 I think we can get started, but I'll do a roll call to confirm that. We're all here. Commissioner Cameron. Good morning. I'm here. Commissioner O'Brien. Good morning. Commissioner Zuniga. Good morning everybody. And commissioner Stevens. I'm here. Good morning everyone. That makes five. And of course we are conducting this meeting using remote technology. We're allowed to do that given relief that governor Baker provided for us through an executive order giving certain relief from certain provisions of the open meeting law. We've been able to do this as you know, since March and we appreciate the fact that it's been quite seamless. So thank you. We'll get started today in September 24th. It's 10 a.m. And this is public meeting number 320. We'll get started with the approval of the minutes. Commissioner Stevens, I did notice on the minutes that they're for July 10th. It says the executive session minutes at the top. Yes, that needs to be corrected. It should be a public meeting minutes. They were obviously very short as we were convening in public meeting before going into executive session, so it's a short set of minutes. But we will appropriately title the top of the minutes. Go back and make that change. OK, so that would just be an easy change. Are there any questions for Commissioner Stevens on this otherwise? Second his motion. A second to the motion. Excellent. Would that edit? All right, thank you. Commissioner Cameron. I. Commissioner O'Brien. I. Commissioner Zuniga. I. Commissioner Stevens. I. And I vote yes, 5-0. Thank you, Sharon. Thank you for preparing the minutes. All right, moving on to the administrative update, Executive Director Wells. Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the commission. To start with the casino updates is a couple points I have just before turning it over to Attorney Lilios and Assistant Director Band. We did get word that PPC is planning to go back to their 24-7 operations starting October 9. So we will be ready for that. And the gaming agents will be prepared for that along with the state police. Also, EVH is planning to reopen their spa, men's retail location, and beauty store. It indicated they will be operated in accordance with state guidelines for those types of facilities. Internally, we'll pull those guidelines for that restart group so we can take a look at to see if there's anything we want to address in that area. But it is encouraging that they have identified that they have flagged that they need to comply with Governor Baker's guidelines for any kind of spa or retail operation there. So if there's any questions, I can answer questions on that or any comments on that. Otherwise, I'll turn it over to Bruce and Loretta. Commissioner Zanicka. Yeah, just, Karen, remind us the other two facilities, category one, they are operating or have been operating on a 24-7 basis, is that correct? That's my understanding, Bruce. That's correct, right, Bruce? Yeah. OK. Thank you. OK. So there's no other questions. I'll turn it over to Attorney Lilios and Assistant Director Dayl. Want to start, Loretta? Good. Sure. Good morning, Chair and commissioners. On the safety and health measures, things are continuing to go well at each of the three properties with continued, a broad compliance by the casinos with health and safety requirements, continued dedication to resources to the sanitation, the hygiene, the enforcement of the mask protocol with employees and with guests, enforcement of the beverage requirement limited to the seating while gaming. And overall, the acceptance by the patrons has been good with no significant issues to report at this time. In terms of occupancy numbers set by the commission with the reduced occupancy numbers that were set back in September, each of the properties is continuing to come well below those numbers, the reduced numbers set in September. There are some notifications of some upcoming changes. Karen mentioned the 24-7 plane ridge that will go into effect as of October 9th. And she mentioned some of the retail changes that are going into effect at Encore as of today. In addition, at MGM, they did start their phased opening of their hotel back in the end of August with one floor currently open for hosted and invited guests with no significant issues to report. And October 2nd, they intend to open their Chandler Steakhouse on weekends only, again, complying with the restaurant guidelines, the administration's restaurant guidelines. At the end of, with respect to Encore, at the end of October, they do intend to introduce some additional games. Did she freeze for you? Everybody, or is that me? Yeah. OK. Loretta, you've frozen. OK, I'll text her. OK. And not in an uncomfortable fashion, which is good. Carla, that was set by the commission. Loretta, you've froze there for a second. Can you start with that sentence again? OK. So I'm exactly sure where I froze. But Encore intending to introduce at the end of October, 87 new gaming positions, video poker positions in the loft area. But they will continue to abide by the reduced occupancy numbers set by the commission in September. And they will not utilize those additional positions in the formula set by the commission for reduced occupancy. I think Karen already mentioned the retail and the spa set to open in October for weekends, only, again, operating consistent with state guidelines. Our requirements do call for the casinos to notify the commission of any COVID positive cases among their employees that they become aware of. And we have been notified of a small number of cases numbering in the single digits. The local boards of health for each respective property have been notified as well. We've been notified that none of those cases involves front or guest facing positions or direct contact with any commission employees. We've been notified that each of the case positive cases was determined to have been contracted off property by a source other than at the casino, like a family member or some other direct source. Other casino employees who had direct contact with the positive cases have been notified, have been requested to quarantine, and to be tested. Each property is in communication. Each affected property is in communication with the board of health following the guidelines and guidance of the board of health and cooperating with the board of health. So I thought this was an important matter to bring you up to date on. Of course, we don't wish that diagnosis on anyone. Our thoughts are certainly with people who are stricken. But I thought it was important to update you on the scales and the measures and the public health officials are in the loop on this. And also to remind you that as a group, Director Wells had called a meeting that was attended last month by a representative from each of the boards of health, including their top executive level person and the pandemic safety officer at each casino as well as other executive level representative of the casinos and by commission staff at the IEB level. So there is a group communication sharing of contact information amongst this critical group. But again, I thought it was important to bring you up to date on those numbers so you have that information. That concludes my prepared remarks. Happy to try to answer any questions. Bruce is here. I think he may have a couple of matters to bring you up to date on as well. Should we first address any questions for Loretta and then move to Bruce and then we can circle back to all three questions from Loretta. Yeah, Loretta, it seems like you are, well, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you are getting this information about positives and the circumstances around them and their resulting actions in a timely manner from the licensees. Is that accurate? That's right. The requirements that you voted on back in September do require the pandemic safety officer at each casino to promptly notify. And we have been notified and each of the notifications appears to be without delay. Okay. All right, thank you. I have just one follow-up question if there are no others for Loretta. Yesterday, with respect to restaurants and bars, the governor did lift some restrictions around the number from six to 10 for restaurant guidance. I know that we have been really advising with respect to groups of six. And I think it was aligned with that earlier measure that restaurants could have groups of six. That would make sense for six people to come in as a group into the casino and to be able to cluster at the racing grounds. I'm not sure how we feel about that or whether it's actually applicable. But Loretta, was that something you've already given thought to or something that you could and then perhaps the restart group, when we do reconvene, could be informed and we could bring it back to the commission if it made sense. That's a good point, Chair. That increased number from the governor's office goes into effect next week. So I was expecting that it would apply to the restaurants, the full service restaurants. But I think it's a good point that our group can discuss that. Yeah, to further my point, I just wasn't sure if, you know, I think our guidelines do say six and six may still be the magic number for us. I just wasn't sure if it were, if that number had been derived really from the dining guidance initially. Yeah, and I see Boston has chosen not to follow suit with 10, they are continuing to have six only. Right, yes. Yeah, so in other words, we may not want to shift, but I just wanted to bring that up to something that was announced yesterday and whether or not it's applicable or something for us to think about, something licensees want, but you're absolutely right, Commissioner Cameron. And it also allows for dining at the bar. No, you know, just typical dining, seated dining as opposed to a typical bar activity, but I do see Mayor Walsh has decided not to adopt that or lift that restriction now. Anything else for Loretta? Okay, then Bruce, do you want to chime in? Good morning. Oh, we can't hear you Bruce. I can't hear you, but it doesn't look like he's on mute. That's weird. I know, that's interesting, isn't it? See if perhaps on your laptop. He looks frozen too. Perhaps your laptop, Bruce. There we go, there we go. Madam Chair, commissioners, I'll try it again. I can't start without being a muted or something. Good morning. My report's actually, you know, overall pretty well. MGM had no issues over the past week. PPC had no issues. We did have some elevator crowding again at Encore. They've put in some additional measures to try and correct this. They put members of the transportation department stationed on various floors to control how many people get on the elevators, pass out masks at the same time. They have the SCC, which is their security surveillance room, to monitor the elevator lobbies and they dispatch their security supervisors anytime they see any issues starting to occur to rectify the situation. The casino rovers also will rove into the lobby areas to keep an eye, to make sure that there aren't overcrowding in those problem areas as well. Guests who have ID issues, the security officers will pull out a line to keep the lines moving for they don't back up in there. They also will have the guests pull down their masks but keep moving in line for that doesn't back up that area as well. And supervisors will routinely check on the elevator entrances throughout their shifts so those areas don't become a problem. And it's only really a problem during real crowded times in the casino. So we'll see if that rectifies the problem. Any questions or? Commissioner Zunica? Thank you, Madam Chair. Bruce, where is this typically these occasional overcrowding in the elevators? Is that the ones from the parking garage into the casino or is it in the hotel tower or? It's mostly with people leaving, you know, when they have a line coming out and then there's people coming up the elevator and going out that those elevators become crowded. They're even exploring the possibility of being able to use some of the staircases to allow people to exit. It just becomes kind of a log jam to some extent. So they're seeing what they're allowed to use via fire code and so on to be able to keep the public, you know, safe and keep the lines moving. Thank you. You're welcome. Any other questions for Bruce? Okay, Karen. Okay, I'll move on to the next part of the administrative update. Just wanted to give some, just a brief analysis of some of the revenue numbers because we are dealing with a different situation right now given the COVID restrictions. As reported in our September 15th press release, the August gross gaming revenue was approximately $71 million. Our internal analysis shows that the three licensees, they collected 83% of gross gaming revenue on approximately 49% of gaming positions as compared to August of 2019. So that's a particular metric to show how the COVID restrictions have impacted the gaming revenue. The comparative percentage of slot revenue was higher compared to the comparative percentage of table revenue. That's not unexpected since Latinos are not operating poker, roulette or crafts right now and table pain positions have been reduced. I don't wanna get into too much speculation at the exact driving force here with the numbers. I expect the licensees will be doing their own market analysis, you know, on the gross gaming revenue and what works for their business operations. And I also wanted to note, this is just gaming revenue only. This is not incorporating the non-gaming revenue that casinos would normally collect during this time period. So thought it just would be helpful for the commissioners for you to just get a snapshot. We can, if you're interested, we can track this kind of metric going forward during COVID operations and see how that's going. If that's something you would be interested in going forward and we can report that out to you. Just thought you may be interested in how that's going. Any questions on that? And we have CFO Lenin's on the call as well in case there's any particular questions because he had done that analysis. Commissioner Zuniga, I see you nodding your head to Karen that you'd like to continued, maybe that continued analysis, it's helpful, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. And I would imagine it's, we have to, as Karen alludes, we have to be careful not to draw conclusions from only one month and a half. The takeaway here is to really continue monitoring for trends and comparisons for year over year and what may have been an unusual month because there's a reopening or what may become a bit of a new normal with some higher percent per machine because there's less gaming positions. There's simply a lower denominator. But I imagine and welcome the continued effort to monitor these revenues and perform some more analytics as time progresses because some of it really means it has implications for the community mitigation fund, for the public health trust fund and of course for overall revenues for the state. Derek, did you want to chime in? Good morning. Good morning. Oh, I think Karen did an excellent job summarizing the information, but I'm here for any questions, comments, concerns that you may have. As to Karen's point, it's to continue that analysis in a consistent fashion so we can perhaps be able to discern a trend that's not too heavy of a lift. No, it's not a heavy lift at all. You know, the way we look at it and you know, one of the things that's difficult for people trying to find this on the outside is we have the gaming positions at the end of each month where the public only has the gaming positions at the beginning of the year and then the midpoint of the year for each casino. So when they're trying to compare our numbers may be a little different which is why we're not giving them by facility, we're only showing them by Massachusetts. So we don't give away our licensees, competitive advantage, but them at a disadvantage because a lot of other jurisdictions aren't reporting that on a monthly basis either. One, I will make another comment which you know, we also knew early on but now the numbers are bearing, you know, that anecdotal evidence which is this sort of switch into more revenues coming from slots as opposed to tables, particularly at Ancor given the nature of the games really the slots are more of an individual type game whereas the tables tend to be more of a community type of group game. So it's not perhaps not surprising what these, you know, switch we may be, you know, witnessing here just by the nature of the pandemic. Any other questions on that? So what I hear, we'll continue to do the analysis on that metric and report that out to the commissioners. The next agenda item is just wanted to address the license status for casino rehires. You know, as we're all aware, the pandemic has resulted in layoffs in many industries, including casinos here in Massachusetts. So just for public edification, an original employee license or registration has a term of five years. So if an employee gets laid off and then returns to work during that time period, that license or registration is still valid. So we wanna make sure that employees don't feel that there's a deterrent if they get laid off and have to come back. We don't want the licensing or registration process to be an impediment. So the only employees right now that may be running up against that time period are PPC employees who are hired at the opening of that casino. As we know from the casino relicensing process, we're coming up on the five year period. So we do expect that it's a very small number of people that this may impact, but we just wanted to put out there that the licensing team will work with anyone that may be in that situation, just to get them back to work quickly, especially during a pandemic, especially during tough times, we're gonna be here to help people get back to work and go through that process. Any questions of that or any comments from the commissioners on that? Yeah, thank you Karen and thank you and the team for kind of looking into that. Obviously we weren't expecting this kind of question to come up, but we know our licensees had to go through some pretty difficult decisions and making final determinations on employees that would have to be laid off. And I think just for that employees ease and comfort to know that if they came back to work further for our gaming licensee that some of these issues aren't something that they need to revisit and go back through an entire process, which to your point might be a deterrent and we don't want that to be. So I appreciate you and the team looking into this and again approaching it that we wanna help people get back to work and be as helpful as we can if some of those folks come back on board. So thank you for digging into that. Henry Day. Karen, I know when we first experienced the closure of the casinos, we issued either a guidance or remind me perhaps an emergency reg on people whose term was going to be expiring during the closure period, a grace period for people to renew those licenses because of those most of unusual conditions. Is any of that still part of what is necessary now or have operations for relicensure effectively gone back to normal as we have reopened in this remote capacity? Right, and Derek may be able to put a finer point on it but I think they identified through that process who that would impact and identified as a discrete number of people and then work with those people. So Derek, correct me if there's anything to add to that but I think we identified that dealt with that and then now we're moving forward in the normal force. Is that correct, Derek? That's 95% correct. If there are any employees that the casino has identified are still furloughed during this time period. So we communicate, Mary communicates with the employees on a monthly basis to the still active employees that are showing up so they haven't informed us that terminated right now. Active employees that are showing up with their licenses set to expire and if the casino gets back to us and says they're still furloughed, we've been extending them until they make a final decision on whether they are going to be terminated or brought back so that they are not impacted taking into consideration what the intent of that reg the emergency reg that was passed. So 95% there because the majority of the people they have given us a decision on in each month that gets smaller on that list of active terminated active furloughed that are still sitting out there. That's very good to know. Thank you. Any other questions from the commission? I'm very, very helpful. And thank you, Commissioner Stappins for noting that. We're all set. Should we move on to item number four, Joe Delaney, our construction project oversight manager in the Ombudsman division. Good morning, Joe. Thank you, Madam Chair, commissioners. So today we're going to talk about quarterly reports. So in your packets we have the 2020 first and second quarterly reports from our licensees. You know, we don't have a particular presentation ourselves, nor have we asked one for one from our licensees on these. I think the notion here was simply to use this vehicle to enter them into the public record. So as you recall, back in May, the commission voted to allow a significantly reduced level of reporting on the quarterly reports. You know, due to the fact that the casinos were closed and that the licensees were working with very small staff levels. So what we did was there's a certain certification that we required. And, you know, at that point, we didn't give a whole lot of guidance on exactly what needed to be submitted. We gave sort of a general outline. So what you'll see in the quarterly reports is our licensees, you know, kind of varied a little bit in what they reported and what they didn't report. But, you know, for all intents and purposes, the first quarter reports were really showing the first quarter results up until the casinos closed down in the middle of March. And then the second quarter reports, I would say were essentially really perfunctory in a way because there were no revenues happening at that time. Most of the staff had been furloughed and so on. So we do have, I think I saw representatives from all of our licensees here on the meeting. So with that, if you have any particular questions regarding these reports or anything of that nature, I can try to answer them or we have our licensees here as well. Questions? Yeah, Joe, just to follow up on that notion of entering them into the record, which I think is very important, these materials do catch us up until the second quarter, which is June 30th, right? We will be reporting on a future date on the third quarters. Is that correct? Yeah, that's correct. And the next topic of discussion that we'll go into is what we want that format to look like going forward. Thank you. I do recall when we offered that important relief to the licensees, you know, to not have to come before us in sort of the typical fashion that at the very least they did have to meet the statutory requirements. And what I'm hearing today from you, Joe, is that you're comfortable saying that those requirements have been met, the format during this time, you know, we gave relief and truly is inconsequential given the circumstances. But you can, and Todd, you can say that they've met their reporting obligations with this through the two first quarters. Yeah, I think that's correct. I'm all set. Any questions for the folks who have come in this morning from our licensees? Except to say a big thank you. We know that even meeting these requirements at that time were still a challenge. So thank you. All right, Joe? Okay, so the next piece again, we wanna get back to some consistent level of reporting. So what we wanna do is we figure out what this quarterly report is gonna look like going forward. So over the last several weeks, I have met with each of the commissioners, I've met with each of our licensees to discuss sort of what the regulations require and what we would like to see in a quarterly report going forward. And in those discussions, our licensees have raised several concerns with sort of the template that we've prepared, and I'm gonna share that template in a moment. So I was hoping that I would come to this meeting with full resolution of these issues, but we really aren't right there yet. So I guess what I'd like to do is just present an update on where we stand and where those sort of sticking points are and maybe some ideas for resolving those. So with that, just to put in sort of broad brushstrokes what the key concerns that our licensees have, I think we can sort of put them into four kind of buckets. First is the confidentiality of information. The second one is regarding capital expenditures and the reporting of diversity requirements on that and I'll get into that a little bit more. The third piece is the reporting on RFA-2 compliance and then the fourth one is relative to non-gaming revenue and performance. And so I'm gonna share with you template that I've been working on and this will give us a good place to talk about what some of the issues are and we can get into a little bit more detail with them. So as you can see here, this is just a draft template really just for discussion at this point. And what I indicated here, the areas in bold are sort of newly requested information or topics or discussion. So the first thing, I think everyone is in agreement that we should get a report on revenues as we have in the past and I'm sure we'll continue to do so. The quarterly report requirement in the REGS does require a bit of a narrative commentary on the operating results so we wanna see that. And then the exact mechanisms, we wanna see the current quarter, I think we wanna probably see year to date, maybe the year over year comparison, the breakdown of slots and table games and those kinds of things. But this item F that you see in bold, these are the non-gaming revenues and this is something that all of the commissioners expressed some interest in seeing these numbers. And what is interesting is that each of our licensees report these numbers somewhat differently in their corporate structures. So for instance, the Wynn corporation, when they put out their 10Q report, they actually report non-gaming revenue by facility. So you can go into that 10Q report and find Encore Boston Harbor and find what their hotel revenues, what their food and beverage revenues were, when that 10Q report comes out. Now MGM and Plain Ridge on the other hand, they report it differently. MGM corporate reports their non-gaming revenues, of course by the entire corporation, but then they break it down into Vegas, regional and I think China. So they have sort of three buckets that they report. So MGM's numbers get rolled up with all of the regional casinos and are not reported out individually. Same thing with PPC, PPC, if I'm not mistaken, they report by region. So that each region of the country reports sort of non-gaming revenues. And I think in PPC's case where they have, they don't have a hotel and some of the other things that those non-gaming revenues are probably smaller than they might be at the other facilities. But with that said, concern was expressed about sort of releasing, especially from MGM and Plain Ridge who report differently than on-core. They've expressed some concern about making that public information for their individual facility. And one possibility with this is we could, and we'll talk about sort of an annual report a little bit later, but we could maybe pull this out and not get it quarterly, but maybe get it annually and it could possibly be done under their non-disclosure agreement or something of that nature so that the commission has the ability to see that data, but it isn't necessarily made public. So that's one issue that we have. I think then workforce and goods and services, these are things that we've gotten in our quarterly reports from the beginning of time and we expect to continue to get those. Now Jill has worked out some sort of templates that she'd like to see so that everybody's reporting fairly consistently, and I'm not gonna get into the sort of the nitty gritty of exactly what the report's gonna look like, but I think we do wanna see the number of workers full in part time, gender diversity, veteran status, previous quarter to current quarter year over year. And then I think part E here is this licensees specific hiring goals. As you know, all of our licensees in their workforce plans established sort of different goals. For instance, I think Encore has, they're supposed to hire a certain percentage of people within 30 miles of the facility and MGM has some Springfield specific and county, those counties around Springfield specific goals and PPCs are a little bit different than that. I remember we went through a rework of their workforce plan and so on. So everybody has some specific goals that they're not, then, this reporting's not gonna be the same for every licensee because they do have different goals. And same thing with goods and services. We want some of this basic information, but also we need some licensee specific goals. Again, for example, Encore has some goals on how much they're trying to spend in the local communities. And some of the other licensees don't have those same type of goals. So we need to do that. Item number four are capital expenditures. Now this is a little complicated because there are differing requirements depending upon how things are working, but our regulations talk about capital expenditures a number of times. And I think the consensus was in my meetings with commissioners was that we wanna see something on capital expenditures in the quarterly report. Now, Plain Ridge Park has a capital expenditure plan. They already developed one of those back in 2017. I think the commission approved that capital expenditure plan and that actually expires this year. So we're gonna need to meet with PPC and look at another five-year capital plan if they think that they need that. But one of the things that we do require is some diversity data on the spend that's done for capital expenditures. And this is one of the areas again that our licensees have had some concern with. When these facilities were constructed, they had like entire departments that followed diversity spend on construction. And now that the construction is over they don't really have that same sort of robust systems in place to track these things. And these tend to be smaller projects and some of them it's very specialized in finding diversity on those might be a little bit difficult. So I think everybody was okay with reporting on capital expenditures but there was some concern about how diversity and minority women veteran businesses would be tracked under this category. So that hasn't been fully worked out yet. I think what we will ask for is in the next quarterly reports we get an update on capital expenditures through current because we haven't had reports on them before. So we would ask from the beginning of their opening up to current give us a report and see what's happening there. And also with capital expenditure plans we may need to look at with MDM and Encore on whether or not they need to do a capital expenditure plan given the circumstances with revenues and other things spending the 3.5% of net revenues on CAPEX may not be feasible or whatever. And there are the regulations do allow relief from that 3.5% requirement if it can be demonstrated and also the notion of a capital expenditure plan if expenditure's gonna be down in one year and up the next year that kind of thing. So then the fifth item here I just for lack of a better term I just put gaming for compliance. And this is that every quarter we've been getting the underage report which has been of interest to the commission and I think still is. I put this sort of other category and I think that's just if something that's happening out on the facilities rises to a level where it needs to be reported to the commission under the quarterly report this sort of gives an opportunity to put that there. Item six is lottery. It's interesting there's no specific requirement in our regulations to report on the lottery but that's always been of interest to the commission and I think that's something we definitely wanna keep in our report according to our licensees it's not a heavy lift to get that information and I think we wanna continue to report that. And item seven and eight again these are things that our licensees tend to like to report what they're doing for promotions or special events or other things of that nature. There's nothing that requires that to be reported and I think actually for the quarterly report itself I would tend to think we could probably eliminate these I mean it's not a requirement and if the licensees wanted to report on that they certainly could do that but there really is no requirement to do so. And then on to item nine there are some site specific reporting you know this is an example MGM is required to report on the activation and the future plans for the armory and that needs to continue so we just sort of reserve this placeholder for that if there's no site specific reporting they wouldn't need to do that. And then of course item 10 is that certification that we require under 130906 so we wanna get that. Now our recommendation on this is that this quarterly report just be submitted to us as a written report that will put it into our records and that will be our record of a quarterly report. And what we're also suggesting is that we go back to the licensees making a presentation on their quarterly report and then of course they can use the written report to develop their presentation for the commission. And so that's essentially the format and let me just go into a couple of other things and then I'll open it up for questions. When going through our regulations there are a few other pieces of information that are required at least on an annual basis but the caveat is or more frequently if required by the commission. And these include some of the things on the workforce like the job titles and salaries and so on that all of our licensees feel should be done under the non-disclosure agreement. And then the other piece is this annual report stating compliance with the RFA too. And I'll talk about that a little bit more in a second but now PPC having been open longer than the other facilities actually has been submitting this annual report and this is what they include to us as an annual job statistics report, gross gaming revenue report, diversity contract report and then all this annual RFA two goals status report. And they give that to us on the 30th of September annually. And I'm proposing a few sort of changes to that just particularly to the timing. So now both on core and MGM have expressed type of their concern with providing this annual RFA two goals status report for a couple of reasons. One, if you look at these RFA twos they are voluminous to be charitable. These are gargantuan documents. And these projects specifically, PPC pretty much built what they said they were going to build with on core and MGM. There were some fairly large changes that took place to the designs and so on through the course of the RFA two to the final permitting. If you remember, MGM originally had a tower that that was removed and it was done in a low rise building of a hotel. On core had a different design for their tower that they modified and lots of changes have taken place over time. And also the fact that there's this reduced level of staffing since the reopening of the casinos both MGM and on core have really expressed concern about being able to give sort of a robust update on the RFA two goals. So one of the solutions I guess to this problem is maybe having sort of the gaming commission staff kind of look through the RFA twos and maybe try to pick out some of those key things that we think need to be reported on on an annual basis. A lot of the things in the RFA two were done and they're done and they're finished but there were these other things that are sort of some of them were kind of aspirational. So I guess I do sympathize with our licensees on this. It is a tremendous amount of work to try to do that. My thought is maybe through the fall through now until sort of the end of the year we can take a look at the RFA twos and see if there are some particular things that we think should be reported on on a regular basis and maybe we can sort of reduce that to a more manageable reporting requirement for our licensees. And then I guess the last thing is so we do really need this sort of annual report in addition to the quarterly reports and because all of our licensees their fiscal year is also a calendar year. My thought was that this annual report might be better done sort of with the fourth quarter report. So it's sort of a wrap up of the whole year rather than going on our fiscal year which doesn't really coincide with the licensees. So that's where we are now and I guess what I'm suggesting is that we'll have quarterly reports for the third quarter but we may not have fully resolved while hoping we'll resolve this issue about non-gaming revenues and capital expenditures and that kind of thing and the RFA too stuff you know when we go into that. So I guess at that point I'll open that up for questions. I know that was quite a lot of information and not a lot of time. So Joe maybe the best way to approach the questions initially is you're identifying areas where there isn't an immediate agreement from our licensees and perhaps we should just take the temperature of the commission as to how important it is with respect to non-gaming revenue. Should we discuss that? It appears to me that this is not a matter that's always made public. It sounds like from property to property as a matter of disclosure requirements. It is not a statutory requirement for us to receive. That's correct. No, it's not. This is just something that again all of the commissioners have expressed some interest in seeing that. And to be clear, you know the public would be interested in the legislative body but it is not a requirement. So... No, it is not. Okay. So commissioners, do you wanna just address that one? That one might help Joe in particular. I can't see all of your faces. So Anrika, I see you first. I can, can you hear me? Yes. Yes. Thank you. Well, my suggestion is that we use the same process we've done in the past that Joe talked about in terms of the non-disclosure agreement process. They can submit the case for why they believe this would be the reason or why they would seek, you know, the ability of reporting it under an NDA. And we'd come a future meeting and deliberate on it like we've done with some of the other NDAs. I would note that it occurs to me that they are in a very different competitive environment. MGM and PPC have a lot more of a regional competition that is very tight in a tight market, which is why maybe Yankee reports the numbers that they report with very different markets, Vegas, now Boston and Macau versus the other two. But I don't wanna make the case for them. I would just be wanna be open to the process of listening to their argument for an NDA. So I would, let me say one other thing, Joe, relative to the diversity. Oh, could we just stick with the non-gaming or the non-discomissioning? Yeah, just so we can get through. Any other comments? I see Commissioner Cameron. Yes, Joe, I'd like to better understand the rationale for having a concern reporting this information. Is it the ability to get a hold of the information because it's done regionally, or is it this competitive advantage piece that commissioners and Iga just alluded to? You know, I think maybe it's better if our licensees weighed in on that. I think, you know, Seth is here and I think Lance is here as well. Maybe they could just jump in and give sort of their thoughts on the non-gaming revenue piece. It's hard for me to guide you right now. You want me to stop? I can stop sharing for a little bit here. Perhaps, that would be helpful. Then we'll return back to the list. But while we're just, if Seth is available. Oh, there's, I see Seth. Hi, Seth, good morning. Good morning. Good morning, everyone. Thank you. So I think the short answer is it's primarily the latter, Commissioner Cameron. It's the competitive advantage and that we don't disclose that from a competitive standpoint. It also creates challenges with alignment with our public reporting in our SEC filings and whether we would be, the time releasing publicly versus what we're, would be releasing through our SEC filings and whether they're consistent. So there are several challenges in that respect. Again, we don't have issue with sharing the information with the commission, the public nature of the information that is, is the concern. So Seth, this is Commissioner O'Brien. Can I ask if that concern would hold whether it's an annual reporting or a quarterly? That really doesn't make a difference. Correct. I mean, the timing piece of it, short answer is correct. It's a little bit easier, I think, to address the timing situation vis-a-vis, you know, public reporting if we only have one report. But I think that's the tail wagging dog a bit. It really is that it being public altogether. And I deferred on Lancet. Yes. Good morning, Lance. How are you? Good, good. My feedback doesn't differ much from what you just heard from Seth. The only additional item I would throw in there, and I suspect MGM would have a similar concern, I believe, is I'd have to go back and review our agreements with one, we have a lease agreement as well as a franchise agreement. We've got one with document, one with Smashburger. And I would have to review those terms to understand what information is required to be confidential and what we could actually report upon. So that's an additional issue that certainly concerns around the information that is contained in both the 10 Ps as well as the 10 Tec. Any further questions on this topic right now? It sounds as though there's still interest from the commissioners. I've lost Joe. There you are to pursue this area. And perhaps though, through the NDA is appropriate. Madam chair. I'm sorry. No, no worries. You know, and kind of thinking through this, you know, there isn't a specific requirement, I don't think in the statute for us to look at non-gaming revenue. You know, my first impression that, you know, looking at this in kind of an annual basis might be interesting. But, you know, looking at some of the data that they do collect and they do have to publicly report, they could reflect on how well they are doing a non-gaming revenue. And that's the local taxes that they do to submit meals tax, hotel tax, you know, that could be a good indicator, you know, kind of a year and roll up to get a sense of the success of their non-gaming revenue. But I'd be willing to kind of look at more of a that type of factual release or that type of information release on an annual basis. And again, it's something that would be publicly reported animals. Right. And we have had snippets from, you know, the different cities and mayors have spoken on that and how it's beneficial for them. But that is a public medium for us to seek. Is that something that we could ask the licensees to track for us? Or is that something we could, should it be internally tracking in coordination with the various towns? You know, I don't want to overburden the licensees, but those are public, that's public information that we could get. Karen, what do you think? Oh, you're mute. I apologize. You know, it's always just a tricky balance. I mean, I think the most important thing is the commission gets the information that they need. You know, and that should be the priority. And then if we have to do some kind of the action or NDA, I think that's okay, as long as the commission's getting the information they want. Well, I have in the past asked about the local taxes and we haven't figured out really how we could track that in an efficient fashion, but that's completely public and not going through the back door of the NDA. Because of course, I agree with Commissioner Zuniga, we could get that perhaps to the NDA, but then what do we really do with it? You know, it's harder to analyze publicly. But maybe it's a combination. Well, I'm curious, are the taxes for every business available publicly or are we really talking about the aggregate of taxes for any one municipality? I think, let me go back to, I think the desire at least from my perspective of looking at that gaming revenue was a general picture of other things, you know, like we all agree, but I am sensitive to the notion of what this represents given the structure. And so I'd be happy to put them in the category of a lot of other information that we do review, that we have access to on an ongoing basis our financial investigators. And they can, you know, given what they find at any given point, they could report to us, you know, at any given point. Yeah. Oh, did, okay. That makes good sense. I think it sounds like we've got a couple of tracks to pursue. Commissioner Cameron, Commissioner O'Brien, do you want to weigh in at this point? Are you all set? Commissioner Cameron, all set? Yes, I'm all set. Thank you. Okay. All right, Joe, do you want to go on to the, if you could restore the page, you had your bold items. I think maybe it was capital expenditures where there may be questions on that. It sounds as though PPC has had a plan in place, perhaps the others have not. And I wondered what the practice has been and the expectations have been. Well, so the way that the regulation is written, it says that if you spend 3.5% of your net revenues on CAPEX, you don't need to do a plan if you're doing that every year. So for the first couple of years, certainly for MGM and, and at least for the first year for Encore, they spend actually a fair amount of money on capital expenditures, you know, MGM put the new car in and they did the high lounge there. And there's a bunch of other things that they've done. And, you know, same thing with Encore, the new food service out on the gaming floor and some of those other things that they've done. So I think the thought was at the beginning is that they didn't really need a capital expenditure plan. The idea with the capital expenditure plan is saying, well, you know, we just opened this facility. So for the first few years, we're really not going to spend a whole lot of money. And what we want to do is put together a five-year plan that shows how we're going to spend the requisite amount of money over the five-year period, rather than trying to meet it in the first year or maybe even the second year. Now, in that also is the possibility of relief from meeting the 3.5% in that revenue requirement. They can ask for relief from that if they don't think that they, you know, from a competitive standpoint or whatever that spending that amount of money puts them at some kind of a disadvantage. They can come back to the commission and request relief from that. But what I'm suggesting here is that even absent to capital expenditure plan, we should be getting a report on capital expenditures at the facility. It's a requirement of the commission that they have this 3.5% in that revenue requirement. And we want to know how they're doing with respect to that. And the quarterly report seem to be a good vehicle for getting that. And they also don't know if you have a capital expenditure plan, you're supposed to be reporting quarterly. And, you know, admittedly, we have not been requiring PPC to report quarterly to us in the quarterly reports on their CAPX plan. But, you know, going forward, we want to make sure we're in compliance with all of our regulations that were consistent among our licensees. And I don't, and I'll ask the licensees to correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think I've heard any pushback on reporting on capital expenditures. Pushback that I'm getting is that finding some of the diverse firms on, especially some very specialized companies may be difficult. And the other thing is we do require that they're supposed to report on the employee diversity of those subcontractors. And that's not something that they collect today. And to get to a point where they could collect that, you know, they'd have to institute some systems and other things in order to do that. And again, I think some concern about the sort of the lack of manpower at the facilities, they are running very lean, you know, MGM is not only gonna be running Springfield, but also New York, you know, they're sharing staff on some of these facilities. They're stretched very thin. And I think, you know, I think perhaps what we do is start the reporting on capital, just on capital expenditures themselves and how they meet the 3.5% net revenue requirement or whatever the requirement is in their capital expenditure plan. And then maybe Jill and I can start working with them to try to figure out a way for them to report, to develop a system to report on this. Maybe it's something that doesn't happen in, you know, 30 days or 60 days. Maybe it's, you know, we work on it over the next six months or something and see if we can't come up with a reasonable way to do this without creating a huge burden on their staff or something to that effect. That's sort of what my thought is, let's get the reporting started and we'll sort of worry about that second piece of it. We'll try to come up with some systems over the next, you know, several months. Joe, before we turn to questions on this particular item, can you just clarify with respect to the goals on the MBE, WBE and VBE hiring, that is a statutory provision, correct? No, it's interesting the, well, I guess there is a statutory requirement for in the purchase of goods and services. And I imagine you could say hiring a contractor is a service. So yes, they are supposed to be doing that. And I believe our licensees have certainly taken credit, you know, if they've done CAPEX and they have MWVBE in there, I believe they've all sort of taken credit for that in that reporting. I think it's, I think it's the work. Okay, thank you, Bruce. Yeah, I think it's the workforce piece that's the more difficult one. You know, again, when the construction of the facilities was going on, I wasn't around for PPC's construction, but I can tell you with a great degree of certainty on MGM and Encore, they had, you know, multiple people working on this diversity piece of it and getting the employee diversity numbers and tracking them. And, you know, it was pretty complex and pretty difficult. So. And very successful. Indeed, indeed. So I'm just, you know. Because of that accountability that Jill Griffin really, really fiercely protected and furthered. Exactly, exactly. So before, just to, I wanna give each commissioner an opportunity to chime in. You're saying that there's nothing with respect to the capital expenditures requirement in the statute that says, like they did have construction expectations, they didn't, it's not tied together. No, they only specifically talk about the employee diversity. That is actually in the regulation. But there's nothing about, there's nothing about MW or VBE. Okay. That's in, I think in 139, no, four somewhere. But not in the statute. Again, they just talk about construction in the statute. They don't particularly talk about capital expenditure. Obviously capital expenditure typically, well, it's not always construction, but it's, you know, partially constructed. Commissioners, who would like to go first? I'd love to ask a question, Madam Chair. Sorry, Commissioner Cameron. You're just like, thank you. Yes, my apologies. Thank you. No worries. I have a question though. Yes. Thank you. Joe, I actually think it's really important that we continue to track this. I think that like anything else, if you don't track it, subcontractors are not gonna feel, they're not gonna work as hard to get, to really pay attention to these numbers. So I think because there was such great success initially and we emphasized it, our licensees work very hard and had great success for us to say now that, well, maybe, you know, because it's hard to track, we shouldn't pay attention. I actually think this is one of the areas that we should continue to pay attention. And if it's a little bit more difficult, so be it, it's really important. And there will be backslide if you don't continually to watch and monitor. So just giving you my thoughts on how important I think this element is. Oh, and I agree. I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't require this. I'm just suggesting that maybe we sort of try to phase it in given their circumstances. But I think it's also, you know, when Jill did her presentation at the last commission meeting, you know, with Encore and what success they had and with the access and opportunity committee, you know, one of their takeaways from the access and opportunity committee was to, you know, keep your foot on the pedal with this stuff with CapEx and other things to make sure that we don't, we don't, you know, go backwards on this. Yeah, can I say? Yes. Yeah, I agree with Commissioner Cameron. I think it's, you know, we should track it. And we can be sensitive to, you know, the facing in, as you say, at the same time. For one, for example, I think, and this goes as well with the capital expenditures, but as well with the diversity in numbers on capital. Given the nature of the expenditures, I'd be satisfied with an annual report. Some of these projects take a little bit of time to design and plan and then execute on them. And if we, you know, stress the notion of having that reported quarterly, we might be getting effectively, you know, non-desertable numbers between one quarter and the next. But the annual plan, which is also part of the requirements in statute could be reported annually. And that might offer a little bit of relief in terms of some of the resources that it takes to track. But on the fundamental notion of, you know, that if we don't track them, then, you know, the needle goes back to the status quo. I think that we should continue to track them. And I think whatever resources may be necessary, you know, to put in there, at the appropriate time, we should emphasize it. Commissioner Stevens? Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. I agree with my colleagues. You know, we want to keep moving forward. Excuse me. We definitely want to make sure that minority women and veteran-owned firms have the opportunity to compete for these projects really regardless of size. I think when it comes down to minority women and veteran employee or worker participation in some of these projects, I think as Jill pointed out, you know, in Jill's report last week, there was a significant amount of effort and resources and time that went into tracking that information. Let's remember that Encore Boston Harbor had, you know, an electronic checkpoint to record everybody that was arriving on the spot. There might be, you know, some gradation here in terms of the size of the project and who's going to be responsible for the reporting. But if you're a subcontractor and you're coming in and you're going to do a simple project like a recarpeting of a space, you know, there might be some onus now on that subcontractor to report that information to our licensees. If a bigger CAPEX project was being undertaken, then I'd probably, you know, want to make sure that there was a more aggressive reporting requirement. But there's going to be some gradation, I think, in that. But I think certainly with respect to vendors and, you know, I think it bears repeating that, you know, even during this COVID crisis, nobody is taking our eye off the ball that, you know, we need to continue to pursue all the goals set forth by all of our licensees and that it's just as important now as it was back in January, February and previous years. But, you know, some solution needs to be found to this. I think there's something that can be worked out. I do like the idea of kind of rolling it up into the year-end report. And, you know, the quarterly snapshots might look a little uneven. But I think, you know, PPC has done this. They've taken some of that MBE, WBE, VBE participation and some of their small CAPEX projects and rolled that into their local spend. But I might agree with Commissioner Zuniga at this point was kind of rolling it all up into a more of an annual look back. And I can't remember who said it, but I think one of our licensees in these conversations did say, hey, could we maybe put a, you know, the CAPEX has to be over a certain size to require some of this stuff or whatever. And maybe that's, you know, some of the smaller things we wouldn't be as concerned about. And in fact, it sounds like some of the smaller things are done by actual staff at the facilities anyway. So it'd already be counted under the workforce, you know, just for the facility. And Joe, if I'm not mistaken, we include, obviously CAPEX plans also includes purchases of new gaming equipment, which is that rolled up into that category or not? Yeah, you know, this is probably another topic for another day a little bit about what gets included under CAPEX, but typically, yeah, the, you know, slot machines, you know, those are capital purchases and definitely count under CAPEX. And you know, and look, probably all of the plexiglass that got put up and all of these other things that happened during COVID probably would count as CAPEX as well. But I think we probably do want to have that conversation about what we count as CAPEX and what we don't, you know, so everybody is working from the same sheet of paper. Okay. I can see that Seth has joined us. I'm not sure if that means he would like to speak in, but if I could go to Commissioner O'Brien first, Commissioner. Yeah, I would reiterate what the other commissioners have said in terms of the importance of continuing to track. And I thought about, you know, that idea of, do you have a threshold below, which it doesn't apply. My only concern with that is the idea of sort of bidsplitting, you know, is I wouldn't want it to be a number that would then motivate people to break it up where each project is then exempt, but it turns out to be a rather large project. So we would just have to figure out how we define the calculation of the value of the product if we're going to get an exemption like that. Okay, Commissioner, yes. Yeah, I actually wanted to speak to something like that as well. I'll remind, you know, all of us that we did have a process for looking at what could be accepted. You know, I was part of that, you know, mini group that looked at, you know, whenever they were putting on a contract, let's say, for highly specialized, you know, only one bidder type, you know. Yeah, elevators. Yeah, elevators is the usual one, you know, that those can be exempted from the calculation in order to try to meet the numbers otherwise. You know, I would imagine, you know, we could still have a process like that in which we look at what they request and saying the efforts that they're making and they could, you know, persuade us to say, okay, maybe this should be exempted or not. Yeah, before I turn to Seth, I would just chime in. Again, I shouted out the fact that the, coming into the commission a year and a half or so ago, the work that was done in the construction that really furthered MBE, WBE and VBE's capacity as well as their own portfolios so that they actually are gaining experience that puts them in front for important RFP work. That was extremely impressive to me and really the evidence points that the success really had to do with the accountability that we as a regulator, you know, the direction and leadership of Jill Griffin accomplished. So we're there. And at this point in time, I don't think this is the time for us or our licensees to take steps backwards. I do hear and I think Commissioner Cameron heard it too. It's a little bit difficult right now, perhaps a little bit difficult is not for me to say that the sufficient threshold to say let's hold or somehow not look at these goals. In fact, this is the exact time that we can build on all the experience that you have. And we can support, I think we can support and be reasonable but not take a step backwards in any way with respect to these important goals that really reflect the intentions of the expanded gaming app. They reflect our values that were established and certainly all of the licensees value. So that's my position, you know, we'll do whatever we can to support, but I would not recommend taking our eyes off the ties here. Seth, with that. Sure, yeah. And we generally agree, I guess, certainly in spirit, this is an area that our company is very committed to and we've had a lot of success. So I think there are some challenges that folks have already spoken to in terms of size and scope and the, you know, processes and procedures. But I think the other piece that we have to be cognizant of is what are we reporting against? Because when I look back at our approved diversity affirmative marketing plan 2015, you know, when I was somewhat involved in myself in it, I know for a fact that it was contemplated to be designed construction of the facility and then post construction operations, goods and services. It did not contemplate construction, post opening construction, CapEx in the setting of the goals. So if you look at our goals, which are very specific by the way, 15.3% for minorities, 6.9% for women, those were determined looking at the size and scope of the construction project, what the total spend would be, what we need to build, what the availability would be and made some pretty specific determinations around the general construction of the project and what goals we could achieve. That's completely different in a post opening CapEx environment and those goals did not contemplate that. So tracking is one thing, but what the goals that we're tracking against is a separate question that I don't, I know for MGM's perspective, that hasn't been a goal that we haven't calculated those goals. And so I think we would need to do some real concerted thinking about, you know, where we can be successful and what those goals should be for a post construction CapEx tracking because we simply didn't, it wasn't part of our original analysis. It's, it would be a new kind of a new requirement that we're, you know, willing to look at and track and the, you know, the goods and services we're already committed to, but so I, we may have to go to the drawing board a little bit to figure out, we don't want to set false, false goals or goals that would be set us up not for success. Commissioner. And Madam Chair, I just wanted to add one thing that I think, and correct me. I'm not sure if that's Joe or me. Is everybody frozen? Joe's frozen. Okay, Joe's frozen. Thank you. Am I back? You're back, Joe. You're back. Okay, I just wanted to add one thing in here and I would ask the licensees to correct me if I'm wrong, but I think on CapEx right now, no one has been tracking the workforce piece of the subcontractors to date. So, so that, that information doesn't actually exist to this point in time. So it would be impossible for the licensees to report workforce diversity on CapEx to date. It would have to be a system developed going forward. Is that fair statement, Jackie or Seth? Yes, and if I may. Good morning, Jackie. How are you? Well, thank you. I wanted to echo Seth's statements. We obviously, this is something that's a huge important to us. And as you know, from our last presentation, it's something we took very seriously. We continue to take seriously. I think I just want to make one distinction. We are tracking expenditures through the vendor process. And I don't know if I'm not sure if that would be pulled out of the vendor process and tracked against the construction numbers to Seth's point, I think it would be worth looking at. I see Lance, if he wants to chime in too, and then we can, I'll go back to the commissioners. Good morning again, Lance. Good morning. I just wanted to piggyback on Jackie's comments. Some of this topic for PPC relates to clarity and reporting. To that end, we include the spend in our quarterly update. And so I guess some of this is a question of, should the capital spend be removed from our quarterly reporting and put into an annual report? And are there goals associated with operating expenses in addition to capital expenses? Or is it one goal for the combination of those two expenses? So it does get a little into the weeds on this. But certainly, I think one of the things we're looking for is clarity in reporting and consistency. Let me suggest that that can easily be resolved. We could report, the beauty of data these days is that we can report in multiple ways. So as long as we have a collective understanding that if we're reporting on CAPEX, and that may have been or should not have been included in the quarterly spend, as long as we noted, that's fine. Let me go back to a point that Seth started making, which I'm open to understanding a little bit more. But I guess if you follow the logic of, we don't have a goal for the capital expenditures, because when we set out our plans, we were contemplating a much larger project, the big casino resort. You seem to be suggesting that the smaller the project, the harder it is to meet the diversity numbers. Or that you would have to have a different goal, perhaps smaller, but perhaps lower. Is that a fair statement, Seth? I think that is a fair statement. It is more challenging on a smaller project, because there's simply fewer pieces that are available. And if you have a specialized vendor that is a good portion of the project, there's just less to spread the smaller project. But I think it's also, there's no mistake that we had certain specific percentages of, for instance, 15.3% for minority, because we did some pre-work determining, we knew what we were going to build, we knew what to take to build it, we knew what contractors were out there, we knew what the labor market looked like. And so we were able to come up with goals based on that information, based on the specific construction project, not knowing what those CAPEX projects will be at this stage. And, again, being a collection of smaller projects, it's harder to, I don't know that we even thought about what the goals could be for the CAPEX on, for instance, labor participation if we were reporting against that. I'm guessing we would think that those percentages would be lower, but without having done that exercise, like we did with construction, I don't know what reasonable goals are, putting aside the tracking piece. Right, well, let me just suggest that this is where a plan comes handy. If you have a five-year plan, you may have a better understanding. And I understand that maybe you're not able to have, you know, all the changes that you might wanna make on a five-year plan from one year to the next, but there could be enough flexibility embedded in a plan to help you plan for that. And then, and the other part is something that I already also mentioned, but there's repeating, we would look at, you know, exceptions, you know, as part of that process. If you say that, you know, we didn't plan on making a certain repair that only has one specialized contractor in the United States, for example, then that would not count, you know, and we would look at it, we would do a process like we've done in the past where you show us that you looked and that you solicited and did all the diligence and persuaded us that, you know, that number should be excluded. I think I understand in concept that you might wanna have to sit down and plan for what is a realistic achievable goal, but I am reluctant to accept the notion that it would be fundamentally different only because of the size. And I think it's worth trying to achieve this thing. That's fair, Commissioner, and it may not be fundamentally different. I just, we haven't done that exercise. And I think that's fair. And I think, you know, that's where I also mentioned earlier that, you know, we are sympathetic to the resources and the time that you're going through. So we don't have to execute that tomorrow or next month, but as we are looking at, and we started this process of re-looking at our reporting, I think this is for a few years down the line. I think it's, you know, where we're sort of coming down. Yeah, I would just wanna add onto that that, you know, there's, you know, we've talked about PPC rolling up some of their smaller projects into their local spend. We gotta be mindful that all of our licensees have different spend goals and different spend priorities and trying to figure out how CAPEX projects would fit within that. So there's certainly still some work to do. Daphne, I think you're muted there. I can't hear you. I can't hear you. I'm so sorry. There you go. Sorry, no wonder. I'm not being very productive in sharing here. Before we go on, I did want to invite Jill Grippen to comment because she is our expert on these matters. And so to the extent that you could even help inform the discussion right now, and it sounds as though we've got some work to maybe do. Hi, thank you, Chair Jettstein. I did want to clarify the construction workforce goals. The law actually does specify that during construction, the goals need to be equal to or greater than administrative bulletin 14, which is 15.3% for minorities and 6.9% for females. This mures federal goals that were set under the administration of Jimmy Carter. So they've been around for a very long time. And I just wanted to clarify that, that kind of set the, at least the baseline for where we should start. And in terms of construction, I do hear stuff making a distinction between pre-opening construction versus post-opening construction, capital expenditures that are expected. I mean, quite frankly, I saw the capital expenditures as an opportunity to continue this very important work and opportunities for MBEs, VBEs and WBEs. So I'm not an operator, I'm the regulator. So I saw that as an opportunity and now I'm hearing that distinction. But in fact, the statute doesn't make the distinction. Does it, Jill? Well, those figures I recited were specifically for the workforce. And the construction workforce. The construction workforce. And is that construction workforce pre-opening? Well, it doesn't make that distinction. I would agree that, you know, it doesn't mention CAPEX. I would certainly turn to our legal staff to make that interpretation, but I can, I see those points. So what I do hear is a consensus to where all my fellow commissioners chime in is that we do see to the extent that we want, we would like to see these commitments continue to be fulfilled. We very much appreciate the success in the past and would like to extend that, those requirements going forward with respect to construction-oriented projects which would fall under CAPEX. Is that a fair, with some of the considerations around some flexibility in the reporting? Is that a fair statement? Chime in to correct me or add in? Are you seeing some nods? Yeah, I think that's a first statement with the understanding that, you know, we can be flexible as to the timing, you know, understanding of the resources that will be required and a collective understanding of making sure we're not reporting twice unnecessarily, that sort of thing. And I think what we could also do just is, you know, Jill and I can work with the licensees over the next few weeks. You know, the third quarter report is gonna be due, you know, sort of towards the end of October and, you know, in the next few weeks, we can try to see if we can't come to some resolution on this. Like I said, I don't think we're gonna see numbers up to this point because those hadn't been tracked and, you know, trying to, you know, recreate that data would be tremendously difficult. But I think what we can, you know, Jill and I can just work with the licensees for the next few weeks and try to come to some resolution. Yeah, I think that clarification is good. I don't think anybody wants to go back and try to recreate any data that would be unrealistic. It's really going forward. Okay. All right, well, let me put my template just back up. And I think the other issues are pretty quick. I think on these items seven and eight, I don't think those need to be in the report itself, but licensees I think would typically like to include that in their presentations. And I would speak for all of us, we like hearing it. Yeah. So I think one of the key pieces of it, the job titles and salaries and so on, I think, you know, we agreed with PPC when we created this annual report that they would report that only at that time that that would be done under the NDA. And I don't disagree with that, you know, salaries are proprietary and job titles and so on. And so I think that is certainly something that we can do as part of that NDA and part of that annual report. Okay, I'm seeing nodding. So, and then I think the last one, this one here is the RF8-2. And again, this is a tough one, you know, there are, you know, thousands of pages of documents and other things that make various commitments and some aspirational goals and other things. And I guess maybe I'd ask Jackie and Seth maybe to just chime in on that a little bit on sort of what the difficulty there is. Sure, I'll start. Obviously when we submitted our application, I think it was five years ago in 2013, things have changed dramatically between then and now. It was thousands and thousands of pages following that submission. We went through the Meeper process and other thousands and thousands of pages and dozens of MDC hearings and meetings to work through the changes from that application to where we are today. One of the thoughts we had was, it seems like the important parts of what the commission wants us to do that encapsulates that entire process is sort of set both in our gaming license terms. So, you know, would that be a meaningful place to look at to start reporting against? Yeah, Madam Chair. Yeah, I think Joe hit the issue right on the head. I mean, the RFA too is voluminous. There's a lot of follow-up work and some of that's already been done. You know, I'd love it if Joe and Jill could sit down with our licensees and extract and come up with a list of some of those things that we think are important to continue to monitor and probably are already watching. But to, you know, to generate a lot more busy work on some things in the RFA too that have been checked off the list that I think is a little redundant and burdensome. Yeah, let me jump in. I agree with that. You mentioned, Joe mentioned the notion of the tower, for example, at MGM, and that matter has been settled a while ago. Whether we did it, I forget if we did it as part of the Operation Certificate or the conditions of the license, there's absolutely no point in revisiting that if that was part of the RFA too. So I think that realistically, the starting point could be the conditions of the license, but then, you know, for us to go back and look at what might have not made it from the RFA too process, you know, what might have not made it into the license or incorporated it by reference, and now it's important to continue to report on that still applies. I think it's really the goal that we all have. Yeah, you know, there are a lot of those things that are in the RFA too, or excuse me, that are in the license, like, you know, the compliance with host community agreements, surrounding community agreements, those are things that don't get reported back to the commission very often. I mean, I track them, you know, I'll check in, you know, I'll be checking in with Encore soon to say, hey, did you make your surrounding community agreements, you know, that are due on doesn't such a date? You know, so maybe it is some of those things where we just get a more robust report of those things that are really important to the commission. And, you know, I mean, it could be different from licensee to licensee a little bit. You know, obviously traffic is a bigger issue with Encore than it is, say, with PPC. You know, and we may wanna get, you know, we have these annual twice a year reports that are done on transportation, so it's okay. So yeah, that's certainly a possibility. Commissioner Cameron or Commissioner O'Brien? I certainly agree that looking at a way to just identify what continues to be important in tracking that information is the right approach. And that was Joe's original recommendation. Commissioner O'Brien? Oh, I would agree with that. It's, I think, putting the work up front in determining what we believe is still relevant and what's still alive, I think we'll narrow the conversation. I think it will move it along a lot faster too. Karen, Executive Director Wells, I don't know if you wanna chime in. I think it's, you're hearing from the commissioners there's a good way to make this a very workable process. And yeah, I would like to look into more also the idea of tracking it with the license conditions that Ms. Crom mentions. We are looking at that with respect to the removal of PPC's license. I happen to have the statute in front of me and I was looking through that. So I'd like to explore that a little bit more as well. Yeah, and maybe what I can do is, you know, now that I have Tanya working with me, I can maybe have her sort of dust off the RFA twos and kind of go through them at a high level so we can sort of pick out some of those things, you know, just to put another set of eyes on the document, even though it's voluminous, it's probably worth kind of going through and seeing if there are things in there that we still do need to pull out and record on. Okay. Trying to scare her away, Jo. She is gonna know so much about these facilities. It's a good learning process. Jo, I had one other question. The armory activation requirement for MGM, can you remind me how we put that into force? I believe that was a condition of the certificate of operation. Okay. I think I'm trying to remember now, but I know that we did require that quarterly they report on the activation, not for the previous, well, for the previous three months, but really for the three months going forward, what they had planned coming up, you know, we just wanted to make sure that that was, you know, continuing to being activated and utilized and so on. Yeah. I mean, obviously right now, there's nothing going on. So maybe we should read a look at that, but... Any further comments on Jo's report? Jo, in terms of template, is there any other outstanding issue or are we all set now? No, I think we're all set. What I will do is, you know, in the next couple of weeks, I'll sort of refine this and I'm gonna try to put a little meat on the bones to saying, hey, this is kind of how we'd like to see it and get it out to all of our licensees so that they have something that hopefully will be relatively easy for them to follow and, you know, we can give them sort of exactly what we wanna see. So the templates are the same so that you guys are all seeing the same information and we'll sort of leave out those pieces that we still need to, you know, need to work on if we need to work on those. Can I? Seth, yes, go ahead, thank you. Yeah, if I can make one comment, I know we're often pushing back. I want to go and compliment Jo. I think the way Joe organized that conversation, the document we use today and presenting it to us really made this conversation with a lot of moving pieces and a lot of different requirements, very easy to discuss and figure out where there were any open points. So, Joe, you know, I think I mentioned that before, but it was a made the conversation easy and just listening to it today was a very efficient conversation and what could have been much more complex. So thank you, you know, for organizing it in that fashion. Well, thank you. Thank you, Seth, that was very, very kind and also it really helped us organize the conversation. So thank you, Joe. And I feel like you've gotten good guidance from her. I think that there's probably not anything that's really a big separation from us in the licensees here. No, there's no deal breakers here, but I think you can now understand why I haven't quite gotten to resolution. I'm moving forward, excellent, thank you so much. Okay, any further questions for Joe on this topic? If not, we'll move to item four C. Great, thank you again. So this is, so the commission makes four appointments to each of the local community mitigation advisory committees. One is a chamber of commerce representative. One is a regional economic development organization representative and two are for human service providers. Now today, before you, we have five people we're proposing for reappointment to their respective LCMACs and one new appointment to the Region B LCMAC. So the five reappointments are Vincent Panzini in Region A. He is the chamber of commerce representative. We have David Bancroft from Region A. He is the representative of the economic development organization. We have Myra Negron-Rivera who is also Region A as a human service provider. We have Allison Abner in Region B, chamber of commerce representative. We have Ellen Potashnik, Region B for a human service provider. And the one new member that we are proposing is Richard Sullivan for Region B. He would be the economic development organization. And if you don't know Rick, Rick is the president and CEO of the Economic Development Council of Western Massachusetts. He was also previously Governor Patrick's chief of staff and he was also the secretary of energy and environmental affairs before that. So Rick had been on the LCMAC before and he resigned due to a potential conflict of interest. What had happened was one of our communities that applied for community mitigation funds had asked the Economic Development Council to assist them in implementing their community mitigation fund grant. So they did, they agreed to help them out. So in doing that, he had to resign because of a potential conflict of interest here. Now that project is over and there's really nothing else on the horizon that they would be assisting on. And Rick has expressed interest in rejoining the LCMAC and from my experience with him, he had done an excellent job previously and we'd love to have him back on as a committee member. And I guess with that, I will, oh and just before we finish, there are also three gaming policy advisory committee subcommittee members. We're not proposing to vote on them today but they will need to be voted on soon. And those three positions are the community mitigation advisory subcommittee, the public safety committee and the addiction services subcommittee. But again, we're not proposing to vote on those today just on the five existing members and one new member of the LCMAC. So with that, I will open it up for questions. As a reminder commissioners, the Joe has and Mary have summarized- Mostly Mary. Have summarized these recommended members in the materials in your packet. Yeah, Madam Chair, just in just one clarification Rick Sullivan, if in any situation he feels he might be at a conflict again, he is trying to find some me from within the organization but not a staff member that you see that could be a backup or somebody to sit in for them so that the economic development agency still has a representative but it wouldn't be Rick himself if he found himself in a potential conflict again. As Chair said, he doesn't expect that. I have a, just a comment rather than a question which is, I've read these resumes before over the years and if certainly to read the new one proposed, I'm just continually impressed by the team for bringing forth such highly qualified candidates. And I obviously impressed that this group would volunteer their time in this manner, frankly. They're very, very busy people with tremendously impressive credentials but I think this piece is working really well and I do commend everybody for a volunteering and B for our team for really reaching out, conducting the outreach and bringing forth such quality candidates for us to approve. And we still have work to do because we do have still have a couple of openings in the LCMAC. I understand the challenges, Joe but it's just a very, very impressive group. Yesterday I got to pop in on one of the meetings for Region A and I couldn't, I didn't stay but I did express my gratitude on behalf of all of us because as I've learned this process, Commissioner Cameron, I do see that this level with the local voices really serves as the foundation for this extensive process that our team and subcommittees engage in that lead to significant community mitigation awards. So this is the real important local voice. So I echo Commissioner Cameron's thanks and I do also echo Joe's note that there are some vacancies and I've suggested that even Mary and Joe and Tanya reach out and Karen reach out to each of you in case you have ideas as well for the local level to serve. I think it seems to be extraordinarily rewarding and leads to significant awards for the communities to mitigate any impact. So stay tuned, Commissioner Cameron, you may get an ask for ideas as well. So with that, any other comments and then we would want to, we do need to take formal action to affirm at least the current, should we separate out Rick Sullivan from the other so do it as one slate? And then second, we do need to take affirmative vote on this. Yeah, I think we take, Rick, we have a separate motion for Rick Sullivan. Okay, so that's a recommended approach. Commissioners. Madam Chair, I'd move that the commission approve the ombudsman's offices, reappointment recommendations for the following members of the local community mitigation advisory committees as referenced in the memorandum in the commissioner's packet and as discussed here today, Vincent Pancini for Region A-LiC-MAC, David Bancro for the Region A-LiC-MAC, Mara Negron-Rivera for the Region A-LiC-MAC, Allison Ebner for the Region B-LiC-MAC, and Ellen Patashnik for the Region B-LiC-MAC. Second. Any further questions on this motion? That it's okay. We'll roll call vote, Commissioner Cameron. Aye. Commissioner Bryan. Aye. Questions in the back? Aye. Mr. Stevens. Aye. I vote yes, five, zero. Thank you. Thank you, Joe and Mary and Tonya. Moving on to the Rick Sullivan appointment. Madam Chair, I'd move the commission approve the ombudsman's offices, appointment recommendation for Richard Sullivan to serve as the regional economic development representative for the Region B-LiC-MAC as discussed here today. Second. Any further questions, comments? Commissioner Cameron. Aye. Michelle Bryan. Aye. Questions in the back? Aye. And Commissioner Stevens. Aye. I vote yes, five, zero. Excellent. Mary gives two thumbs up. Thank you so much, Mary and John. Excellent work. Thank you. You're all set now? I am. That concludes my report. Thank you very much. Commissioners, it is 11.53. We're about to turn now to our Chief Financial and Accounting Officer. To report, do we need a break or are we thinking of a little break rather than a lunch break for today or a little break and possibly a lunch break? I'm just trying to figure out our planning. Madam Chair, I think if we just took a smelt my opinion, if we took us just a very short break now and then we'd be able to move through the rest of the items without a lunch break and maybe just be prepared to do that, that seems to me looking at what we have left might make some sense. Sounds good. Yeah, it might be a little bit longer than a very short, just having to check in with what's going on downstairs. Do you want to say 15 minutes? Yeah, I would need about 15. I can't do like a five or 10. I need about 15. 15 minutes makes good sense. So it's 10 of 12. Will we convene around 12, 10? Does that work for you? Yep. Okay, all right. Thanks, everyone. We'll reconvene at 12, 10. Thank you. Apologies. Just had a few things to take care of. Okay. Where are we? We're on item number five. We're reconvening. I'm looking for our meeting number, meeting number 320. It's now 12, 15, starting with Derek Lennon, Chief Financial and Accounting Officer. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and commissioners. You know, really good topics of conversation this morning. I just, you know, really struck by how some of these things keep chasing you around as a state employee. I remember when I was a CFO for DCR dealing with the labor statistics and trying to find the most appropriate way to do it for capital construction projects. I know we spent a couple hundred million a year. So I can one, understand the huge public importance of that policy and to sympathize with the licensees about the other as well as the difficulty of making sure that what's being reported is accurate. And, you know, I have great faith in Joe and Jill and Enrique in his past experience to be able to help the licensees get through that with both of those, both of those needs. And the funniest thing is Joe forgot to mention what Rick Sullivan's biggest job was, was as a commissioner of DCR, while I was there as a CFO. So, you know, a great, great person to be adding to that Blip Mac as well. So, but that's on the top. Now it's interesting that you say that's his biggest position. And Governor Patrick would say, Mr. Lennon, I think when he was my Chief of Staff that was his biggest position. So he's had some big ones, that's for sure. Right, it all depends on where you sit. Exactly. But you know, that is, your point is well taken. I think, and that's why I tried to say at the end, I don't think we're far apart. I think all of us just really share that the importance of those goals and the fulfillment of those goals in the overall, in our overall expanded gaming act. And we can provide the support to help them be able to report and accomplish those goals. Yeah, so just very interesting topics. Yeah, yeah. Good to hear. Thank you. Going forward now, Derek, on... Yes, so I'm sorry. For this topic, I'm joined by Doug O'Donnell, our Revenue Manager for the MGC. However, for the first time, we're not joined by Agnes. Retired and taken a few weeks off before returning as a part-time employee for the commission. But Doug and I are here to present the fiscal year 2020 budget closeout report. I will share the memo and try to keep up with it as we walk through. I can find where that memo is. I don't think I can find it on my screen right now. Take your time. We're fine. Okay, hold on one second. Let me stop Karen and try and find it. Can you see that? On page sort of three, four. Okay, let me scroll up. It's on page one now. And the memo's still up. It is. Okay. MGC's revised budget was 33.77 million, which required a $19 million assessment on licensees. Included in both the spending estimates and revenue estimates were the cost for the independent monitor at Encore Boston Harbor. The actual spending for FY20 in the game control fund was 32.69 million in revenues with 33.75 million. Included in the spending of 32.69 million was an even one million in expenses for the independent monitor at Encore Boston Harbor. However, the offsetting revenue was not received until after June 30th, 2020 and was credited to fiscal year 2021. The reason this happened is because Commonwealth works on a modified cash basis of accounting. So if you took into account the million that we received in 2021, the actual surplus for FY20 would be 2.06 million, which would be credited to the licensees FY21 assessment. Just an overview of the final spending for the game and control fund. The final spending was 32.69 million, which was approximately 3.2% less than the approved spending level. And these regulatory costs under spent by one million, which is 3.56% under spending, indirect spending over spent by 128,000, which was 6.3% more than budget. The Office of the Attorney General under spent their allocation by 6% and the ABCC alcoholic beverage commission under spent by 5.7%. The chart on page two of the memo explains the areas of over and under spending. The majority of MBC's under spending was in law enforcement. This had to do with the closure of the casinos as well as not billing back filling positions of both local and state level for law enforcement positions during those closures. Additional reductions were travel, supplies, and purchases of equipment. The commission's revenue is generated from a daily fee for slot machines, licensing fees, and assessment on licensees. The most recent revenue projections were 33.77 million, relying on an assessment of 26.19 million licensees. Actual revenues received were 33.75 million. Revenues exceeded spending, as previously reported by 1.06 million. However, as also previously mentioned, the 1 million in monitoring fees that should have been paid solely by Encore Boss Harbor were not included in that FY20 spending figures. And that revenue was not received until early July of FY21. At the conclusion of the third quarter, we have reported that the assessment on licensees would be 26.19 million. However, the finance office erroneously built the licensees for 26.95 million, which resulted in an overbelling of 764,000, which also contributed to the surplus revenue. So therefore, the actual amount to be credited back to licensees, including overbelling surplus revenue, and then pushing back the million that was received in the beginning of July 2021 for the Encore Boston Harbor Independent Monitor is 2.06 million. The chart on page three of the memo lays out each licensee's share of the credit. And what we've done is we've walked down spending, less revenue, which gives us a surplus, added in the total monitoring expenses. And once again, it's an even million, even though the bills were an uneven million, because we had only set up an encumbrance to that amount for FY20. So our budget was a million. The excess got charged off FY21, which I think was around 15 to 20,000, which left a total surplus of 2,060,000. Of that 2,060,764 was specific to overbelling of licensees, which is laid out right down here. They should have, licensees should have been assessed this much. This is how much they actually paid. The actual assessment paid column, the difference is what is given back directly to them. And then the balance, the 1.296 million, is given to them in proportion to their aggregate assessment, what they should have been assessed throughout the year. So MGM receives 31.34% of that 1.9 million. Encore receives 53.59%. Plain Ridge Park receives 15.07%. Combine the two together, and you get the 2,060,000 that the licensees will receive as a credit. The one area that's left to discuss, and we're hoping to get some guidance from the commission today, prior to going back to the licensees, is the timing of the refund for the surplus revenue. Typically, we would refund it in the next quarter's assessment. What we're doing right now is a monthly billing. So what we'd like to do is split this refund up over the next three months to mirror how we would have done it in previous years by doing it over a quarter. Right now, Doug has some calculations. We're billing about 2.4 million a month to the licensees. So if we gave this all back as a credit right now, it basically wiped out one whole month's worth of assessments and put us maybe at a disadvantage. So, you know, we'd like to take back some thoughts to the licensees. We want to get their opinion as well to bring it back to the commission so we can give you an update on what their thoughts are and how to credit this back on the timing of it. And that's all the prepared comments I have. If there are any questions or comments, we look forward to them now. Commissioner Zuniga, do you want to start off? I don't know if you just want to go back so that everybody knows that the amount's outstanding for each property. That would be your question with respect to monthly. Correct. We've got those numbers, everyone. Yes, let me pull that back up. And then perhaps, Commissioner Zuniga, I'd like if we could hear from you first. Sure. I think Derek did a good job in the memo and of course today in the remarks outlining the basic dynamics here, I personally am somewhat indifferent to the mode or the way in which we credit back the amounts due to the licensees on the one. And that means my neutrality comes from I guess opposing, offsetting rather, perspectives. On the one hand, this is overbilling that we need to licensees, it belongs to them. On the other hand, we are billing on a monthly basis and that is given all of these current situation in which we all agreed it was important to have everybody plan for expenditures, not just them, but us as well. So I really have no preference as Derek suggests. Maybe we can just consult with them and see if they have a preference. I would also note, because I think Derek spoke about this just briefly, that there were a couple of things in this fiscal year different from before and that is the very different composition of gaming positions at the midpoint of the year and in the beginning of the year, which change, if you will, some of these percentages that are articulated here in this spreadsheet, but are a careful calculation of a lot of moving pieces, the composition of the gaming positions, the start of the fiscal year and the end of the fiscal year, et cetera. So that is yet another area that I know Derek will make sure that licensees understand in terms of the calculations behind these tables. I'm confident that they have been checked and double checked and these are the numbers that are due to them, but it's important for them to understand them as well. So just to be clear at the very bottom of the screen right now in my hand corner, those are the three individual amounts that total to just over two million down there. That's correct. I think we can shift the screen off now for further discussion, Derek. I just wanted everyone to see those numbers. So we owe those to the properties and we've had the benefit of briefings, Derek, from you and Doug. So thank you very much. Commissioners, the outstanding question on monthly, if we take the lead, do we ask the licensees? I'm hearing Derek say operationally if we were to do a full reimbursement now, it might, it would put us in a difficult position. Is that an overstatement, Derek? No, it's not an overstatement. We've shifted off to monthly. We'd normally be taking in a quarterly reimbursement right now. So the two million wouldn't have as big an impact, but it would have an impact right now. I'm not saying we can't manage through it. We've managed through tighter cash constraints. I'm just saying it would make my weekly meetings with Commissioner Zuniga more of a discussion about which bills to pay and at what time point. And to be clear, the monthly shift was at the request of the licensees because of COVID and the challenges when they were shut down. Good questions for Derek. I just have a question in terms of, I do think it makes sense given the fact that there was an accommodation that we shift from quarterly to monthly. And now we're sort of in the situation of staying, all right, well, because of that, we now have a cash flow issue. The question I have is, if it's not going to be lump sum, Derek, what is the proposal in terms of timing to repay? So what we do is one third spread out, reducing each month, yeah, reducing each monthly assessment by one third of that 2,060,000. Okay, I mean, I think that seems like a reasonable response to the situation given that we've shifted to a monthly assessment from them. Any questions or comments? I think we're hearing that we would suggest that approach. And any questions with respect to the overall presentation? Well, I'll just make a comment and I've made some of these in the past, but the work that goes behind what is very well summarized in this memo is quite a bit of work in terms of reports, reconciliation with Mars and a lot of spreadsheets that Derek and Doug and others work on. So thank you for all the work you do. It's very deliberate and careful, but again, I will share with licensees so that they can also understand all those ratios behind them. Thank you. Other comments? Other than I think a big thank you from all of us, Derek and Doug and the team behind you, which I know they all make significant contributions, very clear and we appreciate you're following up on the issue that you've made clear to us arose in these complex times, so thank you. So we did get to the bottom of that too, Madam Chair. Yeah, so the overbilling Doug and his team have spent a lot of time dealing with and it was a spreadsheet where we just hadn't. So as Commissioner Zuniga was pointing out, we had our assessment at the beginning of the year, then we gave back 1.4 million of FY19 carry-forward revenue which changed the dollars amount and what licensees were bringing in. Then we had the mid-year assessment change, then all of a sudden in March, we had COVID-19 closures, we had the reduction of 1.5 million in expenditures and then offsetting revenue that we're expecting to come in higher and we were just using an old assessment sheet for the final billing. So we hadn't taken into consideration all of those reductions, but Doug and his team did find that spreadsheet and can track it back. Great, smooth thing. I know that they spent the entire weekend and it took a big effort and I knew that you would get to the bottom of it. I didn't know it would be by today, so thank you, Doug. Yeah, we did. Thank you. We spent a lot of time last weekend over the weekend and I would love to thank Noel and Sarah because they did very deep dives and finding out where the discrepancy was but once we really found it, we were able to reconcile everything and it matched out. So it was a good team effort. Thank you. So Commissioner Cameron, did you want to- So I think what I'm hearing and from the two by two as well is that because of the pandemic, things had changed and some of the assumptions had changed. So this is a kind of an over-billing that is very unlikely to happen again because of these very unique circumstances, is that accurate? Yes, that is very accurate. Since 2015, this is our first over-billing ever on the assessment. So it's, I mean, we spent a lot of time trying to figure out how this could happen and this just attracts back to so many moving pieces during that time period and spreadsheet. By the way, sorry Ma'am Chair, by the way, I would rather us have over-billing than under-billing. The context also explains a little bit here which was a real watching of the cash flow during a period of great uncertainty with the closure of the casinos and the licensees making every effort to also manage their cash and taking every day that they could in terms of when the billing happened and when the payment was due. So, but anyway, I'm glad that we have, we clearly have a process to reconcile and this is just what normally happens. Chair, okay, I just will echo the same as when I had my two by two, it's two by one. I, most important for me was that the over-billing was found and that I appreciate and then you've given me full competence in the fact that we are restoring the licensees fully and the fact that it will happen over a monthly basis given all the circumstances including the relief we gave them with the monthly assessments. I feel that this happened during very complicated times. It was identified as a problem and then you were able to now conclude exactly where the mistake may have happened but you've given me full competence and the licensees should be fully competent that they're made 100% whole through today's report. So thank you, I appreciate it, the full report very much and the overall report, that's not getting lost and with respect to this is your, the end of the fiscal year budget report. So if there are any other questions on the overall report as to the independent monitor, billing, we also are working as a team internally to make sure that we process those bills now that we've gotten more comfortable with the invoicing in a way that we should be able to achieve some benefits on prompt pay too. So to my side of the point here, we are able to monitor that really well and thank you Derek and your team for supporting that. Thank you. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you, thank you, Doug. Good to see you. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right, then we now have item number six, covering a lot of territory today. Responsible Gaming, that are Research and Responsible Gaming Director, Mark Bandelman. Good afternoon, Chair and Commissioners. Yes, you are covering a lot of ground today. Let me take you over into a far corner and talk about the status of the implementation of section 97. I'm joined, I believe, by Dr. Tom Lane, who should be available to help us answer some of the more technical questions should we go there. So chapter 194, section 97, requires that gaming licensees provide the MGC with customer tracking data collected through their loyalty programs. So the player card information at MGM is in my vet. On course, the red card at PPC is my choice of life. So providing that information, the intent of the data is what's really important is to be used by qualified researchers to develop a better understanding of gambling disorders and measure to mitigate gambling related harm. Within the memo that I provided to you, I included the exact language of section 97. So this is largely a summary of that. Let me say from the onset, this collecting this type of data falls outside of my area of expertise, but I'm feeling confident by the process that we have in place as well as the expertise that have come to the table that the commission should be satisfied with the end result that's removed in that direction. To avoid the risk of proprietary player data information being misused by competitors, the MGC agreed to delay the implementation of section 97 until all three gaming licensees were operational. Commissioners integrate, you may recall back now several years ago when this decision was made. However, now that we have the three licensees up and running, it is time for us to roll this piece out. So over the spring and summer, several activities have been underway to support the implementation of section 97. I do need to say that we did have some stops and starts especially as COVID was heating up back in March, April, and May, but I think that we now have traction again. One of the most concrete steps forward was the establishment of the MGC's mode or the Massachusetts Open Data Exchange. While mode does not currently offer an option for using player data, it's outlined in section 97. It's envisioned that once the data channel is established, it will be in an ideal environment of doing so. As I said before, we've leveraged the expertise of a variety of different stakeholders. Leading this effort is, or co-leading this effort, I should say, is with me, is Dr. Tom Land, as well as select members from our research review committee who's kind of background and knowledge really lend to this type of setting this up. We've also met with others. We've been in communication with the Department of Public Health, who manage very large health data sets. And their expertise is important, but it's also important as we walk down this path with them since they will ultimately end up hosting this data set along with the other data sets that we have in mode. We've worked with CHIA, the Center for Health Information and Analysis, which is also, and this is completely within kind of the realm of the type of work that they do. So we've leveraged their help as well as looked outside of what's happening in the US to the Gaming Research Exchange of Ontario or GRIO. And just to get their thoughts on this specific project. I even had a meeting earlier this week with the Game Sense advisors who understand gambling related harm, probably gambling in the trajectory there to see if they had any additional input on elements that we should include in this project. And finally, we don't wanna forget the central and very important involvement of our licensees. I've been in contact with each of the licensees to just get a sense of how work that they've done in this area or what size data set they would project that we would be working with. MGM has been very helpful. Thank you to Seth and Daniel Miller for their help in beginning to coordinate some of this. We had an interesting meeting with them where they began to kind of lay out some of the data elements that are required in Section 97, kind of beginning to put some of the meat on the bones if you will. This is a long ways from being done. We have several next steps that are coming our way. One is to take a look at data models where this is made accessible by accessible to researchers. In communication with Grillo, I had not been aware of any such data sets in the US or elsewhere. They forwarded to me a couple of interesting studies, one looking at using that player data to begin predicting whether or not somebody would be enrolling in the voluntary self-exclusion program. And another just looking at behavioral markers of play that may be associated with problematic play. I was encouraged by the fact that the data that these studies looked at were included in the requirements outlined in Section 97. And I think that speaks to the incredible thoughtfulness of the authors of that section of Chapter 194. Other important pieces that we need to begin taking a look at is going back to our licensees and identifying the raw data elements that need to be captured and how those data elements need to be organized in order to get to the type of data set that can be used for the goals of Section 97. Again, looking at remembering what the original goals of Section 97, including being able to understand gambling disorders and the measures, perhaps measures that we can take to mitigate it. So really understanding that, holding those goals in mind and that should inform how we organize the data elements. So some of that includes, do we want some summative data elements or do we want the entire transaction of these data elements? What would be more useful for the researchers in order to begin to answer some of those questions? We also need to finalize a comprehensive data dictionary. So once we have those data elements, putting definitions to those, we need to continue to work with the Department of Public Health to expand the current ISA with the MGC from the data sets that are hosted through mode to include the player card data. We will work with VPH as well as CHIA to develop usage levels for the data cards and we will begin to develop a secure access plan. Dr. Landon and I had a good conversation with Katrina earlier in the week, assuring the security of this data, ensuring that it is truly anonymized are two essential pieces of this. The MGC is highly aware of this as well as our licensees have each made that piece, raised that point to make sure that that's covered. So we'll continue to work with VPH to host these types of data sets. CHIA, who is also well informed of this, as well as our licensees to make sure that they're comfortable with the data as it's being transferred. Ultimately, the end goal is at a certain point in the not too distant future within the next, I would hope three or four months that we'd be able to have our first data transfer from our licensees into mode so that it's accessible. Anecdotally, in discussions with others, both within the US and Canada, this is an important data set. There isn't one that is like it, at least within the United States that takes casino level data and makes it available. So I understand and respect the stakes here, both in terms of kind of charting this new path for this data set, but also what the potential of doing this is. So we are not taking our role in this lightly. We wanna make sure that you as the commission and the field in general can really fit in. Before we turn it over, I wanna make sure Dr. Land, if there are other important pieces that I either just skimmed over or left out altogether. I don't see his tile, did he phone in? Yeah, I saw him earlier. Perhaps he's not there, or he broke out. Well, why don't we go ahead and open it up? He's not somehow. Oh, I see his tile. I see his tile too. So perhaps, let me see. Dr. Land, if I can hear me. Now I can. I think I just redid it. My apologies. Dr. Land, there you go. Okay. Yeah, I don't have anything to add to what Mark just summarized, but if there are other questions, I'm happy to help answer them if needed. Any questions for Mark or for Dr. Land? Commissioner Zinnicka? Yeah, just a comment, which is the concern that everybody shares relative to protecting the anonymity of the players. That's the number one priority for everybody involved, not just the licensees, but ourselves and of course, on behalf of the players and the pH, et cetera. I think one thing that goes under that concern is that if players began to suspect that data that they are using was being used in some way to identify them, then that would itself almost kill the data usage and the loyalty cards. And that's a very, very far away scenario, but there's multiple reasons to be really protective of the identity of the players and all the systems that are being put in place so that that doesn't happen. But the flip side of all of that is that there's real promise as to getting some real insights, especially as I know I've heard Mark but especially Dr. Land say, how this dataset combined with other datasets, then you really get into some powerful insights as to what maybe components of people entering the risk territory and insights as to what certain behaviors and attitudes may result in. So which is the whole intention of this statute. So I think the fact that we're here eight years after the gaming act was approved, really going on this topic in earnest is a testament to how careful we had to be and how important this process was as well. Did you wanna chime in on something, Tom? I think I heard you say something. Yeah, I would hopefully you can hear me. I would just add that what is unique about this dataset is that it is actual behavioral data. It's not self-reported behavioral data. So this is information about what the players have done and not their assessment of their own behavior. That in combination with other datasets can truly give you insights into the risks and the benefits of gaming for individuals who are actively playing at the casinos. That's right and our other researchers, Dr. Volberg have pointed out a number of times how when it comes to gambling especially, there's other areas of course, self-reported data is quite unreliable for a number of reasons. And that's especially the point that Tom is making. But it's great to have another source of data to triangulate the information that we have. Self-reported data may be obviously not as reliable as the actual data. But I think that the two datasets together can work together to begin painting a clearer picture. Other questions, comments for Mark and Dr. Land? Really good introduction to this topic. I know that you've touched on it in the past, but the progress is important to report on. I'm looking forward for the next steps. Three to four months sounds pretty good. Yeah, I think the purpose today is to give the commission an update and to kind of put a stake in the ground and hold us accountable to move this forward on a timely basis. Thank you and thank you, Dr. Land. Hope you're well. Okay, so we're moving on now to item number seven on the agenda. You've allowed me. I'd like to just set the stage for our presentation today, dated publicly before I convened in June an equity inclusion working group in light of recent national events to consider how we as members of the MGC community address our unconscious biases and operate to avoid disproportionate negative impacts on communities and individuals of color. I wanna be clear. I appreciate and we publicize frequently that the MGC has grounded on a longstanding strong commitment to diversity and inclusion in the commission ratified as a founding principle, the value of a diverse workforce and supplier base and inclusive culture internally and among our partners in the mass justice gaming industry. At this time, however, there is an opportunity we feel and I feel to renew the commitment that you've adopted early on and examine how best to ensure its fulfillment and proactively address racial inequities. From my perspective, the timing to launch this work could not be more appropriate. Last week, Massachusetts learned of the untimely death of Ralph Gans, Chief Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court. And by the end of the week, the country learned of the loss of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Both were devoted to achieving systemic equity for all. Chief Justice Gans just days before his death released a comprehensive report completed by Harvard Law School at his request in an attempt to better understand the sources of racial disparities in the Massachusetts criminal system. Justice Ginsburg's lifetime of breaking down barriers to equal citizenship stature of men and women make her an iconic figure across generations. The footprint of the MGC is small. And particularly when we think of the breadth and reach of the decisions and work of those two justices. But the impact of the MGC can be significant. As a regulator, we address the intersection of critical public and private policy and at any touch point, our decisions and our systems may have a disproportionate negative impact on people of color or result in an obstruction to equitable treatment and opportunity frustrating. We know key objectives of the expanded gaming act as well as our established values. So the working group is going to present today an action plan intended to serve as a sustained but a dynamic framework to further the MGC's long standing commitment to diversity and inclusion. Our footprint may be small, but our goals are appropriately big. As Justice Ginsburg said, real change, enduring change happens one step at a time. So I'd like to again introduce and thank the members of the working group. You'll hear from each of them today. For me personally, this has been an enormously collaborative effort to watch and be a part of. Working with this group has been a personal pleasure. I appreciate each member's thoughtfulness, attention to detail, candor and teamwork. So I'll turn it over next to Commissioner Zuniga, but I wanna remind everybody that in this working group, we have the benefit and it will continue to have the benefit of Executive Director Wells, Jill Griffin, our Director of Workforce, Fire and Diversity Development, Trip de Banda, our HR Manager, Tanya Perez, Program Assistant and Paul Eldridge, our Financial Investigator. So Commissioner Zuniga. Thank you, Madam Chair. Let me just give a little bit of an overview of the process and what you will be hearing next from each of the members of the working group in the packet. As you all know, there is a document that begins with a statement of purpose and the action plan, a five point action plan that the Chair outlined. We spent a fair amount of time editing the document in a number of meetings like these with the working group. It is of course meant to be self-explanatory and stand on its own, but needless to say, it is provided to be edited as my colleagues think it might be appropriate. This is a document that we expect the Commission to really own and adopt as its own. I'll provide a little bit more context. The subheading as the Chair outlined is really from one of our original core values. It's about valuing inclusivity and diversity. We have taken principles that have been in existence for a while, but of course, of how the diversity of backgrounds yields better outcomes in a number of areas. But we've also adopted additional or more recent principles that are important to highlight. As in particular, this notion of being an anti-racist, something that I talked about last time, but it bears repeating. It's this notion that being neutral is unacceptable and you will see it more fleshed out in the document. It's a term that has been coined by Professor Ibram Kendi, but there's other recent authors who are also speaking about how society is judged by the outcomes that it produces. And today, it's a great opportunity this day and age to revisit the efforts that we have done in the past and continue those efforts. Another point, the important is really this notion of re-examining, examining and re-examining this topic. Just from last commission meeting, the big insight of the wrap-up presentation of the consortium of the trade women in construction was that in order to move the needle, you really require a village, it takes a village, it takes a lot of all of the stakeholders, and it also takes persistence. It's much too easy to go back to the status quo once the trend lets up. So with that, I'll turn it over to, I believe it's Jill, who begins maybe talking about the document. Commissioner, I believe that Tanya is prepared to share the document, if that's helpful. And second, Dr. Wells, is this the format that you want, Jill's next? Oh, yes, exactly. So Tanya's all ready to go. She could share the document and then we'll turn it over to Jill, who's gonna go over the statement of purpose before we go over the initial action items. Thank you, Commissioner Zuniga and Chair Judd Stein. It's my pleasure to share with you our statement of purpose. The MGC is committed to racial equity and justice, diversity and inclusion, and expects the same of its employees, licensees and other stakeholders. In our society at large, there are systems, policies and practices that continue to yield inequitable outcomes. As a result of these systems, communities of color are disproportionately negatively affected and or afforded benefits and the opportunities to a lesser degree. Although the MGC remains committed to safeguarding all protected classes from discrimination, recent national events have underscored the urgency for all of us as an agency to take action on racial equity. We recognize that in addressing systemic issues, everyone who is a part of any system has an opportunity and responsibility to examine how those systems work and to dismantle barriers obstructing racial equity. We embrace anti-racism as a guiding principle. Anti-racism in contrast to an absence of racism calls for proactiveness. On the topic of racial equity, neutrality is insufficient, reserves the status quo, and is equivalent to an abdication of moral obligation. As such, the MGC adopts these principles and pledges to follow a proactive approach of continuous engagement towards developing and ensuring an environment of equity and justice. So I'd like to turn it over to Executive Director Wells to discuss implementation. Thank you very much, Jill. So as part of the plan, we also have in their statement that the chair and the Massachusetts Gaming Commission convene the equity and inclusion working group in an effort to consider and examine relevant operations within the MGC and create an ongoing action plan to address racial inequity. The plan will be supported and executed by the entire MGC team. The Executive Director will be accountable for the plan's implementation. So we have five initial action items. So for the public meeting today, we split that up between five of the staff members who are in the equity and inclusion working group and we'll go through all of those with a brief introduction and then reading the action item into the record so the commission is aware and these action items are public. So for the first action item under culture, I'm gonna turn it over to Ms. Tanya Perez. Hello. So we at the MGC want to ensure that everyone feels welcomed and included. We all have our own cultural backgrounds but we also have our workplace culture where everyone should feel comfortable and everyone should feel comfortable being themselves. What better way to nurture that, that healthy environment than to share with and learn from each other. So we developed these cultural action items. Develop and sustain an agency-wide internal culture of proactive inclusion where everyone can belong, contribute and succeed. Strategies include training. Provide training and education on such relevant topics as unconscious bias, diversity and inclusion, racial discrimination, communication and social media use, et cetera. Create a resource library. Communicating and reporting. Proactively enhance transparency by increasing communication and reporting on existing and future anti-racism efforts. Celebrate our community. Organize a voluntary culture club to share experiences, literature and other forms of expression and resources to enrich the understanding of different cultures, histories and experiences. Thank you so much, Tonya. The next action item is a regulatory review and I'm gonna turn it over to Paul Eldridge to speak a little bit about that and read that item for the commission. Thank you, Mary. Given that the EMGC is a regulatory agency and given the importance of our regulations and how we and our licensees function, the Chair and the Commission had already identified the need for an updated regulatory review process. This group thought it was important to include criterion in that review to ensure fairness and equity across the board. As such, the group included an action item that reads as follows. Regulatory review. As part of an agency-wide regulatory review conducted no less than every three years, include a criterion that requires each regulation to be reviewed through an anti-racist lens. Ensuring that the regulation one, does not result in a disproportionate negative impact on and two, eliminates barriers to opportunities for individuals and or communities of color. Thank you so much, Paul. So the next action item is regarding customer service. So I'll turn it back over to Jill Griffin to deal with that one. Thank you. At the EMGC, the culture we emphasize is one of excellent customer service. I know that each department has a customer, whether it be internally facing or externally facing. For example, I get great feedback when I refer small businesses to the licensing department. But we want to ensure that every individual receives equal outcomes. And those are not unequal due to unconscious bias. So number three, customer service. We will examine EMGC's policies, procedures, and the implementation of practices with respect to our customer service and community outreach in order to ensure fair and equitable processes and accessibility to advance economic prosperity for individuals and communities of color. Thank you. Thank you so much, Jill. The next action item is hiring and retention. I'll turn that over to our HR manager, Tripp DeGanda. Let's see, Tripp DeGanda. I'm here. There you are. Hi there. Hi. Since its inception, the commission has made efforts to have diverse representation in its staff. This is an ongoing process. And going forward, we look forward to reexamining and strengthening those efforts in order to increase diversity at the EMGC. The focus on hiring and retention has been identified as a critical priority in the five-step plan. I look forward to continuing those efforts with senior leadership managers and staff across the agency where everyone can contribute in their meaningful way, which brings us to number four, our hiring and retention. Review and enhance EMGC's internal hiring and retention practices with the objective of increasing and elevating diverse representation throughout the EMGC. Areas of focus and strategy include job descriptions, outreach and recruitment, mentoring and development and retention efforts. The EMGC will continue to publicly monitor and prioritize licensees, hiring and retention practices with respect to diversity and to encourage increased representation and elevation of diverse employees. Thank you. Thank you, Tripti. And I'll address the last action item, procurement practices. The group took a look at not only what we can do internally as an agency, but also we can do externally to have a positive impact in the community. And one of the ways we can have an impact is on how we spend our money. So we list a procurement practices as one of the action items. That is to reexamine and revise procurement policies, procedures, and practices to maximize the EMGC's and licensees minority-owned business spend. So the working group will periodically report to the commission publicly on these ongoing efforts. But I want to say thank you to Chair Judd Stein and commissioners Amiga for working with the staff on this project and for convening the group. I look forward to implementing these and reporting back to the commission. Thank you. Thank you. That was a great question. Comments and questions from our fellow commissioners. Commissioner Stevens. Thank you, Madam Chair. And first of all, great work on behalf of the whole interagency group working on this, everybody stepping up and contributing. I like the fact that we're not losing focus is the length of this commission's life goes along. And we've seen some success. And as we tell our licensees, the goals you set should not be the ceiling. They should be the floor. So we should continue to make every effort to surpass that. So this is, I think, a great action plan to help the commission stay ahead and stay committed to its mission. So thank you for the whole team's good work. Hi, Cameron. Yes. First of all, I think this is such an important working group, I was so pleased to hear about it because it really is critical. I love the words proactiveness because it really does take proactive intentional kinds of efforts to make these improvements. So to follow up on what Commissioner Stevens said, the fact that we are continuing to try to focus on this as opposed to just saying, this is what's in our mission statement or this is what we believe in. Taking really intentional steps is really critical. If you're just standing still, you're falling behind. So I love this document. I read it. I so much believe in all of these principles. And again, with things like hiring and retention, all good areas, one thing that's really important too is the analysis piece. We had three diverse candidates. How come we were not able to? Where are we losing candidates? And I think some of our own people internally will be our best recruiters. If we have the appropriate culture, people see an opportunity to succeed, they become your best recruiters. So I love the work you're all doing. I love that you each took ownership of a piece of this in the presentation. That's tremendous. And I can hear it in your voices, how much you've bought into this and believe in it. And that is so very important. And I'm just proud of all of you, frankly. And Chair, I think this was a brilliant idea, frankly, and putting this group together. And I'm just proud to be part of a commission proactive when it comes to these issues. Any further comments? Commissioner Bryan. Just to echo what it's already been said, but to also reiterate, I think a comment that was made earlier on when we were doing something boring is looking at our own administrative rules and things about harassment policies. But this is just a bigger example and a magnification of the fact that every little bit helps and the fact that there was this inclusive process to get the feedback and the viewpoint of a number of different people in this organization to come up with this outline, I think, was a great way of doing it. So I look forward to seeing it implemented. And I thank everyone for the time that they put in to make it happen. Thank you. Commissioners, those are all generous comments and really do reflect the overall efforts of the team here. I think Commissioner Zuniga and I are kind of beaming right now because we're at a really great point right now where we can turn this work over now to Executive Director Wells and use this statement of purpose and these action items as a lens for the work that we do. We are here today, though, because as much as we're very excited about it, we do feel that it does require the buy-in from all of our fellow commissioners. And then, of course, we know many of our team members are here and they've heard the statement read and understand our intentions. So if you agree, we would like a formal ratification, if you will, of today's statement of purpose. And again, Commissioner Zuniga, I want to give you a chance to comment, but to each of the five who presented, thank you. And as somebody that's Commissioner Cameron and Commissioner Bryan and Commissioner Stebbin said, they recognize the work and the contribution and the thoughtfulness that you've each provided. Commissioner Zuniga. Sure, thank you. Well, I think a lot of it has been said. I would comment that to thank you, Cathy, for taking the leadership on this, recognizing that this was something that was important to do on convening the group that passes along to the rest of the agency, this group, this work. But of course, we will all remain very much involved in the actual implementation steps because we all have a role to play in every one of these action items. So we all hope that there will be more meat to those bones in this outline. This is only an outline, but the work continues. And again, also thank you to all the members of the working group who provided tremendous input and really great work. Lots of heart and lots of thoughts. So thank you. Do we have a motion for a ratification? Are we comfortable going forward today? Well, Commissioner Cameron, perhaps you're muted. I'm happy to make that motion, Madam Chair. I move that the commission endorse and ratify the statement of purpose. And if five guiding principles for the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, equity and inclusion working group by enthusiastically make that motion. Yes, second. Second. Thank you. Well, then we'll call vote. Commissioner Cameron. Aye. Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Zunica. Aye. Commissioner Statham. Aye. Aye. Yes, 5-0. And thank you. This is, of course, a launch. And I think Commissioner Zunica said it will take the entire village. And I think everybody will enthusiastically support your efforts, Karen, as you implement this plan. So thank you. Thank you so much, Chair. OK. Hey, we're doing pretty well on our timing. Next item is number eight. So the good news, bad news. With the promotion of Karen Wells, which was very exciting to the position of executive director, we have created a vacancy in the IAB. And so, as I mentioned in our agenda setting, meeting that I thought that it would make sense that I would go ahead and recommend for the commission to consider making Loretta Lilios, who serves as deputy director and enforcement counsel of the IAB, the interim director of the IAB. And before we consider a vote on that, I had only hoped to make the recommendation and then have each of you reflect on that recommendation. And then if we decide to move forward, we would take a more formal action with the benefit of executive director Wells chiming in on compensation in those issues. So I don't know who would like to speak first with respect to that recommendation. Commissioner Cameron? Yes. Be happy to. I wholeheartedly, I have had time to think about it. And I wholeheartedly agree with the recommendation. I have had the opportunity being actively involved with the IAB for a number of years. I remember the first day Loretta came to us from the AG's office to assist with the bulk of work we had to do. We had very few staff members at the time. It was immediately impressed with her subject matter expertise for willingness to just jump in and help us in any area we needed help and have watched her over the years continue to add value to our organization, stepping up in many, many ways in her role at IAB. So I think it's an excellent recommendation and I wholeheartedly agree with it. Thank you, others. This meeting and commissioners. I'm going to go with commissioner Stevens. You got the vocal. All right. Sorry about that. Commissioner is going to get. No, I like commissioner Cameron wholeheartedly agree with the recommendation. Miss Lilios is an incredible member of the IAB team. And over the years, she's been very patient with somebody whose background is not in law enforcement investigation that she's been great in kind of tutoring me and mentoring me along the ways. I think it's a great recommendation. I think she can step in and relieve our new executive director of a lot of the two hats she's been wearing. So this is a great recommendation to move forward with. Commissioner Nica. I agree as well. And I'm very, very comfortable with that in many ways. And this is not to take away anything from the job that Karen did while performing in those two jobs. But in many ways, that was possible because Loretta was already stepping to the plate of effectively doing a lot of the work that needed to be done at the IAB. And from the beginning, she has done that very methodically. From as we are all remembering some of those early days, she has come in and tried to really learn. And the new industry that we all knew was new to many of us, experts in other areas, but somewhat new to gaming. And I think it's very appropriate. I endorse it 100%. Commissioner Bryan. Sure. I once again feel like I have an unfair advantage because I probably know Loretta longer than even Karen in this regard. Having been in the DA's office way back when, I do think it's an excellent choice not only for the fact that she stepped up already. I do think that her detail and deliberation and the thought choices that she's making and the legal choices and recommendations that she makes are an asset, particularly as we've been going through the COVID period that we're going through. So I think it's absolutely the right recommendation to make. And I think it makes sense then for us to take formal action. If I have a motion, so this would be for an interim status, we'll have a follow-up discussion on the competitive hiring process after this. But this would be for the interim status. Do I have a move? Chair, I move that the commission-designated attorney Loretta Lillio says interim director for the investigations and enforcement bureau. So I can. I'm thinking I'm not going to hear any further comment. So we'll go ahead. Commissioner Cameron. Aye. Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Zuniga. Aye. And Commissioner Stevens. Aye. And I vote yes. 5-0. Thank you. And in terms of taking on this responsibility, Karen, you and I talked about this, and we thought that it would make sense for you to go and speak with Derek, who really worked with Commissioner Zuniga and me on the last two interim positions. So. Correct. So as far as appropriate compensation, I did confer with CFO Lennon on this. We've reviewed the past range of our interim pay, and that generally goes up to 12% to 15% depending on responsibilities. The recommendation is that this interim increase be 15% for a number of reasons. One, it's the broad scope of responsibility in this position. I can attest. This is a big job. There includes the oversight of four divisions within the agency and state police. And there's a broad scope of responsibility that we've warned that. She's also going to be continuing her role as Chief Enforcement Counsel, so she will be doing that work as well. And we also noted that there won't be any responsibilities and oversight that will be shifted to anyone else of the commission. So she'll be taking over the entire shop as it was overseen by me prior to her taking over as the interim. So for those reasons, that's the recommendation for the 15%. So that would be the 15% increase over her current salary in her council position, correct? Exactly. Exactly. Any questions for Executive Director Wells with respect to that recommendation? I think that recommendation sounds is sound. I'm sure we've asked her if this is the job she wants, but I think that's all that's taken care of. I talked to her. And I did talk to speak with her, of course, of course, before making the recommendation. Loretta, you can still bow out. Please don't. I can confirm that I'm very excited about the opportunity. I've been working with this team for a number of years. I know them well. And I'm really looking forward to this. Thank you very much for your confidence. And I think we should move seamlessly in this period, the interim period ahead. So we confirm that, Commissioner Stevens, it is an important preliminary inquiry. So in terms of the compensation, the 15% boost makes sense to you in light of the fact that she will retain her other responsibilities and the full bailiwick of the IEB position, the lead position. OK. Any further discussion? No, just to say that I'm in agreement, I think we've discussed those ranges in the past. And I think, as Karen outlines, it's entirely appropriate. Yeah, those ranges were, we investigated that when we were looking at the last two interim positions to see about best practice. Yeah. Commissioner O'Brien, anything you want to add or do you want to make a motion? Nope. Just make the motion, actually, at this point. Madam Chair, I move that Commission authorize an interim salary increase of 15% for the duration of Attorney Lilius' appointment as interim director of investigations and unfortunately, you're up. Second. Thank you. All right. Roll call vote. Appreciate Cameron. Aye. Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Zuniga. Aye. Commissioner Stevens. Aye. And I vote yes, 5-0. Then I think that we just wanted to speak about the next steps on the hiring process. I do want to note that, as Commissioner Zuniga said, she will be, of course, doing both roles. So timing is probably something we want to keep in mind at this time. But Karen, can you speak on the process that we've talked about? Yes, yes. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm hearing an echo. Are you hearing me OK? All right. It seems to be OK now. So yes, we will be conducting a competitive hiring process for the position of the IEB director. Plan is for me as the executive director and Kathy as the chair to work collaboratively on the process. It's important to note, even in the statute, it talks about that position being reporting to the chair of the commission, that the specific language is that providing the chair that the duties of that position shall be overseen and discharged subject to the direction, control, and supervision of the chair. So I think it makes sense for I have the support of the HR department and all the resources in the office to work with the chair on that process. So currently, we're working on a job posting, and hopefully we'll post that shortly. And then similar to the way we worked with the general counsel position, I'll be engaging with the other commissioners for input and engaging them on the process, obviously, in compliance with the open meeting law. So ultimately, I expect that we would come before the commission for approval on that final candidate. But I just wanted to outline that process and put it out there. If there's any questions, I'm happy to answer that at this time, but that's the plan going forward. And hopefully we can do this in an expedient manner. Any questions on the process? Only to mention that it sounds on board. It sounds very much the way we've done it in the past, which I appreciate very much as well. Right. And very much, I think, the most recent experience would have been you and I are meeting in terms of the executive director and in terms of the general counsel. I think this is a critically important position. We have the benefit of Karen having had that position. So the insights are enormous. But we also want to make sure that it's fully competitive. And we need all resources available in the commission to make sure that that happens. So thank you. And one first up, congratulations to Loretta. We appreciate her willingness to step up into this position in an interim role and appreciate particularly her enthusiasm to do this. So we know we're in good hands as we go forward. Any further comments or questions on the process? All right. I'll set then. We don't need any formal action on that, Karen. And we will move forward then in terms of any individual updates. Mr. Ners. Madam Chair, just one real quick. I had the chance to do a kind of a regular checkup with Director Ban and Deputy Director Cain from the gaming agents yesterday. Again, this is a reminder to our licensees that we need their full cooperation and assistance when it comes to catching switchers of jackpots. A critical step that's easy to take to make sure that people who shouldn't be gambling are not gambling and people that have obligations to the Commonwealth are not trying to slide by their obligations. So just a general reminder to keep for us and our licensees to keep a focus on that. But I appreciate Mr. Ban and Mr. Cain's updating and reporting to me. So good work. Thank you. And congratulations, Loretta. Very deserving. Thank you very much. Other updates? You know, I'd like to mention something. On the eve of this statement of purpose on the equity and inclusion working group that we just did a little while ago when all these unrest first came about, I drafted something that I thought at the time could be a blog post or if thought through more, perhaps even an op-ed, an editorial that could be perhaps picked up by somebody in the press. With what we've done, the purpose of that would be to perhaps tell the story of what we've done at the commission in the area of the aspect of economic development with aspects of backgrounds of people with some disqualifiers in terms of licenses to be able to operate at the casino. So I wanted to mention that that never went anywhere. There's still a draft that I have in that document. And I wanted to mention that to my fellow commissioners to see if anybody would be opposed to the idea of writing, of me writing these, and at a minimum, it would become a blog post that everybody could just see internally of my take on our history wrestling, if you will, with this topic. But hopefully we could also tell that story a little further. In commenting with Cathy about this probability, she suggested I should mention it because we really have not had a process of how any one of us could write or speak publicly about some of the business of the commission. As I mentioned, the intention would be nearly to try to tell the story in a summary way of what we've done in this topic. I would just jump and say I think the timing is excellent. I would encourage you to do that and tie it in with the work that we've discussed here today if all makes sense and not just to tell internal stakeholders but external stakeholders as well. I know the Laura and me takes over at this point, Enrique, that I, well, I laud the idea. I'm loath to say go ahead until I read something and I kind of know the exact extent in the context. So while I hear what you're saying and I've laud the effort to get other voices out there, I guess maybe you and I need to have a deeper conversation or maybe in some other forum to truly understand blog posts versus op ed versus and what exactly it says in terms of invoking sort of the commission behind it. So I think it's a great idea to get the voices out there. I guess I'm a little uncertain about exactly what the context and the confines of the article are. Fair enough, which I can try to at least mention now or follow up at a later time, a couple of things. My idea would be that this would come from me as an individual or at least that was the initial take that this would not be necessarily, I would not be speaking on anybody, on anybody's behalf. Because I do recognize that if anybody was to pick it up would be because of my position as a commissioner, not just because of me. I first, I wanted to run the idea by you. And secondly, I could also come back and look at a draft with you collectively or any one of you individually with the two commissioner rule that we've had in the past in which two commissioners deliberating about something is not yet a violation of the open meeting. So I know this is, again, the tension behind trying to, in my view, say a story that's worth telling to somebody else besides who joins us for our meetings regularly and our staff who reads our blog posts. It could go no further than that. It might not be of interest to anybody. But I think the timing, I feel a bit of a duty of saying something about what has been my experience in this area and an opportunity to say in this time around. I do recognize I would never pertain to speak on behalf of others. But I recognize that that is a potential concern. You mute. Doesn't look like you are. Who's that? Now, Commissioner Cameron, now we can hear you. Oh, yeah, no, I wasn't trying to speak before. I thought you were and I couldn't hear you. So I would just like, Enrique, it sounds like you're talking about your own personal experiences, not necessarily those of the commission. Is that right? Or is it a combination of your life experience and work with the commission? Well, yes, it would be my take on both my experience, which, of course, goes without saying, but more relevantly with my experience at the commission. Again, I think I know it has to be thought through. And as to how it might be perceived, it's hard to write to a pager that does justice to ensure that something like this is coming from my perspective. And again, in recognition of that, I'm more than happy to try to share something for anybody who might be interested or offer that with anybody who might provide, let's say, second perspective. But again, my intention is never to have something be coming from the commission as a whole. And with that in mind, I figure I still needed to mention that to you. Well, I'm glad to talk about it with you. I certainly support your right to do this. And I support your feeling of duty to get something out there. I understand it completely. And certainly have worked with you long enough to know that all of your actions are taken with the best interest of all. I've worked with you for so many years now. I certainly understand where you're coming from and have learned to trust your judgment. So I understand the concerns. And be happy to talk to you more about this. But I certainly support your right to do it. Thank you. So perhaps people might be interested in reading. And in terms of confine with the open meeting law on Rique, you can arrange perhaps with Todd's support. I think you know that I too support the right that you have to express your view. And I also appreciate that you've said clearly that you would establish that it's not necessarily the viewpoint of the entire commission. Although perhaps, ultimately, it would be something we'd adopt. But without knowing, we wouldn't be able to say that right now, of course. So I feel like you're getting a go ahead in terms of sharing. And from my perspective, I look forward to reading it. Thank you. Thank you. Any other commission update? I have one. I believe that our very own Commissioner Cameron will be speaking with the AGA. There's somebody like Jim Murn speaking or something, maybe on the fireside chat. But to be clear, Commissioner Cameron will be representing the commission and really with her experience speaking on addressing COVID as an operator. And with colleagues of ours, I believe I think Sandra Morgan out of Nevada will be there, and as well as Ronnie Jones. So if you don't have that, I've signed up. But I wanted to make sure that maybe Sarah will make sure that you all have that access so that we can tune in to the Gail. Madam Chair, thank you for mentioning that. And of course, I will be reaching out to all of our subject matter experts to assist me with making sure that my remarks are truly reflective of the work we're doing here at the commission. So thanks. And get ready for the phone calls to talk to you about the different aspects of what this will be about. It is on the 8th at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. So I'm hopeful that our commission meeting will be concluded by then. So I don't have to step away early to fulfill this request to speak by the AGA. Well, thank you. Any other commission updates? All right. It is 1.45. You know, Mary Ann pretty spot on in terms of our timing. So we thank Mary Ann and Jamie, of course, who do all the magic behind them with Austin's good help. It does take everybody's efforts to keep us moving along. And today was a particularly interesting, diverse agenda. So to all of you who presented and all of those who have stayed on throughout the meeting, we thank you. And thank you for each of your contributions. Anything else anybody wants to add? Just a motion to adjourn, Madam Chair. All right. You know what, somebody's getting hungry. And we've heard the second from Commissioner Stebbins, Sharra. So I'll take the roll call vote. Commissioner Cameron. Aye. Commissioner Bryan. Aye. Commissioner Zuniga. Aye. Commissioner Stebbins. Aye. I vote yes, 5-0. Thank you, everyone. Appreciate it.