apologize. I hear from. Make me the second. Move, move from Commissioner Hill, second from Commissioner O'Brien. Commissioner O'Brien. Hi. Commissioner Hill. Hi. Commissioner Skinner. Hi. Is that a vote? Yes. Or is Sarah. Thanks guys. Thank you so much. Thank you.