 And we're good to go. Thank you, Dave. Good morning. Today is Wednesday, January 17, 2024. And we are convening this 13th meeting of the screening committee for Director of the Investigations and Enforcement Bureau. And I'll begin by taking roll call. Commissioner Hill. I'm here. And Chief Maldrew. I'm here. And good morning to you, Autumn. My apologies. I was quite ambitious in thinking that we would be able to tackle all of the minutes today from the last meeting we held in December through last Friday. But I realized that our team needs some additional time to get through those. So we will not be taking any action on the minutes. Today we will roll over that item to probably the meeting that is scheduled for January 24. That's fine. And that's the same for the executive session minutes. OK. Item number three, Attorney Macarius will be joining us shortly, hopefully soon. But he is on the agenda to present really an overview or more like options for the committee to consider in its work to advance candidates or interview by the full commission. We didn't touch base just briefly yesterday. And we are anticipating moving into an executive session later on in the meeting to begin our deliberations. But before we get there, I think it's important that we set the stage. So we have just about completed our interview process. And so today's session, the executive session, should the committee vote to convene an executive session, will really be a chance for us to get a start on considering the candidates that we would like to move forward. Really just debriefing again and trying to get to a determination by consensus, I feel. I don't know if a vote will be necessary, though we do have that reserved in executive session. But it is my hope that we can come to consensus in determining which candidates to move forward. And we do know that we need to advance at least two. And we are in great shape to be able to do that. So one of the considerations is really how we wish to go about revealing the names of the candidates that we wish to advance forward and really when. I don't think we're in a position to do that. But also let me back up. Originally, in setting the schedule, I had anticipated that the committee would be prepared to report back to the commission at tomorrow's public meeting. That is no longer realistic. I think that aside from the remaining interviews that we have scheduled, we do need time to notify candidates that they will be advanced. It is not ideal. I think you would agree to reveal those names in public without notifying those individuals, but then without notifying the individuals who are not selected to move forward. So we've got a bit of process that needs to take place. Dave, could you give us just a general understanding of what the HR process is like when notifying candidates that they were not selected? Normally when they're not selected, we have sent out a document that states, thank you for receiving your documentation. If we will be reviewing these applications and resumes, and if we choose to continue, then we will be reaching out to you. And that's a standardized approach. In this particular case, because I would want to probably speak with me and them and say, what's the verbiage we can use to reach out to each of these folks to make sure we address them directly, and they feel comfortable that we acknowledge them. Because we normally would not do that, but under these circumstances, we may wish to. I agree that that would be a good approach. That's different. But the verbiage, I know I'd like to have legal take a look at it, because I don't want to infer or get into or have anyone get. I would probably do it myself. Oh, I can't. So I have to have someone do it that will not go off track with a question and start, well, then I didn't say that. How come that happened? So just really just making a statement. And that's it. That's what I would prefer. Now, he may say we can send something out writing also. So I think we should acknowledge everyone who has not, because if they're publicly looking at it saying, oh, I guess I didn't know what a terrible way to find out. Yeah, and that is not. We don't want that. I would not want to take that approach. And I wouldn't necessarily count yourself out as the individual who will be reaching out to these clients, these candidates. Because, well, we'll reserve that question for Mina, but I don't think that it would be inappropriate for you to make that call. But I do think a phone call is preferred because it's quick. It's more personal. And we could get that done and say an afternoon and then be prepared to communicate the final candidates to the commission knowing that that has been done. Both pools, if you will, the yes and the no's have been notified. Because we have to get our screening process clarified during this meeting. But then there's also the business of the commission where we have to take up the commission's process during a public meeting. And so I believe that Mina has some options. I think a lot of the questions that you have are going to be answered by Mina. And a couple of the processes that you have brought up, we would not do. So I think we need to wait for Mina. Yeah. Judging by my experience at the town level and how we respond to people, I think is a little bit different than what you're envisioning. OK. I said at the beginning, Mina and I did connect yesterday. So what I am and I'm not really suggesting a process aside from really just communicating with the candidates, one way or the other. But a lot of what I'm sharing here has been discussed with Mina. I don't want to speak for Mina for sure. But I don't agree that we're too far outside of what typically happens in these situations. Understood. Have we sent letters out to those who that did not get interviewed and let them know that they were no longer further in being? Well, no. We haven't done that yet. So I think right out of the box, we need to send a letter or correspondence of some sort to those people to let them know that we went in another direction and we can get the verbiage from Mina. And then after our discussion, we'll talk about the phone call versus a letter. Yeah. I think best practice, just with respect to the candidates we did not select to interview by this committee, I think best practice, and you tell me, is not to do that until we have selected a candidate, right? And who was accepted. Well, let me finish my question. I think we've got, let's say, for instance, our chosen candidate decides not to accept the position for whatever reason. And we've got a whole handful of folks who may not accept the position. We would then have to go back through the pool, correct? So I guess it's from that perspective, I wouldn't want to foreclose any need or, sorry, any opportunity to go back to those folks to start the process all over again. I don't anticipate us doing that, but that's why I ask if it was considered a best practice. So Dave, I don't know what your thoughts are about that. I can compare it. The normal practice, if it were not public, would be to extend a verbal offer and not notify any of the folks that you interviewed until that verbal offer was accepted and the background investigations were done because you want to make sure that you could have a number two or a number three to fill. So that's the norm. However, in this particular case, we have a situation where we're publicly going to identify the folks. That's different. We're publicly going to tell them, which means whoever's, whoever, who else is out there, we're going to be saying, no, you weren't chosen now. And we have to decide that we send something to them and say, sorry, you're not considered, and then have to go back and go, hey, we were wrong and we'd like to consider you, which I'd never want to be in that situation. So the real issue here is that I, my recommendation is that we make sure everyone's been notified, we have notified everyone else that we are, that we, I don't want to do this. You know, Dave, I think- I really think we need to communicate. The thing about it is that we don't have, we have a background investigation and a public notification. So normally I would want to tell people that on the circumstances, we have reviewed, thank you for interviewing, but we have determined to move on with a, candidates are more viable. I would like to find out from Mina when that can take place. It should be said as quickly as possible. I'm not 100% sure on the timing of it. And I'm not trying to get out of this. I just don't know. I've never dealt with this public notification before. So I would like to find out from his experience, what other organizations, quasi's have done, public folks have done when they've had this situation. That would help me a lot. Yeah. Cause normally it's, it's pretty, you know, it's pretty standard, but this is far from standard. Well, yeah. Yeah. Oh, there's Mina. So he can maybe set the, set the stage for us. Good morning everyone. Apologies. Trying to get out from an emergency meeting a moment ago. Good morning. So Mina, we are on agenda item number three and, and, and I, you know, we, we've begun a little bit of a discussion, but really we need information and guidance, I guess, from, from you in terms of how, what our options are in terms of moving forward here. We, we talked a little bit about notifying candidates who are not selected or who, who will not be advanced to the commission. But then we also talked a little bit about how and when to notify candidates who the committee has not interviewed. And at what point do we, do we do that? You're muted by the way. So if you could just kind of give us a little bit of just kind of perspective as to how, how these committees typically move forward in the public setting. Sure. So how you can, you know, so there's, there's a couple of different ways to do it, but typically what would happen at this point is in the executive session, you would have a discussion of who you would like to advance as finalists to the, to the full commission. And before you break that executive session, another topic of discussion would be potentially going through the other folks who you interviewed, you know, let's call them semi finalists in a sense who made it to that cut and what message ought to be shared with them at this point versus later. In some, there are different ways of doing this in some searches where there's sort of a very large group and perhaps no interviews or limited interviews at this stage, really the only notice is maybe a kind of more perfunctory one sent out at some point but you know, you kind of go ahead and tell the commission who you're or the full body, whichever it is, who the finalists are and folks who aren't in that boat kind of unfortunately find out that way, they might get a courtesy call otherwise but there isn't anything particularly special. If you have a smaller group of these sort of semi-final folks you can make the decision of somebody probably on the HR staff or dividing up the list amongst yourselves giving them a phone call to explain what will happen next and letting them know that they are not selected as finalists at the moment. Let me pause it, they're not selected as finalists, however, but you might move to another situation where you want to ask those folks interests to stay under consideration either for the job in case a finalist drops out or something else or if they'd be interested in talking to the folks in your HR team about any other open positions, for instance, during your interview it turns out and I don't know if any of this is to be true, true just feel for public record here but that somebody who interviewed didn't seem like a good fit to move as a finalist but actually might be interested in other opening at the commission, et cetera and that is an entirely fair thing to do. So long story short, I think it's sort of a matter of how much you want to communicate with those folks and what you feel is the right thing to do. There isn't a set formula. In terms of how you communicate the finalists to the commission, there also isn't a set formula, you can announce them at the end of your session if you go back into public session you can wait till another meeting of this group, you can ask one member of this group to pass it along to the commission in the form of a commissioner update or an update from Mr. Muldrew at the next meeting or a follow on meeting of the commission and at that point it's sort of the finalists are in the commission's hands to figure out how the commission with your input obviously since you've been keeping the closest eye to this process wants to deal with interviews or further review of the finalists. Thank you, Mina. So I have a direct question, Madam Chair. Go right ahead. So my direct question, Mina is for those that we did not interview can we send a letter now to say that we have gone in another direction? Yeah, yeah, there's no reason like any other hiring process to simply say you weren't selected for an interview thanks for applying basically, yeah. So Dave, do we have verbiage like that that we usually send out? That's what I was stating. I know this would be different than what we normally do because we notify folks upon receipt of their resume that if we choose to follow with them then we will follow back up with them. That's always been the standard. Here, not only did they receive this but then we get back to them which I don't see anything wrong with that but we have to get back and write up a letter that says you are not being considered at all not that we're gonna write that way but you're not being considered for this position and then we would send that out. That's something that we have not done here. So I'm asking you, Madam Chair, can we do that? Can I just get clarification, Dave? So the individual applies for open position, any open position and they are not selected for an interview. Are you saying that they do not get any further notification that they're not being considered? So what goes out is- No, I'm not saying that. Okay, could you just repeat? Could you- I missed something there. What I'm saying, Dave Moldrew applies for a position with mass gaming commission. Upon receipt of my resume and application, I receive electronic notification that states we are in receipt of your resume. Yep. And in the event we are interviewing and if we are in the event, your skills match up to our skills, point blank, then we will be following up with you with further discussions. Good luck with your future endeavors. That's the standard statement that everyone receives so they know that we have their resume and they know that they're under consideration, but that's it. And we- So right, so nothing else. So when they are not selected for an interview, they don't receive an additional letter saying, we did not choose you, we went in another direction. Thank you, your qualifications don't meet our needs. Thank you for applying. We don't send anything like that. I see. And so commissioner Hill, what you're suggesting is that we do that in this instance. They did not receive that notification for this job. I think they did. Did they not, Dave? Oh, they did. Oh, they did. Oh no, we made sure. Will you ask me to check that and that they all receive notification? I will check it again with Dean, but I will definitely, I had done that and passed that on, I thought. I apologize if I hadn't because we had talked about this about over a month ago to check on that and it sounds like it's standard practice. So I don't see why I would not have sent that letter if it's standard practice. So I apologize because I did not understand that to be the case, but if that is the case, then we've covered ourselves. Then we don't need to send a further letter. Yes, that has already been dealt with. What I'd like to do is I'm glad you brought this up. I want you to make sure I hear it again and then I see it. So I will, as a deliverable, I'd like to be able to, can I, I don't have time, but I will, as a deliverable, I will get back, meaner, I can get back in touch with you. Can I look into this or do I need Annie to look into this? It's operations, I can look into it because it's operations. I will look into this to confirm it directly to make sure and then I can send it. How would I communicate that? Dave, you can communicate it at our meeting on Friday. Okay, great. We are convening in public on Friday. And so if you could bring that back at that time. I certainly will because we've gone too far. I don't want to assume anything. Okay. But I was told that, but I will check that. But if that is the case and that has happened, then that pool of applicants is all set. We don't need to do anything further with that. Correct. My concern was because of the visibility of this type of position, if I'm, if I received that email and I forgot I got it, and then suddenly someone says, well, no one notified me. It's our word. And I was thinking as a fail safe to make sure that they got something. I could see that being a reason of doing it. We're not talking about a lot of people. I don't believe. And we would know, we would know. Well, you know, even in the event that you didn't receive it, this is something different. My question was, if we do that, Mina, do we stand, are we, are we liable? Or is there, is there, that's what I'm trying to say. If we do that, do we run the risk of treating people or candidates differently? If we create a new process for this position alone. Dave, just one second, just one second. What is the new process that you're referring to? Because I don't think neither, I don't think what Commissioner Hale is asking us to do, or you to do, or HR to do, is to create a new process. You're right. Not now. I was just asking from David, from HR, from HR role, should we send out a letter, even though we don't need to? So can I, Dave, just a second. So I'm sorry, I don't want to. I'm sorry. It's okay, it's okay. I just want to be respectful of time. I don't think that that will be an issue. I think that should you wish to explore this further, I want to suggest that you reach out to Mina directly. I don't think that there is an issue at all, but I may not understand. And you should certainly have the opportunity to clarify yourself with Mina directly. So we've dealt with that pool of folks. And so now relative to the individuals who we interviewed, but will not be recommending advancement to a full commission interview. I, Dave, you earlier suggested that you give a phone call to these individuals. Personally, to notify them that they had not been selected. I think that is an option that's up for discussion. Mina. That is an option, yes. And I would not recommend that. Okay. What is your concern, Commissioner Hill? I think, Mina, correct me if I'm wrong. In my view, we send whatever we're gonna do, two or three names to the full commission. We have our interview. An executive, the director is then selected. Then we send a letter saying, you did not get the position. We appreciate your blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever the verbiage is. And it's at that time that I would like to send a letter. Yeah. So I think Commissioner Hill, sorry Mina, if I could jump in. I think what you're suggesting, I was indicating or asking Chief Maldrew whether it was best practice because I don't want to lose someone, a semi-finalist. I'll use Mina's terminology. I don't wanna lose a semi-finalist sooner than we need to. Just in case those finalists don't work out for whatever reason. And the commission says, no, go back to the drawing board. We didn't like any of your candidates. I wanna make sure that we're not precluding any further review of those individuals, those semi-finalists. So Dave, where do you stand on that? My practice, my recruitment practice tells me that we do not notify anyone until we know the position has been accepted and confirmed. And however awkward that gets, it gets awkward, but you do not want to start telling folks, you don't wanna put yourself in a situation where I know I called you on Friday, but it turns out what a great opportunity. We have it again. That makes us look, that's not a good look. And I would rather have folks get upset and say, you haven't notified me than because it's a long, it's a drawn out process. It really is because we're looking at it from when we extend the offer, but if they're working, they have to extend their offer. And then they in turn have to go through a thorough background, backfinding check. And then when we say it's a go, that's a six-week process. If someone gives a notice, if someone isn't working, it's about four. My only concern with what is being suggested in terms of notifying or holding off on notifying semi-finalists is that they will learn in public that they did not get selected as a finalist. And I just, I worry about how we deal with that. And so I do think that there should be some form of outreach. It doesn't have to be a letter that says your candidacy is no longer being considered. I do think that a nice touch to this would be a personal phone call from you, Chief Maldrew, just again, explaining what the process is and gauging their continued interest in the process. Should those finalists, should the finals not be selected this round? I just, I really do worry. The candidates already were informed that this will be a public process. And having someone tune into one of our meetings and where we are revealing names of finalists and obviously they'll learn that they have not been selected to be advanced again in that public setting, which just, it's just a little bit uncomfortable for me. It's the way of the world when it's a public process. It's the way it is. If I get that phone call, I'm already saying thanks, but no thanks from that point on. But then if you hear, if you learn in the public that you're not being selected as a finalist, you're already gonna move on. So I think either way, we're gonna get the same results. So I'm hesitant to say what I'm about to say. Mina, tell me if I can say it or not, I'll stop immediately. Okay. Whisper it first, Brad. No, just kidding. We're gonna be deliberating. In my view, two or three have risen to the top. Of those two or three, I don't see them not accepting the job, if offered. So I'm not as worried as you are, Madam Chair. Okay. Dave? And I guess as a recruiter, that's what I do, I worry because I handle the risk. And my view though, even though there's part of me that truly does agree with reaching out, in the events I do that, even if one person thinks I'm calling them to extend them and offer, that could be very awkward. Because they don't know who I am. I'm the chief HR person. Why would you be calling me? You're calling me to say I don't have the job? Well, I know that. Why'd you call me? So when I start looking at that, I go, you know, good intentions. Maybe that's not the case. So I'm going to, I'm going to hope that people realize that they have been notified that, you know, when they see publicly that they're no longer eligible for the role. Okay. Madam Chair, if this makes you feel better, over the past few years, I have applied for local school jobs. And it's the same process that we go through. And sometimes I don't find out till after the position has been filled, and then I get the letter. And that was a public process? Yep. No, it's not as public as this is, but the process is similar apps in the public, the public piece of it. My fear, what I'm trying to tell you is, I have to wait until the position's filled before I find out if I got the job or not. I guess I'm used to that process, and I've been through it many times. Yeah. And I have no problem with it. That's how it is. Yeah. As am I, Commissioner Hill. It's just the public piece that, that's all. That's all. We've won them. We've won every one of them that this is how it is. Okay. Well, so we don't have to decide today. We do have another public meeting on, but I see we're already heading into consensus. So maybe we can just touch on it briefly on Friday after we've just had a couple of days to stew on it. Nina, what else should we be putting on our radar? I think you've covered it. I think you've covered it. I mean, those are the considerations. I think Commissioner Hill's point is really the conversation you need to have next in executive session of art. Do you have a pool of finalists that you're comfortable with? And that's the factors are folks who can do the job and that are likely to take it if offered. And that's sort of the two things normally at this stage that a body would be thinking about. And so I think you're probably ready to have that discussion. I mean, I know the, Madam Chair, Nina, I know the answer to this question, but I do want to hear it publicly. Okay. There should be no more than three people that we put forward to the commission. So there is no legal number. More but three is usually a good manageable number. Okay. With the understanding that we need to advance at least two. Yep. Yes. The minimum of two, there is no upper maximum, but three is a pretty typical number, I would say. Yeah. And what that final number is, I think would depend on how we deliberate. So. Right. If there's nothing else for Nina, and if there's no other business. I am. Thank you, Nina. Thank you very much, Nina. Thank you, Nina. Are you expecting me to join you in executive session or are you all set at this point? I think we're all set. Okay. I'm available with my phones right next to me if you need me. Okay. Thank you very much. Okay. So with that, moving on to item number 4A, the committee anticipates that it will meet an executive session in accordance with general laws chapter 30A, section 21, 8, 8, in conjunction with the initial screening process to consider specific applicants for director of the investigations and enforcement bureau as the chair has declared, and I do, that an open meeting will have a detrimental effect on obtaining qualified applicants for the position. The committee, should it just, should it vote to convene an executive session, does not anticipate reconvening in this public session. Do I have a motion? Madam chair, I move that we move into an executive session for the reasons stated by the chair and that I would anticipate not coming back into public session. Second motion. Thank you. I'll do a roll call vote. Commissioner Hill? Aye. Chief Muldrew? Aye. And I'm also an aye. Once again, the committee does not anticipate reconvening in this public session at the conclusion of its executive session. Thank you everyone and we do have, we do not have an executive session link. So Dave, I'm going to ask if you could create a breakout room for us.