 Good morning Dave Maltrow. We're good to go. Good morning, Andrew. Okay. Good morning everyone. This is the convening of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission. We're holding this meeting virtually. So this December day, good morning, Commissioner O'Brien. Good morning, I'm here. Good morning, Commissioner Hill. Good morning, I'm here. Good morning, Commissioner Skinner. I know you have to be out on video right now. Good morning. Good morning. Okay. And good morning, Commissioner Maynard. Good morning. All right. Well, for those who have been celebrating holidays already, happy holidays, and those who are looking forward to it, let's continue to hope for joyous days. Starting today is public meeting number 492. It's December 14th, and we have some minutes, Commissioner Maynard. Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that the Commission approve the minutes. I'm going to do them together since we're all here and we can break them out if we need to. From the March 8th, 2023 and the March 9th, 2023 public meetings that are included in the commissioner's packet subject to any necessary corrections for topographical errors or other non-material matters. Second. Any edits or corrections? Extensive minutes. Thank you, Commissioner Maynard. And thank you to, I know that there's a whole host of team members who work on these. Thank you to them. All right, Commissioner O'Brien. Hi, Commissioner Hill. Hi. Commissioner Skerve. Hi. And Commissioner Maynard. Hi. And I vote yes. Five, zero. Thanks for both sets. Nice work. We'll move right on to the administrative update then our interim Executive Director, Todd Grossman, and of course our General Counsel. Good morning, Todd. Good morning, Madam Chair. Good morning, commissioners. And good morning to our team and all who are joining here this morning. We do have a couple of items for you for the administrative update. First, we'll hear from our gaming agents, Chief of Burkane. We'll offer an update as to some of the holiday plans at the casinos over the course of this season. And then we'll hear from our Director of Racing, Dr. Alex Lightbound. We'll offer a recap of the racing season that recently concluded at Plain Ridge Park. And then an update as to the state of the annual report for the racing division as well. So with that, let's turn to Burkane first. And good morning to you, Burk, if you'd like to jump right in. Thanks, Todd. Good morning, Chair. Good morning, commissioners. Good morning to everyone. Happy holidays. With the holidays best approaching, I thought it would be a good time to give an update to everybody on some of the happenings at the casino during this season. Starting with PPC, PPC began renovations on their food court, which they will publicly share all those changes at a future date. While the food court is under renovation, the sports bar will be open for lunch, seven days a week. On New Year's Eve, PPC will include a midnight balloon drop, dinner specials at the restaurant, and a live band will perform at the Revolution Lounge. Over at MGM, MGM hosted recently during Thanksgiving the Mayflower Marathon event. It's not a running event, but it's a food collection donation drive. This year, MGM broke another record with over $212,000 worth of food and cash donations. And that'll sustain the food bank for approximately six months. Also the MGM ice skating rink out into Plaza has been installed. It opened on 1124, that actually coincided with a tree lighting ceremony. For New Year's Eve, a Fleetwood Mac cover band called Tusk will perform in the area ballroom followed by a DJ performance. Party favors and a glass of bubbly will be given to players on the casino floor at the stroke of midnight. MGM also has a Toys for Tot holiday drive both back at the house and at the casino entrance. Lots of toys have been collected. Angela actually sent me a picture and it includes a bicycle. So that's a nice gift coming to some lucky child. Over at Encore, recently Encore invited members of all their player card tier groups to pick up New England Patriot WeatherTech jackets. Over 6,000 of these jackets were given out. It's a big hit on the casino floor. Encore employees also assembled over 550,000 meals at their feed to funnel initiative for local distribution at the end of November and early December. In the Picasso ballroom on New Year's Eve, they're expecting between 1,000 and 2,000 guests to watch the New Year pop in. And lastly, on Encore's official webpage, there's a bulletin for all the holiday specials, all the festivities, all the restaurant specials to give a notice to the public for any events they may like to attend. And that concludes that. Any questions you may have? Missions. Nice report, Burke. Thank you. Anyone have any questions or comments for Burke? I don't have any questions, but my only comment, oh, Madam Chair, my only, my comment would be if you can let them know back at the properties, you know, food banks and food drives this year are so important. I just saw a report recently that more than ever people are in need of food. There's a lot of food insecurities out there. And knowing that this has been a priority for everybody, I think they should know that as at least from one commissioner, how thrilled I am that they have chosen to make that a priority, you know, in their community interactions. Yes, thank you. Totally agree. And I will pass that along. Thank you, Commissioner Hill. Thank you. Anything else, commissioners? Thanks, Burke for the timing, Todd. Yeah, well done, Burke. Thank you. And Dr. Leipan, let's turn to you if you want to jump into the recap. That would be great. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you. We had another great season at Plain Ridge this year. It was a very safe season for the horses. I want to report that. And then also we were fortunate this year, there is a nationwide veterinary shortage, particularly in horse related industries. This year, Plain Ridge was able to get a full time backup veterinarian that worked out great and we were able to get a full time blood gas vet, which we hadn't been able to do in a while. And the Lasix vet who had been around for a long time retired and we were also successful in getting another Lasix vet. So it was wonderful to have, you know, all those extra veterinarians on and we really appreciate them all coming on. I wanted to thank HR and IEB and the state police because near the end of the season, we got a little short on veterinary assistance and we did repost the job and got people through the background successfully and got some more help near the end. So that was very nice. Our state police unit helped out with the sire stakes program for the finals. Plain Ridge wanted to have all the horses come in the day before and be quarantined overnight. And our state police unit was involved in that. So a good shout out to them. And, you know, when we do the annual report, we'll have more statistics for you in all later, but just wanted to give you a quick couple of highlights from this season. If you have any questions. Commissioner's questions, comments for Dr. Lightman. Congratulations on a good energy point out safe season, Alex. Excellent. Okay. So now we'll move on to the end report them for the previous year, 2022. Again, the sire stakes purse money went up a little bit to 2.5 million. It was 2.2 the year before. One of the big things we had to do that year was move the spirit of Massachusetts day over one day due to the extreme heat conditions. And again, that took a lot of cooperation between the grand circuit people, our local horsemen, obviously Plain Ridge and Steve's staff and then our own staff. It can be challenging to make sure that everybody can move from one day to another because they all have other commitments and all. So big shout out to everybody for making that possible and making it a much more pleasant and safer day in the cooler weather. Persons continue to go up a little bit. Our licensing and badging continued, you know, around a little over a thousand. And we had a very low incident of positives for that year. We had a total of seven and four of those were for permitted medications that were just a little bit over the limit. So that was great. The judges rulings did go up considerably to 197 from the previous year of 117. That's primarily because we're taking a strong stance on use of the whip. And I think if anybody watches our races from around the country, you can see the difference. It's very noticeable. The judges have met with the drivers before that meet. And again, before this meet, to go over what is expected and what will constitute a violation. And so I wanna give a shout out to the judges for doing that and for PPC for backing that up and for the drivers, you know, they drive in all over the country, some of them. And so it can be challenging for them to meet the requirements for the different states. And I appreciate them for making the effort to follow our guidelines here. And Chad's here to go over the financials. If you wanna move to him next or take questions. Any questions for Alex on her piece so far? Great, thanks. Thanks, Dr. Wipo. Thank you. Yes, good morning, Madam Chair and commissioners and happy holidays to everyone. So as Alex mentioned, I'm just gonna run through a few of the financials in the report. Total revenue in 2022 was 2,136,853 dollars. And the majority of that came from paramutual wagering commissions and assessments, which was 964,750,000 respectively. The overall handle was down almost 8% year over year compared to 2021. And this is to be mainly attributed to, excuse me, a decrease of 18 million in our ADW handle, which makes up almost 72% of the total handle. As for the division's program and trusts, paramutual wagering generated an additional 486,000 for capital improvement trust funds and 148,000 for promotional trusts. And lastly, the racehorse development fund distributed over 16 million. And we did see an increase in the overall purse of 1.3 million that benefited our horsemen and women. Lastly, the division provided almost $1 million and local aid to cities in town where racing activities took place. And just a quick thank you to the finance team and Steve O'Toole who helped put this together. And that's the end of my comments. Thanks, Chad. Questions for Chad? Chad, can you, if you have already reminded us of this, could you just remind me again then of, I think you said it was an 18% decrease in ADW. Do we have any, is there any intelligence as to what contributed to that decrease? Yeah, so 2021 was sort of an anomaly. It had to do with the COVID and where people were kind of cuddled up in there and their rooms and the only thing, the only wagering that was going on happened to be horse racing that took place basically in Australia, Ireland and the UK. And so I think there was a kind of, of the retraction and went back to the mean there. And so that's really where we saw the big decrease. Right, and I know for purposes of our budgeting for this coming year, it seems to have shown some stabilization of that decrease. So. Yeah, and also for this year, you know, with the additional, they were, I believe five additional ADWs added through some of the sports betting applications and licensees. So that's still out to see how sports betting and the five ADWs will, what effect that they'll have on racing. So it should be pretty interesting. Good, and again, for more details on that, somebody could look back at our most recent discussion on budgeting for next year. So, but this is 2022. Yeah, Derek, Alex and I and John have been discussing that. So. Okay, well, thank you. That's a good reminder. Any other questions for Chad? Dr. Lightbaum? We're all set. All set. Todd? Thank you, Chad. Alex, well done. Thanks again to Burke and that concludes the administrative update. Okay, on number four, we've got commissioner's update to the top of this, mainly because at least one commissioner might have to leave early. We're gonna see how our day proceeds. I had reached out to legal and got a little advice commissioners we had read in the news that a complaint was filed in Massachusetts Superior Court against DraftKings and DraftKings did make an appropriate and timely disclosure to IEB. And I'm sure you have no view or comments to the substance of the complaint. But in the past, we have asked the IEB to review and monitor such outside litigation matters to determine, you know, for example, if our regulations are implicated in some way. I've reached out to legal and Caitlyn is here. I believe that your recommendation was to have IEB monitors. Am I characterizing that recommendation correctly, Caitlyn? Yes, I believe it is up to the commission, but that is an option of the commission. Right, so that was certainly an option. Commissioners, are you in agreement? Commissioner O'Brien. I think I'd like to do a little bit of a deeper dive into the complaint. Part of it dovetails with our role in terms of making sure we don't have anything deceptive or unfair in terms of bonus offers, things like that. So I do think I would like a little more of a detailed, like when they filed the answer to the complaint and our motion to dismiss, like I would want to revisit it at that time whether we want to be more proactive. Because it was a rather substantive claim in terms of the motivation behind the bonus. And it's a group that is somewhat local. I mean, you have a local university that was vocal very early on when we were doing our right. So I want to circle back to this once the answer is filed. I think that that's contemplated in my reference of what I was referring. It's like to monitor and give us those updates. We had a similar litigation matter, remember on Blackjack and the same kind of advice. So I agree with you entirely, Commissioner O'Brien, if I didn't want to minimize IOB's role. And then the only other thing in terms of timeliness, maybe a little more clarity on from IEB on what the expectation is in terms of when something like this is brought to their attention and when we hear about it. Because we've had some licensees who get sort of noticed from a call from the press and haven't been served yet and notify us immediately, notwithstanding not being served. And then there's people who get served and then notify us. So just looking for a little more clarity on when that, what the expectation is in terms of calling something Timeline. Caitlin, do we have any guidance on that in our regs? I don't believe there is specific guidance in the regs that that is something that we've only IEB could discuss and provide some insight into. A little more clarity. Yeah. I would appreciate it. Thanks. But Chair, I could provide a little bit of clarity briefly on this if it helps. Thanks. It's our understanding that the complaint was filed on December 8th and then we received the recent notice so it has not yet been served. Just wanted to make sure everyone's aware of that. Thank you. Yeah. So they received it. I'm sure they took a look at it and then they got right in touch with Heather. So that's helpful, Commissioner O'Brien. Yeah. I mean, I for one learned about it in the press, which I didn't love. And so that's what I'm getting at is I'd like them to notify us at the same time something might hit the newspapers, if possible. They may not always be able to control what's in the press, that's all. I understand that. But we've had circumstances in the past where they know something is going to be in the press. And so I think just a courtesy phone call that IEB would be appreciated. I understand. I agree with that. Yeah. Okay. Commissioner Maynard was also with being with that. I think I see Commissioner Hill as well. All right. Madam Chair. Yes, Commissioner Skinner. Just a point of clarification. Has it been determined that no commission regulations were violated here? I don't believe there's not a determination that there was a violation here. Heather, you're indicating, you're not indicating that there's any concern that disclosure is that correct? No, there isn't, Chair. We just were made aware of this as well. We haven't reviewed, we haven't done a thorough review of it. But like I said, the complaint was filed on December 8th and then we received notice from the draftings I would leave this two days ago. So that was a short timeframe for when the complaint was filed. The eighth being on Friday, then there's a weekend. Yeah. Yeah. My question speaks to more of the- The substance. The substance of the allegations. Oh. So when you say- Commissioner Skinner. Commissioner Skinner, can I just, can I just put a pause on that? Because the intent here was simply to not discuss the nature of the allegations. Understood. Okay. Understood. But when you say that the IEB will monitor what exactly does that entail? Well, they would not only monitor, but they're monitoring was really what Commissioner O'Brien was getting at, in terms of the development and getting back to us but also review it. This is litigation that doesn't involve the commission directly, but there could be implications around our regulations where we might need to even add clarity. And so that's the kind of thing where IEB would be able to advise and be using their skillset to look into the substance of the complaint without us being truly involved. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. And to Commissioner O'Brien's point about wanting to see the answer to the complaint in the media, there was reference to a 17 page letter that was issued by Drapkings. And so maybe it would be helpful to get, not maybe, I think it would be helpful to see that at least in the interim until the complaint is answered, excuse me, is filed. So I guess my direct request is that we seek to obtain that. Makes sense. Any other comments? I'm gonna, I'm only going to repeat but legal recommended and set IEB, use their skillset to give us the advice along the way to the extent that there's documents that commissioners want, I'm sure that they'll be made available. Okay, moving on then to the next item, item number five, human resources. I'm assuming there's nothing else there because I just don't want us to get out ahead of ourselves. And I just think IEB can take the lead on that and make anything available, commissioner wants. Okay. All right. Turning them to Chief Moldrew. Good morning, Madam Chair. Good morning, commissioners. Happy holidays. She will train candidates approaching me, presenting an interest in the interim IEB director position. I have discussion with each one. One of the candidates after a very positive discussion self-selected themselves on the process. The remaining candidate, we had a very positive discussion the following day had an interview upon conclusion of the interview and assessing the candidate's responses, skill sets, past work experience. I am recommending Caitlin Monahan to be reviewed as a potential candidate for the interim IEB director position. Thank you for that recommendation, commissioners. I think that we left it that we would have to put a mark on our approval. We had asked for this recommendation from Chief Moldrew, first I wanna thank you. Dave, you've got a lot on your plate and the fact that you did this in speedy fashion in what sounds like a process that you're comfortable with. Thank you for your work, commissioners. And we also, I'm going right here, thank Caitlin for her willingness to step into this role which we anticipate will be relatively short. Commissures, are we all set? Commissioner Bryant. I am, I wholeheartedly support the recommendation. I can move if we're ready for a motion. I didn't know if other commissioners wanted to comment first. I wanna make sure Commissioner Hill's got a thumbs up. Commissioner Skinner. I am in full support. Commissioner Maynard. I am also in full support and I just wanna point out that Karen Wells and Loretta Lilios and Heather Hall and I think Caitlin fits right in there. So. I am delighted with this recommendation. And it's not lost on us and actually the public, the contributions that Caitlin has been making. And I do think she's had the benefit of full sum lens to step into this role. So, and I see Commissioner Bryant, you're nodding your head. So I appreciate this recommendation very much. And I suspect that the folks in the IEB will welcome Caitlin and her experience and knowledge in team play and collaboration. So thank you. Commissioner Bryant, you wanna move? Certainly. I'm sure I moved that the commission adopt the recommendation of Chief Dave Muldrew regarding the appointment of Caitlin Monaghan as interim IEB director and authorize Dave Muldrew to take any steps necessary to complete this appointment. Second. There we go, Commissioner Hill. I think there's probably no further discussion. Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Commissioner Skinner. Aye. Commissioner Maynard. And I vote yes. Five-zero. Thank you, Caitlin. You know, I know Heather's smiling and I know that Heather will be working with you closely on a great transition and will be able to acknowledge, Heather's giving the thumbs up, acknowledge Heather's contributions to future meetings. So thank you. And thank you for this opportunity. I look forward to working with the IEB and thank you, Heather. Yeah. Thank you. Heather's got a transition memo that's only this long. All right, good. All right, then I'm gonna move on to a couple of items for that Commissioner O'Brien and Commissioner Maynard are involved with. Let's start with the mission statement update and to clarify, it's really Commissioner O'Brien will clarify. I did add vote because at a moment of this, Commissioner O'Brien and I thought, is there a possibility we could actually vote today? So thank you. Sure. So this was because Commissioner Maynard and I were integrally involved in the drafting of it, the better approach for OML open meeting would be to just distribute today and then come back for a vote on the other day to give the three of you the opportunity to really look at it, digest, put any, you know, thoughts in in terms of edits and then we can vote at the next meeting or if that one's too stacked on an agenda, the one after that. I don't know, Commissioner Maynard wouldn't add anything. I did wanna thank the team. They were a quick succession of meetings and a lot of thought went into wording and, you know, intent. And so I think the team did a really great job on the draft. Commissioner Maynard? I agree with everything Commissioner O'Brien just said and the team was really intentional in every word, every phrase, every sentence. So we did want the commission to have the same opportunity to think about each one of those. And the goal was really, you know, 10 years, a decade plus into the commission to look at what the next decade is going to look like, not what the last decade looked like. So that was the intent. And we hope we look forward to any feedback. Well, I thank you for that work. I think Grace and I worked on that team and appreciated the two of you stepping in for the leadership, but it was a little bit of a dream team. A lot of good perspectives from across the agency. And I suspect it was also a fun team. So, and from my perspective, the product is looking great, but I appreciate the additional time and of course the full compliance without the meeting also. Commissioner Skinner and Commissioner Hill and I can take a closer look. So thank you. Excellent. I'm not sure what the rule of thumb is, but if it's every 10 years, Commissioner Maynard or if there's another big expansion of duties, right? Which was another spark. So thank you. All right. Now on the internship program, Commissioner Maynard, and I know Tripti's been involved too, right? Yeah, Dave and Tripti and Mark VanderLinden and Katrina. I think I hit everybody, Commissioner O'Brien and myself. We met in late October and October 25th and had a really good conversation. And this, by the way, this update is really just to keep us honest. This is not as polished as Commissioner O'Brien's last update. But we talked a lot about what does an internship program look like across state government? What would it look like for the MGC? On November 7th, Tripti sent an internship proposal for review. It included 11 questions that would be sent out to managers. And the idea being that this is really going to be a pilot program is what we're thinking. Start small and start with managers who want to take on the responsibility of managing interns. And so that's where we wanna start. Just a few weeks ago, Chief Muldrew was able to get his hand on some copies of DOT's materials that they give out at college campuses. And we were able to look at, A, what's on the materials, substantively, but B, what their timelines look like, right? Like when do they go out to try to recruit people? Are they six months ahead or are they eight months ahead? We're gonna be a little behind the eight ball as the agency, I think. But that's okay. I think we're gonna be much smaller than someone like DOT to begin with. So I think the next steps are to confirm with the managers and troop D I'll let her speak up if we're there to meet again as this group to discuss materials and a budget. We did get to the point where we think there should be some sort of renumeration for the internship program. What that looks like, we'll talk with the COO and then we would update the commission, make sure that everyone thinks we're going the right direction and then try to launch and get an actual intern class in the year 2024. That's the goal. That's the update. It's great. Commissioner Bryan, I know you've been hoping for that and the co-op program does have a little bit of a set timeline. It does. My time there. That's why. Yeah. And some of the different universities and colleges do. So that's part of this is figuring out when the jumping off point is. I also did want to tip a hat to Trudy. I know she did some of this at her past job and then expressed an interest in supporting the team. So she was also raising her hand to do whatever it takes. So a lot of people, you know, yeah, I've been asking for this for five plus. You're very happy that we have traction. And it looks like it might actually happen in 2024. And I have to say, I feel like everybody else did way more on this than me once we got going. So thanks to everybody on the group. Yeah. That's great to know Trudy about your background on that because it does take a good degree of organization. So there we go. And I know, Commissioner Maynard, you had such wonderful experience in your last position with interns. And so hope to get that part going. I can speak to the negative part is I spent all night last night writing recommendation letters for people that interned for me three years ago. So that is something we can look forward to. Commissioner Maynard, you want to reframe that, right? The pleasure of writing those letters of recommendation, right? Yeah, all right. That's great. Thanks. That's a really, really important initiative. And as we've noted, it can really serve as a great pipeline. Going to turn right to item number eight then. If everyone's all set or do we have questions for, all right, legal, we've got a couple of regs. Good morning again, Katelyn. And we're back. I am looking for Nina, who is not here. Would it be possible to hold on the regs and move to number nine while I get a hold of NK? Oh, I didn't hear you. I'm sorry at the beginning you said, so somebody's not here. We can ask, can you believe it? Are we just flying through? Is that? I think no one expected to be here at 10 or 7. If you wouldn't mind giving me a couple of minutes and we can maybe move to nine if that's possible. Are you comfortable moving to nine? Because does that implicate you too? Is that all right? It does, but we do want to be. Let me just see. Bruce, what about if we did nine B first? Is that helpful? I am so excited that we're ahead. I don't see Director Bambi. I do see Andrew Steppen. Manager Steppen, hello there. Could we shift to nine B commissioners comfortably? Are you all right with that? Well, Caitlin lines up the legal piece. Oh, yes. Yes. All right, good, thanks. And then Andrew and Bruce, you're all right with that. Okay, good morning, Andrew. How are you? Well, thank you. Good morning, Madam Chair, commissioners. Only one item for your review today for me. Beginning on page 178 of your packet. This is a potential non-compliance matter self-reported by fanatics betting and gaming, FGB or just fanatics. On Wednesday, December 6th, the sports wagering division was notified by fanatics of accepting a single wager in Massachusetts on the Boston College football matchup against SMU. This particular game is the Wasabi Fenway Bowl scheduled for December 28th at Fenway Park. The single wager was made at approximately 2.21 p.m. Eastern time on December 5th in the amount of $50. Per fanatics submitted incident report the December or per fanatics incident report from December 5th at 11 a.m. Eastern time through December 6th at 5.50 a.m. Approximately 18 hours and 50 minutes. The event was live for wagering in Massachusetts. The prohibited market was mistakenly turned on by a fanatics trader manually during the daily market process. Once discovered, the fanatics trading team removed the prohibited market from their system and set the market to off and was no longer available to its customers in Massachusetts. Fanatics stated they implement a dual validation when offering markets in a specific jurisdiction. However, this error was caused by a single trader erroneously turning the market on. Per fanatics, their compliance team has worked with the trading team to reiterate the importance of verifying markets are permissible prior to activating games during the daily market authorization process. Fanatics has stated they continue to refine its trading practices and will work with its traders to refine the gating process. And in this context, gating is the process of turning markets on or off. Pursuant to 205CMR 24703 section 11, fanatics promptly notified or promptly voided the wager after accepting the prohibited event and provided prompt notification to the sports wagering division. Additionally, fanatics promptly notified the sports wagering division when issuing the refund to the single customer. However, per 205CMR 24701 section two, subsection A2, an operator may not offer sports wagering on any collegiate sport or athletic event involving any collegiate teams from the Commonwealth unless the teams are involved in a college tournament. Per chapter 23N section three, a collegiate tournament is defined as a series of collegiate sports or athletic events involving four or more collegiate teams that make up a single unit of competition. As this bowl game is not a tournament, this is being brought forward to the commission as a potential non-compliance matter. I mean, I do see that we have Michael Levine from Fanatics also on the meeting today to help answer any additional questions. Madam Chair. Thanks, Andrew, and thank you for the report. Before we go into the substance of the report, perhaps, can't let her mean it if you can remind us of where we are with respect to what would be expected of the commission in light of the nature of this particular case? Absolutely. Let me give a little bit of background for context of where this case is versus where other cases have been. So for prior non-compliance matters, they have come into the commission in some way, shape, or form. They've gone to sports wagering and then tie B for an initial evaluation. I won't say full investigation, but an initial evaluation. The IED has then presented a short report to the commission regarding the potential non-compliance event. And it's been up to the commission to decide how to move that forward. And the commission can decide how to move that forward pursuant to the statute and regulation, and in particular 205-CMR-232. And there are three main things that the commission can do. First, based on the initial information that comes in, it can decide on a civil administrative penalty, provide notice of that penalty. And then there's a process for the operator contesting basically the penalty if that's what the operator chooses to do. And that is pre-adjudicatory hearing. That is a process set out in statute. The second option would be to send the matter to the IED for further investigation. And then the IED can come back either with a recommendation or the IED could be authorized to pursuant to 232 to put out a notice of non-compliance or issue a penalty pursuant to the regs. So basically send it to the IED for handling in the first instance. Then the third option would be to schedule for an adjudicatory hearing, which is what has been done previously with regard to potential non-compliance matters. And as part of that, the commission could also ask the IED to either provide information as a witness or as a party that's up to the commission. So that's what's been done thus far. This particular matter is in a slightly different stage because it hasn't gone to the IED yet. You're hearing it right from sports wagering. It's not an issue, it's just a different process or it's in a different place in the process right now. But with that overview, it's up to the commission to decide how it wants to move forward with this matter. Madam chair. Madam chair. I've got commissioner Hill first, commissioner Skinner. And then I'll turn to you. Sorry, watching windows. Thanks, commissioner Hill. Just a very quick question, Kate. When the first option was an administrative. A civil administrative penalty. So the commission could decide now we're at another date on a penalty based on the facts as they understand or the allegations facts as they understand them right now and move forward in that way. I'll share my opinion in a moment, madam chair, but I'd like to hear from commissioner Skinner first. Thank you, commissioner Hill. I was just going to ask Caitlin if she could review option number three again. Sure. Option number three is to essentially say the commission is going to look into this or is going to evaluate this through an adjudicatory hearing. So if the commission decided to take that route, it would also make the decision of whether it wanted the IEB to either prove, basically serve as a witness or as a party in the matter, which would mean that in either instance, the IEB would, well, in the first instance, if the IEB was a witness, it would do an investigation, create a report, present that report to the commission and be there as a witness to answer questions, but not make a recommendation. If the commission decided that the IEB should be a witness in that matter or I'm sorry, a party in that matter, then the IEB would take all the same steps, it would do the report and it would come forward, but it would be a party and it would make a recommendation. You need your adjudicatory hearing. Thank you. Commissioner Maynard, Commissioner Bryan, also Commissioner Bryan has her. Yeah. So this was self-reported really fast, manual error one off, but I still think they should be treated like we treated the other licensees who had something similar on college vetting. I'd like to do it as streamlined as possible though, like treat them the same, but as expeditiously as possible given the nature of this. So I know we did full bonus adjudicatories that came before us, that seems a bit overkill for where we are in terms of our regulatory experience in this now and what happened, but those are my thoughts. I just throw out in terms of how we should approach it. Madam Chair. Commissioner Maynard was just leaning in right before you, Commissioner Skinner. So I'll yield to him. Sure. Thank you. Yeah, no, I feel very similar to Commissioner O'Brien. I think a couple of things. One, it's a future bet, right? That matters to me. It was caught long before a future bet. It's one bet. It's on an illegal gain. So to me, it's very different than some of the other ones we've seen where it was about odds or something else. And so I would not want to, A, waste IEB's time putting a full-blown adjudicatory hearing together, but at the same time, I do think we should look at what happened and how this got through. I mean, for better or worse, like how did the issue happen and how can it not happen in the future? But I will give kudos to the licensee for catching it early, letting us know early and getting it taken care of before it even got to us. So I appreciate that. Commissioner Skinner. I am aligned with commissioners Maynard and O'Brien. I wonder where this fits in in the context of the proposed non-compliance review protocols that we saw last weekend that the team is working on tweaking for us. There are degrees to non-compliance in my mind. Yes, non-compliance is non-compliance and we should be absolutely paying attention to each incident. But it's been stated that this is really something a lot different than what we've seen from the other incidents. And I agree that this is not something that this body should be so formally reviewing. So I'd be interested just to have further discussion as to whether this is perhaps a category one. I'm just trying to, I'm drawing a blank on the exact reference from the protocol we saw a couple of weeks ago, but whether this would constitute in IEB's opinion that lower level incident that wouldn't even perhaps come to the commission for any further review. Just throwing that out there because it is something I think is worth discussing just in light of the minimal I think harm that has occurred as a result of this non-compliance. Thanks, commissioner Skinner. I have to applaud the operators while for being prompt and it was a futures bet as commissioner Mina pointed out. I think the event isn't scheduled till December 28th. It's a Fenway event. So it was out there, but I wanna make sure and I apologize for needing the clarification that maybe my fellow commissioners might want it to on our first, the first compliance matter with a different operator where it was caught early. It was one that I can't remember if the event had already occurred when it was caught or if there's a distinguishing factor there. I wanna, I want folks to remember that and that decision has issued. So it's a matter of public record. Caitlin, can you help me out? I can, I don't wanna, I know there was a, there was a decision that the commission took up and had in due to hearing on similar facts, the futures that really hadn't happened yet and it was canceled and refunded prior to the event taking place. I can pull it up and figure out exactly which one it is if you'd like me to do that. There was one that was canceled outside of the one that I was thinking about or is that the first one on a Massachusetts team? I believe there was one on a Massachusetts team and I don't wanna say any more about knowing exactly which matter it was, but yeah. And Bruce and Andrew might be able to clarify too. Have we had this situation before where it was caught in advance of the event? I just wanna make sure we're using similar logic here. I don't fully recall whether it was caught like this before the event. I think on course was caught a little before the event. That was like last March, so I'm not totally positive on that. Do you remember Heather when you guys brought that before the commission? I'm trying to kind of draw my mind here and looking at it. I think the prior, they were paid out. I mean, I think the event happened on those. Yeah. Right, it was your run. It was BC and UNC, BC and University of Louisville and then there was a third game all in February. Yeah, my memory is, and I don't want to, I don't wanna overstep this, but the games happened and could there have been a future mixed with one that already happened by the time it was caught? Perhaps, my memory doesn't get there, but I think this is the first single incident of a single thing that was pretty far off in the future. Very far off. Pretty sure. Yeah. Yeah, I think all the BC ones from February, I think the events did in fact happen. They were caught, but not in time to pull me down before the event occurred. I'm just gonna put indulge me because that we're all sort of a little bit foggy on this and it might warrant some additional work just to make sure that, and again, this is not to suggest that I'm in, what my personal thinking is on this matter, I think I've acknowledged by gratitude for the early catch and also sports way drinks, good work, but I just think we probably need to know how the facts are distinguishable or confirm that they can be distinguished. I was just reminded that this was the Encore Non-Compliance event, and it was, the fine was issued. There was a wagering on an unauthorized event involving Massachusetts College of Team. EBA accepted one wager on a February 2nd, 2023 game, and it was open for about five hours, but it was voided prior to settlement of the ticket. So it's similar in that regard. It was part of a parlay. And that there is that distinguishing that there's a parlay. But I would just vote, excuse me, sorry. Oh no, no, go right ahead, Kayla. I guess I would just note that the fact that there's been an event with similar facts is helpful, but I don't know that that is determinative of the commission's decision here and how it wants it to move forward. And I think that's what the commission has been sort of saying all along, is you'll have, you'll review a handful of them or whatever you think is appropriate, and then that information can be taken into consideration and moving forward. So I think the commission still has the option to do any of those three things, retain it for new due to hearing, send it to the IEB for further review, or issue a civil administrative penalty now. Commissioner? I mean, I think from where, I think if I'm hearing everybody where I was coming from is to be explicitly reminded, maybe the decisions and or the incident reports on those other issues that are very similar to this and then come back and say, well, this is how we wanna, like I'd like to learn from that and then treat everyone equally in terms of non-compliance. That's where I'm coming from. So I do think us making sure we all have the back history on the prior two that we've done potentially, no, three that were done in this regard with two of the breaking orders. That would be helpful for me because I do wanna deal with it as non-compliance. I wanna do it as expeditiously as possible, but I wanna do it treating everybody's similar. And using, I think the challenge Commissioner O'Brien will be to start, the streamlining of our process, which I'm also hearing, but maybe, and again for the operator, the facts are still distinguishable, but I think we should just refresh our memory. So I'm in agreement with Commissioner O'Brien. Commissioner Hill, what are you thinking? So what I'm thinking, I actually agree with Commissioner O'Brien, but I also agree with what Commissioner Skinner is thinking because I'm thinking the same thing. As we were going over the review of the non-compliance last week, in my view, this would be something that would be a first option. It would be a civil administrative penalty. However, for consistency purposes, back to Commissioner O'Brien, we really can't do anything at this point except option. Well, we could of course, but to be consistent, we need to go with the third option. So my recommendation, Madam Chair, is that we go with the third option for this particular issue. We keep reviewing non-compliance, but in the future, to me, something like this would be in that category one. As we continue that dialogue, for today's purposes, for consistency purposes, we really need to stick with the third option. Until we get that policy down, and Todd, we've had that discussion. I know that you are all working on, right now focusing on the category one to help Director Van with, you know, really institute his practices in compliance with what the Commissioner is all thinking. Madam Chair, what I'm hearing from the Commission is we all agree. We were notified very quickly. It was a game in the future. It was shut down immediately. The bet was taken back. That's a civil penalty, in my view. You know what, having trouble with Commissioner Hills, I'm not sure what administrative or civil penalty is. And that's why the continued dialogue needs to happen. Yeah, I don't know what that means. If it means just thank you, you know, you're notified, you know, don't do it again, or if it means a penalty. Yeah, so I agree. I'm sorry to interrupt. I don't know if it would be helpful, but I think what we could do if the Commission was amenable to this, is that we could review it, provide a summary memo like we have been, and then provide that to the Commission. So they have, you know, some information on paper with respect to what happened with this particular matter. And then the Commission could then decide how it was like to proceed, which has been the course that we've taken in the past. And at least then you would have a document before you, which laid out a summary, as we have done previously. Thank you Heather for that clarification. I think that's what we're all kind of imagining, right? Exactly what Heather just proposed. An additional staff, but again, you know, as we're just cementing the policies for Bruce, that does make sense, right? And also as Commissioner O'Brien pointed out, we wanna make sure it's all a fair process. Caitlin, how's that feel? That's fine. That would be the same process that we've been doing previously. And basically at that point, you'll have a memo from the IED and you will have the same decision to make as to moving forward the same three, but you'll have more information. Okay. Anything else on this one? Thank you, Andrew. Thank you, Michael for showing. And we appreciate everyone's input here and look forward to the report. Right, Commissioner O'Brien? You all set? I've got you. I'm gonna go on. Okay. I'll set. Alrighty. Let's go then to Caitlin. We had skipped over a nine A. Do you wanna go back to legal on the two regs now, of which we're... I defer to the... Mina's here now. So I defer to the commission on whether you wanna start with regs or the waivers either is fine. Mina, you get your choice. Why don't we start with the regs? And my apologies, I did not expect to be up so quickly. So congratulations to you on that, I guess. Thank you. Do you wanna repeat that one more time, Mina? Cause it makes us feel better. I hope to not ruin that. No, we're good. Thank you. So let's start with the regs cause I think it's actually fairly straightforward. There aren't any changes proposed from the last time. So this is more of an update and taking regs to final. So these are the items listed as nine A. I'm sorry, that's eight A and eight B on your agenda. So these were the two sets of regulatory changes. One a new reg and one a change to the internal controls reg adopted by emergency on October 19th to deal with potential cessation or discontinuation of operations by an operator in either because they are going to continue to operate elsewhere as an entity but not in the Commonwealth or because they will or they are going out of business altogether no longer operating, which is what raised the bankruptcy issues we discussed last time. We received no comments on 258, which was a general regulation regarding cessation of operations and there and accordingly don't recommend any revisions. We're on that one. We're simply asking for a final vote on the regulation for the December for today's meeting from the same version as October 19th. I'm happy to walk through that one again as a reminder of sort of the basic components of it if that's helpful or I can answer questions instead of folks have them. Commissioners on the memo did outline the reg but do you have specific questions or want Nina to go through it? I always appreciate when he goes through it Madam Chair and I think they start on page 59 if you're looking for them. Yeah. I think I'm sure you want to go through it. So the memo was great before it. So on page, yes, exactly. The memo was right before that. And so happy to go through it. 258, really it's a process that we anticipate that if there is this situation where an entity is shutting down operations for any of the reasons I mentioned other than bankruptcy actually there will probably be some unique circumstances for each operator that goes through that. And so it's really geared towards having a lot of communication with the commission and commission staff to ensure that things are properly wound down. In the event of bankruptcy, you may have less control over that because of the federal and state bankruptcy laws and just the nature of when companies are in that position of financial distress but we try to at least keep it as an expectation and the hope is to be able to leverage existing relationships, both for you and also relationships these entities might have with other regulators and knowing that I think operators are well aware that regulators talk to each other and are often asked for information about entities that that's sort of the leverage for continued cooperation from an entity that no longer wants to be in the common home. So the process starts with a notification ideally as early as possible to the commission that but in no event fewer than 90 days before cessation is a tent to become effective and an explanation of why that's happening. 258.2 then gets into the commission action upon receipt of it. And this gives you a few different options and there you will see option three is or anything else you can do. So again, it's intended to be somewhat flexible. It's not a limited set, but it does contemplate for instance, ordering no more wagers to be taken in to avoid sort of last minute issues with a futures bet especially or something that the operator may no longer have the wherewithal to support as they go through the process later. The second option is to appoint a conservator or receiver to manage and operate the business. This is modeled on what you have under 23K by statute and also in the regulation. It's really to have somebody, this is probably for a more intense, very quick shutdown but to have somebody doing the day to day because while there may be some decisions that need to come up to the commission during that process, there may be a lot of little things. You know, what do we do with this equipment? Can't sure, there's a game tonight, are we allowed to offer that better or not? Or how does this notice look for payouts, et cetera? 258.03 is kind of the meat of this. It's a requirement to submit a cessation plan. It's designed to be very soon after notice is given, so really contemporaneous with it that addresses a number of things, how winnings are going to be distributed, refund of pending wagers after, that won't be paid out before operation, distribution of funds, closing accounts, closing the sports wagering area if there is one or the platform to Massachusetts customers, satisfaction of any outstanding debts, including especially to the Commonwealth. And G, I think this was one that I know is important to director band was making sure there's communication plan for how this is all communicated out to patrons. That was a change I think we embellished on at least at the last meeting, so that's captured here. And then H, which is two section 238, which is what we talked about, is a description of the status and balance of a letter of credit meant to secure at least a portion of the sports wagering operators' liabilities, specifically that portion that corresponds to outstanding debts. The idea is that the commission would approve the plan. And we did say here commission or its designee, and we talked about this a bit last time. The rationale for keeping or its designee is not necessarily to make that judgment call today, but again, to recognize that some of these may be happening very quickly or during a period of time when you have other things that you cannot do as much. But the idea is to have somebody able to kind of help manage that. That might be the trustee or receiver, it might be a staff member, it might be a particular commissioner designated for that purpose or the commission could decide, no, we wanna actually, in this particular case, it makes more sense to have us review the plan. So that's not to cede anything today, but just as an option. There's also a notification process listed in addition to the communication plan, a way to make sure that the cessation is noticed on the places where patrons would interact really with the platform or the sportsbook. 25804 is the reporting requirements. We envision that assuming someone is following this timeline, you would want regular updates in the form of written reports. Again, the commission could ask the operator to come in before it for verbal reports as well, but to also have a written report of how things are going. Have they put out the notices? Have they started shutting down accounts? Where can they give you evidence that they've terminated contracts as they need to? Have they paid back taxes that might be owed, et cetera? And it allows you in the commission to modify or impose conditions if needed. And again, you could designate somebody to do that. Again, if you need to for, and you can define the scope of what they're allowed to modify through that. It's, you don't have to do that, but it's a possibility. The reason to include that option here is to avoid someone later suggesting you can't designate that authority if it's practically necessary at the time. The cessation then becomes effective only on this important point in 05-2 only when the commission issues are written decision-approving it. So essentially, you can't just shut down and say, we're done, you have to have a final commission approval. Now, again, I will say all of this is assuming non-filed bankruptcy. Filed bankruptcy preempts any state or local regulation, and therefore there'll be a pretty good argument that if the bankruptcy court says, nope, they're done on December 1st, the commission can't say, no, you must wait till December 31st. You could try, but you can't, but everybody would have to get the court to approve it. There is also an issue of surrendering a license. This is to avoid the issue that sometimes happens with local licensing bodies where there's a sort of defunct licensee or non-operating licensee holding onto a license and using that as sort of financial leverage is something they can transfer. The license comes back to the commission to reissue and it's in the normal course as opposed to being under the control of the operator once they do that. Finally, there is bankruptcy language that was developed with the assistance of outside bankruptcy council to try to mesh as the best we can with the bankruptcy proceedings. Again, it is intended to at least give the bankruptcy court a sense of what the expectations were going into bankruptcy from the commission's perspective. Naturally, if there is an entity facing that, I think it would be wise for the general council's office to engage with and on behalf of the commission with bankruptcy council to make sure your rights are protected. But that is just again, it's helpful to have here so that the court understands what's happening. It also is helpful. The other point of it is to try to clarify that the commission could ask if it's within the scope of their duties, the receiver or conservator appointed by the bankruptcy court to take this on as well, to take on the operational side as well or appoint a separate person to do that work that may be more operational for work for the commission's purposes. Then there is a reference in D to 238126, which we'll get to in a second. The purpose of 238126 is to require, as I mentioned, a letter of credit. The advice from bankruptcy council and consistent with our own experience and other situations where we worry about financials stability down the road is that you would want a mechanism that's accessible directly by the commission to pay a segregated account or a trust fund that is held by the licensee, by the operator, would potentially be affected by the bankruptcy, tied up in the bankruptcy and not something that the commission can access. A letter of credit is held by a bank, a third party and accessible directly by the commission. Essentially it's an insurance policy that the commission can draw on itself without having to have it be wrapped up in the assets of the bankruptcy, if there is one. So that's 258. I can describe 23812 before you take a vote or we can take a vote on this, if you'd like. But I think because they're so interrelated, does it make sense for him to go through the reserve requirement and then I can go back and vote? I see thumbs up and thumbs up. Okay. Sure. So 23812 was not approved under the emergency reg. We approved it through, you approved it through the regular promulgation process in October because it was recognizing that we're asking operators to do something slightly different than what they're asked to in their internal controls to see if it was an issue. The commission only received one comment on this, which is included in the packet. The comment I believe was from Ben MGM and it was suggesting sort of a little more flexibility on the mechanisms allowed. We are not after reviewing it and having this conversation again with bankruptcy council suggesting, accepting the comment. And I'll get to that when I describe this section again. So the actual language that's being added to 23812 is on page 66 of your packet in red line. There is already a reserve requirement in 23812 in general for all of the commission, for all of the liabilities that need to be held in a reserve by the operator. It could be held in different amounts, excuse me, forms, cash, cash equivalent, equivalents, payment processor reserves or letters of credits, bonds, et cetera. However, the addition is that the amount of the reserve that's intended to cover this, what's called a sports wagering liability, the amount that could be paid out to patrons, the changes to have that being an irrevocable letter of credit. So the rest of sort of the operational reserves to make sure you have enough money to pay your bills, to pay your vendors, you can keep that in cash if you're an operator and keep that in other reserves. But the change here would be to protect patrons to make sure that a letter of credit's available. The rationale for only having that being a letter of credit as opposed to the rest is that there are really three categories of potential liabilities out there. One is to the commonwealth. We have confirmed, and I think we talked to us last time just as a reminder, we confirmed that that would be a tax that would be entitled to priority after the federal taxes and certain others in bankruptcy. So you have a lot of the same protections you would have as a commonwealth normally would have to get its taxes. So we didn't think a letter of credit was necessary for that. The second set is payment to vendors, marketing affiliates, et cetera. Those entities would have the same protections as any vendor would in bankruptcy, which are not perfect, but there's sort of a legal protection there. And to the extent that they were really worried about it, they could secure their payments through other mechanisms by contract. Patrons are the ones that don't really have that ability to do that. They would be unsecured and accounts, essentially, they wouldn't have any, certainly no FDIC type protection, anything like that. So the purpose of the letter of credit would really be to pay out the refunds or wagers that happened in that time period that don't get paid out, et cetera. The comment we got from BenMGM suggested that letter of credit would not secure liquid assets more than the existing other forms such as liquid assets. Mentioned that their bank also provides insured cash sweeps to ensure FDIC coverage, et cetera. And suggests a proposed regulation would put a higher cost on player reserves without a commensurate benefit to players. I will say this is counter to our own experience in dealing with these issues for things like superfund sites and other long-term liabilities. It's also counter to bankruptcy, counsel's experience by necessity, something that's within the operator's account is going to stay within their account. It may be true that for a larger entity like MGM that might have a corporate parent, there hopefully no one ever has to trigger this letter of credit, but if you do, saying that there's a bank account somewhere, that bank account is gonna have the same trouble as the rest of the assets. It may be reachable someday, but it may not be reachable immediately. So we're suggesting sticking with this, especially since only one operator mentioned this, and I also believe as we're preparing this reg, that there's actually some operators who have been requesting or have input from the finance department to see how much of this could be done through letters of credits or bonds so that they don't have to put aside work and cash that they could be using. Otherwise, a letter of credit doesn't typically cost as much as the actual cash that it secures. It's like an insurance policy. You pay out of mouth for the bank to have the letter of credit. Mina, with your pause, I just see a bow. Derek Mena is coming in. Did you walk away in on this, Derek? Just at this time? Just in case there are any questions based on what Mina just said, we have received many questions regarding not tying up all of the cash. Because when you tie up the patron's deposits, you don't have working capital. So that is one of the requests that we've received from operators. I'm not sure what that means in terms of Mina's recommendation. Does it counter it? No, so the letter of credit is just another option. Yeah. And it's actually a better option through bankruptcy council because the trust accounts and any cash deposits could actually be taken into bankruptcy proceedings. So we would actually prefer to see the letter of credit plus it frees up cash for the operators to be using. But that would require another slight modification to the regulation, which we're not ready to come forward with. But in the eventual process, that's actually better for the operator. It's kind of like the float when you're dealing with insurance. So right now they do have to maintain that reserve, right? Right now they do, and they will continue to have to maintain a reserve. And right now they also couldn't maintain through a letter of credit. So that's not a new thing. The only distinction with the reg is that the portion that covers the sports wage or liability has to be in a letter of credit. The rest can be in a letter of credit, but it can also be in cash. There's more flexibility about the options it's having. Muston versus May. Commissioners, I feel like this really reflects earlier discussions that may reprioritize this, right? Commissioner O'Brien, I see you nodding your head. This just further clarifies that it really was our intention. Does everybody agree? Any questions for Mina? I see Commissioner Hill thumbs up. Any questions? Okay, then maybe we are ready to move. Thank you. Commissioner Bann just came in, but I think he's looking at the next item. Any questions, commissioners, for Mina before we move on this? And if not, I'll take a motion. Madam Chair. Yes, Commissioner Hill. I move that the commission approve the amended small business impact statement and the draft of 205 CMR 258 as included in the commissioner's packet and discussed here today. And further that the staff be authorized to take the steps necessary to file the required documentation with the secretary of the Commonwealth to finalize the regulation promulgation process and further move that the commission approve the amended small business impact statement and the draft of 205 CMR 238.12 as included in the commissioner's packet and discussed here today. And further that the staff be authorized to take the steps necessary to file the required documentation with the secretary of the Commonwealth to finalize the regulation promulgation process. Second. Thanks, Commissioner O'Brien. Comfortable moving on both at the same time. No problem for legal. All right. Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Commissioner Skinner. Aye. Excellent, thank you. And Commissioner Maynard. Aye. And I vote yes by zero. Thanks Mina for walking us through that and good reminder of our earlier established priorities. So thank you. All right. And that takes care of legal. It's 10 of 11. We'll move on now to item nine A back to Caitlin and Director Ban and Manager Boschman. Good morning, Crystal. Good morning. It's still morning. Amazing. All right. Who's leaving this? Actually, I believe that Mina is going to continue. And thank you again, Mina. Madam Chair, I'm sorry. It says yet another meeting where you think you're done with me and you're not. No, I didn't think I was done with you. I just wasn't sure who was leading. No, thank you so much. So Madam Chair, there's a, this is an update and a follow-up on some of the requests for waivers under the security and privacy regulations to five CMR 257. If you recall, we had a lengthy conversation about a variety of waivers that were pushed, that pushed out compliance on different parts of 257 out to different dates. There were a couple of items that were going to come back specifically one item that was going to come back to today. I think given where we were in the agenda last time and also to see if there's any further clarification following the discussion last time that was needed. And then I think there were also some questions which Director Petruin can talk to if about anybody else having asking for any additional waivers based on the conversation. There were no additional waivers received. I think there was actually one withdrawn as a result of the conversation last time. Crystal, is that, did I get that right? I don't think it was withdrawn. I think they're just not putting in a revised waiver. It was not completed and was not needed. That's right. So no new waivers, my apologies. No new waivers needed. So that, the remaining waiver request that had not been addressed last time was with respect to 257.04 which has to do with patron access. 257.04 requires a variety of options for patrons to be able to essentially claw back data that they may have authorized the use of after the fact and also to request copies of, or request information, I shouldn't say copies of what is being done with their confidential or personally identifiable information, how it's used to in some cases of somewhat narrow set of cases as for deletion provided that deletion doesn't necessarily, would not require the operator to get rid of anything that they otherwise have to keep or in a good business practice, keep for their own operations or necessary for their operations. And I believe, and I'm just double checking for this, because this has changed that personally identifiable information could, after it's erased, may still be stored for future use if necessary, but it can't be essentially accessible in any network or in any way where it might be accessed even if a request is granted. The request for waiver was based on a similar set of concerns I think about both implementation and implement just simple implementation problems of getting the kind of request forms up having clarity on them, having in time for the deadlines. There's also a request for, or there's also some concern about over promising, I think was really the issue. And there was a desire to at least clarify for folks what has to be allowed in terms of requests from patrons, what requests from operators to clarify what they have to allow patrons to demand be done with their data. For those reasons, I think that I'm just looking for the, I don't have the dates right in front of me for the actual timelines. I'm just trying to go to that quickly if I could. I believe that there were some permanent requests from provisions of 205 to 57, I'm sorry, that was 203, four of my apologies. Just there, I'm just looking for my, so for 041D, it's Caesar's Better, that MGM fanatics and Fandall. And I'm not sure if they all gave clear, that they all are clear about the timeline, but a couple could give some specificity. Yes, and that's, sorry, I had a chart of that that I'm just trying to get back to here. I may have missed it in the documents. I think it's 175, Mina. Is that what you're looking for, Archer? Okay. No, Archer, it might be. I think it is. Yes, it is, my apologies, there it is, yes. So 250704, there were a variety of timelines requested for this one. One was to October 1, 2024 from Fandall, another was November 2024. That MGM actually requested a permanent waiver on the theory to, instead of allowing folks to back out of data uses to have a sort of opt out of marketing and control cookies, but it's sort of no other uses. The Better had asked for a June, excuse me, a March one date, so that mostly to develop the consent form. Caesars was June 30th to match the opt-in mechanism. And so there was a little bit all over the place. Mina, could you just, 1124, let's see, I think. Yeah, to put it succinctly, the range is March 1, 2024 through 11, 2024, I don't have a date in November, and with one request for a sort of permanent change to this from that MGM that I mentioned that sort of, they would like to. Yeah, fanatics may, the fanatics is probably the 1124 because they said 12 months, okay, got it. Correct, yeah, correct. That's how that, okay. Our suggestion on this, having gone through the past set of waivers is a lot of the implementation issues in terms of setting up forms, getting things clarified, in terms of how consent is withdrawn, really mirror the process for having the opt-in in the first place. And I believe where we ended up last meeting and Caitlin or Crystal correct me if I'm wrong was that that was a, I think that was going to be a June, 2024 date, correct, for those waivers? I'm looking for Caitlin, can you repeat and maybe I can clarify? My apologies, I didn't have this top of, the date that was granted for the waivers to the consent opt-in forms was, I believe, June 30th. All right, or yes, yeah, thank you. Commissioner reminds me of that. So we would suggest that those two things may be linked to the extent these are operational issues, obviously some operators are not asking for quite as much time, like better, but to the extent that put everyone on equal playing field and also it may make sense to roll out both packages at the same time, this is how you opt-in, if you opt-in, this is how you opt back out of particular controls. That also allows enough time to consider asks like that MGMs in the course of bringing back this regulation, which we intend to do probably in late winter, early spring, so February, March, a time period, because if you recall, there were a handful of other smaller issues that as we were talking through the waiver process, we might suggest some tweaks for clarification, for instance, on things like encryption, I think was one of them, this issue of aggregating data or not and how it ties to responsible gaming protocols and responsible gaming flags that might be inserted to help, so that for those reasons, I think, to the extent we would be able to revisit some of the requests for a permanent change to 257.04, that can be done in the next couple of months while there's a waiver in place through June. It also allows the entities, Fandall and Fanatics in particular, who asked for a longer time to the extent that they still need the summer to get through that process, that that may be something that can be revisited in June, if necessary, if there are still concerns about how the processes are lining up. Questions for Mina, commissioners? Thank you, Caitlin, for the compilation you made, you gave us in terms of all the activity on the waivers, that was really helpful. Just the timeline. Seems to me, Mina's proposal makes sense, it doesn't please everybody, right? So, it's gonna be earlier than some of the operators and then I know we have a couple of operators here. Good morning, Andrew and Michael, again. But it seems like it's consistent with the opt-in extension. Commissioners, any feedback? Sounds like there must be agreement, Mina. Yeah, I mean, I think Mina's suggestion of keeping the date fixed on the 38th at this point is the way to go. Yeah, so do I have a motion? Is it just 0.04, or is there a further subsection required, Mina? So the requests were on different, initially came in with some requests for, and just to be fair to Ben and Jan because I don't wanna overstate this, they were only asking for the permanent piece for consent withdrawal on 1D, but Fandu and Fanatics were for all of 0.04, better was 0.41 A&E, which is essentially the bulk of the reg for this purpose. Because there's sort of intertwined pieces about consent withdrawal, I think it probably is appropriate to do it for the entirety of 0.04. So the entirety of 0.04, and I'm not, if I make a motion for June 30th, I'm not overriding another interim waiver deadline, right? Correct, yeah. Because I'm seeing waivers through October 1, 24th, that's all of these will be the June 30th, 24th, correct? Right, and my question is then if needed, you could revisit to see how things are going then, but since there'll be development on the other side, on the opt-in, we should have a better sense of what lingering issues might be there. And obviously we're our office, and I'm sure I don't wanna speak for sports wagering or legal, but I'm sure all of us will be happy to help try to clarify issues as they come up in the meantime as well. Okay. So I'm not gonna be waiver, licensee specific, I'm just gonna do a waiver as to that. One minute, Commissioner. Yeah. I wanna be, you know, Andrew was invited to the meeting, and so I do wanna give him an opportunity to speak before our motion, my apologies. Thank you. Thank you, Chair, thank you, Commissioner. I just wanted to clarify from our perspective that it makes perfect sense for us to have the two line up, and that's why our original request for 04 was to October, because our original request on the opt-in mechanism was to October. So under the same understanding that we had from the previous discussion about the opt-in, this line is perfectly with what we would currently request. Helpful clarification, Andrew, thank you. And I know that, Michael, I'm assuming you're not asking for permission to speak, but before we move, did you wanna add anything? I would second it, Andrew, there as well. That is the rationale behind our November 2024 request was the opt-in and then this opt-out provision being on the same date. Yeah, so put you on a little bit of a faster timeline and we've all been there, so thank you. And just to clarify, Mina's discussion is, in the event as we approach the June 30th, 2024 date, we also be provided the opportunity if necessary to request another waiver at that time. And to my point, timelines, we've all been there and I think we also understand that sometimes circumstances arise, right, Mina? So that's what you were saying, that you'll be looking at it. Yes, I can't speak for anybody else, but legally you can always ask, I guess, Michael, so I gots as much as I could, so. And all the commissioners smiled, but I think that all with an appreciation of that. But again, right now the expectation is June 30th, correct? Okay, thanks, Michael. All right, with that, Michelle Brown, you're all set? Yep, Madam Chair, I move that in accordance with 205s. Oops, sorry, my goodness. Did I freeze or did you freeze? I wasn't sure, I couldn't make it. Am I in frozen again? It's me. Okay, I'm good, okay. Madam Chair, I move that in accordance with 205CMR202.032, the commission issue, a waiver as further detailed in the materials in the commissioners packet and is discussed here today as granting the waivers requested in the packet meets the requirements specified in 205CMR102.034 and is consistent with the purposes of general laws chapter 23N, namely that the licensees be given a waiver from the requirements outlined in 205CMR257.04. Through June 30th, 2024. Second. Thanks, commissioners. Any questions on that? Okay, thank you to the legal team, Commissioner Bryan. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Did I miss you, Commissioner Hill? My apologies. I think I just froze. Aye. Thank you, Commissioner Skinner. Aye. And Commissioner Maynard. Aye. And I vote yes, so five, zero. Excellent, and thank you to both Andrew and Michael for being here. Okay, does that mean that we've concluded legal's pieces today? I mean, have we ever really concluded legal's pieces? And sports racing as a team. So there we go, eight, nine are done, but I know now we're turning to IEB. And we've got Heather and I think you've got Zach on today, right, Heather? Thank you, Director Hall. Good morning, Chair and commissioners. Just by way of follow-up, we are at the stage in the process where the IEB has provided to the commission a summary incident review for the commission's review, and Zach will be presenting on that today. And as we have done in the past, the commission then will decide how they would like to proceed with this particular matter in this public meeting. Thanks, Director Hall. Good morning, Zach, good morning, Mayor Sir. Thank you for this. Good morning, Chair, good morning, commissioners. In this matter, on May 31st, 2023, DraftKings notified the commission's sports wagering director, Bruce Ban, by phone, that it had been allowing the use of credit card funds deposited in other jurisdictions in Massachusetts wagers since its launch on March 10th, 2023. DraftKings discovered this issue on May 30th, 2023. Prior to the issuance of DraftKings sports wagering license, then-MGC executive director, Karen Wells, submitted a series of questions to DraftKings regarding its safeguards to prevent the use of credit card funds in Massachusetts. In its response to those questions, DraftKings reported that it used its own proprietary wallet. Geolocation services were used to disable certain financial accounts based upon which state the user was in, and when in a state that prohibits the use of credit card funds such as Massachusetts, these funds would be locked. In its May 31st notification to director Ban, DraftKings stated that the appropriate safeguards were not in fact in place upon launch. On June 21st, 2023, DraftKings submitted a report on the incident detailing the number of users affected, total handle, reported reasons for the issue, and remedial measures taken. DraftKings further stated that out-of-state credit card funds had been blocked in Massachusetts by way of a software update implemented on May 31st, 2023. However, on July 14th, 2023, DraftKings contacted director Ban with an update on the universal wallet issue. DraftKings explained that the May 31st, 2023 software update was ineffective, and as a result, it had continued to allow the use of out-of-state credit card funds for wagering in Massachusetts until July 13th, 2023 when it discovered the issue. DraftKings reported that the matter had been fully resolved by way of another software update implemented on the evening of July 13th, 2023. On August 1st, 2023, DraftKings submitted a second report detailing the issues with the initial remedial measures, the implementation of a second effective software update, and updated figures for the entirety of the non-compliance event. The IED learned the following key facts during its review. The timeframe that wagering was allowed was from March 10th, 2023 through July 13th, 2023. As for the number of users and total amount wagered, 218 users with a total handle of $83,663.92, the total number of wagers was 242. As for the reported reasons for the errors, for the first error leading to the failure to enact safeguards upon launch, DraftKings explained that this was due to internal miscommunication. The safeguards described in correspondence prior to launch were based upon DraftKings capabilities and other jurisdictions. Guidance in this area was not provided to the DraftKings launch team, therefore the reported safeguards were not enacted in Massachusetts. This initial report attributed this error to a quote unquote anomalous sequence of events, and DraftKings did not expect similar issues going forward. For the second error in the failed software update, DraftKings stated that there was also miscommunication in the attempted implementation of the May 31st, 2023 update. However, it identified the root cause of the failed update as a lack of complete functionality testing. DraftKings explained that the failed update required to change to three internal functions, the financial platform, the account platform, and the sportsbook product. However, the sportsbook product remedy was changed in process so that it would not have to rely upon the other two functions. Despite a change to the sportsbook remedy, the changes to the other two platforms were completed as initially planned. Due to a lack of corresponding change in the other processes, the remedy was rendered ineffective. This was not immediately detected due to a lack of end-to-end functionality testing of the complete sportsbook product. In regard to remedial and mitigating information, DraftKings reports that it's implemented the following measures to prevent similar issues going forward. An updated configuration to prevent out-of-state credit card funds for being used in Massachusetts wagers, changes in the earlier mentioned product processes to work as originally intended, and a change in DraftKings internal change management checklist in projects involving multiple teams to verify the end-to-end testing is performed. Finally, DraftKings reported that the wagers placed in Massachusetts using out-of-state credit card funds were processed in the normal course and that no additional action was taken on those specific wagers. Thank you. Thanks, Councillor Mercer. And thank you for your work looking into this matter. I'm going to spend with IEB for a bit of time and Zach has been, as I understand it, Director Halvin, looking into the details, correct? Yes, thank you, Chair. Thank you. Commissioner O'Brien, where do you want to start? Assuming that the options in front of us are the same three that were presented earlier. For me, this is egregious. I think it needs to be in adjudicatory hearing. And the one thing that I would also want to add in addition to the notice going out to DraftKings on this is if there's a way to determine who made the initial representations to then ED Wells, if that person is in fact a qualifier or any other way, I'd like that person to also be notified of a potential non-compliance issue in terms of the misrepresentations in trying to get to the cause of how that happened. And Commissioner O'Brien, in terms of going through the adjudicatory process, we will have the ability to determine witnesses as IEB and legal work out that important process. Am I right? Am I right? I'm looking at Todd and Caitlin that that's part of the process going forward. In terms of the notice. Yeah, do we agree, Commissioner Hill? Yeah, Madam Chair, I'm in full agreement with the proposal by Commissioner O'Brien. Commissioner Skinner. Same, Madam Chair. And Commissioner Maynard. I agree. And I just would add that, this is a violation of the statute, not a rag, the statute. Yeah, I'm in agreement with my fellow commissioners. I think what would be helpful to Director O'Brien, you've been here for a long time and credit is forbidden in both the casinos and towards wagering play. I don't remember this kind of a violation on the casino side, but maybe there is history there. No. He's saying, no, it's muted, but so this will deserve full process. I do know that point of clarification, Zach, the information that Director Wells sent out, that went to all who had a universal law, correct? Not just to this particular operator. That is my understanding, correct, Chair? Okay, thank you. All right. Is that all we need on that for direction? Chair, I would just note, in the previous cases that the commission has handled with respect to non-compliance, the IEV has not been a party. I just wanted to flag that for the commission. The other thing I would just note is that the IEV could provide that information with respect to who made the representations to Director Wells, if that helps. Well, oh, you mean right now? I don't think that's it. Not at this moment, but we can follow up. Well, I think what Commissioner O'Brien's saying is that that person should be available to us is what I'm hearing, right? No, I think it may go beyond that in terms of if the person's a qualifier. It's not just, we had a circumstance where we had a licensee was noticed. We had conduct that was alleged to individuals, but they hadn't been noticed necessarily, that we were also looking at them individually. I am interested in the individual or individuals who made the representations to E.D. Wells back in the spring. Separate action versus potentially. Potentially. Todd, I see you laying in here. Oh, I'm sorry, that was just how I was sitting, but I did have a question. I assume Commissioner O'Brien, you mean whether they're a qualifier or they're otherwise licensed by the commission? Correct, yes, yes. And as long as we follow the correct processes, Director Hall, I just want to be really careful, Commissioner O'Brien, you're nodding your head. Yes. It's a little bit of a very sensitive process. So I'll yield to our IEB and legal teams. But your point is a very good one, Commissioner O'Brien. I would suggest at this point, we allow the IEB to do its work to prepare as described. We will start to gather the evidence and begin to prepare the notices and schedule and see where we are consistent with this conversation. If there's anything that is inconsistent, of course, we'll bring it back to your attention, but I can envision that by looking at the materials, we'll be able to schedule this, including the witness lists and the exhibits as we customarily have, and we'll be able to move forward. I'm not sure of the timeline on this, but I would ask that this be prioritized. One question I have, and it may come through, is there recourse for patrons in this case? And if so, I guess I'd like to understand that sooner than later. So, commissioners, do you feel the same way that this somehow should have some, without, of course, impacting the quality of the investigation or the work that IEB will do? Timeline, do you feel the same way I do? Yeah. Yep. Thanks. Thanks. I see a thumbs up from Commissioner Hill. Commissioners, can I just check in with you just so that we all, we might be missing something. You're all set? Yeah, I'm good. Okay, Commissioner Mayer. Yeah. All right. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Zach. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, commissioners. I'm sorry, Commissioner Hill. Every now and again, I'd like to throw out a nice job, and I've been working with Zachary on the community mitigation department as well as obviously these IEB issues. And I don't get to publicly say it too often, but good job, Zachary. Thank you very much, Commissioner Hill. It's been a pleasure. Yeah, that's the benefit of that community mitigation work. You get to work a lot with the different team members. Commissioner Hill, so that's an extra bonus for you. And also a big thank you to all the team members who do work on that. That's an additional part of their expansion of their duties, but I think they all seem to like it. So that's good news. All right, so now we're going to shift to a matter that came up before. And I think we just want to update on the research and response, from research and response with gaming director, Mark VanderLinden on the railing around that MGM screen fields for. Good morning, Madam Chair. Good morning, commissioners. I am joined here with Burke Kane and Daniel Miller, Compliance Officer Manager at MGM Springfield. There are no materials in your packet for this topic today. We want to just provide you with an update. Madam Chair, you're right. As discussed during the November 2nd open public meeting MGM, during the MGM quarterly report, the commission expressed concern that there was a railing erected around the perimeter of the gaming floor and inadvertently created a barrier for people to access the game sense information center and the important services that are offered there. Specifically, the railing cut in front of the game sense information center, and so person's wishing to access it would need to go one direction or the other to find their way to get to the game sense information center. There was concern that it would reduce the traffic to the center and the game sense advisors. So I am here to happy to report that that issue has been corrected. And I think Daniel, if you wanted to show some pictures of the area just in front of the game sense information center, I'll turn it over to you. And we have Burke as well here, Daniel. So you've got backup. Good morning, Daniel. Good morning, Lady Chair. Thank you and fellow commissioners. And thank you, Mark. Yeah, I have a couple of photographs here and I'll just share my screen. So just a moment while they're bringing it up for you. Are you able to see that? I can. Okay. So the first picture as we look out from the game sense counter itself, you'll see the gap now right across from there. And this particular location was chosen. A couple of things that you'll notice there is there was already the 21 plus sign sort of availed itself to be there to let people know. We also had one of our under 21 expressway decals right there on the floor as well. And then removing that small section of the handrail didn't afford the need to move any slump machines or other equipment on the gaming floor. So it was a good little through way. Similarly from there, if you're on the walkway heading toward a main valley entrance exit, it turns up there on your left-hand side. I'm not sure that digital sign because of the angle from which I took that photograph shows it, but there's another slide that speaks to families remaining on the tile as well. So we are trying to make sure that on both sides of that gap, there's still the reminders, making sure that underage stay out on the tile. And then if we just a couple more here, this is obviously on the casino floor looking out, you can see its proximity to the game sense center. So there's nothing impeding you going straight off the floor and straight to game sense or vice versa. And then this last picture is just to confirm, I stepped in maybe 30, 40 feet into the casino floor just to show how it's still visible there. The game sense sign itself is still visible throughout the casino floor. Even with the slot machines around, there isn't any real obstruction from people seeing, ah, that's where it is and that's where I can go. So those are the visuals that I have. Would you like me to take that down if there are any questions or comments? No, I think we can take it down, Daniel. Commissures. No, stop sharing. Any comments for Mark and Daniel and Burke? Commissioner Maynard, are you leading in? I'll speak real quick. Thank you for doing it, Daniel. I like your decorations first of all behind you, but thank you for doing it. I think it's important to not impede folks who need help. Thank you for being a partner on this and thanks for having the relic. I mean, we appreciate what you're trying to do and that's all I have on that. Excellent. Thank you, Commissioner. Appreciate that. Madam Chair, I kept waiting for Casey and the Sunshine Band to come up behind Daniel with those lights blind, but with that said, Daniel, thank you. I mean, when we visited last month, we all walked by that area. We all had the same concerns. Share them with you and you've come up with a good proposal here. You've taken down the railing and just a thank you because I think it was very, very important for the mission that we all have together. Michelle Maynard? Yeah, I want to reiterate what Commissioner Maynard and Hill have said. I appreciate, Daniel, how quickly, I was with you actually when we did the walkthrough and you were very receptive and I appreciate that. Conversation for another time or maybe another communication is, there were some machines that blocked sort of just dead on view of Game Sense and I think that was historic before Game Sense had moved locations. Just curious if you could send some pictures of sort of what the straight on view is now in terms of the railing and that don't want to track from putting up the railing and responding so quickly to what we asked, but just a follow up for me. Definitely and there is going to be some change there that involves those machines anyway. In sort of the beginning of the year, I don't know exactly what's being done, but so I'll wait for that to be done then I'll snap the pictures and then we can give you an update, maybe during our before quarterly or something like that. Okay, perfect. Thank you, Dana. Commissioner Skinner, you want to chime in? Yeah, I'll just add to the chorus. Daniel, thank you and MGM for your quick action to step in and address what we all consider to significant issue. Much appreciated. And I... Thank you all very much. Thank you, Daniel. And thank you to both members of our team Burke and Mark for coordinating with them, the very cooperative operator here. It's not lost on me that this is a challenge. We're asking for additional safeguards around miners and at the same time we're balancing other interests and you've struck the right balance here and I want to applaud you, Daniel and your colleagues at MGM Springfield for being so nimble and getting that adjustment made. So thank you and happy holidays. We also can take this time. There's going to be some transitions. I'm not sure when it's public, but if it is public. Oh, Daniel, are you on mute? It is not yet, I apologize. I'm only... Thank you. Yes. So for right now, happy holidays to you and keep those lights flickering. And to all of you as well, as you can tell, I'm a fan of this time of year. So have a wonderful holiday. Happy holidays. Why not? Madam Chair, can I just add just on behalf of the games and steam I checked in with them, they are happy with the changes that are made and wanted me to explicitly express the appreciation and cooperation that MGM Springfield and the partnership around game sense. Yeah. And I would only add to everybody, this is part of casino gaming, right? There's always Evan flow, there's always changes, floors change, floors are updated and we respond accordingly. And it's a good partnership with the MGM folks and the game sense folks. Well done. Thank you very much. All right. Commissioners, it is 1130 and we have a pretty good amount of racing ahead of us. Would everybody mind if we took a 10 minute break? Okay, does that feel like about right? And then- Always appreciated, Madam Chair. Yeah. And I think if everything goes as planned, we might be able to line up before lunch and certainly to accommodate everybody's schedule. So thank you. And Dr. Liza, thank you for your patience. I know you've got a lineup coming. So thank you. All right, we'll return on what, between 20 up and quarter of? Thanks. Thanks, Dave. Awesome. Thanks so much, Dave. But just people are coming back. I wanna make sure I've got Princess Skinner. I'm here. There, now you show up on my first screen. Thanks so much. Okay. So we'll do a roll call given that we're holding the meeting virtually. Commissioner O'Brien. Hello again. I'm here. Commissioner Hill. That was, I'm here, right? Okay. I am here. Great, thank you. Commissioner Skinner. I'm here. Great, thanks. And Commissioner Maynard, hello again. Hello, I'm here. Excellent. All right, so we are returning to public meeting 492 and we're on item 12 of our agenda. And Dr. Leibman, you've got some good work ahead of us, ahead of you for us. Yes, thank you. So these are our annual requests and we'll start with Plain Ridge Park Casino and Steve O'Toole. Their director of racing is on for this. The first item is the request for approval of their 2014 simulcast export signals. That's on page 180 of your packet. As part of their application to race live in 2024, they submit all four of these items. So this was submitted in exhibit 28. Again, export signals are them sending their live signal to other facilities. If you have any questions and it does require a vote. On the export commissioner, any questions? Hi, Steve, how are you? Hi, commissioners, I'm very well. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good, I'm glad that you continue to recuperate nicely. Good, questions on the export and if not, take a motion. Commissioner Hill or Commissioner Maynard, whoever's leaning in first? I just, I'll ask this question because I remember the long conversations we had last year and earlier this year. Any issues, Dr. Lightbound, with any of these? No. I'm good, Madam Chair. Okay, this is... Madam Chair. Plain Ridge request for export. Yes, Commissioner Hill. I move that the commission approved Plain Ridge Park Casino's request for approval of the 2024 simulcast export signals as included in the commissioners packet and discussed here today. Second. Second. Thanks, Commissioner Maynard. Next time, Commissioner Skinner. Any further questions? Okay, Commissioner Bryan. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Commissioner Skinner. Aye. And Commissioner Maynard. Aye. And I vote yes, five, zero. Okay, Dr. Lightbound. So their next item request is the 2024 simulcast import signals, signals from, you know, around other areas that they'll bring in to simulcast. That was part of their exhibit 27, and it's on page 198. Any questions? Questions, commissioners. Commissioner Hill. I move that the commission approved Plain Ridge Park's Casino's request for approval of 2024 simulcast import signals as included in the commissioners packet and discussed here today. Second. Commissioner Skinner, thank you. Any further questions or edits? Commissioner Bryan. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Commissioner Skinner. Aye. Commissioner Maynard. Aye. And I vote yes, so five, zero. Dr. Lightbound on the imports for PPC. Next. Okay, the next item is their premium free period for 2024. That's by statute. 12 weeks that they don't have to pay premiums. That was submitted as exhibit 27, and it does require a vote. It's in the packet on page 202. Anybody wants to review it? Questions for, I'm sorry. I was reviewing it, my apologies. I was getting up to date. Commissioner Hill, did you have any questions or are you prepared to move? I am prepared to move, Madam Chair. I, just making sure that I get the right one here. I move that the commission approve the Plain Ridge Parks Casino's request for a 2024 premium free period from Sunday, June 16, 2024 to Saturday, September 7, 2024, as included in the commissioner's packet and discussed here today. Second. And again, that's all for so my statutes. Commissioner Bryan. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Commissioner Skinner. Aye. And Commissioner Maynard. Aye. I thought yes, 5-0. Thank you. And then Dr. Lagoma, one more item for PPC. Yes, this item can be found in page 204 on the packet, and this is their request for their account wagering provider for 2024, Hollywood Races, which is the Penn product. The commission initially approved this, I believe in 2016. And this does require a vote. Questions for Alex here, commissioners. Excellent number, and I appreciate it very much. Commissioner Hill, it looks like you're the moving party again. Thank you. Madam Chair. I move that the commission approve Plain Ridge Parks Casino's request for approval of NADW LLC doing businesses Hollywood Races using the eBet technology platform as its 2024 account wagering provider as included in the commissioners packet and discussed here today. Second. Thank you. Any questions, edits? Okay, Commissioner Bryan. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Commissioner Skinner. Aye. Commissioner Maynard. Aye. I vote yes. So five zero again. Thank you, Steve. We had no questions for you. We're glad to see you. Happy holidays. That's great. Thank you. Happy holidays to all of you as well. Thank you very much. Madam Chair. Yes. I might add, but boy, you look good today. So I think he's commenting on your attire. You look good every day, Steve, but Commissioner Hill is feeling the groove right now. Clearly we think alike. I think we need to get together for our wardrobe to make sure we don't dress alike in the future. Not too many people can pull this off, Steve, but you're right. And there we go. There we go. All right, good. Well, again, happy holidays. Thank you. Thank you. And you do look good, but I'm thinking of your leg. So thank you. All right, moving on now to something. We've got guests here. Dr. Lightman, if you want to introduce them and get started on item 12B. Yes. Today we have Bruce Barnett, Attorney DLA Piper for Suffolk Downs and Suffolk Downs COO Michael Buckley with their requests. Now that they're not submitting application for live racing, they bring this forward as the individual requests. So their first one is their request for approval of the 2024 simulcast import signals. Those can be found on page 206 of your packet. Thank you. In my still good morning, Mr. Buckley and Attorney Barnett, it's nice to see you both. Nice to see the commission. And congratulations on it still being morning. I know. Do me a favor. Commissioner Hill, challenge accepted. Next meeting, going with the turtleneck. It is so cold outside. I went out to do the garbage today. I'm like, oh, turtleneck needed. Next time you have a scarf around too, the additional attire. All right, Mr. Buckley, whoever's going first. Thank you. So we do need a vote for the 2024 simulcast import signals. Oh, I guess I wondered if you had wanted to speak. All right. Sorry. Any questions with respect to the import signals where Suffolk counts? You're all set. Commissioner Maynard, are you prepared to move? I'm ready to move. Madam Chair, I move that the commission approved Massasoi Greyhound associations and talk dog tracks. I think it's Suffolk. Sorry, sorry, Suffolk. My apologies. I moved the commission approved Suffolk Downs request for the approval of the 2024 simulcast import signals as included in the commissioner's packet and discussed here today. Second. Thanks, Commissioner O'Brien. Any questions or edits on that? All right. Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Mr. Skinner. Aye. Commissioner Maynard. I'm going to blame my distraction on the turtleneck talk, but aye. And I vote yes. You're jealous, Commissioner Maynard. Five-zero. Let me know what to put under your holiday tree. There you go. I hope it's going to be a secret Santa gift. I did a nice cozy turtleneck next week. Or a bobblehead of someone in a turtleneck like James Bond or something. Sean Connery. Exactly. We can go there with that. Okay. So now we're turning Dr. Maynard to some more serious business. So the next item is the request for the 2024 premium free period. Again, as I spoke in the Plain Ridge request, it's a 12-week period and that is by statute. And it's on page 210 of our packet. And the dates are right in here now, though. Do I have any questions on this? Again, statutory required. Commissioner O'Brien or Commissioner Maynard? I see it. Commissioner Skinner, I'm not neglecting you. You just won't have to chime in, but you've got fellow commissioners moving. So aye the line. Madam Chair, I move that the commission approve Suffolk Down's request for a 2020, 2024 premium free period from October 9, 2024 through December 31, 2024, as included in the commissioner's packet and discussed here today. Second. Okay, any questions? Commissioner O'Brien? Aye. Commissioner Hill? Aye. Commissioner Skinner? Aye. And Commissioner Maynard? Aye. I vote yes. All right, there's one more item for Suffolk Downs and right now, Mike and Bruce, you're escaping any inquiries. So here we go. Let's see on the, providers, Dr. Leyva. Yes. Our next item is approval of the 2024 account waidering providers for Suffolk. Again, that is on page 212 of the commissioners packet. And the providers are asking for ones they've had before except for the ADW platform known as AM Wager that is under AM West Entertainment. AM West has been operating as an ADW since 2009. It's licensed in Oregon and numerous other states. There's a slide deck in the commissioner's packet with more information from them. And we're just asking for approval of their advanced deposit vendors. Questions for Dr. Leibhahn? Will they, perhaps the expansion to include a new ADW? I'll just ask the general question. Dr. Leibhahn, you do say that you don't have any information that counters the appropriateness of this provider. Correct. And that information you rely on other jurisdictions. What do you rely on for? Or how would we know if they were ever and how would actually have, maybe it's a question for our Suffolk Downs how, what do they do to the criteria for assessing their providers? Mike? Well, I think we look towards other jurisdictions and their track record, which is 2009. So a substantial track record and run by verifiable people with real management team. And I think this is the seventh state that they would be licensed for. It's six or seven states. And the total handle that we're dealing with on this particular vendor is something in order of maybe 30 million over the course of the entire country. So really a pretty small player up and coming into space that wants to compete here in Massachusetts. But they seem to be totally compliant. I mean, they've been in business for a very long time. So that's my only follow-up was there's been no issues of non-compliance that you feel should come to our attention. Is that right? That's right. Okay. Really helpful. Commissioner has other questions for either Mr. Buckley or for Dr. Lightbound. All right. And Dr. Lightbound, you are airing any issues than you would be if you had them. Correct. Okay. Do I have a motion? If everyone's all set. I don't want to close the question. Okay, thanks. Commissioner Hill. Commissioner Hill? Oh, sure. So actually before we do that, I just want to make sure. So one of them is fan dual racing and just for legal, I'm assuming the answer to this is, it's fine. I just want to make sure that the fact that we have a different licensees racing platform showing up on this licensees request that that's not in violation of any of our regs, right? It's not a violation. We have looked at this before and you'll recall there was discussion, I think last year, as to whether the fan dual and some of the other operators who do this or in the ADW business are allowed to actually have the ADW platform on their sports wagering platform. Right. Right. So that was the decision was made. They can do it as long as it's a separate entry point. Yeah. We just want to just point out fan dual, I believe right here in the memos also that MGM and Feesers. Yeah. And actually drafting DK Horvitz, I didn't even notice that. Yeah, drafting, yeah. Yeah. Great. And thanks for that reminder. Again, thanks to that parallel. And the recommendation as well is the last part of it is for paramutri wagering purposes only. So it keeps it separate from any sports wagering. That would be a whole separate item, obviously. Yeah. All separate accounting. Excellent. Okay, then commissioner Hill, I think if we're all set now. Madam chair, I move that the commission approved subject downs request for approval of express bet LLC and it's affiliate first bet. TVG, Twinspire, fan dual racing, NYRA bets, bet MGM, Caesars race book, DK horse, and AM West entertainment as its ADW platform, AM wager, as it 2024 account wagering providers, as included in the commissioner's packet and discussed here today. Just from the amendment, adding in the language Dr. Lifon just mentioned for paramutri wagering purposes only. That's fine. And then I would second that. Okay. Any further discussion or edits? Commissioner Bryan. I. Commissioner Hill. I. Commissioner Skinner. I. And commissioner Maynard. I. And I vote yes. So five zero. Okay. That takes care of suffix. Well, we can say happy holidays to you both. Councilor Burnett, nice to see you again. I'll be at virtual and thank you, Mr. Buckley. Maybe someday we'll be in person again, but thanks to the commission and you all have good holidays as well. Thank you. Thanks so much. And now we're going to turn to Rainham Park. Good morning to Sue. I see good morning, Dr. Lifon again on Rainham Park. Okay. I think George Carney may also be joining with Sue. He just stepped out, but he is in the building. Okay. Oh, so their requests are for approval of their simulcast import signals for 2024. That's found on page two, two, two of our packet. And again, this does require a vote. I feel like since I goofed the last time looking at Sue's turtleneck during the conversation, I should move on this one. I moved that the commission approved Massasoit Greyhound Association and Totten Dog tracks requests for approval of the 2024 simulcast import signals as included in the commissioners packet and discussed here today. Second. And it's our questions. OK, Commissioner O'Brien. I. Commissioner Hill. I. Mr. Skinner. I. And Commissioner Maynard. I. And I vote yes. Thank you. And so thank you for being here. And no questions is is. Nothing but probably a good sign. So we'll move on to the next item. And that's you. The account wagering provider. That's definitely them. Yeah, so this is, as you said, it's the approval of their account wagering provider. It's an in-house one dial to bet that's been in existence for quite a while. And that is found on page two twenty nine of the commission packet. And does require a vote. Commissioner, is any questions for Dr. Leibhound or Ms. Rogers? OK, all right. Commissioner Hill. Madam Chair, I move that the commission approved Massasoit Greyhound Association and Totten Dog tracks requests for approval of dial to bet and US off track LLC as a two thousand twenty four account wagering provider as included in the commissioners packet and discussed here today. Second. OK. Commissioner Brian. I. Commissioner Hill. I. Commissioner Skinner. I. And Commissioner Maynard. I. I vote yes. Five zero. OK, and Dr. Leibhound. And we all set them. Yes, we are. Thank you very much. Well, happy holidays to you, Sue. And we're sorry that we miss Mr. Carney, given our best and and and happy holidays to you all. Thank you, everyone. Happy holidays. Thank you. All right. So Dr. Leibhound. Thank you. Excellent organization, as always. And I think. For for today, we're all set, right? Yes, we are. Thank you very much. OK, then we're going to turn to item number 13 and our community mitigation. Fun and community affairs chief. Good morning. Good. I can finally say good afternoon, Chief Delaney. Indeed. Thank you very much, Madam chair and commissioners. So today in front of you, we have a request from the city of Springfield to increase the amount of a grant that we issue to them back in our 2023 grant round. And just as a little bit of background, we introduced the gambling harm reduction category in 2023. And in that, we had kind of a two tiered system that we had a type one study, which we kind of called a screenings level study for about $20,000 that would allow a community to try to identify some kind of either a group of folks or some problems that they want to study further. And then we had a type two study that was for a community that has already really identified a specific research topic and wanted to really dig into that. So what Springfield had done was they applied for a type one study and it was for just under $20,000. And what they wanted to do was look at young adult gambling in the community. And I think when we introduced this, we did introduce it as a pilot. We hadn't done this kind of work particularly before. Of course, Mark and Bonnie and his folks do a lot of research, but we hadn't really participated in that particularly. So we were trying to start off, I guess, with the kind of baby steps a little bit. And so Springfield has started this work. They put together a group of folks. They have 10 young adults that are working on this. And as originally their proposal was to have about six meetings with these folks and then come up with some recommendations for further study. As they've gotten into this, they realized they've got a really great group of folks. They're really engaged, they're really knowledgeable and the city feels that they can get a whole lot more out of this group than just what they've done in these first six meetings. And they would like to continue this program out through the end of June, which would get them to the next round of grant funding where they would like to come in with a type two study for this group identifying a very specific item or items that they wanna study. So, what we've learned, I think in this project, well, I should say, I have certainly learned in this process that these types of studies are quite a bit more fluid than some of the things that we're used to dealing with. We deal a lot with traffic studies and economic development studies. And there are consultants who do these kinds of things and they know if they're studying 10 intersections, it's gonna cost this much money and so on. These types of studies really, it seems as though when people get into them, I see Bonnie just joined us as well. And I thank her for being here because she can probably talk to more of the details of the study than I can at this point. But we've found is that once they start getting into these things, things certainly might go in a little bit different direction than they expected and so on. And what Springfield is concerned about is if they stop this study at this point, this group of folks will disband and they'll sort of lose the momentum that they've developed so far where they want which they would like to take into that type two study for next year. We really like this project. We think it's a good project. I think Mark and Bonnie really like this project. I mean, we all do, but as a research project, I think they really are behind this. But the problem that we have is our guidelines don't really address increasing the amount of a project's budget. We do have the emergency mitigation grant which does deal with things outside of the regular process, but it's a little hard press to call this an emergency. It's certainly desirable for them to do this. We do see how breaking up this group will putting it back together six months down the road is probably unlikely. So we understand what they're kind of up against. Now, if this had been just like some of the previous things that we had done where we were just moving around money within a grant, we would certainly be recommending this. But with that said, our guidelines just simply don't really address this. So we had to really bring this to the commission to say, is this something that we wanna do? Now, as I said, in the past, we've modified many grants, but there was always budget that would be moved from one piece to another. But we did find, I didn't think that we had done something like this before, but Mary put on her sleuthing cap and dug into the archives. And in fact, we did find one project back in 2016 that we did increase a budget. And that was also coincidentally for the city of Springfield. And while the projects were very, very different, there were some common threads in them. They were both pilot projects, things that we had just started up. And there were a lot of unknowns in it. In that earlier project, they got several months into it and went out and did some bidding and found out costs were gonna be a little bit higher and so on and so forth. And it came back to the commission and said, hey, is there any way that we can increase this money, amount of money so that will last us for the full duration of the time that we needed. And the commission did approve that at that time. In your packet, in the memo, I did outline the waiver provisions of the guidelines. Now, this is not particularly requesting a waiver of anything because the guidelines are silent on this matter. I think I just wanted to illustrate that the commission does have sort of broad authority to interpret the regulations and the guidelines as they see fit. So I guess at this point, we think that the commission has the authority to increase this grant. We agree it's a worthwhile project. We agree that there's some sort of uniqueness to this that they would have to kind of stop a study and start it back up. In most cases, we would tell a community, well, just go, if you need more money for a project, just go through the normal process. And in fact, we have done that in the past where I think with Everett, with the Northern Strand, they needed some more money, but they were able to do it in the regular process. This I think does cause a little bit of hardship for the community as far as that loss of momentum and other things that they would have to kind of recreate moving into a new study. And that would probably be a little bit of, losing that momentum means that they would have to kind of recreate some things and will probably be a little bit more costly to do that. So again, we're not making a particular recommendation. I think as you can hear from me, we do like the project and we'd like to see it go forward, but as far as this goes, I think it's a policy decision by the commission on what to do since the law, the regs and the guidelines are all silent on this matter. And I think we will look at this. This isn't something that we would want to encourage people to be doing routinely, but we do see that there's some unique parts of this program that might warrant that. So I guess with that, I'll open up for questions. Bonnie's here as well to answer questions about the grant itself and anything else that we can answer. Dr. Andrew, it's good to see you. Did you have anything you wanted to add on? I don't. I think Joe did a fabulous job outlining the project and the issues that are before us. So I'm happy to answer any questions about the project or anything else. Well, I saw you nodding with approval and a smile. And then I just want to acknowledge both Lily and Mary because I know that's your team, Joe, hard at work always. So happy holidays to you both. We'll be seeing you, I'm sure, next week in full holiday form. Questions for Joe on this request? The only question I have is, could this be, I don't know what a variance is. If it's not a variance. I mean, I guess sort of a waiver and a variance. I think they're kind of the same thing, really. So, Joe, is this coming out of, I remember the conversation about the emergency bucket and I'm really glad that 2016 came up because I did not remember us ever doing this again. And we were trying to envision what would be an emergency circumstance. I'm very glad we did that because this clearly is one of those circumstances, right? Where you don't want to disrupt something that's a really good process and say, we'll just try to get everybody back together. Right, like I said, it's, you know, fitting it in under, if you read the emergency definition, this probably doesn't quite fit under that, but I think you could argue that it certainly has a negative impact on the project by sort of segregating it with a large time gap. So from a procedural standpoint, is this dipping into it? So we're not relying on the emergency portion. We're just saying there's funds left in region B. So therefore we can amend the allocation. Yeah, yeah, there are sufficient funds. I meant to mention that as well. There are sufficient funds that are there to fund this. It doesn't affect the allocations for 2024, excuse me, FY 2025, we're no longer a calendar year. But, you know, so it doesn't impact that. You know, I guess that the commission could call it an emergency if they would like. And, you know, that's, you know, I think, again, it's sort of almost like a waiver of that, the emergency provision saying that it's, you know, I think I put the exact language in here, but to cover newly identified impacts of an emergency nature that would cost significant amount to the community, if it were not remedied in an expeditious fashion. Again, that's... Yeah, I wonder if we want to try some language going forward because to me this would also be part of what we envisioned during when we created that category is sort of not disrupting the good work and making them wait for the money. Yeah, I think so. And I think we'll sort of revisit this whole issue. I think we should address it in our guidelines in some fashion. Again, it's not something that we want to encourage people to be doing all the time because it could really, you know, just throw our budgets in an array and this array and, you know, we don't, this is something that should be fairly extraordinary and not, or... Also, probably me. Whoops, I think you, did you just come back? You froze for a second, but I think you're back. Me? Yeah. Thanks, I'm in a different location. So thanks. I'm in agreement with Commissioner O'Brien and Gell that this is just something we could revisit, but there's, from a procedural point of view, we do have that discretion. Seems to me, we've got a bunch of engaged young people. We should keep them engaged. Yeah, Commissioner Hill, you feel the same way I can see, right? I do. I think this is an important program and one that we should probably be increasing procedurally the money's there and there is no disruption. So I'm all for this. And we'll definitely get some lessons learned out of this as we, you know, revise guidelines in the future and do more of these types of projects. I mean, this is the very first one that we've done. And, you know, I think we didn't know what we didn't know, you know, going into this, that, you know, there were certain things we could run into and, you know, so I think we will try to take those lessons learned and apply them going forward. Commissioner O'Brien, when we did that emergency language, I can't remember. It might have been around COVID too. So we might have had sort of that emergency emergency, but I think more flexibility, but something like this would work. Yeah. We were wondering about, you know, we also were thinking about, you know, the tornadoes that hit Springfield that sort of the precursor to some of this. And so it was like environmental or economic catastrophic kind of things. But to me, not disrupting something that is going well would be in the similar range or we have to bake it into the guidelines in another way if it's not a emergency. Yeah. So that's using maybe accessible funds and not necessarily emergency funds, got it. Right. All right. Thank you for that. Madam Chair. Yes, Commissioner Skinner. I think this project certainly fits within the sphere of what was discussed years ago around the emergency. Though I don't think that it is an emergency. I do think that the justification is there and the consequences of not granting these additional funds could be costly to Springfield. So I support the additional funding and the conversation, the dialogue that Commissioner O'Brien and Joe just had is almost identical to the one Joe and I had yesterday. And that I think we do need to seek to amend the guidelines to cover this type of a scenario going forward. Excellent. Thank you. I'm not right though, Commissioner Skinner, that you're comfortable that we not use the emergency fund even though there's an argument to support it that we just use the additional funds that are available and that we have that discretion to access those. That's right. Okay. Full agreement. Excellent. All right. Any other discussion? Commissioner O'Brien are you leaning in with a motion or? Sure. Madam Chair, I moved that the commission approved the modification of the 2023 Community Mitigation Fund Grant to the city of Springfield for the Springfield Youth Adult Gambling Project by providing an additional $34,772 in funding as further detailed in the materials in the commissioner's packet and discussed here today. Second. Okay. Any further discussion? Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Commissioner Skinner. Aye. Commissioner Maynard. Aye. Well, yes, 5-0. Excellent. Exciting. We'll look forward to the next steps. Yes. Thank you very much and happy holidays to you all. Thanks, Joe. All right. So we're moving on now to another really exciting report. Lots of diverse topics today and this is on diversity. Vaniswa and John, welcome. Good afternoon. Thank you. So I'm not sure who starts but we're looking forward to your update on the MGC diversity report. Right. So I'm gonna start. So John and I are here to provide the commission with a diversity update regarding the Massachusetts Games Commissions current fiscal year 24 numbers for our internal workforce statistics and our diversity spend. The Massachusetts Gaming Commission has had a commitment to diversity since its inception as it has adopted OSD policies for procurement. More recently, the Supply Diversity Office was established as its own state agency by chapter 262 of the acts of 2020 effective January 2021. The mission of the SDO is to increase opportunities for certified businesses and small business through annual state agency benchmarks. As such, the SDO independently sets the benchmarks and does the spend tracking for the Massachusetts Gaming Commission. So the MGC diversity spend update, we have some charts. I don't know if John is able to share his screen. May I share my screen? Yes, please. Thanks. Okay. Thank you. Give me one sec. So as he's bringing those up, oh, he got up. These charts represent our spending progress for FY23 and FY24. So on the left-hand side is FY23. On the right-hand side is FY24. So we're in the middle of the FY24 fiscal year. So we're making progress towards those goals. So if you take a quick look at these charts, you can see that we're exceeding the benchmarks for all of our categories with the exception of vendor diverse, then veteran business spend for FY23. That's a really tough target to meet. Also, you have to note too, that disability and LGBT were just added. They were just added, but they're still counting towards ours and we are still far exceeding those numbers. And I'm gonna pass it over to John. Excellent. All right. So this is, as Benny Swiss said, and what I'm sharing right now, this is a snapshot of what supplier diversity office shares in their hub with departments. As you can see, as Benny Swiss said, everything in the left-hand bar chart columns, that's FY23, that's over and done with and completed. We hit all our goals, except for veteran spend, that continues to be a little bit of struggle. We're gonna continue to work on that. The problem that we find with that mostly is, it's hard to find services within the discretionary spend that are veteran owned businesses, but we will continue to work on that. And as you can see, actually, I'll move on to the next slide. So the supply diversity office sets our benchmarks for our agency. And this slide shows that the percentage of discretionary spend for MGC for a small business purchasing is 3.3%. And for the supply diversity program categories, minority owned businesses, it's 8%. Women owned businesses, it's 14%. Veteran owned businesses, it's 3%. And as Benny Swiss stated, as of FY24, SDO has set two new benchmarks and the percentages for disability owned businesses is 0.3% and LGBT is also 0.3%. All right, so I'm gonna move on to the next chart. And this shows where we're at for this year, right? In this column, you can see the actual dollar values of what the SDO has prescribed. And we don't have any say in that the SDO is independent of us, they set these dollar amounts for disability and LGBT spending. It sits a little over 24,000. For minority owned businesses, it's around 650,000. For small businesses, it's close to 270,000. For veteran spend, it's close to 245,000. And for women owned businesses, it's a little over 1.1 million. So as you can see right here, this is our progress through FY24. And we're not quite yet at the halfway point. After this month we'll be into the third quarter. But as you can see, we're already making progress towards our disability spend goals. I expect us to actually pick up. Some of that progress with some intentional spend procurements later on. LGBT, we've already exceeded our goals for the year. So we've hit that benchmark, minority business spend. We are on our way to hitting this benchmark. I know that our IT division has a lot of intentional spend off of statewide contracts with minority owned businesses. And a lot of that spend happens in the latter part of the year. So we expect to hit that benchmark as well. We've already hit the benchmark for small business spend. We far exceeded that. And we're not even halfway through the year. For veteran spends, this is an area where we still struggle and we'll continue to look for avenues to try to bring this up. And surprisingly enough, women business spend, this is a very high benchmark. And we've already made it for the year. So, I'm pleased to say that I think we're making great progress. We're still working on, and we'll be improving these numbers throughout the year. I also want to note that hitting these goals is a multi-year endeavor. Derek and my predecessor, Agnes, they've worked on procurements and intentional spend all the different divisions have also worked on that to really help us meet these goals. Cause as you can see, these numbers, the benchmarks are quite high. With that, I'm going to pass it to Beniswa to go over our internal statistics. So just like our vendor, our goals for our vendor, we also have our internal goals with regards to our workforce. And that has also been in place since our agency was started. So we look to have at least 25% diverse individuals within our agency. And if you look at this total, right now we have, well, as of 1130, 2023, it was the last time this was updated, we have hired people since that time. We have 134%, I mean, 134 people. And for when you're looking at how people self-identify, 100% of people have self-identified with our categories. Now, we do have to mention that according to our applications, you can only select male or female, you don't get any other options, but 100% choose one or two of those topics. So for males, we have 65, which is 48.51%. And then for female, we have 69, which is 51.49%. So looking back about a year ago, we were around 47, 48. So we have surpassed that goal. And as far as self-identification, when it comes to ethnicity, we have 98.51%, or 132 employees who chose to self-identify. Now, when it comes to the multi-ethnic category, that's when somebody chose to identify as more than one ethnic category. So they're still counted, but they're put into the multi-ethnic bucket. So right now we have 99 employees who consider or identify as white, that's 75% of our agency. We have 15 employees that identify as black or African-American, which is 11.36%. We have 12 that identify as Asian or AAPI, that's 9.09%. We have three that identify as Hispanic or Latinx, which is 2.27%. And three that identify as multi-ethnic, which is 2.27%. So we're really happy that we're in alignment and this has been consistent throughout the year and it was consistent last year as well. And that concludes our diversity report. Any questions? Any questions, commissioner Kusher Maynard? So I just, on the last slide, I have a question for Beniswa. Do we capture the numbers of persons with disabilities, veterans or LGBTQ plus populations? So with regards to Pelleo, we do, but we don't have access to that information. So we are looking at possibly, so hopefully sometime next year to do a new self-disclosure form internally that we will keep up. Because like I said before, we don't have the, people do not have the opportunity to select non-binary. They can only select male or female. So we should be able to give them more choices as well. Yeah, and the reason I ask is simple. I think that, you know, you and I spend a lot of time talking about this, Beniswa, at our desks. It's hard to capture that information. And a lot of time, I think, organizations like ours are under-reporting, not over-reporting, and it's just a matter of capturing it. So anything that we can do as a commission to make sure that people feel safe to report that information, I'm happy to support that. Thank you. Other questions or comments? Nice report. Thank you. You're in great progress on the spend. Yeah, and I would just like to note one other thing, Chair, on the veteran piece of it, the Supply Diversity Office does acknowledge that it is very tough for most agencies to meet the veteran spend goals, because a lot of the SDO certified businesses that are veteran businesses are more related towards construction. So that's why we're, you know, that's one of the struggles that we're trying to find services within our discretionary spend that matches with what we need. So I'm wondering, I know that we have these stats from our licensees as well. I wonder if even checking who they've got in terms of their veteran suppliers may give us some ideas, right? So with regard to our licensees, they're also struggling with regards. Yeah, yeah. We just had our quarterly meeting and that's one area that veterans and women are the two areas that they struggle with the most. And so we were trying to brainstorm ways in which we can try to partner to get more people. Is it an education piece? Do we have to look out towards like a leave or the Chamber of Commerce or pay setters to help educate people on ensuring that they're getting certified and what that process is to support them through those processes. Okay, great. And Commissioner O'Brien, just to address what you talked about, what Bernice talked about, the veteran spend we have did come from our licensees. It was a vendor that's not on statewide contract. It's veteran business supply. We made an intentional spend. The commission gave us that authority a few years ago and we've actually continued using them over WB Mason where they're able to provide us the goods. And to further address what Bernice was talking about, John and Mark worked to get the Mass Council as a certified women-owned not-for-profit. So we get their spend. One of the things we have to continue trying to do is diversify our vendor pool because if we lose the Mass Council, we lose a huge piece of our women-owned business spend. So this is something that is a daily challenge for us in a daily work and very valuable work. But as vendors come and go, we need to continue to have a pipeline. And this is a big piece where Bernice and John are really making an effort with all of the divisions. So I've never hit the targets. John and Bernice have made huge progress here and I just can't speak highly enough about the work that they're doing with all of our divisions. That's great. Thanks, sir. So that's actually really interesting information because I wondered how we were so far ahead on the women's spend. So, yeah, let's take that into account and put that council in one bucket and make sure that we're going and being really intentional because there's a lot of women-owned businesses out there. We still do work with other women-owned businesses. Travel leaders, for example, is one and we'll continue to diversify, as Derek said. And just to add on to what Derek said, being able to hit these benchmarks takes time because they're related to procurements. Yeah. And just a shout out to the SDO. They do such great work and they're really good state partners. I think that I have emphasized in the past and I think my fellow commissioners have joined me that for our operators who listen often to our meetings, the SDO is such a cooperative partner and such a great resource. What they've really been able to accomplish by one, expanding, and that's always with the governor's work too, the categories, but they've also really been able to diminish the friction of the certification process. And I think we're seeing that, right, Sean, you're nodding your head evidence of that. And to the extent that we can help veterans in any way, accomplish that in concert with other state agencies and SDO, I think that you have permission to work collaboratively with the state to really assist the vets here. I think all of us, there are complications about what they're qualified for, but they go beyond that for our veteran population. Thanks. In terms of our numbers, Denise, I had one question. It looks like we're right around 25%, which is our benchmark, but I felt like we were up to 30 last year. Did we have just a little? We did, we had some people leave, so. Yeah, which affected our numbers. Yeah, okay. So then the good news is that we've been up to about 30 and we've been intentional about it. And I know that the intentionality will continue. So, you know, we're a small group, relatively speaking, right? Right. And the other thing that goes with that too is I'm ensuring that our tracking is correct. So we, some of that could be self-corrected because we're tracking better now too. So, okay, excellent. And then to Commissioner Maynard's point, I'm assuming Commissioner Maynard that there's no legal restriction for us to do more on the reporting as long as to your point, it's safe. And also that there aren't any legal restrictions when you swan can work with the legal team, right? On that. Yeah, and she and I have talked and, you know, HRD has some guidelines I know from our former job on what you can and cannot do and how you can ask certain questions and when you can ask certain questions. And I know that I would imagine Dave Muldrews on top of that too. So, as we, you know, as we go forward. Yeah. All right. This is really excellent work and it holds us all accountable. And we asked so much of our licensees in this area and they're leading in many ways in this area now because of that ask. And so this keeps us. So thank you. Commissioner Skinner, I just wanna make sure I haven't neglected you. No, this is all very good stuff. And I'm very pleased with our team in ensuring that, you know, we're not just talking to talk, we're walking the walk. I said that before. Setting the example. So great, great work. Yes, excellent. Okay. So I think then happy holidays and hopefully we'll all be together next week. Vinicius Rajan, great to see you and thank you for your good work. And we're gonna move on to our last item on the agenda, number 15. Thanks. I'm gonna turn. Commissioner Hill, if you wanna, I know we're probably gonna ask Todd to lead us through on the document. Thank you, Todd, for your picking on the laboring of putting it into writing. But also I wanna invite Mills, Tom Mills, to join us if he's available because he also has been instrumental in thinking about this item. Commissioner Hill, you wanna? Of the only introduction I would give this is that over the last few weeks, Todd and Madam Chair and Tom and others have reached out to members of the Mass Gaming Commission to kinda look at the 23K, 23N and see if there's anything that we could do to make things a little easier here through legislative changes. Now that the Mass Gaming Commission has been up and running for 10 years, it's always appropriate to look back and see what we can do to improve the way we do business. And in some cases, that means that we need some legislative changes. So what we have before you today, our subject matters that the staff has come up with as well as others for your consideration for us to send a letter to the legislative leaders in hopes that they would agree that we need some changes legislatively and would be willing to do that before the end of the session, which ends July 30th of this year. And if they don't, then we could certainly revisit this in December for the next session, which starts next January. So with that, Madam Chair, I would turn it over to you or to Todd. Why don't we go back to Todd? Thank you, Commissioner Hill, Madam Chair, happy to jump in here. And just for open meeting law purposes, I would just note that, well, of course, as Commissioner Hill mentioned, I have discussed or shared this with two of the commissioners, the opinions in here are my own and not necessarily theirs. And so that's why we're presenting this to the commission collectively for your review. I also just wanted to thank Carrie Teresee, who I collaborated with in putting this letter together. She was instrumental in constructing this as well. So with that, I'm happy to walk through each of the proposals and Madam Chair commissioners, if we'll be helpful, I can pause after each one or if we'd like to just jump in if there are any questions. We can do that as well. The first one, and that is by design, I think this is one of the larger issues that we face and it has manifested itself in recent weeks, relates to the public records law and exemptions under which the commission may withhold from public dissemination certain documents and information. As you are well aware, there is one provision in chapter 23N, the sports wagering law that discusses public records, but it is very limited in scope and limited to just the application process. That makes it difficult oftentimes for the commission and staff to obtain all of the information that is useful in doing our jobs effectively and ensuring robust oversight over the sports wagering industry. So for that reason, we've included this proposal to adjust the exemption, the statutory exemption language within chapter 23N and 23K and 128A for that matter as well if the legislators and governor are so inclined. So that's the first bullet point. I'll just keep going. The second one pertains to nondisclosure agreements. As you're aware, under chapter 23K, there is some language that we have used to execute nondisclosure agreements with the casino licensees. And again, this applies solely to the casino gaming licensees, not to racing or sports wagering. This particular bullet is a request that we more clearly establish the authority to do that than presently exist just to ensure that we're on as solid footing as possible in protecting some highly sensitive information that comes before us to do our jobs. The third bullet point relates to the ability of the IEB and the commission ultimately to request and share information with other regulatory and investigatory bodies. There is very clear language in chapter 23K that allows the commission and the IEB to do so. In fact, as you may know, we've executed MOUs with a wide variety of other regulatory bodies and other jurisdictions and routinely share and receive intelligence and other investigatory information with other bodies. Such language does not exist in chapter 23N, so we don't have the ability to do that. This proposal would broaden that authority into chapter 23N so that we can make sure that we are communicating with our colleagues across the country. The fourth bullet point pertains to our ability to request and receive certain player related data which we've come to refer to as section 97 data. As you know, section 97 of the Gaming Act directed the commission and ultimately the licensees to provide player data relative to certain types of play that is one of the cornerstones of the gaming law itself. It will allow, ultimately we're in the process of gathering this data and ultimately we'll share it. It's intended to allow researchers to conduct analysis to understand better how addiction develops and progresses, how to engage in the best possible harm minimization and other evidence-based systems that would allow certain monitoring. Such language does not exist in chapter 23N, so we would not have the direct ability to receive and study this type of information. So this particular bullet point and request would allow us to do engage in similar type of data collection. The next page, first bullet, addresses the community mitigation fund. And of course we just talked about that a little bit. And as you are very familiar, the commission has some flexibility in disseminating funds from the community mitigation fund, but it is limited to ensuring that the monies are intended to offset costs related to the construction and operation of the gaming establishments. This particular request would broaden potentially the scope of the use of community mitigation funds in order to allow the commission to distribute funds that would ultimately just benefit the communities in a more broad way other than the more limited fashion that's presently described in the statute. So that is the intention behind that request. The next bullet point addresses employment related matters affecting the commission. As you know, under chapter 23K, section three, there is language that restricts our ability to hire folks who have worked for casinos or gaming licensees really in the three years preceding any employment here. That restriction, just to be clear, we're not talking about the post-employment restrictions, those would remain in effect, we're not touching those here. What this is talking about is the pre-employment period. There was certainly a logic behind this at the time the gaming law was passed, the likely rationale was to avoid industry insiders populating the commission and its ranks to ensure that really impartial regulation and licensing measures were put into place. At this juncture, though, it does limit our ability in the pool of applicants that we're able to look at for present purposes. So that's what this particular bullet point is intended to address. So I'm sure Brian is here. Yeah, so this is one where what I really love to see is I would like to see maybe a shorter period. I don't really think we should take somebody directly from a licensee in. I think it should be both ways, 23K and 23N. So I'd like to see it extended to 23N, but maybe the three years is the part that's more excessive. I don't know what everybody else thinks. Commissioner O'Brien, I immediately picked up on this one. I've talked to the chair when I first started this job about my worry about regulatory and agency capture. It's something that I've studied, something I've thought a lot about. It's something I worry about. And the theory is that just by working relationships and being close that the agency can be captured by the interests that it regulates. And so just from a theoretical standpoint, I mean, I would leave it in place. I would be more likely to talk to Commissioner O'Brien about a particular year, but I would extend it to everyone that is regulated by the Game Commission. I think that it's a good thing that there's a cooling off period both coming in and going out. Yeah, I'm in agreement with commissioners here and I'm actually comfortable with the three years. I'm not sure necessarily about the rationale that the notion that it doesn't exist because of exactly Commissioner Maynard's point, but Commissioner Hill. I think I could be swayed into maybe lowering the three to maybe one year. I hear what you're saying and I can appreciate it and agree with it to a point. But I think three years is a long, long time. And I think we maybe we'll continue this dialogue. We can take it out of the letter at this time, talk about how we would move forward with maybe lowering the years, and then we can always send another letter at some point in the future. If we do decide to lower it, and I actually think even with it, the state ethics rules also apply here for purposes of disclosure and transparency so that if we do have employees who've worked for a licensee and they're involved in presenting, a disclosure should be probably made, Todd. I don't know if you're agreeing with me, but I think that that's important because not all of us may know every employee's history. So if we do, if we begin hiring folks with background who worked for our licensee. Spell it out in our enhanced code. It's I think it actually, it's under 2688 too. No, I know what I'm saying. I'm wondering, they get sort of tutor them on the intake, right, on our own enhanced rules. It might be maybe part of that, a good onboarding topic to remind people of, yeah. Yeah, it's just an appearance thing too. So just straight 2688 for any state employee who actually is presenting. At some point it gets old enough where it's no longer reasonable to have that perception. But if we shorten it, certainly like to the one year that Commissioner Hill just recommended and even maybe with three years, I'm amenable to reducing. I just think we have to, you know, I think we should be, we should be careful around this area. So I just, my reduction was more the two, not the one, Commissioner Hill, just full disclosure. That's sort of my past that I'm not comfortable. And I would like maybe, I think it should come out of the letter and we have a conversation and I'd be curious to get a little more detail on which areas in particular are we having difficulty getting people in? Cause it doesn't apply to 23N at this point. And so what aspects exactly are we having difficulty on the 23K side in what would you anticipate potentially on 23N if we're gonna, as part of this, we ask them to please extend it to 23N. Commissioner Brian, to your point, it doesn't apply to sports wagering right now. We could impose it on ourselves through our enhanced ethics. Right. That's something maybe we need to talk about, yeah? So maybe we, you know, on the other hand, I also know it's competitive hiring and so, you know, I don't wanna be difficult from a management point of view, Todd, but maybe it's a combination of prohibition and disclosure and treating both all sides equally. Commissioner Maynard, Commissioner Skinner. Commissioner Skinner. Madam Chair. Yes. Yeah. So I'm gonna go against the grain just a little bit here. Not to disrupt the discussion. I think it's a good one and it should continue, but I'm gonna ask for a little bit more time to sit with this document. I saw it for the first time on Tuesday evening and I would like to have the opportunity to better grasp the issues and understand their implications and, you know, sort of what the options are and what the current lay of the land is now. I wanna understand that more fully. So if there are no time constraints involved in the submission of this letter to the legislature, I would ask that we not take action today and put this off for the next meeting, just again, to allow time to digest. So Commissioner Skinner, could we still go through the document just to get first impressions? And then Commissioner Hill, I'm gonna turn to you because you're the expert on the timetable. Absolutely. The discussion should definitely continue. It's a good one. Thanks. Commissioner Hill. Let's continue. I had no illusions that we were gonna be voting on this today. This was to allow a conversation to start and then we would come back. In terms of timing, we were hoping to be able to get it to the legislative leaders when they came back from their winter break. But certainly this letter could go anytime to the legislature. My hope is the earlier, the better so they can digest it. And when the budget's coming out in April, for example. So we were hoping if there was gonna be any changes that maybe they could put it as an outside section. There's gonna probably be two or three more supplemental budgets that will be offered before August that maybe they could put outside sections. So there is no hard set date that this needs to be out by. So again, we envisioned today being the first day of the discussion, look at the document and then come back. But the sooner the legislature gets at the better opportunity they have to know if they're going to adopt any changes where they can put those in because they probably will not be freestanding bills. So we can continue to walk through the sections with Todd. On the one that we were just discussing that kind of has operational implications. So whether it stays in or out, I think it sounds like the commissioners are asking some good questions, Todd and maybe it can get to the right place to help operationally, but yet also address the transparency issues that we've got. Okay. What do you think? Yeah, no, that works well. We'll beef that one up a little bit and be prepared to discuss it in a little further detail next time. Yeah, and it may actually end up becoming its own sort of item for discussion, balancing all the interest at play. All right, so do you wanna go on to the racing modifications? Is that where we are? Yes, absolutely. So the next two under the heading racing modifications pertain to the Resource Development Fund, which is section 60 of chapter 23K. The first one pertains to the commission's ability to make use of the part of the fund for purposes of administering the racing division and the racing oversight, the commission offers the industry. As we've discussed previously, the funding for that is moving in the wrong direction and this is one potential way to ensure that we're able to afford the type of robust oversight of the industry that we have come to expect and will continue to expect. So that is what that particular bullet point gets to. Of course, and just to kind of, this dovetails a little bit into the next one, you'll remember, of course, the uses of the fund are very specific in the statute. They go into those three familiar buckets, the first for racing purses, the second for breeding related uses, and the third for what we refer to as health and welfare benefits. So this would essentially add a fourth bucket into the authorized use of funds from the racework development fund. The next bullet also related to the fund would give the commission greater authority and expand the buckets as well. And this one would be for uses other than the three that I've just described and for any commission related purposes over the years, you know, there've been requests to use monies for the development of new race tracks and things along those lines. And of course we can't do that because the statute is very precise as to what the funds can be used for. And there certainly may be some other uses that would benefit the industry that could come about that the commission may wish to direct certain funds to. And this particular proposal would simply give the commission greater authority to direct the use of the funds in a way that would benefit the industry other than those already described. The next bullet point is also a familiar topic. This is under chapter 128A. You recall of course that there are specific dates in the statute by which an application for a racing license must be submitted and upon which the commission must act. So those are the familiar October 1st and November 15 dates. It may be that there was a time in history where those were helpful useful dates and to some degree, it is helpful to make sure that the application for the upcoming season is in with enough time for the commission to review it. But as we've seen when it comes to a potential new application that comes in, this does hamstring the commission a little bit and force our hand. And it's difficult to understand what the benefit of some of these dates are in that context. So under this particular proposal, those dates would be removed to give the commission just discretion to decide when an application has to be submitted by, and of course the commission would make a decision in the timely fashion. So that is that bullet. The next one, this is the top of the next page, it addresses chapter 128A section 5H and 5 in general. And you'll recall that there's a list of purposes and requirements that govern the manner in which the commission has to expend the revenues collected in the racing space, whether from simulcasting or other paramutual wagering assessments or what have you. The top one on the list is local aid. The second one is for the commission's operation of the racing division. And then further on down the list, just by way of illustration is the $65,000 that the commission has over the past couple of years directed for the use of the jockeys and what have you. So some of the items on the list are a bit outdated and the ordering could benefit from some review. And so what this would do is give the commission a greater discretion as to how to expend the funds that comes to it in the interest of the racing industry in ensuring that we have robust rigorous regulatory oversight again that we've come to expect. It's really just a modernization effort that we are proposing here. The final one under responsible gaming considerations relates to what I believe is familiar monthly rewards statement requirement. The requirement of course would stay in place here but there are a few provisions in there that it seems to me could benefit from some modernization. The statute itself doesn't discuss email and things along those lines. We do address that in our regulations but just to ensure that we are on as solid a footing as possible it would be helpful to have a look at section 29 and ensure that it not only is it modernized but that it also reflects the most current responsible gaming principles as we've come to know them over the past number of years. And that is what this particular bullet point would be designed to address. So with that Madam Chair commissioners, that's the list. Of course, if there are other items that come to mind we can add to them. We have certainly identified one matter here that we will be prepared to address further at the next meeting or at an upcoming meeting but otherwise that is my overview of the contents of this proposed letter. Any questions for Todd? Only one generated some real discussion. Todd and I had suspected it would but again, as I mentioned, there's competing interests so I operationally so we can figure out next steps on that one. Any ones that come to mind commissioners that you wouldn't have liked to have seen address? I'm wondering if we should incorporate something about charitable gaming, Todd? Yeah, so there are a couple of others that I would want to discuss with some of the other stakeholders across state government if we were going to include something like that and charitable gaming is certainly one of them. Right, so maybe we could do that in the independent letter but can we put that on the list, please? That would be good. Absolutely, of course. And then anything else commissioners? So we wouldn't want to hold up this list of charitable gaming where there are outside stakeholders but I think we don't wanna drop that. Madam Chair. Yes, Commissioner Hill. And I'm sorry if you just said this, I was reading the letter and I just wanted to make sure something was in there and it is but would we put this up on our website so that the public can see it as well because there may be some changes that we're asking for that people may not agree with. And I certainly would like to hear that if that's the case. So it's not formally out for public comment but it is public today in our packet. So that's good news. Do we want to put it up on the website for comment? Commissioners. Not opposed to the idea, putting out some sort of, make press release that then links you into that document directing anyone to go into the MGC box if they have comments on it. Mills is going to press release. Or I don't know how you draw attention to it as opposed to just throwing it up there, you know. All right, I'm saying, I am in agreement with you, Commissioner O'Brien, I would have used the same terminology but Mills, how do we normally seek public comment something like this that's not really part of the regulatory framework? We have a section of the webpage where we put items up for public comment and we would share it through our social channels. I see Dave Sousa just popped on as well. You know, Dave, if there's anything else that I'm missing please, please jump in. Nope, that seems all pretty straightforward. Exactly, like you said, there's multiple sections on our website where we could post requests for public comments whether it be individualized that we can put on the front page or the public comments page directly. Usually we do both and then we can share it across social media like Tom just said. Does that sound good? Great, anybody object to that? Hearing none. So Todd, that sounds good. I'm not hearing any additions but people will have a chance to think about it as they read it. All right, excellent work. Thank you very, very much. It's nice to have this compilation and can grow from there. So thank you, Commissioner Hill, thank you. All right, I think that that concludes item number 15, right, Tom? Yes, that's it. Okay, any other business? Any commissioners update? I don't want to embarrass Heather necessarily but I don't know that we have another public meeting other than agenda setting before she leaves. So unless there's something else planned I don't know about in this forum. I just wanted to say thank you to her for her time and her work stepping into the interim the last couple of months and I wish her well and a happy holidays. Just in case we don't fit it in on the agenda setting. Well, I certainly was going to fit it in on the agenda setting December 20th and then I know we also have a gathering we'll all be together internally but we're allowed to thank people as much as we want, Commissioner Bryant. So thank you. She might be... She's not taking her video off so I think she's just going to stay under the radar until the next time. She might be hard at work so that's most likely the case. I don't think she'd be shy but yes in our agenda setting meeting it's public of course too. We'll be sure to embarrass Heather at our holiday party as well. Yeah, well there was the in-person and then there were sort of the public facing so I wanted to get the embarrassment on the public facing one too. I like John's icon there. There we go. Thank you and Heather. No neglect here. We are all thinking of you and thanking you. All right. Anything else? All right. Motion to adjourn from someone? Move to adjourn. Thanks, Commissioner. Second. Thank you, Commissioner Maynard. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Commissioner Skinner for hanging in here today. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner O'Brien. Hi. Commissioner Hill. Hi. Commissioner Skinner. Hi. Commissioner Maynard. Hi. Yes. Thanks, everyone. Excellent meeting. Appreciate everyone's hard work.