 We're good to go. All right. Good morning. This is a convening of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission. Holding this meeting virtually, so we'll do our roll call. Good morning, Commissioner O'Brien. Good morning, I'm here. Good morning, Commissioner Hill. Morning, I'm here. Good morning, Commissioner Skinner. Good morning. Good morning, Commissioner Maynard. Good morning, Madam Chair. Okay. Thank you. We'll get started today as public meeting number 471, and it's August 17th. I'm not sure if it's anybody's anniversary today or not. I'm looking at Commissioner Maynard. Yours was earlier in the month. That was the fifth which you should always remember. I should always remember. Our son got married on the same day, just this past couple of weeks ago. All right. We're going to turn to you, Commissioner Maynard. You have some minutes for us and your new roll of secretary. Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I move that the commission approve the minutes from the January 23rd, 2023, and January 26th, 2023 public meetings that are included in the commissioner's packet subject to any necessary corrections for topographical errors or other non-material matters. Commissioner Maynard, could we take the motion separately? I was not present for the January 26th meeting, and so I will need to abstain. Absolutely, I can do that. So I will go ahead and make a motion. I move that the minutes from the January 23rd, 2023 public meeting that is included in the commissioner's packet subject to approve them, subject to any necessary corrections for topographical errors or other non-material matters. Second. Any edits or comments? All set, Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Commissioner Skinner. Aye. Commissioner Maynard. Aye. And I vote yes, five, zero. Thanks, Commissioner. Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that the commission approve the minutes from the January 26th, 2023 public meeting that's included in the commissioner's packet subject to any necessary corrections for topographical errors or other non-material matters. Second. Thank you. Any edits or comments? Okay. Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Commissioner Skinner. Aye. Abstain. Okay, and Commissioner Maynard. Aye. Aye. Thank you. Five, zero. With my yes, because I gotta remember to vote two. Thank you, Commissioner Maynard. And we'll move right on to our administrative update from our interim executive director. Good morning, Todd. Good morning, Madam Chair. Thank you. And good morning to you commissioners and to all who are joining the meeting here today. We've certainly had an eventful week or so beginning with the developments relative to Penn Entertainment sports wagering partnerships and with the news of wind bets winding down operations in certain markets. We'll be hearing more from our team about those two matters further on down the agenda. So I won't comment on those for now. And of course, tomorrow we'll be continuing the proceedings relative to the application for a category two sports wagering license. We're also posting a meeting notice for the following Monday, just in case that review is not completed and the commission's inclined to continue the discussions will be solely a placeholder just in case though at this point we're always, of course, mindful of personal commitments. I'd like to take a few moments though to just update you as to a couple of matters I discussed recently with our partners at the Department of Revenue. First, I'm pleased to report my understanding that the intercept program pertaining to past due child support and overdue state tax obligations is up and running successfully in the sports wagering space. The process is required by statute and is similar in nature to the one that operates on the casino side of the ledger. You may recall that the sports wagering operators were required to execute an MOU with the Department of Revenue and the commission outlining the terms under which they'd be given access to the DLR intercept data. Given the truncated timeframe for implementation though the operators commenced those operations with a web-based query system known as e-services with an agreement to migrate to an API which you may recall as an application program interface. They were scheduled to do that by September 1st. And this new system would allow the two computer programs to communicate with each other directly without any human involvement essentially. We've been advised though that by nobody's fault it looks like that date will be pushed out to April 1st of 2024 to essentially help ensure a smooth transition of all the operators to this new system. Accordingly, the MOUs will have to be amended to reflect this change. The executive director was previously authorized to execute these MOUs. And if you're all comfortable with it I'd be happy to take responsibility for reviewing and executing the forthcoming amendments. I've already seen the draft language and essentially all it does is changes the date from September 1st, 2023 to April 1st of 2024. So I wanted to just mention that and make sure you are okay with that move. And I can just stop for a second, Madam Chair. So commissioners, you remember that MOU that Executive Director Wells executed? I guess I'm just reminded by the date of implementation was September 1. Todd, you don't have any further explanation for the move to an April date? Anything we could help with is what I'm wondering. No, I don't believe so. I think I can't recall the exact technical explanation for the need for the move, but the Department of Revenue felt like that was the proper adjustment here just to make sure there are no issues. Things are working well enough with the e-services. There was no reason to rush to the API as my general understanding. So that's very high level explanation. Commissioners, so the request is to just authorize Todd to extend by amendment the date to the April date. Any questions for him? No questions and I feel comfortable doing that, Madam Chair. Thanks, Commissioner. Works for me. Yeah. Yeah, same. Great. And same here. Okay, excellent. Thanks, Todd. All right, thank you very much. Also, while we're speaking of the Department of Revenue, I wanted to advise that the DOR is promulgating a new regulation relative to the withholding of winnings from sports wagering operations, making those winnings subject to the same Massachusetts income tax withholding rule as winnings from wagers placed at gaming establishments. You'll recall that the law generally requires withholding if the proceeds of a wagering transaction is greater than $5,000 and at least 300 times as large as the amount wager. So the proposed amendment would bring that requirement into the sports wagering space as well. A public hearing on that proposed regulatory amendment scheduled for August 30th. It's my understanding that the operators have been made aware of this initiative, but I just wanted to make sure that the commission is aware of this law. So I'm happy to take any questions on that if that would be helpful. Any questions, commissioners? But thank you. Otherwise, given our full agenda here today, that's all I had for you and happy to turn it back over to you, Madam Chair. Commissioners, just is there anything that you would like for a future meeting? I know we'll have our agenda-setting meeting, but is there anything that you would like to hear from except your director Grossman for a future meeting? All set for now. All set for now. Excellent. Okay. Moving then, thank you. And moving on to our legislative update, Commissioner Hill and Grace Robinson. Good morning. Good morning. And I'm gonna turn it over to Grace. Awesome. Thanks, Commissioner Hill. So just a really quick update to our update last week, Governor Healy did sign the budget last week. She sent back to the legislature eight outside sections with proposed amendments, one of which was section 15, which was the amendment we discussed last week, which deals with the enforcement regulation and control of the distribution of alcohol at gaming establishments. So included in your packet is the letter she sent back with her proposed changes to that section. And now we'll just have to wait and see what the legislature does. So we will keep you all updated. And Commissioner Hill, if there's anything you wanna add? Unless anybody has a technical question, that's what happened. I do. She sent it back for amendment. When does the legislature, what's the next move by the legislature, Commissioner Hill? So it actually will go to a committee like a new bill actually. Okay, yep. And they will take a look at it and if they accept it, it passes on through the legislative process like a bill would and it would be sent back to her and it would be signed into law at that point. If they choose not to accept it, my understanding is it would be sent back with language that we don't accept this and then she can either veto it or sign it at that point. So there's still some options in place. And is there a time, are there time machines? That's why I couldn't remember that. Okay, thanks Commissioner Hill. No time machines, okay. I can just tell you historically between September and October is normally when they would bring up vetoes and things of this sort, but they can almost go right up to December 31st. And because this is the first year of the session, I believe it can carry over into the next one, but I'd have to get back to you on that. But certainly up through December 31st for sure. Okay, so at this time, does it make sense for us to sort of think who's going to support the work of this study? Well, we'll hold on that, right? Okay. Yep. Okay, thank you. I worked on the other side where it was 10 days to get everything done. So a little different. All right. Any questions for Grace on that? I know that IEB was working on this issue beforehand. So it's all on hold. Okay. Thank you, Grace. Thanks, Commissioner Hill. Okay, I'm looking at the wrong document here. So at this point in time, returning to IEB, we do have quite a few outside guests today. I wanna thank them all right now for accommodating this busy agenda. At this juncture, we are anticipating hearing from IEB and others on the overview of casino property public safety efforts. We've had an initial meeting, if you remember commissioners on this, and it has been a session, we anticipate that's appropriate for an executive session. So as you know, I have to read language into the record. Commission anticipates that it will meet an executive session, according to general laws chapter 38, section 21A4, to discuss a use and deployment of security personnel or devices or strategies with respect there too at gaming establishments. The public session of the commission meeting will reconvene at the conclusion of the executive session in this instance. We anticipate doing that. So this meeting will be held open if we go into executive session. Any questions or do I have a motion? Madam Chair, I move that we go into executive session on the matter and for the reasons just stated by the chair. Back in. Thank you. Okay, any questions? Right, Commissioner Bryan. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Commissioner Skinner. Aye. Commissioner Maynard. Aye. And I vote yes. So the way that this will work to the members of the public and all of our guests who are outside the purview of this particular matter will go into a different virtual room and there'll be a screen put up to let you folks know that we're still in executive session and we'll give a little bit of a fair warning to folks that when we anticipate coming back. Okay. So is it Dave Souza, Grace who'll escort us to our virtual room? Yep, I'm gonna move everybody over. And if anybody that needs to be included that hasn't afterwards just give me a holler and I can scoot you over real quick as well. Excellent. Thank you. Thanks everyone. You haven't gotten the request either, right? Nothing. Okay. I see all of you. Yeah, I have to manually add everybody before I'm able to open the room. Got it, thank you. Just, Commissioner Maynard was on my screen. Thanks. All right, I think that should be everybody. If anybody that is in here still needs to be added please feel free to send me a message so I can confirm and move you over. Am I in, Dave? I can move you over now, Dave, if you need to be. I just didn't have you on my list, but I'll throw you in there. Please, thank you. Hey, Dave, do you need to go back into the executive session room? You're muted currently. Can you hear me? Yeah, I got you now. Okay, I have a presentation. I just don't know, are we gonna be coming back to the public or? I believe so that the plan is they'll be returning to the public session whenever their executive session is over. I'm just not sure when that'll be. You could also reach out to Grace, because she is in there and she should have a better idea of when things should be wrapping up in there. Not everyone, is Derek in it? I don't believe so. Tom Mills is as well, so he could be somebody to reach out to there. If Derek isn't in it, then I shouldn't be in it, but I just wanna make sure I'm notified when they come out of it. I'll loop in with Grace, so that way one of us can just send you a message that they've returned. Can you do that? I'd really appreciate it. Yeah, sure thing. Thank you so much. The rain has started here on the North Shore. Has it started anywhere else? You're on mute. It's raining. Oh, that's a disappointment because it's actually still okay here in Winchester. Just started up. How can there be anything left? You know what? After the last three summers of no rain and our river's all drying up, I can't complain. I know, I know. I can. I have to say though, it's kind of fun to have a really good storm. But I like it really big. It's not dangerous big, but intense rain, listening to it, I like that. I'm a storm chaser, so I love all that stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You didn't encounter storms on your drive back. On the drive back? No, we did not. On the drive over? Yes. A little bit of rain, but no storms by any stretch. Yeah, I think I remember that. While we were there though, at night, boy, it came down like a house of fire. But not during your ceremony? No. Unlike my daughter-in-law and son's experience, 5 p.m. Oh no. It makes for a wonderful memory. All right, I think we've got everybody to start now turning back to our public meeting. Are we in the right room? Okay. Yep, we are all good to go. Thanks, Dave. So we are right now streaming, and this is a convening of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission. You've probably heard us chatting a little bit. We just came out of executive session. We are holding this meeting virtually, so we will take our roll call. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Mr. Varian. Have here and back, yes. Yeah, not as angry as I was getting. We actually appreciated everyone's patience. It was a very important meeting, and it went along our apologies. Commissioner Hill, are you here? I am here, and I thought you were talking about our New York trip, not the Colorado trip, so I apologize. I was thinking Colorado. Yeah, your big trip, yeah. But I'm here. You're here. Commissioner Skinner. I'm here. And Commissioner Maynard. I'm here. Okay, so thank you everyone, and again, thank you to the members of the public and to our guests today who are presenting. We went long in our sincere apologies, and then we did take a quick, quick, quick lunch break so we can get going. We're now turning to item number six on our agenda. Grace, I'm right here, and we are going to turn right to Director Ban and Manager Mosherman. Good morning, Madam Chair, commissioners. Actually, I'm going to kick this over to Crystal Bechman to start off the Bet MGM presentation. Crystal? Good morning, commissioners. From Bet MGM, I have Josh Wiseman, who has been waiting patiently, and I think he's going to introduce everyone and take the lead. Perfect, and you want me to, I can share my screen. Great. Yeah. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Can everyone see my screen? We can see your screen. Thank you. Great, great. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, commissioners. My name is Josh Wiseman, the Director of Licensing from Bet MGM. It's very nice to see you all again, and thank you very much for the opportunity to be here today to present Bet MGM's first quarterly compliance report. So we will begin by looking at Bet MGM revenue from the first quarter. And on this slide, you can see that we've included revenue from March as well, just because that was the first month of our online operation. So we included that number here. But you can see there are taxable revenue to date. It's been just under $21 million with just over $4 million in taxes collected by the Commonwealth. And then that is good for a 2.82% handle. These numbers are also consistent with the financial reporting that's on the DMGC website. If no questions, I'll continue to roll through. Yes, please. So moving over to human resources and our resource diversity. On this slide, on the left-hand side, you can see that it's broken into three categories. So we have our executive, which is Vice President and above. The supervisor manager level ranges from supervisor to senior director. And then we have our non-managerial staff in the third bucket. So Bet MGM's total employees are now over 1,100 and diverse across multiple categories. One of the points that I wanted to highlight on this slide is on the far right column from Massachusetts residents. You may recall that on Bet MGM's licensing, hearing, pursuitability back in December, at that point we had one employee who permanently resided in Massachusetts and we now have six. So a material increase there and the number of employees that we have. Madam Chair, are we going to ask questions per slide or are we going to come back? I think we can ask when the slides up. I think that probably works best for Josh's timetable too. Sure. So with that said, Josh, I'm a big supporter of our veteran community. And I see that that number is a little low compared to everything else. Any movement in human resources to try and attract more veterans to your company? Definitely. So one of the ERG is the employee resource groups that I'll be touching on is specifically geared towards veterans. So there's definitely a continuing effort to increase that number at Bet MGM and there's a lot of involvement with our current employees as well as the community to try to bolster that number. I do know and I would just make this suggestion to you. There are a lot of national organizations. So we're not going to be specific to Massachusetts. Let's talk nationally that you can reach out to because there are a lot of veterans who are looking for employment who are very, very good at what they do. And I think would be very beneficial in this industry, which I think is relatively new to a veteran and not really knowing how to outreach to a company to get hired. So I would hope that next time we talk that you could tell me that you've reached out to those companies and that you were successful in getting some more veteran folks to be able to work with you. Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. And thanks, Josh. Of course. Mr. Weissman or Josh, as you've been referred to, it's just a question. How do these actuals actually measure up to your goals if you have them? Yeah, so during our suitability license, there are hearing for suitability. I know this was discussed at length. The intent of the company is to increase these goals specifically across all of the diverse categories. So to my knowledge, there isn't a set goal, a certain number that they're trying to achieve per category as the company grows, but certainly as a percentage point, they're trying to increase the numbers wherever possible across all of these categories. And one of the ways that they're doing that again is through all the ERGs that we have that are specific to each different category that have various initiatives in recruiting and community involvement and all of those things to try to increase the numbers here. Thank you. Sure. So Josh, this is Commissioner O'Brien. The female numbers are low. I mean, given the nature of this industry, we're not so shocked at the 32, but can you speak to the 18% in efforts to get that number up on the women representation? Yeah, so I think the, so for the 18% on the executive level, I know that the, and actually I can one of the organizations that we have, again, that's one of the ERGs is called the Women at Betting GM. So that's one of the initiatives that it's internal for all female employees to get more involved in the company and career development and the like. But then that also ties into recruitment as well. So there's specific efforts in place for recruiting at all levels for executives, supervisor manager, non-managerial that are specifically geared toward women. So it's certainly a work in progress. That 18%, we would like to see increase. And do you know what the breakdown is of the six mass residents? They fall into any of these categories? I don't believe that they do. Yeah, I don't believe that they do. Thanks. Josh, I have a follow-up question on the goals. Is it, I didn't hear a definitive statement from you in terms of what Betting GM is pushing for for goals. And I didn't understand that those were forthcoming. So my question is, are they? And it's also relevant to the next couple of slides that you're gonna get into around diversity spend. So just in general, what is Betting GM's plans to develop those diversity goals? So as of right now, the plan is to increase the diversity. We don't have a set number as of right now as it pertains to the staff or as I'll touch on to the vendors. But I'm certainly happy to sync back with the team and come back with sort of a target. I know when we were going through our licensing hearing, there were sort of solid numbers that were thrown around that weren't solidified at the time. And they still haven't been to my knowledge. So we're trying to, the company is trying to increase diversity across all aspects. There just isn't a set number in place right now. But I can certainly, certainly for the next report, we can include more information about sort of what the target is and how we're working against that value. That'd be helpful. Sure. I'll set commissioners. Thank you, Josh. Thanks. So moving on to vendor utility. There are, so there's two slides for vendor utility. The first looks at our global vendors across all jurisdictions and that's spend. So you can see the categories in the bottom of the slide, but the route that I would draw your attention to is the second row of diverse vendor spend. So that number on here is 1.2 million for the second quarter across all jurisdictions, which is 1%. Again, the number that we're trying to increase both in Massachusetts and across all of our live jurisdictions. The reasons to draw your attention to that is because it's fairly consistent with the next slide where we look at local vendor utility. So this is specific to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And down at the bottom, the total diverse vendor spend is 0.98%. So just 0.02% below the numbers that we're seeing across all jurisdictions. And you can see that broken out by category as well. The end to date, the $80,000 with diverse vendor spend has been through small and medium enterprises. So consistent across all of our jurisdictions. I'll pause in case there's any other questions. Questions, commissioners. Commissioner Skinner, are you leading in? No. Thank you. Can I ask this, Josh, on the types? It's not a very big amount and we understand that. Can you explain the type of service that you are able to secure here in Massachusetts? The type of vendor? I can. It's actually one of our KYC vendors that one of our know your customer vendors. So as a customer is creating account and they're going to verify their personal details, this company is involved in that process to verify some data identity and allow them to create an account. So it's on the tech side. Got it. Okay. Thank you. Moving on to compliance. From April through June, there was one underage atrium accessing an account. So this, in this instance, the individual was able to get the login credentials from someone else's account to log in and place a wager. So this was flagged by FedMGM's internal team who was investigated and then suspicious activity report was filed with Massachusetts Gaming. The account was permanently closed because this action violates the underage wagering policy. So it can't be reopened. The other thing that happens in this scenario is all of the devices of the cell phone laptop that are tied to that account are also blocked, moving forward and the individual wouldn't be able to create another account with FedMGM. They're basically flagged in the system because of the fraudulent activity. So they can't be a repeat customer. Questions on that, commissioners? I'm just curious how it was flagged. Me too. Yeah. I was too, but I'm wondering if that's something for open forum or not. I believe I have the report. I can pull it up and take a look in more detail. I know that it goes through FedMGM as a large, a large fraud group are able to monitor all of these and the specifics of how that process works is not my realm, but I can look here. So what happened was the individual on the account reached out to FedMGM and said that they hadn't placed a wager. It was placed from somebody else using their accounts that they flagged it to FedMGM and then FedMGM went and looked at it to confirm that it was fraudulent. Interesting. Can you just repeat that? I think I'm having some troubles with your volume, so I just want to make sure I'm clear. A person contacted FedMGM because somebody had used their account. Is that what I heard? Exactly, yeah. So to follow up on that, you then shut that person down. Correct. Even though they self-admitted that there was an issue. Correct. Okay, thank you. I want to make sure I'm clear. Apologies for my sound. I remember I had this issue on our licensing hearing as well. Josh, I have a follow-up question on this. Is it the case, I think I recall, and we reviewed a lot of applications. Any individual, regardless of age, can create an account online? But during the KYC process is when they're identified as either under age or of age. Is that accurate? My understanding is they have to be up of legal age to create the account successfully with the company. So if someone was under the age of 21, then they wouldn't be able to successfully complete the KYC because once they go through the whole, you know, your customer stage, then they're able to fund their account in face-for-age. Right. So in terms of creating the account, assuming they enter in a date of birth, that is 21-plus, they can open an account. But then it's still at that point that they get screened as part of your KYC efforts. Is that correct? Correct. Okay, thank you. Yeah, exactly. So it's through the account creation process where there's lag to their age. So I guess the point I'm trying to get at, and you tell me if I'm on the right track or not, is that when you flag this underage usage, it's only going to be assuming your KYC process is successful, right? It's only going to be these instances that you're capturing here of the kind that you just described where someone is self-reported. Okay, thank you. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, so it will be this instance where someone who is 21 or older goes in and creates an account. And then, hypothetically, someone else gets the, they get their login information because it's shared with them or whatever it may be. And then they log into someone else's account. So moving on, sorry, is there a question? I think we're all set. So moving on to responsible gaming. During this timeframe, there were 290 patrons who used the timeout tool, and there were 200 patrons who used the voluntary self-exclusion. And these numbers are fairly consistent with what we've seen across other jurisdictions based on the volume of customers that we have. Adam, Chair, a quick question. Yes. And again, I don't know if this is an executive session question or not. Any idea what the percent is of these numbers for all the users? So the percentage of, yeah, I don't have that number on hand, but I can certainly give I to the team. Thank you. Commissioner Hill, I think that would be an interesting question, too, at some point to ask of Director Van Der Linden. I think he's starting to get some statistics on that. Excellent. I think another good data point, Madam Chair, would be the specific timeout tool that's being utilized. So is it a limitation on wagering or limitations or deposits, that sort of thing? I'd be interested to see. OK, and we can certainly follow up with all of that data. And we can build out this slide. So it's a little bit more detailed for next quarter as well. So we touch on all those data points. And to that, I'm sure that's what the commissioner intended to say, too. But I would want to capture the length, like how long. Sure. It's being useful. Yeah, certainly. We did that. As these presentations go, Crystal can perhaps, you know, develop a little bit of the template that I know you've done with the casino. So these are the this will be really good data points thrust moving forward. So thank you. And then moving on with responsible gaming couple of things to highlight. During the quarter, BEDMGM launched our new on my responsible gaming training program. So this program is for all BEDMGM employees to undergo. I took my responsible gaming training quite recently and it was great and very informative. So this is for all existing employees where they complete the training annually. And then it's pretty on-boarding for employees who are customer-facing. So our customer service agents, for example, they have a training, a responsible gaming training that's actually even more robust than what everyone else goes through, just because they're doing customers. And this includes game sense materials as well. And then also BEDMGM participated in problem game awareness month in March and was very involved with that. So we featured deep sense information, information scripts and responsible gaming strategies on our social media channels. We had banners on our platform about responsible gambling to raise awareness of the tools that are available to customers. There were email campaigns and Ben and Jim even had an internal game sense trivia that we played to help educate the company about game sense and then the importance of responsible gaming. So responsible gaming is something, obviously, that BEDMGM takes very seriously. And we try to be a pioneer in this area wherever possible. And the company is really proud of the strides that we've made so far. Well, I want to commend BEDMGM for continuing to be innovative and to being a really supportive partner of game sense. So thank you for this slide. Commissures, I don't know if you have specific questions on the points made. But it's. I actually do, Madam Chair. And I actually am trying to pull up a note. So can you just bear with me one moment, please? I'm on another computer that I don't normally use during our meeting. So. You're OK. I'm trying to get through it. I think my question is, and I'm sorry to take a moment of everybody's time. Can you help us understand the partnership that you have with the Mass Gaming Commission and also like the Mass Council on Gaming and Health and even the Massachusetts Health Department in regards to responsible gaming? What interaction you have had with them? What partnerships you have with them? And if you don't have one, is there plans to have one? Because I am concerned that companies, they're doing the least they can do to appease us when I think there's so much more that could be done. And this is our first time hearing all of our licensees in regards to this. But I'm concerned that maybe we're just seeing the minimalist amount of, I don't want to say effort, because that's not the word I want to use. But just doing what you need to do to get by to appease us. Or are there plans to meet with the groups I mentioned and to have a plan moving forward to be even stronger in regards to RG? So my understanding is that there are plans to bolster our responsible gambling efforts across the US and Massachusetts, wherever possible. And that there are plans to collaborate with those organizations that you mentioned. I would like to speak with, we have a senior manager responsible gambling who has all those conversations that I haven't been privy to. So if I could, I'd like to speak with them to give them more detail for you. But I'm happy to provide that. And I would also say that with a lot of Ben MGM's efforts, I alluded to that we try to be pioneers in the responsible gaming space. And we've certainly done and tried to go above and beyond the bare requirements of what we need to do. And placing banners on our platform, I think is a good example of we were one of the first organizations to do that. And it wasn't your requirement, but it was something that the company wanted to do to make it in fact with the responsible gaming. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Josh. Other questions on responsible gaming for Josh? So moving on to the lottery. At this time, Ben MGM doesn't have a commercial relationship with the Massachusetts lottery. Since we've only been operating our mobile platform within the state for a short period of time, the company's focus has really been on the sports product. But that said, Ben MGM's always looking to sort of diversify our business offering to the Commonwealth and then all the citizens. So it's certainly something that we could consider in the future. It just has no material steps to take today. Mr. Maynard, were you leaning in? Yeah, I was just going to see. But I remember during the process for the temporary license, have you been in contact with Mr. Bracken or anyone at the lottery? Are you actively talking to them? My understanding is that there haven't been there haven't been active conversations with them today. OK, that's disappointing. Crystal, just a double check on your list of outreach that MGM hasn't made contact. I was just trying to pull up the last report we had to confirm. I can let you know in a moment. Yeah. I mean, if we have Madam Chair, if we have a state entity that wants to at least have a conversation, that's I mean, that's, to me, a bare minimum thing that we can more than encourage when we're required, so. And I can definitely, I'll definitely raise that concern on the sixth when they reported they were the operator who had said they had not had their own contacts. MGM Springfield had been having the conversations. Well, I worked at the lottery years ago and I have very clear memories of MGM Springfield before it was it was about to be constructed, having very productive conversations with the lottery. So I think that that can happen, you know, and what will work. Can be discussed. But I know that you'll enjoy meeting Secretary Prack. So OK, great. And moving on to community outreach. So I spoke previously about some of MGM's employee resource groups that are listed here. There's there's seven of them and they're very involved, like I said, within the MGM community, but then also with the broader community. There are a couple of initiatives here from the second quarter. The one of them is the some of the work that our Black Employee Network has done. So they've partnered with the Tom Joiner Foundation to establish an internship program with two students from across the US. So MGM now has a robust internship program going across all different departments at MGM. It was really spearheaded by that Black Employee Network. The company has sponsored several events during Pride Month, including the local the local parade that was in Jersey City where headquarters are located at New Jersey. And then as I mentioned before, all of these all of these ERGs, whether it's bet on bats, which focuses on veterans, the Latinx Alliance, women at MGM, whatever it may be, they all have strong ties to our recruitment process. So the efforts are all aligned in trying to increase the further development and diversity of that MGM workforce. So they're doing some really great things and they'll just continue to continue to do that. Also, Commissioner, sounds like it, Josh, thank you. And that work is very important to us. So thank you. Of course. And that is my presentation. Thank you very much for your time, I appreciate it. Commissioner, is any final questions or comments for Josh? I bet MGM, you can take down your screen so we can see everybody, please. And then we can excuse you because I know we've kept you over your time. No, I don't think so. Any last questions? Commissioner O'Brien, are you leaning in? No. OK. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much. OK. Madam Chair, if I before we go to the next one. So there were some questions. Again, I'm having difficulty getting everything here because I'm using different computers today. There were a couple of questions and information that we talked about just now, and I'm sure Crystal took great notes. So if we at some point can get answers to those questions, I would appreciate that. I think they're important. Absolutely. And he can do that through the sports weight training division. And then Bruce can give us and Chris can give us an update. Thank you so much. OK. I'll turn back to you, Crystal. Manager Benjamin. Let's see. So if we were to go in order, WinBet would be up next, although they are actually moving to September 7th. They need to reevaluate some of their slides related to goals and plans for future business. So they'll bring the report back to you then. So I guess we are bringing up better. And I believe Robert Warren is here. Yes, ma'am. Fabulous. So I will let you introduce whomever you have with you and kick off your slides. Greetings, commission. My name is Robert Warren. Components lead here is better, but to be myself and the head of legal and business affairs, Ash and Christian presenting. And are you able to share your screen? OK. Yes, ma'am. Give me one second. Right. Are you able to see? Yes. Is the template up? Yeah, we can see it. OK, perfect. Thank you, guys. All right. We'll get started revenue. We'd like to highlight that we did not begin a sports major in operations in Massachusetts until May of 2023. So as you can see, the total sports weight during revenue between May and June, 53,425 and 99 cent. Any questions there? All right, we'll move forward. Workforce and workplace diversity. Here's the chart for that. Just our diversity statement is the top priority here for us and better in recruiting, retaining and developing employees that are best suited to achieve our company's objectives, regardless of race, religion, creed, ancestry, age, national origin, sex, disability or status. We pride ourselves in providing all applicants and our employees with equal opportunity in our recruitment selection, appointment, training, promotion, discipline and delegation. And we ensure that hiring and promotion of women and minorities as well as including them in all levels of employment and company decision making. And we work hard to maintain the culture and workforce is not only designed to achieve company goals, but also reasonably reflects the diversity of the community and surrounding areas. Any questions about this side? This is Commissioner Bryan. Thanks. I'm going to ask you the same question that I asked about MGM earlier, which is your stats on women. I understand you have a really small executive level. But yes, and you've got to you get a proportionally good representation of the manager supervisor level compared to entry. But the overall 16 percent. Can you speak to recruiting efforts that you might have under women? Yes, ma'am, as we continue to grow this team, we are focused that our underrepresented communities are highlighted with us only being three months in operation here in Massachusetts. You know, we're still getting our feet wet and trying to grow out the team and in the operation. So as we grow, we don't, you know, similar to the last speaker, we don't have a specific written plan in place, but it is at the forefront of our goals. I'm hopeful the next time you guys come in front of us, there's something a little more formulated in terms of outreach efforts to get your women numbers up. And I'm sure he'll probably not talk to you about veterans, but I would hope there'd be something a little more informed. Yes, ma'am, copy that. Yeah. In that vein, Robert, good afternoon. I'm also interested in what your company goals are along the lines. I guess same question to that MGM earlier today. So hoping the next time you're before us or someone on behalf of the operator will have detail about around goals or what your plan is to establish those goals, both both on workforce diversity and supplier diversity, vendor diversity. Yes, thank you for the question, Commissioner Skinner. And I want to just add that, yes, as a growing company, rapidly growing and very small, still relative to our other licensees, we are kind of expanding in unpredictable ways as different needs arise in our company. But we are very mindful of that and like the previous operator, we weren't able to specify specific goals for each area, but we can work on something. And I sincerely hope as well that next time we meet, we have a lot more to report on the women that are in categories and have more of a plan in place. Thank you. I just have a quick comment, Madam Chair. And that's again, I'm noticing the diversity numbers, especially the entry level are really, really high. I want to commend you on that. And just say that you have a unique opportunity because you are just getting off the ground as much as you want. And so, you know, it's really hard for folks that have been hiring for a long time to kind of correct everything. But you guys have an opportunity to be intentional. So I'm going to ask them to see how this, how this chart progresses over the next few quarters. Yes, sir. Madam Chair, so you know how I feel about the veterans and to see zeros all the way down is kind of sad to me. So my hope is, as you probably heard in the previous presentation, there are many groups that you could be reaching out to that might be able to get some numbers, some increased numbers in that category. We copy that. Are we prepared to move to the next slide? I think so. Thank you, Robert. Thank you, Matt. Then the supply, then the spend. So you have a overview here. We want to make notes in this particular slide that our current process and we're working on a better process in terms of some automated features to help. But right now what we do is we do send out to all of our vendors a survey of sorts that allows them to self report to us. Their status as small business and of course to identify whether or not they qualify for minority minority women and some of the other underrepresented categories. So you'll see a breakdown. And in this ecosystem side, we kind of highlighted some of the partners that identify the small business partners. Robert, do you rely exclusively on self identification or self disclosure or do you require some piece of on top of that that establish their status? Currently, we rely on them to self identify. However, we are putting in place a tool we're utilizing done in Bradstreet soon to be able to bring us some more information in an automated fashion so that we can assist in determination is being made for designations. OK, and I'm assuming that includes a some type of verification process. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. All right, we'll get to move to the next slide. Thank you. Thank you. Again, just highlighting some of the underrepresented categories. I also want to commend you on breaking out the LGBT system. Thank you, sir. One thing, Robert, I'm hoping we can get for future presentations is the overall spend unless I'm missing it here. I do not see it. Yes, it's not it's not here. And I will get you the overall spend right after this and then I'll make sure that it's on all future presentations as well. Thank you. We we've usually looked at is. The overall discretionary spend. Do we think about that in this context to Commissioner Skinner, you know, for casinos? I don't remember, but I think I think it makes sense to to utilize that if that's what's happening in the gaming world. I don't recall whether we specified that during the application process. However, OK, Crystal can follow up on that maybe for us. Great. Thanks. All right. On to compliance. We did have one case that we discovered of a minor accessing the website due to an account takeover. And that was the only case that we discovered during the time period for reporting. Any questions? Commissioners, questions for Robert on this. Can can you just say what so that I'm not assuming what a takeover is? Could you just explain it please? Absolutely, ma'am. I'll just briefly tell you what happened in this instance. We did an ad hoc investigation and discovered that some the payment methods to a specific account didn't seem to match back in name to an owner, which which caused us to reach out to the account holder and perform enhanced due diligence in that enhanced due diligence. We requested additional information in terms of selfie through an application that we had. There was a selfie. They scan their ID and what happened is they refused the actual link but then sent in some corresponding pictures. And in the pictures, we noticed that the hands of the individual holding the identification card were different than the adult who took the verification photo holding the ID by his face. The hand looks significantly younger than the adult that was taking the selfie picture and photo. So in that we did a little more digging, a little more due diligence and due to the miners, I would say it was it was a little bit of ego. The minor ended up providing us with the same verification information and admitting to taking over the dad's account and utilizing that account. So we filed a report with the commission, of course, and took all the necessary steps in terms of the commission's requirements for regulation for submitting or remitting the the losses of the account to the general fund. Thank you. Commissioners, questions on this also? Thank you. For responsible gaming. We didn't have any VSE enrollments from better through the VSE portal. Did you guys want to have? Did you have any questions pertaining to responsible gaming? We did. We answered the quarterly template request for responsible gaming. And unfortunately, we didn't go into a detailed slide for responsible gaming. We'll do that on the next presentation. We kind of relied on the template for what we presented to for this presentation. Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, go right ahead. So I'm I'm sure you heard my comments with the previous presentation. It is my hope that you will be reaching out to some of the groups that I spoke about and certainly the MGC in regards to RG and making sure that we're helping those that need our help and we need you to be a partner with us in that regard. Absolutely, sir. And just for some informational purposes, we have a great relationship with the National Council on Problem Gammon and Keith White. We also attended the conference in Washington, D.C. I mean, we're working on implementing some automation, some some A.I. related tools to help in the fight for RG. We'd like to highlight the fact that although Massachusetts is very strong on its RG requirement front from the regulatory perspective, you know, in every jurisdiction, we impose deposit limits on 25 years and under and we ban credit cards from being able to be utilized on our platform. So, you know, we've already taken we already have a very strong stance in the fight to combat that against non responsible play. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Thank you guys for letting me present and I'll let Ashwin take over for the lottery portion of this. And Robert, on your responsible gaming, it's a good reminder that better was ahead and leading on not accepting credit. The message is you can't accept credit, but that's your better's policy nationwide. Yes, ma'am. And we thank Massachusetts as well for providing us with a waiver to implement our 25 and under deposit limit because according to Massachusetts regulation, that was also imposing a limit on individuals that they didn't impose on themselves was against the regulation. But understanding the spirit of what we were trying to do. You guys did grant us a waiver and we appreciate that. Right. Thank you for that, Robert. OK, thanks, Robert. OK, let's turn to the lottery. Oh, Robert, I'm just looking to need you to go to the next slide. OK, so with the Masters of States lottery, thanks to Crystal for kind of encouraging all operators to proactively seek out the lottery. We did highlight that in our initial presentation in January during the licensing process. And we have been able to have several conversations with the Masters of State lottery. They were very receptive to our ideas around using our talent. Jake Paul, Haley, Nana Cavender, Handshake Betts, Bo Nickel and others to create marketing and other kind of innovative content. And the other element we discussed with them was our better ticket promotion, which is something that kind of ties into the lottery theme. And it's basically a free to play game based on different outcomes at, you know, we propose going to Fenway Park and having people pick numbers there that would tie in and promote the lottery. We've had it back and forth with them. We may answer some follow up questions that are actually just currently waiting on them to kind of see which of our ideas they'd like to move forward with. So excited to continue our partnership with them and again, appreciate Crystal for giving us that nudge. Excellent questions for us in terms of the lottery. We've got a little different response here. Mr. Mayor or Commissioner O'Brien? Yeah. I just wanted to say thank you for reaching out. It's refreshing that you guys have reached out to lottery and the ball's already rolling. Yeah, same thing. I said during your application review when we were putting this application together, this is exactly what we were envisioning this kind of bridge and relationship. So thank you. Thank you. OK, and then turning to our community outreach and Charity One Impacts, Robert, the next slide. So, you know, again, in our presentation, we made a big kind of deal about being able to use Jake and, you know, his charity Boxing Bullies. He actually just finished his fight a couple of weeks ago. Thankfully, he won. But now we're able to kind of have more access to Jake when he's in training camp. It's often very focused and tough to get him to, you know, focus, look at other things. And so now we're excited to have an opportunity to really focus on bringing Boxing Bullies to Massachusetts. It's kind of a very good fit for us and kind of what we want to do in the different communities in which we operate. You know, we think it's a great cause and something that you could partner with the local gym. And, you know, as we were going through the licensing process, we did have some conversations with boys and girls clubs. And we'd obviously look to partner with other organizations that we think would be a good fit for who we are and our brand. You know, I think we we want to build healthier communities like Jake's charity does and, you know, want to contribute to the local community in Massachusetts. So, you know, unfortunately, there's nothing to report at this point, but hopefully when we do the next check-in, we'll have some some concrete updates on that front. Questions, commissioners? OK. Thank you. Thank you. There we have any any questions? Outstanding questions, commissioners, for better. And Crystal, there's just a good couple of areas where you'll follow up with them will be great. Thank you. Absolutely. We appreciate, again, our apologies for keeping you today. We did run long. We hope that's not a habit. Thank you so much. Not at all. Thanks for the time. OK. What's next, manager Boschman? We are now bringing draft kings for it. And we have Jake List on the call. Somewhere. Yes, hi, Crystal. All right, great. Firstly, most of you have met me a couple of times at this point, but my name is Jake List. I'm the Senior Director of Regulatory Operations at DraftKings. I'll be running through the presentation, but we also have several subject matter experts on the DraftKings side who will tackle specific slides. And I'll just run through those quickly. So we also have Kim Amfly, who's an accounting manager. Christina Akas, VP of HR. Jared Hesse, Director of Communications. Chrissy Thurman, Head of our Responsible Gaming Relations. And then Jen Agar, Chief Compliance Officer. We got all jumping. And thank you, everyone. I'm just doing this. I'm just doing my screen share. Yep. Sorry, people. And is everyone able to see the screen now? Very good. OK, let's. Madam Chair, before we begin, can you just make an announcement that people might want to mute themselves? Because I think there's a couple of unmuted that don't know it. OK, thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Hill. Moving to revenue. So firstly, for quarter one, obviously, we're only live in March, but DraftKings generated 16,119,770 dollars and 77 cents in sports wagering revenue, which resulted in 3,111,365 dollars and 49 cents in tax revenue to the state at a whole percentage of 6.3 percent. You can also see Q2 revenue numbers here. I won't go through each month, but just summarizing the totals for Q2 April May through June, we generated 75 million and 70 75 million 32,891 dollars and 54 cents in sports wagering revenue. 14,684,016 dollars and 80 cents in taxes. And that was at a whole percentage of 11.2 percent. I'll stop briefly at the end of each slide, just in case anyone wants to interject with questions. Then moving to workforce diversity, I will hand it over to Cristiana. Thank you. Also, just as an update as of July 1st, 2023, we have a total of 4,239 total employees globally. Global female representation was at 27 percent. And within the U.S., 32 percent of our employees identify as underrepresented or race or ethnicity, or as we know, non-white. We do have a priority focused on advancing diversity within leadership positions, as well as increasing our female representation overall globally. If we go to the next slide, we'll have to be able to break this down even greater for you guys. So as you'll see, definitely have, you know, I think really good stats in regards to race, diversity, gender, as well as veteran representation. But of course, I was working to continue to increase that. This year alone to date, though, in regards to even hires, you know, we're achieving our hiring rates. So right now within the U.S., we have a higher rate of women at 36.7 percent and for non-white employees within the U.S. at 45.9 percent. So definitely making traction. A lot of that is due to just our more intentional hiring practices or everything from targeted outreach, expanding our campus recruitment efforts, as well as just inclusive hiring practices, so diversifying our interview panels and so forth. So really starting to see a lot more improvement in regards to diversity across our roles. OK, so vendor diversity. So this is one of our focus areas within our strategic pillar. So we've really just designed our strategic framework for all things inclusion, equity and belonging, or D&I more broadly referenced as. Within our marketplace, we have an effort to not only drive accessibility, but also diversity through our customers, products and vendors. And this is where our supplier diversity initiative lives. And Q1, when we were looking at our spending, you know, the exclusion of charitable donations across the U.S., we saw 2.1 percent of our total villains being allocated to minority and veteran companies. Our goal is to increase that spending by 2.5 percent by 2028. So we have a few efforts that we've, you know, really put in place to help get us there. So what we're doing is first thing, you know, we've just signed on a third party a tool that's going to help us better trap spending. So we're onboarding that tool now. What it will do will not only retroactively look at the spending so you get a better gauge of how we've been spending across diverse suppliers, but also looking in the future as we onboard new vendors, it will keep track of up to the certifications for those businesses. So what we're going to do once we have that, we'll start to create new benchmarks that will be across all our draftings. But we're also going to go in and look at the function, right? So this is your... I'm sorry, Ms. I'm just having trouble hearing you when you pull back. Sorry, I was just bringing a little whispering to you. Sorry, I'll speak up. So what we're going to do, actually, we have an effort that for each function, we're going to identify where their current spending is and opportunities to increase it. So case in point, if we're looking very simply, right? If we're looking at our workplace experiences team and we know they get catering to the office once or twice a week, how do we start to diversify those dollars? And that's a very small example, but even building bigger when we look at certain construction opportunities or looking at tech opportunities, we want to be very intentional at the most granular source that we can to help us drive success in these goals. So we'll start identifying those potential areas that we can really start to diversify. We'll have goals that across the different functions as well, which puts accountability across our organization. Another thing we want to start working with more local supplier diversity offices, though trying to just kind of forge those relationships so that we are also aware across our footprint of new businesses that may be available or even just in businesses that we'll be able to partner with moving forward. So also take some of that and lift off of our teams. How do we just have those relationships up front and start incorporating them into our vendor onboarding systems to eliminate any of that friction that sometimes does happen with onboarding? So next slide. But with that said, this is specifically within Massachusetts. So what we are seeing during Q1 and Q2, so we've actually been able to identify just kind of retroactively through Q1 areas that we've been spending with minority-owned businesses. So we do see a slight increase, but as noted from prior presentations, we will incorporate actual dollar amounts so that you have that reference moving forward. So, Christina, just a comment. Again, with the goals, you had indicated you were tuning in to the earlier presentations so I'm sure you've seen my comments and questions. I think goals signify the level of importance and intentionality put to the diversity efforts. And so it's really important that operators, Jackings, establish goals. It seems you're a lot further along on the vendor diversity front in that you intend to increase spending to 5% by 2028. But as you noted, we don't have the overall spend and whether that's discretionary. I think it's discretionary spend, excuse me. I think Crystal will give further guidance on that or get that guidance out to the operators. But it's really important for us to determine or whether that 5% that you have identified as a goal, just what we can measure that up against. So it sounds like you are hearing us and you understand exactly where I'm coming from, at least. Yeah, absolutely. And I think another area of trust is to develop those goals on a local standpoint. But as you guys mentioned, that 5% is definitely just global spending. So we also want to get more local and granular so that we can definitely look at how each area, each function, each region can contribute to those goals. So we will get those. Thank you. Thanks, Christina. Sorry, Madam Chair, can you move on? Yes, thank you. OK, so underage slash minor access. So one clarifying note, we actually we report on any alleged underage access. So anyone who has written into DraftKings and said a minor access to my account, this would appear on this form. And so there have been four cases of that happening in April and two cases of that happening in May. Important to note that, yes, none of these situations were someone managing to pass KYC with underage credentials. They were people that correctly passed with 21 plus credentials. But then the account was subject to someone writing in and claiming alleged underage access. When we have reported on these to the commission, in the vast majority of cases, there isn't supporting evidence of the claim. But if in the case that there is, that information is included in the details that we supply when we report these cases to the commission. So do these normally come in because what someone lost about? And they're trying to say someone underage came into their account. What are the circumstances? I've never seen someone win and write in and make a claim. That's correct. But that does not mean that occasionally. So we will investigate all of them regardless of the situation. Mostly, yes, it's what I just described. But occasionally, we will find something like a sudden change in betting behavior, an email address that looks like it could be someone else. And that type of thing will initiate more investigation. And at that point, occasionally, we will deem that there really is some evidence that someone else was operating the account. Can I just ask this, Jake? I think we heard in the first report that they close out the account once if there's that kind of a violation. Is that your regulation? I should know the answer to that. Or is that your practice? So underage account use is a violation. So if it irrespect and I guess you would be as the account user responsible for your own account. So there could be a situation, I suppose, where we might give the person who's written in the opportunity to walk back the statement. But if that is the story, then yes, we would restrict and close the account. General counsel, maybe you can follow up. If that's our rager, that's their good business practice. I should know that, but I just don't. So thank you. OK, responsible gaming. Thanks, Jake. So just to clarify, this part of the responsible gaming section is just speaking to the self-exclusion list. Later in the presentation, Chrissy will speak to specific responsible gaming initiatives. So for just statistics on people who have self-excluded in the state of Massachusetts, we do drive people to the state list for our self-exclusion procedures in the state of Massachusetts. So the number of people that have done that is 170, but that should be consistent with the total state list during that period of time. Moving forward to Lottery. So this slide is quite straightforward at this point, but we have engaged Lottery. So we have established a dialogue with them. We don't have anything to update yet about specific initiatives, but that certainly doesn't mean it won't happen in the future. And we will update the commission if there is anything material tonight. Any questions for Jake on that? No, just interested to see in future quarters ends up. Yeah, absolutely understood. Moving to our community, I'll pass it on to Jared Hess. Thanks, Jake. Yeah, I just wanted to overview some of our initiatives as part of our Global Draft King Serve CSR program. We just run through some of these. These are all initiatives that were just in Massachusetts during Q2 of this year. So it's a global program that's much larger than what's outlined here. The first is that we were a major sponsor of the Foundation to be named later Hot Stove Cool Music Event in April. So this supports the Peter Gammons College Scholarship program. And again, we were a major sponsor of their event and continue to be a sponsor with them throughout the year. Is that the one with Peter Gammons and the whole? That's exactly right. Yup, so it was an organization started by Theo Epstein, his brother and great organization here in Boston, Massachusetts. If you ever get a chance, it's a great organization and a great take. Definitely. Moving on to the next, we sponsored the Dravitt Syndrome Foundation Strike Out Dravitt Event. This was in May of this year. Again, just funding research into Dravitt Syndrome and improving quality of life for patients and families. And then moving on to the next, we were presenting sponsor of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute's Jimmy Funday at Fenway Park. So this was in June, also during Q2. Trying to fuel future of cancer research and care. It was a great event. We fielded a team of 50 participants from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. And then we also had 30 DraftKings employee volunteers that participated as well. An employee-driven event in Q2 was the JPMorgan Corporate Challenge. So we had 60 DraftKings employees come together on their own to field a team and raise just under $4,000 to benefit the United Way of Massachusetts Bay. And then finally in Q2, we supported the Boston Well Black Job Summit. How to Boston Well Black Summit just brought together black entrepreneurs, business professionals, non-black allies, DEI leaders. This was a job summit. Speaker's events, we hosted a recruitment booth and then sponsored the summit after party. So again, just some of the initiatives we were involved with in Massachusetts during Q2 of this year. Mr. Hill, wanna make a comment? My comment is great job. Yeah, thank you. Yes, I know how important that was to you during the application process. And we're so pleased, DraftKings with its local presence is taking advantage of that and making a difference. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Moving on to responsible gaming initiatives, I'll pass it over to Chrissy. Thanks, Jake. Good afternoon, commissioners. I'm really excited to be with you this afternoon to share with you some of the responsible gaming funding we provided this year, specifically as it relates to Massachusetts. One of the things that we're extremely proud of is our state council funding program. DraftKings in 2002 took the initiative to offer every state council across the United States a $15,000 non-discretionary fund for them to use as they see fit within their jurisdictions. And so we are proudly approaching the end of year two of that three year pilot program. And it has been tremendously successful. We hear from councils across the United States, but we have a soft spot of course here in Massachusetts for the Mass Council on Gambling and Health, of which I used to work and connect with often. So we're very thrilled to be able to offer this program throughout the United States. We also are very keenly engaged with the veterans population and Commissioner Hill, I think you'll enjoy these projects. They both are based out of a Beverly, Massachusetts and it's with the Kindbridge Research Institute. We're funding two programs with them currently. One is the 50 over 50 times four vets program, which really seeks to provide a permanent long-term solution to the lack of research on problem gamblings with the veteran population. This has been a very keen spot for DraftKings. As Jared mentioned, we have a service program and we work with our veterans on multiple levels, but this program really supports one of the core tenants of responsible gaming, which is supporting external research. So we are engaged with that program. We are hoping to have published, peer review published publications in the next quarter. So hopefully we'll be able to report to you on that. We also are supporting the Kindbridge Research Institute Military Research Associates Program. They call it the MRAP program. And this is an amazing program. What this program does is it supports veterans transitioning from the military who are seeking to expand their educational experiences, focusing on public mental health research as it relates to veterans and specifically around gambling. What this program does really, it is a source of funding for the next generation of knowledge generators in this field. And it's just kicked off. This is a three year commitment that we have made and we're very excited about it. Moving on, we also supported a resource which is called BEP Blocker. It's a nonprofit organization based out of the UK and it is a free anonymous program that any of our patrons can download to their phones and use it any way they see fit. It's a multi-purpose tool that allows customers to set restrictions on their play, such as blocking times over the weekends or during certain seasons or at a period of time that they don't feel that they are comfortable gambling. And it is something that we find has been tremendously helpful as a resource. We do not track this because it is anonymous. We only know around how many clicks that have been used to year to date. We've had over 1500 clicks on this site. And so we feel that it's a tremendous resource for people who want to customize a play experience that makes the most sense for them, including blocking all sites. And that's including both legal and illegal sites. I believe there are over 18,000 sites that are being blocked off of BEP Blocker currently. And then lastly, we are supporters of the International Center for Responsible Gaming. We commit to their general fund. Again, as research is a core tenet of responsible gaming, we really have put our efforts into making sure that we are funding the next level of knowledge, the next level of research that we can use to help guide us as we develop our responsible gaming principles and programs moving forward. So to that end, I think this is the conclusion of our presentation, Jake. We'll turn it back over. Thank you. Thanks, Chrissy. I will just prompt if there are any questions for Chrissy about the responsible gaming information. Commissioner, is there any questions from any of our guest speakers? I do not have a question, Madam Chair, but kudos on the veterans' help with the RG. That's in my backyard. It's all well aware of it. And it's a great program and great to see you partnering not only with them, but all the other organizations that you have done in regards to Responsible Gaming. Thank you. Okay. If you want to take down your slideshow, we'll make sure everybody's all set. Commissures, all set with DraftKings. So nice to hear from all of you. And thank you again for your patience as we were off on our timing today. Our apologies. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Chrissy. Thank you. Okay. We're turning then to item number seven on our agenda. Director Banda Linden and the ad hoc study proposal. So you've got outside guests. I don't want to be rude. I'm going to just video. I'm shifting. We have to be in our homes because we're having construction done at our offices and I'm having construction done at my home. So I'll be shifting quietly now, but I'll be listening. Thank you so much. Great. Thank you, Chair Genstein. And good afternoon, commissioners. It's good to see you. So I am joined today. We have a couple of guests. We have Tom Peek from the UMass Bonda Human Institute and of course, Dr. Rachel Volver, principal investigator for our segment project. Dr. Bonnie Andrews is also here joining us as well. There you are. Hi, Bonnie. And so the three of them are there really to be able to answer questions that you have fill in the gaps where maybe I'm leaving gaps as I present these potential ad hoc studies for you. So included in the FY24 gambling research agenda that you voted and approved on May 8th is an ad hoc economic impact report to be carried out by the UMass Sigma team and UMass Donny Institute. The ad hoc reports provide flexibility in defining a topic of study after the start of the fiscal year. But in order to have this be completed or mostly completed by the end of the fiscal year we need to move pretty quickly in order to identify what that ad hoc report is. These ad hoc reports aren't new to the commission and fiscal year 21, there were two ad hoc reports that the commission identified as priorities. The first being an examination of gambling related harms looking at it through the prevention paradox. And the second was an economic study looking at casino operations with a focus on the impacts of COVID-19. In fiscal year 22, if you recall there was a report to examine the potential impacts of sports wagering in Massachusetts. This past fiscal year 23, there wasn't an ad hoc report only because the research agenda was overflowing at that time. So we didn't have the resources to pull that together. So here we are ready to identify the fiscal year 24 ad hoc report. And just so you know, I'm going to provide for you three different options that we've discussed with Dr. Wolberg, with Tom, with others from the SIGMA and UMass Donahue Institute. We feel that these are all solid options for you. But if you have other ideas certainly this is an ad hoc report for a topic that is to be identified at this point in time. So we can certainly have that discussion. You should know that there are limitations to what we are able to do. That there is sort of a constraint on budget and a constraint on the staff time that the team has to carry out this report. And so just two notes right off the top is that it's intended to be a relatively brief report and it needs to rely on secondary data not primary data, where we're actually gathering the data to be used. So I'm sorry. Sorry for the interruption. Yes. When we were, and I should have asked this before now. So I apologize, I don't mean to put you on the spot, but when we were discussing and selecting the research items for the FY24 research agenda a few months back, there was a number of potential ad hoc reports identified if I remember correctly at that time. Am I misremembering that? And my question is whether or not any of those potential topics were considered for your presentation today. And so in other words, how did you arrive at these three options, I guess? Commissioner Skinner, I don't recall that we had presented ad hoc reports when discussing the FY24 research agenda, but not presented, but I think you were soliciting ideas from missioners as to what ad hoc reports they might like to see during FY24. And so as you're proceeding with your presentation, I'm just, it dawned on me that it would be helpful if we had that list to consider for this discussion. And again, I apologize for not following up sooner than now on that. Okay. Happy to go back and take a look through our notes. I don't have that information prepared at this point in time though, but Bonnie, we can go back and take a look through the meeting notes and other conversations perhaps. Okay. To answer the second part of your question, Commissioner Skinner of how were these developed? It was through discussions with the Sigma, the Sigma team. And we had, well, we had two meetings with them. They had come with a few ideas to kind of kick it off. And so this is the result of those conversations. Okay. Again, we'll go back and we'll take a look. Sorry, I'm sorry if we missed that piece of it. No, and I apologize for just thinking of this, Mark. So thank you. Sure. So Mark, just to be clear, the ad hoc is part of the Sigma contract. That is correct. Thanks. It's built into the Sigma, the ISA that we have with the University UMass Amherst. Thank you. And that's why we, I know we have UMass represented today, but I wasn't sure about, couldn't remember that. So thank you. You're welcome. So there are three proposed studies that we have for you. One is really focused on sports wagering and the other two are on casino operations. So the sports wagering proposal first, it's the early impacts of sports wagering. And this topic would focus on increasing our understanding of the early economic impacts of sports wagering and early analysis would assess the impacts from current, from cat one licensees, cat two licensees. They can also include cat three licensees. We would need to do some additional planning for that, but just to be clear, we could include the cat three licensees, which I think would be an important piece to this. The Sigma team would follow the same data collection process used for casino operators, which includes really close collaboration with our division led by Dr. Bonnie Andrews in order to obtain the data that is needed. Two sources of data for this would include revenue data that's available to the MGC, as well as recent patron behavior related to sports betting from the Sigma's online patron survey in 2023. The data would be used for economic modeling. The Sigma team uses the RIMI modeling, which allows an analysis of impacts generated from the introduction of sports betting in the state. This would be, they would collaborate or calibrate this model using recent Sigma literature review on the cannibalization of sports betting, as well as relevant findings about patron behavior from behavioral surveys. If the commission desires, this work could be revisited in fiscal year 25 when a patron's origin study is being proposed using GPS location and additional years of behavioral data that has been collected. And that behavioral data is related to several different activities that the Sigma team is working on, including annual online panels. There, I think, is great potential in this study. It would give us sort of that early indicator of what is the broader impact, economic impact, sports wagering in the state. There is a significant challenge is that in very short order, we would be setting up a new system in order to track this in Massachusetts. But overall, I think that it's a study that holds a lot of promise and kind of sets the groundwork for future work in order to understand the economic impacts of sports wagering in Massachusetts. Any questions about that study before we move on to the next? Or I can do all three and then come back for questions. Any questions? Commissioner Skinner? I do have a question. Just in terms of relatively short amount of time, sports wagering has been operational. I wonder if you could give feedback on your sense of whether there is enough data at this point, four months in I guess, five almost. What are your thoughts? And definitely the UMass researchers, is now the right time for something like that? I think that's a really great question. Commissioner Skinner, I will ask Tom and Rachel, if you want to weigh in on that question. I'll weigh in. So the fact of the matter is that even though it's early days for studying the impacts, this exercise of setting up a system of data collection is very important for the future in terms of having those systems in place as the industry develops. So our thought was to work on setting up that data collection system and then the ad hoc report would be sort of, a report on what we found, but also on what we'll be able to do going forward. And Dr. Holberg, if I recall, way back when casinos were introduced and we were working with the stigma team on a similar project in order to develop this system to measure economic impacts, probably the same question came about, when is the optimal time? And if I recall, we had that system in place from the start when Plain Ridge Park Casino happened. Yeah, that's my recollection. And part of the challenge is that most operators in the gambling industry are not familiar with the needs of research teams like ours or with the needs of a game commission that is really data driven. And so it takes a lot of relationship building and trust building to get the operators to be comfortable with turning over that data. It takes a certain amount of work by Mark and his team to assist the research team with getting that data in a timely manner. So the say you can start building those systems, in my opinion, the better, even if you don't sort of turn them on completely until you have maybe a year of data, but it is helpful to sort of see what data is available and what you can get most easily, what's going to be a challenge and how you might be able to figure out how to work around it some kind. Madam Chair. Is this, I'm sorry, go ahead. I'm sorry. You had asked a question and if you have a follow-up question, you should be able to ask it. So go ahead. Thank you. I do have a follow-up. So is the idea Dr. Volberg and Mark to develop the baseline of sorts of this data and a system for collecting this data? And if so, how does that translate into a research report? Yeah, I guess in a sense, we hadn't described it as a baseline, but I think that understanding the economic impacts from the start, from the launch of sports wagering is important for us to understand this industry and its impacts from the onset. And I'm sorry, the second part of your question. I just, you know, determining how that would translate into a report that's digestible or an ad hoc, an ad hoc study report. That's fine. Yeah, thank you, Commissioner Skinner. Yeah, I mean, and Dr. Volberg, please feel free to weigh in. I mean, this will be a brief report. It will, and to me, the primary function of this ad hoc study is building the system that we will use in years to come in order to measure the economic impacts. And that's gonna be probably the heavier lift, not the inputs that go into it. So, Rachel, do you have anything else to add to that? Or Tom or Bonnie? I would generally agree with what you're saying where the early impacts, you can make an argument that they might not reflect what the sort of steady state could be. I think that there still are potentially an interesting thing to look at, but that right now with the data that we have, it would probably be a relatively brief report, but doing it could potentially help us to build an infrastructure that we can leverage going forward in the way that we do with a lot of the stuff that we do with the casinos. And when we get our data requests, those data requests have been refined by going back and forth with the casinos a bunch of times. So I don't think it's ever too early to start those conversations, but there's value to the other studies that is why that's valuable. And Commissioner, we currently right now have a procurement, open procurement on examining diversity in the sports wagering industry. It was one of the statutory requirements. And we grappled with when is the optimal time to launch that? And we proposed that we would allow the industry to open for a period of time and that we would do that procurement during the summer. So I think, I don't know if there's a science to this, but I think it does make sense that the industry, you wanna let the industry mature even slightly before we begin to do some of this. And I do have another follow-up. I don't know if you can hear me. There are a number of you frozen on my screen. It might be me. No, we can hear you. Okay, okay. Yeah, so just in terms of just the, so what you're proposing and if this option moves forward is limited to the economics of sports wagering and not necessarily some of the other aspects to it. And so what's the responsible gaming tie-in? It might be obvious to some or most, but not necessarily to me. So one of the things we talked about in the quarterly reports we heard about earlier is the utilization, excuse me, of the tools that operators have for individuals to time out of sports wagering. And so is there an opportunity to dig into that as part of this ad hoc report? Or would that be something completely separate given that it is just an ad hoc report? I mean, did you understand what I'm getting at? I understand completely, Commissioner. And this would be an economic ad hoc report and so it would be limited to that. But you raise a really interesting point that I have been thinking about with our team which is we require play management functions or tools on each of these sports wagering websites. And that's absolutely the right thing, but what are we doing to examine the uptake and utilization and effectiveness of these tools? Which I think is a really important question that we are looking at as part of our responsible gaming efforts at the commission. And maybe that ties into the research agenda, but I would love to see us focus on that as well. Yeah, especially where we're talking about sort of developing baseline data and systems for data collection. I think it's really important that we start to think about that. And if not for this ad hoc report purpose, but instead something that we include or in the FY24 research agenda, if there's an appetite to revisit that, then I think that that would be important. Thank you. Commissioner Maynard. Thank you, Goldberg. I heard. Thank you, Commissioner. I just wanted to add to what Mark said that in my experience, relationship building of the kind that we would need to do to get the economic data that we need for the ad hoc report and for the systems going forward, that relationship building is very important so that we can move further out into these organizations and have relationship established so that we can make additional asks for data that the operators are comfortable when we come with those additional asks. Thank you. Madam Chair. Commissioner. So Commissioner Skinner actually, I wanted to question maybe think back to my notes on when we did have a conversation. I remember a couple of us asking about the illegal market and the effects and the impacts on sports betting and Commissioner Hill and I were just at a conference in Saratoga and Massachusetts was called out actually during one of the round tables about the fact that we had seen a letter and we're doing some work on this. And so I'm just curious to see is that going to fall under this particular study or is this, did we agree to do it in some other way or shape or form? I'm just, I think, you know, what's really prompting it to Director Vander Landen is I actually got a text last week from a former employee and I shared this with Commissioner Hill but now I can share it with the rest of the commissioners saying, hey, I'm really excited for the NFL season. I'm using and I'm not gonna name the name and it was not a licensed operator. And this is in the Commonwealth from Massachusetts. So I sit on our website, said all the reasons why you should use a licensed operator, all the protections we have built in. And it was funny because at the same conference, this particular website was mentioned multiple times by licensees for capturing a lot of the market share. And by the way, they have none of the protections we have, right? They have none of the great work that you've done Mark gets captured by this illegal operator. So interested to see how we're gonna work that in or if possible, if we can work it in. I can follow up with that. I am recalling that we did ask for that study. So I think I'm also wondering about the conversation we had that commissioners can erase because it certainly has been at the top of the commission's mind, how do we address the illegal market? We followed up with that letter to the DOJ after the seven other states have presented their letter. I think I was out in Las Vegas with the AGA when that letter was just going out. And then we followed up and I know the attorney general's office has just also recently indicated an interest in working with us on how to go after the illegal market. So does this ring a bell, Mark, too? Yeah, I mean, it is starting to ring a bell. I share, so I mean, this is part of this discussion is that if there is a topic identified by the commission, if we can't address it right now, I may need to go back with the team and provide a scope that kind of meets the limitations that we have within the study. And I'm more than happy to do that. But Dr. Volver, Tom, Bonnie, do you have any additional thoughts on that? I do, Mark. The question of capture of the illegal market is a very important question. It has both social and economic implications. And Mark, you may remember the email that you and I and Rob Williams exchanged where we indicated that we did have questions about whether people had gambled on illegal, we didn't call it illegal, but unregulated in Massachusetts sports-spending websites. In Ops 23, we have a report planned on Ops 23 in the spring of next year. And that question will be addressed in that report. I do recall. That might have been where it came up, that it's being addressed. I think I remember that now, Rachel, that we had said where and is incorporated in that report. Ops 23 is the online panel survey, which is one of the ongoing monitoring efforts that we have included in this year and what we hope to include next year, which is an online panel survey to kind of continue to monitor gambling behavior, including participation on those sites. So thank you. Thank you. Yeah, that definitely is that. That's really helpful. Thank you. But there was a broader question. There may not help you, but that helped me. Sorry. That helped, Madam Chair. I'm just recalling, I was doing the same thing Commissioner Maynard was doing. It's just recalling some of the other topics that were thrown out earlier along the public safety line. I think we talked about AML, we talked about human trafficking. And so is there, I'm on our website right now. I'd like to refresh my memory as to what the research agenda is for FY24, and I'm not able to pull it up. Is it on our website, Mark? We can forward that to you. I actually, Bonnie and I had an exchange right before and I asked her to make sure to pull up the FY24 research agenda in case we had some questions about it. I'm sorry, and the AML discussion did come up in sort of the end of the discussions of the FY24 research agenda. It wasn't included in the agenda, though we said that we would continue to watch that and perhaps included in the future agenda. It's what I call, in terms of, I think you also said human trafficking, which is included in the FY24 research agenda and planning as well underway with Commissioner O'Brien on that. Yeah, if I could, Bonnie, if you could just forward that over, I'd appreciate it. It's good to have it right in front of me as we continue this discussion. Thank you. Do you want to go to the next one, Mark? Sure, Commissioner Held, I know you were, are you also? Actually, Commissioner Maynard and I were thinking down the same path because of what we just learned over in Saratoga, but also to Commissioner Skinner, there was a lot of information through technology and data that I believe we can get that will actually make this a very fulsome report. So in that regard, I'm actually looking forward to it, but I think data-wise, there's gonna be plenty of information out there for us. So the second study relates to casino supplier diversity spending, and this topic would examine equity impacts from casino operations through their supplier diversity spending agreements. The team would analyze the extent to which casinos build stronger business ecosystems through black, indigenous people and people of color as well as other minority on businesses. The work would start with a background analysis examining the existing presence of minority-owned and women-owned businesses in the state and then using operator spending data updated through June of 23, the study would assess the involvement of minority women and veteran-owned industry sectors supplying the casino industry. This analysis would analyze operator spending data to highlight the nature of diverse vendor contracting, highlight successes and identify gaps, which could be instructive to other supplier diversity programs in the state, not just the commission and not just limited to the casino industry. The data could also serve as inputs for economic impact modeling to analyze the economic impacts generated by contracts with diverse business enterprises across the state. And thinking ahead to the FY25 research agenda adopted as part of the research agenda, the UNDI, UMass Anihe Institute can conduct a quality data collection process to gather information from the three operators and a subset of diverse vendors involved in the supply chain to identify key features of a successful vendor diversity initiatives along with common challenges and strategies and lessons learned. So one of the, I mean, as you well know, the MGC has led the way in this space. And as we were talking about this potential study with Dr. Volberg and Tom and Dr. Rebecca Loveland from UMDI, it was just the highlight of just how unique of the space this is that we've made impacts not just for our licensees but across the industry in Massachusetts. And this can be seen as a model. So a study focusing on this, I think could really highlight some, highlight the model that has been developed but also be helpful in identifying kind of ways that we can improve it, challenges and translating to other industries. Commissures, I have a question and Rachel maybe you're anticipating this. Are you able to include any minority representation in your research team on this topic? We have several members of our research team who represent communities of color or yeah, we've got several people on the team who are diverse, I guess, and would be very helpful in doing the kind of key informant interviewing and outreach to diverse business owners to collect qualitative data for this purpose. I think it's a great opportunity, right? So I don't know how that gets determined, Mark, but I do think that's, this is where intentionality matters and it's an important topic, as you mentioned, to the commission. We spend a lot of time on it, Commissioner Skinner drilled into it today and I've appreciated that in our application process for both casinos and sports wagering. So Commissioner Skinner. On this option, I think, I wonder, we have right now the diversity audit of the category one licensees gearing up to be conducted. And so, we've identified an audit firm, kickoff meetings have been held and that audit process is designed to evaluate and test the systems that, at least the category one licensees have in place to collect this diversity data. So I would not want, Mark, you and the SIGMA team to rely on data that the commission is reviewing right now in terms of the sufficiency and accuracy of it through its audit process. So that's one thing to consider in moving forward with this option should the commission decide to do so. And Commissioner Skinner, I have to admit, I haven't been following that process probably as closely as I should, but will that focus on vendor diversity as well as Casino off the operators diversity? Your question, I'm sorry, Mark. Will it focus on vendor diversity as well as the operator that the licensees diversity? Yes. Okay, all right. Yeah. It would be limited to the brick and mortar. Okay. Commissioner Skinner, are you concerned about redundancy that it's unnecessary or is it the sharing of the data? Exactly. Yeah, it's neither. It's really, I mean, if we're building a report or if the proposal is to generate an ad hoc report based on data that's under review right now by the commission, is that sound? Can I ask a question? That is reasonable. Yes. Hi, Tom. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sure. What's the timeline for that audit to get done because it could potentially dovetail nicely if that was something that could actually inform our findings. I mean, like Mark said, a part of this proposed product would be trying to understand better the regional context of the vendor data that we're looking at and what, like which industries, which sectors are heavily represented by minority-owned, women-owned, veteran-owned firms and which ones are not and sort of that sort of stuff to help contextualize the sort of reporting that we've been doing a while on vendor spend. But I'm curious sort of what the timeline would be for those audit findings and whether they would be something that potentially could be seen as an acceptable input into a study like the one we're proposing. Tom, I think the timeline, I don't quote me, but the completion of the audit, I think is anticipated to be somewhere around the end of the year, the calendar year. Great, thank you. So how does that work in terms of timing for you, Tom? Like, I don't think it would necessarily be an issue because like I said, there's work that sort of like in terms of regional context and things like that sort of qualitative work potentially potentially contacting some of the actual vendors or trying to understand their experience. There's, let me put it this way, there would be, there's plenty of work that we could do ahead of an audit like that. And so I don't think it would necessarily be an issue for our timeline. I would need to, I probably should like double check with my team about that, but my understanding based on the conversations I've had is that that probably would not be an issue for our timeline. And so, I think it was last week and that was Oneswa and had a discussion about our data collection efforts and what is being led by her and David. And I think that Tom is right. I think that we would definitely need to collaborate and identify where we're working and how we can support each other. But a unique part of what the UMass Donahue has to do brings us some of the economic modeling to understand the broader economic impacts of the diverse vendor spending as well. Any other questions about that? There may be questions when we go to vote. Okay, continue, please. Okay. And the last one, and this is, you're very soon going to be receiving a report that was part of our FY23 research agenda, which is looking at the quality of jobs within the casino industry. And so, this would be a proposed report that would continue to build on that. It would address the additional interests and questions about casino workforce and job quality using the operator dataset used for the 2023 study. It would provide a more developed analysis of local impacts. This would involve closer geographic focus than was done in the report that is coming to you very soon to explore host and surrounding community employment opportunities, occupational development, and payroll impacts. This report has been reviewed two rounds, actually, by our research review committee. And one of the questions that came up from that review committee was just taking a closer look at paid leave and vacation time. And if desired, additional questions could be, in addition to that, additional questions could be shaped by the research review committee, labor advocates, and other parties interested in this type of study. Those would need to be selected relatively soon, but we could certainly include a broad range of stakeholders and further developing the questions that would be examined. Any questions about that study? Questions, commissioner? So we presented three studies here. It sounds like there's additional questions about, well, there was additional questions about AML, but as I recall from our discussions, it was at the end we were going to gather information and data over this fiscal year in order to inform a scope of a study of the commission desired in the FY25 research agenda. There's questions about the illegal gambling market, and while we're collecting information about participation in an illegal gambling market through our different data collection measures, there may be additional interest in further exploring that. And if that is the case, I would want to go back to the SIGMA team and kind of further develop that scope. I think probably the commissioners, at least commissioner Maynard and I are interested in maybe understanding a little bit more clarity, that scope, stop there. Around the illegal gambling market. Okay. Yeah, we're working awfully hard to regulate the market here in a responsible way. Those efforts are defeated somewhat if there's a illegal market flourishing and competing with our regulated market. And so as Dr. Wolberg said, there is kind of a social component to this, the actual behavior of it, but there's also an economic question about what impact are we having on the illegal gambling market? What market share does the illegal gambling market still have in the Commonwealth? Is that right? I think that's what I'm very interested in. Commissioner Maynard, is that what you're thinking too? It's the economic impact. Yeah, and like I said, it was insane to me that somebody that used to work for me reached out and said, hey, I'm using this app. And I said, whoa, wait a minute, right? So that's anecdotal, but there you go. You have one commissioner who knows one real person who was using an app that isn't legal in the Commonwealth. So it's, yeah, it's interesting for sure. As an aside, I know that Mills is thinking about, you know, how we can kind of promote our legal market and indicate where the boundaries are with respect to the illegal. So I know you've been thinking about that Tom. So maybe we'll turn to you too for some ideas on that. But I'd love to know a little bit more about the scope. Other topics or thoughts on the three proposed areas that Mark's giving? I know Commissioner Skinner, I'm not sure if you're completely comfortable with given the overlap on the audit, I couldn't tell. Yeah, I raised it as a question. And it sounds like, you know, the team is comfortable that there will not be any adverse effects of the overlap. So I'm comfortable with that. What about AI? Did we also mention AI? I mentioned that to Director Vandalin in this week that I'd love to explore AI. I think that that's a fascinating topic too. And I don't believe it would fit in the economic or social, the economic impact work that UMass Bonnehewn Institute can do. Though I think it's a study that the commission wishes to consider. We can amend our gaming research agenda. And I could, actually Bonnie and I were talking about it as the chair said, we've spoken about it. We can develop sort of a brief scope of what that would look like, including a budget and bring that to you in pretty short order. To include, and again, to include in the FY24 research agenda. And Commissioner Skinner, I'm not sure what you were thinking about, but after speaking with Director Vandalin, it of course is really critical to responsible gaming, but it's also important with respect to integrity and the lives of sports wagering, particularly sports wagering and how to make sure AI isn't used in the various fashion to compromise integrity. But there's also that big RG piece. I don't know if anybody else has thought about it or if we could explore both or if there's one that is more important to you versus the other. What are you thinking, Commissioner Skinner? I was just thinking that we haven't really explored AI and what effects it may have on gaming in general, sports wagering, RG. So I could benefit from just an overall, I don't know, just a sense of what we should be looking at to the extent that Mark, you and your team are aware. And I don't know if there is a, if we should, before we get there, if we should be hearing from our IT team, it's just, it's such an unknown for me right now. So any input, any suggestion would be helpful as we try to develop a research item under that topic. Right now, it's kind of all over the place for me. And when I say that, I just mean, what should we be concerned about? Yeah. And what can we harness if there are responsible gaming advantages that we can use it for responsible gaming, which we are looking at options in that space. I think that that should be considered too. So do we have to put all the agenda and amendment to the framework down the road? Is that what we got to do to get that in there? Madam Chair, I think we, I spoke with Grace about adding a change to the gaming research agenda in the next couple of meetings. Thanks, Grace. Okay. Kishor's questions for Mark on the ad hoc study. And I, if no questions, are you ready to adopt his recommendations? If so, I need a motion. And to be clear, Madam Chair, we would need to choose one of those three studies or send us back and have us develop a scope for a study of your choosing. What is the budget for this study? We get one ad hoc study? I'm sorry, just get one ad hoc study this year. And how much is set aside for it? Dr. Holberg has sort of budget manager of that piece of it. Do you have a budget number on that? I'm gonna have to confess to not having a hard number because it's hard to sort of disentangle all of the different kinds of work that each member of the team is doing to support the full effort. But, you know, we have, the Sigma project has quite a few deliverables on its plate. The big integrated report is the piece that is going to take the majority of our resources for FY24. I think the, you know, if I were to have you to guess, the ad hoc report is probably about a $50,000 piece of work. And Madam Chair, the way that the budget is set up with UMass upon the specific project is it's not broken down by deliverable per se, but it's the staff time and the deliverables that we agree that are feasible with the amount of staff time that are there. So it's hard to break it down in a per deliverable way. I'm sure you think, is there one of the three there? Grab your attention. Do you have a gut sense of how much it might cost? As Dr. Holberg said around, I mean, around $50,000, I think that that is a ballpark estimate. Over the years, we've tried to kind of say this deliverable costs this, this is how much we have allocated for each deliverable, but it's really staff time, percentages of staff time and then level of effort for each of these deliverables that is how it's calculated. If you're looking for suggestions, Madam Chair. I know what you're going to say. I'm all about the sports betting at this point. I was going to say. The others are very important and I wish we could do all three. But for me, that's what we should probably be moving forward to do. Yeah, I do have a little bit of a concern with running the parallel projects, the audit project with the potential research project for the diversity piece. I think the third option here on workforce and job quality, the timeline seems to be a bit too compressed for me if we need to sort of identify the questions no later than the end of next month. I don't know how realistic that is. So the sports wagering topic seems to be the most relevant and practical at this time. Commissioner Skinner, I was hesitant to include the third workforce and job quality simply because you haven't seen the first report of that. So we were asking you to weigh in on a follow-up report. And I think that once you see that report, you maybe have a lot of additional questions that then we can consider in the FY25 research agenda. That's the case. Well, I'll state my opinion. I feel that sports betting is the most pertinent and most timely right now. So I'm with Commissioner Hill, Commissioner Maynard, Commissioner O'Brien, Commissioner Skinner, can we hear? I feel the same. Okay. I would just, the caveat being that I would like to capture some of those things that Commissioner Skinner, the chair, myself and Brad, I think Commissioner O'Brien also talked about in the sports betting category. So I'm broadening it a little if that's the one we're doing, but that would be my thought. Commissioner Skinner's piece that she wanted, that would be with respect to understanding the responsible gaming piece and the data around that. Is that fair, Commissioner Skinner? Yes. The utilization of the play management tools. Yes. And I know that's a piece that Mark of course brought is really right now you're keeping track of. Yes. And Commissioner Maynard and Skinner, my recommendation would be put that on my plate to continue to track and allow my team Bonnie and Long and I to build a baseline understanding as we look at options, methods, best practices on increasing utilization and effectiveness of those tools. That is a topic that I feel pretty strongly about right now. So that would be separate and apart from this project. That would be my recommendation. Okay. And then the other items, anything else, Commissioner Skinner that you'd want to include that Commissioner Maynard just referenced. That's in addition to what's presented in this proposal. On the sports wagering? Yeah. Yeah, no, that was it. That was it. Okay, that was my memory. Good. And then Commissioner Maynard. I'm wondering if I'm going to get anything on the illegal market or not. Yeah. But no, and by the way, I see it as an RGB too. So that's why I linked it to Commissioner Skinner's conversation. Commissioner Maynard, I hear that and I hear that from the commission. And may I also propose that much like the AML that where we didn't have a specific scope and parameters of exactly what we were looking at, can we move that forward this year but to try to develop that scope of it and either amend our gaming research agenda once we have that or make sure that it's included as a topic that we would add to the next research agenda. I'm fine with that. If it's not mature enough right now, I understand that. And I also wanted to add that as part of the FY24 research agenda, in addition to the questions that Dr. Wohlberg was talking about, including on the online panel survey, the kiosk study also has a question about anticipated black market recapture from kiosks. So that's something we're going to be gathering more information about that as the year goes on in terms of the research projects that we have going. So we'll be using that information to inform the development of some kind of scope. That's a great point. Thank you, Bonnie. That is also one of the statutory required studies that we are currently, it's currently being carried out. Commissioner Maynard would be helpful. Maybe if Director Vandal-Linden gives us all an email, kind of that all the pieces of the puzzle that touch upon a legal market and see if maybe it's not all captured in one report, but it's getting captured here and everywhere. Does that, that's not necessarily a bad thing, right? Now, that works for me and given my new, or you know, the assignment from you, Chair, I can also touch base Mark online. It would be probably good for all of us to have it. I think we're all interested. So I mean, either way, right? And then Commissioner Arbrien or Commissioner Hill, is there a piece that you wanted them to focus on in terms of this, you're good with it as proposed, right, Commissioner Hill? All right, let's, let's, let's get a motion then. Madam Chair, I move that the commission identify early impacts of sports betting as a topic of study for the ad hoc study for the FY24 MGC research agenda, as included in the commissioner's packet and discussed here today. Second. Okay. Commissioner Arbrien. I, Commissioner Hill. I. Commissioner Skinner. I. Commissioner Maynard. I. And I vote yes, five, zero. Excellent. Thank you. Very thorough report. Good vetting by the commission. It was very helpful. Thank you very much. Thanks Mark. Thank you Rachel and Tom. Nice to see you. And thanks for your patience. Alrighty. Now we're moving to these report and we did separate this out today a little bit because I think we're our external guests. We're all set now with external guests. So thank you. Hi, Director Lillios. Hi. Good afternoon again. So I do have an update for you on a significant transaction entered into by Penn Entertainment, the parent company of two of our sports wagering licenses, the Plymouth Park Casino Cat One and the Cat Two Penn Interactive. On August 8th, Penn announced that it entered into an online sports betting agreement with ESPN Inc. This agreement gives Penn the exclusive right to the ESPN bet trademark for online sports betting in the US for an initial 10 year term, which may be extended to an additional 10 years upon agreement of both of the parties. ESPN bet will be operated fully by Penn and ESPN in turn will promote the sports book to its audience. Penn agreed to pay $1.5 billion in cash to ESPN over the initial 10 year term and also to grant ESPN approximately $500 million worth of warrants to purchase common shares in Penn that will vest over 10 years. And in exchange ESPN will provide media marketing services and branding type rights. Contemporaneous with this transaction, Penn divested the entirety of its stock or the entirety of the stock in Barstool Sports Inc. Back to its founder, David Portnoy, for a nominal amount with certain non-compete agreements. There's also a term that in the event of a sale or other monetization type event, 50% of the proceeds of that sale would go to Penn. Currently Penn has no ownership in Barstool Sports Inc. For its online sports book, Penn will be rebranding away from the Barstool Sports Book brand to the ESPN bet brand with the goal of having that rebranding completed in November of 2023. I believe the agreement itself has an outside date of February 2024, but the company is intending to complete by November 2023. The sports book would use the same platform that it uses now. And we've been informed by Penn that they will not be touching anything on the platform that is GLI certified. It's really a change of the branding alone. The company is also in the process of rebranding its assets on a company-wide basis. For the retail sports book at Plain Ridge Park Casino, PPC is coming before you at your next meeting on the 24th to approve its new retail sports betting area in the former Fluities. That area will not be branded as Barstool. PPC has not kept a surprise of the name yet. I don't know if they've decided yet. It's not public yet, but it will not be a Barstool brand at the retail site. There are a couple of conditions that are attached to the two sportsway during Penn-related licenses now. There's the condition that the company cooperate in a review of the branding of Barstool sports. And the IEB review of that is still a relevant matter. We've had Sergeant Owen and Attorney Zach Mercer working on that. They're continuing to work on that. The company has cooperated in that and we are hoping to bring something before you in the near future on that. There's another condition on those licenses around the Barstool College football shows. I'm not sure about the relevance of that anymore, but we're confirming that. It's my understanding that Barstool will not, I'm not sure if Barstool is even going to have its football shows anymore. The college football shows they will not be promoting Penn if they do not have them and Penn will not be involved, but we will confirm that. So I did want to acknowledge the transition publicly. We want to have time to review the ESPN agreement. That's part of our analysis. There's certainly responsible gaming and other compliance issues that are relevant in that agreement. We've requested documents already from Penn and they're forthcoming. We're also want to confirm that 50% piece that I mentioned in the event of Barstool being sold. Just want to confirm what that means in terms of any financial interests that the company might continue to have in Barstool. My suggestion now is that we come back to you in a couple of weeks or at a meeting in the near term to update you again. So those are, that's my update, but happy to take any direction from you with this point. Christian Maynard? I just have a quick question and it's based on public feedback that I think went to all the commissioners that of course were unable to talk about. Do we know when the Barstool brand will be pulled off of the Penn Entertainment property and both online retail and so forth? The online, their goal is to pull it off by November. I believe they have in their documents, it's a February date, but they're hoping to complete it by November. In terms of the retail, when they open at PPC, they will not be branded as Barstool at PPC. Company-wide, they're working on all of that deep branding now on their documents, their stationery, that kind of thing. They're other properties. PPC, they're in the process of pulling that all off now. So by late fall it sounds like? Correct. Thank you, Director Lillias. I'm just checking with Heather if she had anything to add because she was covering during this announcement. Is there anything that you had in addition to what Director Lillias? I don't care. Thank you very much. I think she summarized everything very well. No detail. Okay, great. Sorry, Commissioner O'Brien, just checking in. Yep. The only other question I thought of Loretta and I talked about this was because there is going to be that gap, what if any safeguards are going to be, I mean, I know representations were made about not offering certain bets, that sort of thing. So if you can get more information about exactly how that separation will manifest itself in the platform, despite the fact that the name may lag by a couple of months, because you're going to be in a couple of months of limbo there where control is gone but messaging might not be different. We're working on that, Commissioner. So I hope at the next briefing that we'll have more information for you. Right. Great. And so, commissioners too, I have a chance to speak with Boko Red and Heather about this, because trying to figure out what we want for updates, now Loretta just suggested that the IEB will come back with more information in a couple of weeks but we did have an application presented where, excuse me, branding, marketing was very much part of our application and Barstil was very much intertwined and I don't know if we want to invite them back to get an update. I see Commissioner Bryan maybe nodding her head, excuse me, but it's something for us to think about what we want to, you know, what we want for an update. I think, Loretta, you weren't thinking necessarily that an application had to be resubmitted but maybe some kind of a supplement as to, you know, because branding can change always, right? Down the road. So, Loretta. That's exactly right. I was not thinking that you needed a new application because they have their temporary license already. But update, I mean, we're doing updates all the time. These companies are constantly evolving and changing. This is a big one and I expected that you would want to hear from the company. Right, because I think there may be questions just about ESPN and what that branding will look like. Okay, so we'll first hear from IEPs. Does that make sense? So, Commissioner Skinner? Just had a quick question. Penn Entertainment will still operate the sports book. Penn Entertainment has complete authority over operating the sports book. This is similarly just a branding deal in terms of the platform. Yeah, thank you. Just looking for that clarification. So, I'm turning to Grace. We'll probably want to think about a little bit later in September hearing from the licensee on this. Unless IEP suggests a couple of weeks, something else. I'll work with IEB on the upcoming date in September. Yeah, okay, excellent. Thank you. Anything else? Any other questions? Thank you. All right, thank you. So now we're gonna move to item number nine. And if you remember correctly, I initiated this conversation in conjunction with Commissioner O'Brien. We did get some legal advice on how to pursue this process and the idea was to present to you the possibility of a nomination for the interim IEB director and the thought that, and I indicated on the record that I would like to recommend that enforcement counselor Heather Hall go into that interim director position. And Commissioner O'Brien was part of that conversation to turn to you, what you would like to add in in terms of the process. And of course we have Heather here today. Right. It's my understanding that Heather is willing to take that appointment. Otherwise, we're obviously having a different conversation today. But I think we can be short and sweet unless commissioners don't agree with that selection. I think this can be very straightforward in terms of doing a motion to have Heather designated as the interim director of investigation and enforcement here. But I leave it to whether the other three would like to be heard before we do that. Yeah, I think I did on the record indicate that I had spoken with Heather and we had a nice conversation on you too. So commissioners, any questions for Heather or for Alice? Are you all set to move? I think Commissioner Skinner wanted to make a comment or a... Thank you, Commissioner Hill. I am in total agreement. Fun fact, I served on the interview panel when director Lilios was looking for her chief enforcement counsel. And I am intimately aware of Ms. Hall's impressive law enforcement, investigative enforcement background and credentials. And so I am in favor and anxious to take the vote. Commissioner Maynard? I don't know if it's Commissioner Hill, but... Oh, I'm sorry. I agree with Commissioner Skinner on how happy I am. I mean, of course, losing director Lilios is a hole that's gonna be tough to fill, but I know that Heather Hall's gonna work really hard and I appreciate your willingness to do this. Commissioner Hill? I agree with everything that's been said. She's willing to take this position and I'm fully supportive of it. I have a motion. Madam Chair, I move that the commission approve the selection of Heather Hall to serve as interim director of the Investigations and Enforcement Bureau. Second. Any further discussion? Commissioner O'Brien? Aye. Commissioner Hill? Aye. Commissioner Skinner? Aye. Commissioner Maynard? Aye. And I vote yes. Five-zero. Thank you. Congratulations, Heather. We will be celebrating Loretta as she leaves with a full plate. This is not the week that is on the thing. It's not. And so for that, Loretta, we are very grateful. So thank you, but I'm very grateful to you, Heather. Congratulations. Thank you, Chair. If I may, I just wanna quickly say I fully recognize these are really big shoes to build. Loretta has been an incredible leader of this bureau and I am honored and humbled even just to be the interim director. I just wanna say thank you, Loretta, for everything that you've taught and I'm looking forward to working closely with the team, which is an incredible team. So I feel very fortunate for that. Thanks, Heather. And great choice, commissioners. Madam Chair? Yes, Commissioner Skinner? Dear, I asked for a quick five-minute break before we move to the next agenda item. Yeah, I'm just gonna point out that we've lose some attorney precarious shortly. And so five-minute break, 315. And then we'll turn to, yeah, I don't know if we can switch it up. Grace, I haven't thought about that. I think that is Mina's item next on the agenda. Well, it actually, we'll go for five minutes and we'll get that and we'll reconvene. Okay, thanks so much. Okay, I don't know if people are starting to come back, Dave. Great, okay. So this is a reconvening of the Master's Game and Commission. We've been meeting since 10 this morning and we're holding this meeting still virtually. So we'll do the roll call. Commissioner O'Brien, are you still here? I am still here, Commissioner Hill. I'm still here. Commissioner Skinner, I'm here. Okay, and Commissioner Maynard. I'm here. All right, so we'll get started and again, it's public meeting number 471 and we are turning to the two last sections, 10A and B of our agenda. And we'll turn first to item A, our Chief Human Resources and Diversity Officer. David Mojoo has worked with, as I understand it, Chief Financial and Administrative Officer Darren Menon. But I see, Dave, you're here, Chief. Yes, I am here. And there's Derek in a slightly different spot today. Good afternoon. I'm upstairs. You're upstairs, different artwork today, Derek. I miss the artwork too. Yeah, yeah. All right, excellent. You have a memo in our packet, Commissioner's page on 106. Right. Yes, Madam Chair, hello. Good afternoon and good afternoon, commissioners. Myself and Derek, we wanted to, the deliverable from the last meeting was to continue the discussion in regards to identifying executive search firms that were minority and women-owned that we may choose to utilize when we start strategizing on the recruitment of the executive director role. So with that said, both Bonisa and John, who I thought did an outstanding job, had a creative approach working with LEAF, our local enterprise assistance fund. And through grants, we have an air familiarity with minority businesses and diversity. These folks created, I considered a collaboration strategic alliance with LEAF where they would provide LEAF with a series of companies that were certified through SDO. And then they, we would also provide them, and this is the packet, a series of 10 questions. Those questions LEAF would ask these organizations and by doing so, we whittled down from 50 plus positions to five. And the five that we have, two are certified, the three are not. We believe these five, when the opportunity may or may not present itself, these are the five that we may be able to use to conduct a national search, super regional search for the ED position where we would be looking for certainly highly qualified talent, highly qualified diverse talent for the role. Now I realize, we realize that it is being driven by the commission, but we wanted to just put something in place and have you have an opportunity to realize what's out there. And I thought they did a great job. And we have a, it's an option that we're looking at. So Derek, did you want to add? I don't want anything other than a few clarifying statements. You know, out of the universe, we had given 40 vendors from the SDO's office. And, you know, I get the benefit and Dave gets the benefit of sitting up here and talking about all the work that was done yet. John, Bernice and LEAF did all this work and they did a lot of work on this. Where they worked with SDO to identify the people, the vendors that they have registered that meet these qualifications. LEAF went out and did research. Bernice did independent research. Dave did independent research. And we only brought forward the vendors that are minority or women or veteran owned because this would be one of those targeted spend opportunities where the commission would choose to go with one of these vendors versus doing a full RFR so we could increase our diversity spent. Now we could compete with the list of five that LEAF has brought forward as a competitive process to figure out who the best would be. But as Dave pointed out, two out of those five are already certified. Three LEAF would work with to get certified as part of our contract and grant with them to make sure that any vendor we brought forward if they provided a final candidate that signed on the line with us and stayed with us that they would, we would get that spend as part of our diversity, supply or diversity office spend. Do I miss anything, John? No, that's pretty much an initial, Derek. I hate to summarize in five minutes what literally took weeks of work on LEAF and John, Bernice, who on Dave's team's part, so. The questions for Dave and Derek and then also, I think I just probably need a little guidance in terms of process. You are putting forth five names but you would like the commission to select one. And I guess I'd wonder how we decide which one. So it's up to the commission what they'd like to do. They'd like to offer this to all five. I mean, only the firm that ultimately provides the final candidate gets paid, right? Because their fee structure is a percentage of having bringing on a final candidate. Managing five vendors, bringing in different applicants would be difficult too. And then honestly, it's up to the selection committee, the smaller group that's gonna be pulled together that John and team would work with to help figure out whether they wanna use one, whether they wanna use two, whether they wanna use three. But that would be part of the strategy of the selection committee as they move forward. Right. And from the stand, because we have multiple, I would recommend not giving it, not giving a particular agency an exclusive. I think we'd want to cast a wide net on this position and the potential for candidates. And only one can fill it. And my background is this in the past, is coordinating this effort, but certainly in conjunction with the direction from the commission. So we could provide the structural support if and when a decision is made. And certainly you folks would drive the nuts and bolts as to the process, spirit, what you're looking for, who would interview, certainly. But we can certainly provide the infrastructure. So I'll follow up with Derek, your answer to my question. I'm not sure, and I'm not saying I'm objecting to be clear, but I'm not sure if it was clear to all five commissioners that the screening committee would be making this choice versus the full commission. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say that the screening committee would choose whether to use a headhunter or not. I was saying the screening committee would choose which headhunter to use. Right, and that was my, that's, and I understood that difference. I think we all, I think we did say, please come and tell us about, you know, the exact switch, but I may have been the only one who missed that, commissioners, and I'm not saying I object to it, but I just wanted to note that I'm not sure it was clear to me at least, that the selection of the search firm was going to be also the decision of the screening committee. Yeah, there's none with you, Madam Chair. I thought what we were doing today is getting the information on them. And I didn't know if there was a recommendation to take some subset of the five or whether all five was sort of the request to be, you know, to help push this out. So I guess if it was misunderstanding, I had the same misunderstanding that you did. Oh, okay. I did too. And I had the same misunderstanding and I don't object to having the search committee make a decision either. What I did know that is that I was not prepared to decide today because I think the questions that have been listed out are pretty determinative, but we don't have the responses. So there's not a way really to evaluate those right now. I mean, you guys have, Dave is nodding his head. You have the responses, but commissioners don't have the responses. So it would be hard to make the decision based on just the five listed out names. Absolutely right. And in the spirit, this was presenting information only. Yeah, based upon what I have here, sorry, Madam Chair. I heard mango too. Based upon what I have here, the only thing I can look at is who's certified and who's not certified. That's the only objective. Right. Right. So we felt that the deliverable was what's even out there. So this is what's out there, but certainly we have the background and the information to do a deeper dive into what and how and how they're answering the answers to these questions, but that was the way in which we felt was the best way to present. And then we'd do a deeper dive as to what does this mean as we go through the process? And based on the five commissioners responses, I guess it was me who had the best understanding. I didn't think we could provide all the information to the whole group. I thought we had to only provide it to the search committee. That being said, we can provide all the information to the whole group. Absolutely. That's gonna be my next question, Derek. Is there anything in procurement law best practices that it's not? That I guess the screening committee is a public body too. So either way, right? All right, so commissioners, do we wanna make it as a group of five or do we wanna delegate it to the screening committee? I have to say I'm really excited about the good work that was done just on a personal level. I think it's a great job. It's excellent, yeah. Madam chair, I recall commissioner Hill had some hesitancy with moving forward with a search firm. So I respect for him, if it's okay, commissioner Hill not to put you on the spot. I'd like to hear what you, how you envision us moving forward with this decision-making. Since our last meeting, I have been able to have a discussion with Derek over this. And I'm okay moving forward with what is being proposed. I still think we are very smart and could do this without a search firm. However, understanding what they bring to the table, I would have no objection at this point moving forward with a search firm. So can I just as a point of clarification, my understanding of the use of the search firms was not that they were replacing what would be the screening committee. It's more assisting the screening committee. So- That's how I understand it. I think, yeah, I think the dissatisfaction or hesitancy you expressed, I kind of shared, which was not wanting to pass off the responsibility for screening out to a third party. Okay. I'm sorry about another place. That's what I was told when we had a discussion it would be an assist, not a do. Right. I like that commissioner Hill an assist, not a do. Keep that one in mind. So, okay. So just back to my earlier question and I appreciate commissioner Skinner checking in with commissioner Hill. Is this something that we would like to decide as a group of five or do we want to delegate it? Commissioner Skinner. I'll jump in. I would like to decide as a group of five. I would like the opportunity to weigh in, but that being said, I could also go with the other option, which is to have this search committee, screening committee make the decision too. But my preference is to have all five of us weigh in. It'd be great to do as much with the five of us as we can do. So if we can get the information and do vote on it next time, then the all five of us can have more of a say. And commissioners, go ahead, commissioner Maynard. No, I was just going to say that I agree as much as the five can get together and help, can help the two that do. So. Assistant do, assistant do. And so if there's any kind of, I think we kind of have a consensus then for the five of us, commissioner Hill, are you good with that? Then is there anything that Derek and Dave, you want to ask of us now so that will inform how you prepare us for that decision making? Or do we want to give any directions to them commissioners? Well, I think from our standpoint, giving you an opportunity to review the data, it's concise, it's easy to read. And among yourselves, I guess, probably communicating and identifying, agreeing on the purpose or the role, one of the maybe top three priorities, deliverables that this committee, that this search using a search firm would provide. I mean, I can add that from an HR standpoint, but certainly from the commission to make sure we get the desired results other than the fact that we want a highly qualified person, certainly, but what is it that we need to see? So we'll start with presenting you with the data and we can wait to hear your feedback. That's how from a customer standpoint. Commissioner Hill? So to commissioner O'Brien's point and to mine earlier, so let me just be very, very clear because I've seen this done at the local level. I have not done it at a state level. At a local level, there are companies that go over all the resumes and then they present to a committee their findings and they're like, I'm gonna just throw a number out. They're top 10. Under the scenario that we are talking about, are we, the committee that would be put together working with the firm pick the 10 or is the firm picking the top 10 and then going to the committee that's the committee that's been set up? I can, so there's two parts there, right? Each response you'll see, and this is another question I may have. Do you wanna just see the top five that were sourced forward or do you wanna see the non-responsive responses that weren't good? I mean, I think having just the top five is beneficial because it just brings the best forward that did the most comprehensive responses and it doesn't add any areas for embarrassment. But that being said, we can ask for all the data on the other ones. Am I, Derek, are you talking now of search firms? No, search firms. I think Commissioner Hill was talking candidates. Yes, for the search firms, before I answer that second one because it relates right into them, you'll see what their methodology is and then you as a commission can say, you know what, we don't want them to bring it forward. We wanna surface through all of the candidates that they have in their database or that they've pulled together because each one of them goes into their methodology and how many they have in their database or what their review process is. And that's pretty comprehensive on these responses in this summary document that we got from LEAF. So Commissioner Hill, to your point though, Dave is looking for priorities for the search firms and I'm trying to think that you would like them to be able to delegate it, is that? I think jumping ahead. Okay. I think our first step is to pick the five, possibly five firms that would come before us. We may vote on that the next time we meet after getting more information on the five. And at that point, the commission is going to, I assume, vote to put a commission, a committee together of I'm assuming two commissioners and then other members of staff to work on coming up with a finalist or a couple of finalists to bring before the full commission or a vote. So my question then is the firms that we choose, are they going to be presenting the committee with the top five or is the committee going to be involved in bringing the top five forward? Am I making myself clear? Yes, you are. You are making yourself clear. And what we would as the intermediary, say myself as the executive HR person, I can be an intermediary. And let's just say they surface, say they surface 25 candidates and we look at 10. I would have no problem having all five of you review 10. And here what your thoughts are. So you start, you yourself start selecting and saying, okay, what's the common denominator we want? What's the common denominator we don't want? Because you really have to go through this but if you want to drive it, you have to see a decent number of candidates to understand what you're looking for. We can help in identifying who the candidates are and things of that sort to a certain extent within employment law parameters. But I do want you folks involved because I think that's where you really get a feel. And then once that happens, again, where the conduit between the agency and folks, that way we make sure that we're docking eyes across the T's, you're participating. That's how I envision this. Is that, does that answer? I do see Mina has a question. So let me hear him first and then I'll follow up. Turning to Mina, yeah. Cause just so you know on the agenda is today is the idea of the selection of the committee, the screening committee today. And maybe Mina, that's what you're going to address. Yeah, I was just going to weigh in cause I thought it might be efficient to do it at the same time as this conversation to commissioner Hill's point. I think we talked about this a little bit before, but in the instance that Mr. Mulder just described or depending on how many folks come before you, you could as you're setting up the screening committee, the five of you, even if you have a subcommittee could give explicit instructions of the kind of information. Often it's statistical kind of information. We have a hundred applications. The commission may at that point have set sort of some minimum criteria that are objective of those making up numbers. 20 meet our minimum criteria. And so we propose, you know, we the screening committee proposed to meet and bring that number down to X and bring this back to you. And the commission could say, we want five to come back to us, we want 10, we want whatever. And if it's a low enough number as a starting point, the screening committee's work may have simply been to work with the search company, with the search firm who was sort of functioning just as a consultant to get to that point and bring it to you to put it in the context of what we at A&K do with you much more often. It's providing, you know, here are the questions. You're sort of your options and where we are in the process, do you want us to take this further and try to call the pile further, et cetera, or not? So I think you can continue to keep that fluid as you go, both and David correct me if I'm wrong, but we have seen that sort of ability to be nimble to use your word, Madam Chair, with both the committee, the subcommittee and the screening or search firm throughout to change their task a little bit depending on what kinds of reaction you're getting in the marketplace for applicants. Well, that's correct. That's correct. I agree with that. Madam Chair and this commission, just to follow up on Commissioner Hill's point, I don't think that your question is premature. I wonder if, you know, the response to that question speaks to the search firm's business model or their approach. And so we might want to consider that as we make the decision which search firm or firms to move forward with. And so I think, Commissioner Skinner, if I could just build off from that, because I thought that might be what Derek was sort of, oh, no, maybe it was Dave who said, you know, what questions would we want for to kind of inform our selection? I don't know if we're prepared today to get all of those, but Commissioner Hill has raised that a couple of times, you know, another way to frame it, would you be comfortable working with the screening committee and not being the screening agent? You know, have they ever worked that model? Do they have experience working that model? Right, Commissioner Hill, if that's what we agree on. So is that kind of what you're getting at? That there's things that when Derek and Dave come back to us with a proposal, are these issues gonna help inform their proposals, right? For us. I don't know, are we ready for that today? You know, I'll add another one for me. I'd love to know, I can't tell from these questions, but I think I heard it, like do they have nationwide experience or is it strictly regional? You know, and that would be important to me. I'm not sure if it's important to others, but I don't know if this is the time to generate that, if we have time today or if we should be thinking about that, Commissioner. All right, I was gonna say, you know, I also noticed that, you know, one of them was headquartered in Springfield, right? And that was important to me when I was looking at it, just when I was searching a lot myself. So I mean, knowing where they're from, where they're based out of, that's, that to me is important. These are Massachusetts, Boston-Centric, did you do that Google search? I Googled through some of them and I just remember, I believe that image group and I can be corrected if I'm wrong, as based out of Springfield. Oh, it is, oh. Madam Chair. Yes, I'm sorry, I wasn't being just, I was distracted by just- No, no. On your notes, when it says not certified, but then MBE next to it or WBE next to it, you, somebody would work with them to get them certified? Correct, correct. That's where Leif would work with them to get certified with the SDL. Some of the folks are already certified. And they're certified as both? Correct. Both the minority and the minority. Correct, well, they've been certified by SDL as, yes, as both, correct. As both, got it, okay, thanks. It was actually East Long Meadow. Oh, okay. East Long Meadow. Okay, thank you. My experience tells me that it's hard for the, I think it would be hard for the commissioners to identify a next step before having an opportunity to review the data. And I think there's so much unknown that you have. We have it, but I don't want to, I can't go any further until you folks have a chance to, you may come back and say, this is great, but there's two or three more questions we need to know. So I'm not saying that we can certainly find the next step or maybe getting this information to you folks as quickly as possible. So you have an opportunity to review. I think that would be kind of a conservative first step. Commissioner, does that make sense? Madam Chair. Yes. The answer is yes, it makes sense. Here's my big issue. And I've been trying to think in my way how to say something without offending somebody, because I'm sure I'm going to with what I'm about to say. And I touched upon it in the last meeting. I have a negative feeling sometimes toward search firms because I'm always afraid that they're going to be putting before us friends that they've worked with slash companies that they have worked with to get us to hire someone. And I've seen it happen at the local level. And I don't want to see that happen here. This is a very, very important position. And I'm concerned that the subcommittee of members on it may not see all the resumes that may come forward. And I want to ensure that that happens locally that doesn't always happen. And again, I have not been or have experience in a statewide hiring like we do now in front of us. But I do have experience at the local level. And I'm going to tell you, there's been some, I have some negative feelings toward it. So I guess I need to be convinced that this is the right way to go. I'm for it, if that's what the board wants to, if the commission wants to do it. And I understand it, but I have that concern. And whatever five we pick, does that address my concerns? Sorry to bring it up, but it's a concern I have because it's come back to haunt some local communities that I am aware of. And I'll just leave it at that. I'm sure. Thank you, Madam Chair. I was sitting and thinking very similarly and I'm glad you brought it up. I think, and I dealt with it only through my prior position on knowing a lot of board and commission members to have Commonwealth who were doing giant searches and interim searches. I think what I would say to you is, I would want the subcommittee to be empowered to see everything, if the five of us pick these groups, I would then want the subcommittee to be empowered to go through everything with a fine tooth comb and weigh and balance, you know, where's this coming from versus where's it not? I see it as more just another, like a sweeping tool, right? Like, okay, here we went out into the world and we asked everybody if they wanna do this, it goes funnels to the subcommittee, but at the same time, you know, if a, I'm gonna use the word headhunter, if a headhunter finds somebody that wasn't about to do it on the website or through our social media channels or however we're generating applicants, that those names could be pushed to the subcommittee too and that the subcommittee could weigh all these things. And I would want the subcommittee to have that power to go through it all. That's the only way I can sit here and think that it could possibly work. All right, place that bomb on you, Madam Chair. That wasn't a bomb, it's a good discussion. I think Derek would like to respond. Thank you, Derek. Yeah, and I was gonna say the mitigating factor might be what Derek is gonna say if we have multiple that would mitigate against those favorites, but Derek, you know what, honestly, I couldn't see your hand. The lighting was just covering it. Sorry, Derek. Sorry, don't worry about it. Minimum, so one of the things I talked to Commissioner Hill about to get him kind of comfortable with this process is, you know, in our normal hiring process, you have different managers who like different processes. Some will just take the resumes that HR says should come forward after the pre-screening. Others will say, I wanna see everyone that you chose not to bring forward that meets the minimum entrance requirements, but you had pre-screened out. So that could be a process to use too, right? You say, I wanna see everyone that meet the minimum entrance requirements and then show me who came in either through your existing database that eliminates some of that fear of you're just doing repeat customers or the ones that came in through another method where you reached out and found people or got them on reference from someone else. So there are many ways that you can deal with this, but the first step is to take a look at the responses, right, take a look at how they get their information, take a look at who these entities are and what their responses to our initial questions were to see if you have any follow-up questions that you may want us to reach back out or you as a committee wanna go back out and ask these firms before you select one or multiple. So that's what I would recommend. One, take a look at the responses. Two, see if there are any questions that we missed. And then three, if you wanna set basic criteria for each one of these, or if you wanna say for this type of firm, I wanna see the people you filtered out or for this other firm, I think you have the way we'd love to see it. We trust you to go ahead and bring back the right ones. So I don't think you can answer that until you see the responses that we've already reviewed. And I apologize that those weren't in there. That's my mistake. I thought that this was just gonna be for the selection committee. Okay, so I wanna make sure we don't lose Mina. We could go back to this issue, but right now, as I understand it, we would be waiting for data to come to us at next week's meeting. Would that make sense? I know Salman and Grace is going, pack your sleeping bags, commissioners, because next Thursday is a long meeting as well. But is that what we're thinking now that you'd wanna see that next? I think for timing, right? You wanna keep things moving, right? The open meeting line doesn't allow us to, and I'm asking you to allow us to send you the information individually as quickly as possible. And you have an opportunity to review it individually? Yeah, in advance, yes. And then Grace would, you could work with Grace to circulate that. We'd be able to look at that, and then we'd be able to discuss it in public together. If we can do that, that would be, the sooner you get it, the better for you to start internalizing it and start answering, just thinking about it and getting familiar with it. Am I right, Derek? There's nothing in that data that can't be circulated in that fashion, right? Correct. Okay. Okay, so commissioners, you'll get it through Grace. We'll have it a week in advance of next Thursday and we'll put it on the agenda, does that sound right? It may require another meeting too, but let's see how we do next Thursday. Okay? I feel comfortable with that, Madam Chair. Okay, excellent. Anybody else have anything missing anything? Oh, okay. So now we did have marked up to have the selection of the screening committee and we've got Meena here to give guidance. Shall we proceed with that? Madam Chair, my apologies. You have me for the next six minutes and then I can try to return after a meeting that I unfortunately can't move. No, no, no, no, because we're going to be leaving. Okay. Okay. So should we get some guidance from Meena now and then if we want to move after he leaves, we move on after he leaves. Okay, Meena? Sure, I'll be very brief. I think I've already said some of it today and in the past. You have a lot of flexibility in how you appoint a screening committee and exactly what tasks you ask it to do. The only real limitations are if you are going to be able to protect the identity of applicants and be able to discuss applications in executive sessions, you can't have more than two members of the commission sit on the screening committee. However, the number or the exact role of the screening committee and how close it gets to finalists who are before you, group for final interviews and final selection is really fluid. We have seen public bodies in these circumstances have the screening committee do everything up until getting a final group of two or more, which is the minimum that has to go before the final body, two or more, and others that have really used it as a tool for getting down to a set of sort of viable candidates who meet kind of basic criteria and then have more extensive interviews with many, many more than that. And as I mentioned, you don't need to make all those decisions in advance, especially as you go through the pool of figuring out what the pool looks like. With a larger pool, you may decide to have the screening committee do more initial culling with a smaller pool, you may decide not to, and have instead that the search, excuse me, the screening committee do more of that. In effect, you can decide whether the screening committee, just like you had this conversation about the search firm, does more of the supporting the search and bringing in candidates and sort of knowing what you have versus getting you to the finalists. All of that would typically happen by the screening committee and executive session to protect the applicants and also protect sort of the commission's interest in getting viable candidates. And you don't have to be tied down to a final process when you appoint. As was sort of alluded to earlier and I think is clear from the prior screening committee you had, screening committee can involve one or two candidates who commissioners can also involve non-commission members, staff, external folks, whoever you'd want to be included on that. And it would be a public bodies. So the folks who joined that would have to know that would have to be careful of the open meeting law. If they're non-commission members it may require just some initial training if they're not used to some of what you're all used to in terms of communications outside of meeting days. I'm meeting up for two minutes. Any questions? It might be less than two minutes. Any questions? All right. So commissioners, are you prepared to think about the selection of the screening committee at this juncture? I see commissioner Maynard nodding. I am. I am too. Okay. Go ahead, commissioner Maynard. What are you thinking? So I did have the opportunity over the last few years to place over a thousand people and I've seen what works and doesn't work. And one thing that definitely works is when you have a group like this to make sure that you have a senior member serve. And it's somebody that knows the agency through and through. It's somebody that has really, really good judgment. I, as I said last time we discussed this, I have full faith in everyone who's on this commission to do what's right and do what they think's right. With that said, I think commissioner O'Brien would have to be a natural choice to serve in this role. Again, I think her experience is invaluable. She is the senior member of the commissioners and that would be how I'm thinking right now. Excellent. Commissioner O'Brien, we've talked about it. I think a few of us have suggested that. I know I took myself out of it. We need another member. I think a couple suggested that they wouldn't have to be but I think this is a good time for everybody to make sure that they indicate if you are interested, this is the time to speak up because each of, everybody brings enormous value to this and everybody is invested in the outcome. So commissioner O'Brien, I think that you've expressed your interest in serving. So I don't know what you- Yeah. Yeah. I reiterate what commissioner Mayer said. I think that all of us have something to bring to the table. My age and longevity are probably the best things I could bring to the process. And mango. But I'm happy to do it. And mango. And mango. Madam chair. Yeah. So I'll just share my observations and my suggestion as well. My observation is that commissioner O'Brien would be an excellent choice for this committee for many reasons. And I also think that commissioner Maynard brings experience from his previous life that would be very helpful in this endeavor. He's been through the processes of looking at resumes, going through background checks, all that good stuff. So it would be my recommendation that commissioner O'Brien and commissioner Maynard be our choices. And I would then look to three staff members to be on the committee. So it would be a committee of five. I don't think it needs to be any bigger than that. I have suggested personnel, people that I would recommend. I don't know if you wanna hear those or not. I think Derek would be an excellent choice as he has his fingers in the entire agency because of his job. So he would have a good overview of what the agency does and what an executive director would need to do to make sure that this agency moves as smoothly as it has over the years. And we just appointed as our interim IEB director, Heather Hall, who I have the utmost respect for who I also think would be an excellent person to go through resumes, understanding that she's worked with Dr. Lillios for so many years and overseeing her department, which is a very big department. And of course, Dave Moudreau. So my suggestion would be two commissioners, commissioners O'Brien and Maynard. And then if they thought they would want to do it, Derek, Heather and Dave as our personnel on that committee. That's my opinion as of right now. Well, I should say I think having Commissioner O'Brien at the helm is an excellent choice. I am struggling and it's not in any way because I, Commissioner Maynard does have a lot of experience in placement, but I also very much appreciate Commissioner Skinner's sensibilities, particularly around issues on our commitment to diversity and her judgment. Commissioner Hill, I know you're very interested in this process, but you have yielded. And I respect you for that. And that shows it demonstrates that you have complete competence in our colleagues in doing that. So thank you. I will have another suggestion at a later time where Commissioner Skinner and I can be very helpful. Okay, but I want to turn to Commissioner Skinner because this is where we haven't heard from you. I will press that I've had the chance to work with Dave L. Drew and this part of, I think it was Commissioner O'Brien and I, part of the hiring of Dave L. Drew, you know that the commission has adopted, and made a decision around prioritizing our hiring practices around equity and inclusion. And I know that you'll safeguard that, but I did want to turn to Commissioner Skinner. You've been a very important voice in that year. And a whole bunch of others. So certainly that's just a piece of the puzzle when it comes to your judgment. Commissioner Skinner. Well, thank you very much, Madam Chair. I appreciate the recognition and the vote of confidence in an area or moving forward in an area that we all care very deeply about. I support Commissioner O'Brien's nomination. I think that Commissioner Maydard had the right idea when he talked about, you know, the most senior member on this commission having a lot of value add to the process. Just having been with the commission, I believe since day one. So I support that recommendation. I also support Commissioner Hill's recommendation that Commissioner Maydard serve on the screening committee because of his very relevant background in screening individuals for these kinds of roles across the Commonwealth. And, you know, the length of time he spent doing that. I can appreciate the sentiments of every single one of the commissioners, I think, at this point in the expression that we all have something to add and, you know, there's no wrong choice here. So however this turns out, I will be okay with it, but I would be untruthful if I said I was not interested in serving on the screening committee. That being said, I did have the opportunity to serve although on a much smaller scale on the screening committee for the interim ED. So, you know, if it means just, you know, bowing out in giving another commissioner the opportunity to serve on the screening committee, I am comfortable doing that. Okay. If I can just add something. Sure, Commissioner Hill. So, my second part of this commissioner Skinner was because of your experience in the screening committee of getting our interim executive director, I was hoping that you and I then could partner and be put on a subcommittee to look for our new IEB director. Because I think your experience on the screening committee is invaluable and I wanted to work with you on that. Well, that's great, I think we need some additional information as to what that process will allow given that the IEB director reports directly to the chair. And there are process questions that have come up on that but I would not be adverse to what was just recommended by Commissioner Skinner. But I know that it's not on the agenda for today but it's a very, an equitable approach and a very smart approach and I would not be adverse to that. I just don't wanna make sure we stick today to the process that's in front of us for the agenda. But Commissioner Skinner, your service on the other screening committee was not meant to be one versus the other. I understand that, I'm sorry if I could just respond here. I do understand that and given the opportunity or given the choice I should say whether to serve on the screening committee for the ED versus the screening committee for the IEB director, I choose the ED screening committee, both very important positions. And I think Commissioner Hill to your point, I think however this shapes up, I think it's gonna take the five of us at the end of the day to come up with the decision as to who to ultimately put in the position. So whether we weigh in more hands-on in the beginning during the screening committee process or at the end when it's time to vote on a final candidate, I think we'll get an opportunity. Commissioner Maynard. First of all, I'm extremely humbled by Commissioner Hill and Commissioner Skinner and their comments. And I have thought about it a little bit. I did have that experience in a way that experience kind of intimidates me because I wonder how many people will think because they've worked with me in the past, they can put in for this position just to be honest with you, but that's not the way my brain works. And this is public notice right now that that's not the way I would think. I would serve if it was the majority, I would serve in that capacity. But I do not waver from, I think Commissioner Bryan should sit on this and whether it's me or Commissioner Skinner or it sounds like Commissioner Hill has pulled out, I have full faith in the process. Commissioner Bryan and Commissioner Maynard and Commissioner Skinner, in terms of the kind of issue that Commissioner Maynard just raised, there will be guidance that you'll get from legal as to how to manage any kind of a conflict should you have candidates that come before you that you know. It's kind of funny that Commissioner Hill was thinking that that would be what the executive search firm might do. They're not under the same guidelines that we are but as state employees, we'll abide by those disclosure processes. So we have three candidates and I think there's probably full consensus that having our most senior and I age you out on that, Commissioner Bryan so in terms of senior in terms of experience, but I think we all agree, Commissioner Bryan would love for you to serve on the screening committee and am I right that we would have her be the chair? So everybody comfortable with that? And so now it comes down to Commissioner Maynard and Commissioner Skinner and you know, this is like, I guess Sophie's choice. I don't know. I mean, from my perspective, you both offer a great, yeah. I'm glad Commissioner Hill, you took your, you made it a little bit easier and now we're down to two, three, because everybody, you know, all of you would add enormous and judgment and experience to the selection process. So help me out, Commissioner Bryan, can you help in terms of experience here that would have, that would my offset your experience? Well, if we went with the most junior member, that would be Commissioner Maynard. Again, and I say this because I think any combination of the four of us would have been fine, but I do wonder if Commissioner Maynard's experience doing broader vetting might be helpful to me. My hiring experience has been on smaller scales. And then if it came to the IEB, I would absolutely say that Commissioner Skinner and Commissioner Hill would be more than qualified to make that determination. So since Commissioner Maynard is willing to serve as well, I'd be leaning toward doing that and then having Commissioner Hill and Commissioner Skinner do IEB director. These votes are never easy. I've had to make them in the past. There's not one of you that I don't have the utmost respect for that would do a great job in this. I've already stated that I think the experience of being able to identify employees in his past life makes him a good candidate. That does not mean that I have any less respect for any of my colleagues, especially you Commissioner Skinner, because I have a lot of respect for you and everything that you stand for on this committee. But I voiced why I think Commissioner Maynard would be the better candidate in this instance. And with that said, Madam Chair, I would move to appoint Commissioner O'Brien and Commissioner Maynard to the screening committee for our new executive director. Do we have to bifurcate it if we're each abstaining or can we just abstain? I don't think, can we not abstain? Because it's... You spoke for yourself? That's fine. That's okay. Okay. It is okay. I think it's actually helpful here. Okay. So what was the emotion? My apologies, Commissioner Hill. I moved to appoint Commissioner O'Brien and Commissioner Maynard to the screening committee in regards to our hiring of the executive director of the mass gaming commission. Do I have a second? Second. Okay, I'm just going to point out that I did hear junior and senior and I'm very mindful that at one point Commissioner Skinner pointed out to me that that wasn't those were labels that she didn't love. And I've always remembered that. So I just want to acknowledge that. My vote today to support this will be because of Commissioner Maynard's extensive experience and placement in Commissioner O'Brien's extensive experience as this commission and having worked with... This will be the third executive director. So I just wanted to note that to you, Commissioner Skinner, that respect. Absolutely, thank you. And when I used the term senior, it was with respect to longevity of service on this commission. Thank you. Okay. Any other discussion? Commissioner O'Brien? Aye. Commissioner Hill? Aye. Commissioner Skinner? Aye. Commissioner Maynard? Aye. And I vote yes. Five, zero. Okay, we got some good work done here. And so we'll just, we won't vote on the other item, but we'll roll that over to next week and we'll get started with our screening committee after we figure out the search firm. And then as I understand, Commissioner O'Brien, there would be an opportunity for the screening committee to report in and when they're seeking guidance from the five commissioners. And in terms of we haven't decided, I guess maybe one more vote, right? Because we haven't decided on the other members of the committee. So Commissioner Hill mentioned three thoughts on that. Commissioner Skinner, I'm gonna turn to you. Well, so I was hoping we could turn to Chief Muldrew on best practices here. And maybe there aren't any, but if there's some insight there, it'd be helpful. I, from a creating the committee, I had some thoughts, I think from a employment parameters, employment law, communicating with the agencies, interpreting agency lingo to make sure the commissioners understood what they were saying and having a team HR wise, I would be present. I always feel, and one way to the answer, the people that were identified from a chief financial officer, I think that's correct. Plus, I also know that Derek brings with him experience from the executive level to commonwealth, which I think it would be naive to think that's not important. We tend to work as a quasi-organization, but we work for the commonwealth of Massachusetts. And it's important that one of our areas of growth is to make sure that we start understanding that we're not an island and that there are parameters. So I think that's also very critical. And the third person, I'm sorry, who was the third person? Heather, Heather Hall. Who's the third person? Heather is very, very detailed and brings, she brings a different view. And that different view is from a legal side. We have a very large number of professionals that are attorneys. And the past person in this office was an attorney and maybe a future one. But I think having someone from that viewpoint is also critical. So long-winded answer, I think the three were a wise, a wise choice. And I would have no problem going with that. In my opinion, Commissioner Skinner. Thank you, Dave. And so with that, I think the most prudent thing for me to do is to turn to the chair of the screening committee and the second commissioner who is serving on the screening committee and just hear from them in terms of their thoughts on those additional committee members. I am in full support of them. I think they would be a good addition to serve in this capacity. So I have no objection to either of those individuals serving on the screening committee, but really defer to the two of you, Commissioner Maynard and Commissioner O'Brien, as you're gonna be heading up this process. I agree with what's been said by Commissioner Hill, Commissioner Skinner and by Dave Muldrew. My only caveat would be to make sure that those two individuals wanna participate in that manner. I wouldn't wanna force somebody, make them feel like they had to say, yes, if for whatever reason, they felt like they didn't wanna participate. But assuming that they did want to, I think that those individuals make perfect sense to add in to this process. And that's a good point, Commissioner O'Brien, and thanks for raising it because we do have Heather newly appointed as interim IAB director, but then also understanding that she will continue her Chief Enforcement Council duties. And so this might be another heavy lift for her to take on a sort of a third area of responsibility at this time, but she's just shown her face so she can speak for herself. Thank you, Commissioner. I appreciate this and I would be willing to serve on the committee. Great. Notably Derek has not taken his video and shown his face. Did not wanna steal Heather's thunder, so I was letting Heather do. The one, I'm very honored to serve on the committee. The one thing I wanna point out and there's probably something that Shathi was going to point out is Chair Yod Stein was gonna point out is there any conflict for me as I'm the position that's appointed by the executive director? So that as long as the commission is comfortable with that, that's fine. And I mean, there's a bigger screening committee here. It's just I wanted to point out that obvious potential conflict of interest. I don't think I'd be serving anyone well if I didn't point that out. You'd be hiring your boss. Not really. In the last few times round, I did have the opportunity to sit in on an interview. I think most of senior staff did get a chance to sit on interviews with the finalists, but I wasn't part of the committee that brought forward the candidate. Yeah, just a reminder by statute, the executive director does make one, a single appointment the commission is not involved with and that is their exposition. So that is, that's a challenge. So Derek, probably best practice would be that you step aside with that. My hunch is that to Commissioner Hill's initial observation that you are in a position that has also on the entire agency, you know, Commissioner Hill, I don't know if you'd like to ask Derek for his recommendation in the incident that he's probably not ideally placed for participating and actually voting on the selection process. Although not ideal, I certainly would like to hear from legal. If there's an issue with this because I still think he would be an excellent person to have on it and I would still recommend him despite that unless legal tells me otherwise. And Derek, I didn't, wasn't thinking of it. So I appreciate you're raising it. Now, we have a little bit of a challenge because we have an interim executive director who's also our general counsel. I'm wondering if it's a question better for Mina, Madam Chair. I think the question- You're not getting it. And so I would say- Can I ask a favor? I would recommend, and I hate to say it this way, but probably given Derek's position, I would probably not recommend that Derek serve on it. That's helpful regardless of our legal advice. I see Commissioner Vayan maybe agreeing. Yeah, well, for a parent's purposes. It's funny, I thought of that but clearly your situation Derek finds himself in in another scenario where I was talking with Christian Hill the other day, but I wasn't thinking about it at present, but it is an awkward situation to put him in. And to his point, there's probably a way for him to give us feedback and input without actually being part of any decision-making process. So then the question becomes who would be next best equipped to bring that breadth of experience and both in the agency and just topic-wise? And I don't know. I'm sorry, go ahead. I had a, we had talking about a new frontier. I have a person that I thought might be, could give a, bring something to the table that hasn't been brought before. And I'm thinking of Mark, as we were talking today and the whole idea of communities and addiction and health and what to view that that's really something that has to be integrated into our culture going forward. It's critical and he's someone that is, he's a thinker. Any challenges with thoughts? And as we go through having an individual who can ask those questions or go through resumes and identify and connect thoughts with folks who have that type of strength would be key. And I just thought that would be a, that's my thought process there, bringing something that's critical to that picture. I myself would feel that Derek hands down is the individual, but there's no longer a choice. But I would, I would recommend on what I've working with, I thought of Mark, he brings a viewpoint that many of us do not have and it could prove worthwhile. So that was my thought. Madam Chair. Yes, Cushar. I'm gonna ask a favor. It's 427. Well, I need to digest this a little bit further than I had anticipated. And I also have a hard stop at 430, but it's a discussion that I still want to continue to be. I know I could leave right now and the commission could finish this without me, but I'm going to ask if we can put this off to the next, I think at the next meeting, we can come to a very quick consensus and conclusion on this, but I'm gonna ask if we can put this off. Yeah, and I'm just gonna be mindful of everybody's open meeting obligations on this, okay? Yeah, understood. Can I throw one last idea out, since to your point, Madam Chair with the OML, just for a commissioner available to hear and chew on. You know, I think that I would love to have Karen Wells serve on this if she would be willing to. I think that it would be really, really helpful to have the person who had the job, who understands the job and has her background, but that's just something I'm throwing out there for thought. I'm going to pause now because we started with three, it was going to be two commissioners and three employees and that's when commissioner Hill started with. And I'm satisfied with using the three commissioners and the executive director Wells just loved us. And I think that might be awkward for her too, but that's just my thinking. We're pausing, it's 429, we've got a 430 stop. We've got, so far we have commissioner O'Brien, commissioner Maynard, and then we've got chief Maltrym on the works and Heather Hall, and we have a third party. And I, right now, I think we do have within our organization somebody who can provide us with great insight. That's a member of our current team. That would be my recommendation. And that's what we started out with today. That's my view, you know, this commissioner Skinner is on the phone and we can, I can be overwritten, but I'd like to accommodate our members of our staff. We also could think of somebody who, you know, Mark is a wonderful idea. We could think of also somebody who might be a member of a physician that is in the chief or director position to add, remember the executive director is, sees the entire organization, you know, we could be thinking of somebody from a different level that could add a whole lot of insight as to what they're expecting. And that's something to maybe think about. We have very, very capable members across this organization who could bring insight as to what they would like to see in the executive director. So I'm ready to pause. Are others ready to pause and bring this back? Okay. All right. In the meantime, we can get that legal opinion if we're pausing Commissioner Hill on Derek. Thank you. But I was kind of doing Derek a little bit of a favor by suggesting maybe that keeps him out of that awkwardness. Understood. Okay. All right. If everybody's in agreement, Commissioner Skinner had to step to her phone. Commissioner Hill's got to go. How about a motion to adjourn? Move to adjourn. Second. Madam Chair. Yes. Oh, I'm sorry. I just, I wanted to, I'm sorry, you did say that I was on the phone. I apologize. I just wanted to make sure that you knew that. Oh, yes. Grace was really helpful and let me know where you disappeared to. So we were just thinking that we could pause because there was another suggestion and I think we were all kind of all over the place. Oh, yes. I heard it all. I heard it all. And I was going to say to Commissioner Hill, we could always use Derek on the IEB director's committee. That's a well done, Commissioner Skinner. Well done. All right. So we have a motion to adjourn and somebody seconded it, I believe. Okay, thanks. Commissioner Skinner. Oh, Brian. All right. Any further questions, edits? Okay. Commissioner Brian. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Commissioner Skinner. Aye. Commissioner Maynard. Aye. And I believe yes. Five, zero. Thanks so much.