 Good morning, everyone. It is Friday, a warm December 1st, and we are convening the committee meeting for the screening committee meeting for the IEB director. That's investigations and enforcement bureau director. And because we are conducting this meeting virtually, I'll do a roll call starting with Commissioner Hill. I see you. I know you're here. We can hear you now. Chief Muldrew. Okay. And our guests today to walk us through one of our agenda items is Attorney Minna Macarius from Anderson and Krieger. Good morning. So could we roll right into the meeting minutes? Thank you, Autumn, for preparing those for us. I just had Commissioner Hill before you your motion. I just had a couple of notations here. First, I know this is probably too nitpicky of a question, Mina, but are we a committee or a subcommittee? You're a committee. Okay. So that would be one of the non material, I think, edits that can be made to this set of minutes. So instead of subcommittee throughout, it would be committee referenced. The other item that I think needs to be corrected is under the commissioners present section. I think it should read committee members present. And then Chief Muldrew's name should be added to that. Okay. I'm sorry, Autumn. Oh, sorry, I just said I'll make those changes and send them over to Judy. Okay, thank you. Any discussion or any other suggested edits to the minutes? No, Madam Chair. Commissioner Hill, I think you're all set, right? Yep. So Madam Chair, I move that the committee for the hiring of the Director of the Investigation and Enforcement Bureau approve the minutes from the November 15, 2023 meeting that are included in our packet subject to any necessary corrections for the typographical errors, for typographical errors or other non material matters. In a friendly amendment, sorry, subject also to the edits as discussed this morning. Fine. Thank you for accepting that. Chief Muldrew, do we have a second? Second that Madam Chair. Okay, thank you. I'll take a roll call vote. Commissioner Hill? Aye. Chief Muldrew? Aye. And I'm also an aye. Thank you. Moving on to item number three, Attorney Macarius. I will kick it over to you, but I maybe want to help set the stage, I guess, a little tiny bit. Please to report, and you all may know this already, that we have completed the postings for this job description. It was posted, if you recall, we had all but two of the outlets communicated and posted. So now Lawyer's Weekly and the LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce has the posting. Lawyer's Weekly will, I think it's available now in the digital edition and then the print edition will have it next week for circulation, but it's also online. So good work to TripD. She's not here today, but I want to give her a shout out for getting that done. I think that Mina can help set up the discussion for the process for finalists review, but I do think that it's important to note that we, the job is still posted. And Dave, if you could remind us please, when the posting end date is for each of these, if I remember correctly, we have decided that the job would be posted for 45 days both internally and externally. Is that right? It was 30 and 45, but that turns out internal is really misnomer. It's really external to the organization. So it's 45 days. It's 45 days. Yes. And I think it's important that we do as we're considering whether or not we want to interview and the timeline for that. I do think it's important that we consider the fact that this job posting will be up through Dave. Do you have that date? November 8th through December 8th. It's going to be up, well, through probably the 20th. Of December. Right. Okay, somewhere around there. All right. And one of the things that I noted, we got the internal distribution for the job posting for one of the sports wagering. I think it was sports wagering operations manager. I didn't see anything come through for the IEB director in terms of an internal notification. Is that, was that supposed to happen? Is that I was not supposed to happen. It was, I was under the, I thought we had both internal and external. In reality, everything is external. Even when it's, when it's posted to the state due to LAO, it's still external. So you wouldn't receive, we weren't going to receive anything internal. Internal is really when we send out, the only internal would be sending it out to MGC employees. That's what I'm referring to. Right. So that, we should not have expected that to happen for this posting as it did for the sports wagering office manager posting. No, that should have happened. It should have. That should have. That people should know that this position internally is available. Absolutely. Would you just confirm that that happened? Absolutely. And it could just be me, Commissioner Hill. I just don't remember seeing that internal communication. So, okay. Moving on. Mina, do you want to get started? Sure. So I think the item that's, that's on next for the agenda is a review of the process for finalists selection. So as a reminder at a high level, the legal requirement, excuse me, for, for you is to provide no fewer than two people to finalists to the full commission for review who then have to be interviewed in open session. So the finalists, the process to get to finalists can be, can take many different shapes. But for this purpose, the, where you are now as you have started reviewing the, the batches of applications that you've received an executive session to the extent that you're ready to start interviewing folks to call that list further. You can do interviews in executive session for kind of preliminary screening interviews or not finalist interviews, but they're preliminary screening to see if you want to advance them to finalists. When and how you do that, like everything else in this process is pretty flexible and up to you. If you feel like you're ready to start scheduling those, you could do that. And then we would talk about the logistics of, you know, how to do that and, and so on. You could alternatively, you know, I know we have an executive session on the agenda today continue to keep an eye on what applications are rolling in and see if the, if anything new knocks out somebody that you might have thought you do a screening interview now, you no longer think, you know, they rise to the same level. So you could take it sequentially, you could take it in tranches, you could take it all at once. And you're also not required to do interviews, by the way, or you could decide just on the resume to advance finalists, although sometimes that can be difficult because you're comparing apples and oranges. So sometimes on a resume. So again, a lot of flexibility and the discussion of actual applicants in the applicant pool can happen in executive session, but the sort of where are you now process you can have right now. Yeah. I for one would like to interview candidates preliminarily before we decide whether they should advance to final status. I agree with that. 100%. All right, good. Chief Mulgrew, are you on board with that? In terms of the timing, I was thinking that we would and I now that I have more of an idea of the date where the job posting, you know, sort of comes down. I think this works out will work out nicely. My proposal is to hold the job description open throughout the final date. And then have the interview scheduled after that. And when I say I think it times, it works out nicely time wise is the job posting will bring us the job posting end date will bring us through the group just before the holidays. And so, you know, we'll have the rest of December, let's say, to gear up for these interviews, schedule them for something like the first week in January. And my proposal would be to get those hold on the calendar now so that we know that you're going to be ready to go all we need to do at that point is obviously leading up to that is identify which candidates we'd like to we'd like to feedback on that proposal. I have feedback. I know you do, Brad. I would like to start the interviewing next week. We have already agreed on five applications. And I think five four or five. And with a possibility of a couple today, once we go into executive session, there may be more. And we can do one or two a day. They usually take between 30 minutes and 45 minutes usually. So I don't see why we wouldn't start interviewing the resumes that we've already identified. And they're coming in on a rolling basis. So as they come in, we can still decide which applications we want to move forward and interview. But I don't see why we would wait three weeks to interview the five that we've already identified. Well, here's here's an offer of an explanation as to why we're going to be receiving these applications on a rolling basis. And I know at one point you would express the opinion that the most likely candidates will apply sooner rather than later. I don't know that I necessarily agree with that, particularly given that we just posted on Lawyers Weekly yesterday. And we just came off of the Thanksgiving holiday. So I do think I would like to give other individuals the opportunity to apply throughout the job posting period. I think I agree with that. I think that the issue with interviewing candidates on a rolling basis is really a matter of efficiency. We have the five candidates that we've identified. If I remember correctly, two of those five were Mabies. And I really don't want to give any individual sort of... So I think in order for this to be a very fair process, I don't want to give anyone false hope. I don't want to interview folks, not understanding the full pool that we have before us. In addition to that, I think as we're interviewing folks on a rolling basis, let's say we set up these interviews, the first set of interviews next week. And then we're not setting any interviews up until two weeks from now. And then two weeks after that, I think that is too much time in between reviewing candidates. My memory is not as good as it once was. And I want to be able to have a fresh recollection as we move from one candidate interview to another as to how that candidate did, how well that candidate did in the interview process. So I just having them be conducted over a span of how much time do we have between now and in the first week of December? Four or five weeks? I just, I worry that we won't have the opportunity to fully compare one candidate from another. Chief Muldrew, what are your thoughts? I'm not chairing, I don't know, Commissioner Hill. From a HR recruitment standpoint, we would, I would recommend rolling because on the candidate side, we don't know if they're looking elsewhere. We couldn't lose a candidate if we wait. And that is something that I have not spoken to the candidates. So I would, I would want to know, you know, when we're talking, are you looking elsewhere? What else is going on in my thought? That's, I don't have a problem with waiting. But if we wait, it will, I prefer to do rolling to keep the process going. But if we do not, we may risk losing a candidate to another job out there, because we're not aware where they're interviewing. So that's a, that's, that's my thought. I think we have that risk, whether we, whether we roll conduct interviews on a rolling basis or whether we wait, that's always the risk, it's par for the course. And we have a position that is this high level. I think, I don't think that anyone would expect to submit a resume one week and be called for an interview to take place the following week. I mean, I just don't, I don't think that that's a reasonable explanation. And I don't know who, I just don't know that. But contrary, contrary to that, there are now applicants who will have waited seven to eight weeks. That's a long time. Seven to eight weeks between November 8th, when the job was posted in the first week of January, we received our first resumes a week and a half ago, almost two weeks ago. And if we wait till January, we're talking between seven and eight weeks before someone gets communication of an interview or not. And I think that's too long. Certainly, we would have to communicate with a candidate before January. So I would expect to, I would expect to reach out to candidates. I don't know if you can hear us, but you've frozen. Are you able to hear me? Now I can. Okay. I guess I'm not suggesting that we hold off entirely on reaching out to the candidate to schedule the interview, but to be fair to the entire process, each of the candidates who will be submitting applications for consideration throughout this process. I just, I don't want to do anyone a disservice by wasting their time. I think when we conduct interviews on a rolling basis where we could potentially be needlessly interviewing candidates, we have a handful of good candidates right now. We may get another handful next week and then another good handful the following week. And that's 15 interviews. And I think that is way too many interviews for us to be considering. I don't and I don't want to foreclose anyone the opportunity to interview simply because we've already interviewed too many candidates. The pool should be, you know, really the pool should be only a handful of candidates, in my opinion, that we are advancing forward for a preliminary interview. There's no reason that I can see that we need to interview every single candidate that we identify as a possibility. In my opinion, it's best to wait to see what we get and then start whittling those candidates down by, you know, sort of order of ranking, if you will, before we determine whether we want to invite them for an interview. Madam Chair, there's a, from a recruitment standpoint, I know I'm not involved in recruiting, but in the event I were involved, can I say that, Mina? Okay. I, when we have, when we have viable candidates, I would reach out to them and say, hi, David, how are you? We've liked you, you know, we're looking at your paperwork, tell me a little something. What is your flexibility? What's your interest? And just do a touch base. We will be reaching out to folks soon. Just wanted to get your status, because that's important if we're going to wait, just so that we know that the numbers that we have are real. Plus, it's a good way to onboard someone to maintain, you know, further develop a recruitment relationship, but also provide you validity that they are still in the market. And that's a common practice. And I have done that. And that's don't normally done by any recruiter to make sure, especially if it's going to become a month or two month process, you want to make sure they're still available. And if they are not, they may have to shift and say, boy, I want to get this person in here now. But that's, that's how it's normally done, just to add that to you. So that, that is something that could be a viable solution or a meek halfway. And so Dave, I respect that. But never in my entire professional career in seeking a job, has anyone reached out to me to get my, my, the status of my interest in that position. And that's, I mean, you know, that's, that's my experience. But you have a different experience. And that's totally fine. I think at the end of the day, though, candidates understand that there's a posting period. And I would be surprised if any employer started reaching out to candidates for an interview before the job posting actually closed. Can I ask, can I ask what, what is happening on the ED screening committee front? Do we know if they are? I can share what's public. Yes. I don't believe that they have announced publicly next steps on interviews or not. I think they are still going through the, the, what they have, but I don't know that they've come to any, they have not had a public discussion of any decision on when and if to interview. Okay. And so I think we could take from that, that they're not interviewing on a rolling basis. That would be my assumption based on that information, Nina. I would not assume that. Yeah, I'm trying to be careful, Commissioner Skinner, because I can't communicate what's happening there since you and Commissioner Hill are part of that and also Dave is in both screening committees. I just think that's just where they are in the process. I don't think a decision has been made either way. A decision whether to interview candidates or not. Correct. Okay. And I'm only, I'm only making the point that the job hosting has been, it's been out there since even before the IEB director posting was out there. So that, that's the point. So. Well, I heard two members say they want to do it on a rolling basis. However, I have such respect for the chair. No, Commissioner Hill. I think it's, I think it's taking too long. I said that last meeting and I'm saying it again. That's my own opinion. But if you are more comfortable waiting until the 20th, so be it. But I will tell you that it's taking a long time. Well, Commissioner Hill, I gotta tell you, we're way ahead of the ED search committee process according to what Mina just reported. So, you know, and that, that, and that's not to say that we have to be in lockstep with that other committee. It's not to say that we can't do things differently than they have decided to do things or we already have done things differently. That's right. That's right. So, you know, I just, I mean, thank you. But for your deference. But I really don't want to make this decision based on, you know, how I would like to move forward. I do think that, you know, it's important that we all be heard. I just, I worry that, you know, we're, I know you want to get this done quickly. But I want to do it efficiently. And I don't want to waste anyone's time. I don't want to needlessly interview candidates. I, you know, because that's scheduling. There are three of us and Mina and Autumn for minute taking purposes. I just, that's a lot if we try the schedule interviews every single week. It can be done. But I think the bigger concern for me, aside from the efficiency factor is really having the opportunity to interview these folks in a cluster so that then we can have them all done at one time and then convene among ourselves to discuss them and rank them. If we're waiting until the end say, and we've had interviews for five weeks straight. I worry that we're interviewing too many candidates and we're not really, we're not really ranking them effectively. I hear your concerns, but you still would prefer to interview on a rolling basis. I said that I would be more than willing to wait till the 20th. Okay. Chief Mildrew, where are you? I, I, I realized that you've never had anyone reach out to use per se and locks are assured. I'll go with the, I'll go with that as you wish. And it's not a deal breaker for me at all. I just know that we want to make sure that I, I, there, I don't know if I, I can't talk process now, correct? Mina. You can talk process. Yeah, but not individuals or give away who is in or not. We do need time to identify consistent questions before we interview if we're talking fairness and consistency. Yep. We also need to identify, is that, is that wrong? No, it's not wrong. That's the item that I had on the list to talk about. And also identifying what type of ranking are we going to do this? I can propose a number of ways, but those are things that need to be discussed and decided upon. I recommend before we set up our interviews. Yeah. So, so let's close out that, that part of, of the discussion. So you mentioned earlier that your experience with recruitment allowed for some kind of communication between the employer and the applicant after the application is submitted, but before interviews have begun. Commissioner Hill, I think Chief Muldrew is proposing to do that here. Is that right, Chief Muldrew? I am. It's not, it's not a situation where, yes, I am proposing that. Okay. As far as who would do it, I know I cannot, but I would recommend just keeping it where we're in receipt of your resume. Okay. We appreciate you applying and we, you know, and, and we will be, we will be in touch with you whatever phrase the ology we should use, not to get up anyone's hopes, but that is something that at least that person knows they're alive. Commissioner Hill, assuming Mina says that that's okay. It sounds like it should be. Are you okay with it? Yeah, it is. And I would actually add that David, there's no reason you couldn't do it. I was just, I was just going to ask that you're a committee member and yeah, so, but I'm glad Mina brought it up. Oh, you probably did. You just can't communicate what they say back outside of a, of a notice session to either Commissioner Hill or Commissioner Skinner, but you can definitely, you know, so I can, I can speak to them, but if they ask questions, I could, I'm just going to say I really can't discuss anything further. Wanted to call you and tell you that we're in receipt of your resume. Correct. Yeah, I mean, you can certainly give them a background of what was talked about in a public session, but you can't go beyond that. Okay. And my suggestion is that you put together some talking points because you should be communicating the same information to each of the candidates. Oh, absolutely. Yep. And what I could do is I can put those points together. Can I distribute it to the committee to review? Or is that something I can just do myself? If they, if you distribute it to the committee that you won't be able to get feedback until the next meeting. So you could take a look if it helps. Okay. You take a look at it, but we'll get that done. Yes. I'm okay with that. Are you okay with that? All right. Perfect. All right. Good. All right. So interview questions and the sort of scaling process. I think I think we could hold off on the scaling process, right? But I think the important thing for purposes of moving forward and scheduling the interviews is the interview questions. So how do we want to tackle those? Chief Muldrew, there are I think some standard questions that HR has, sort of the routine questions that you have. But surely in relation to a candidate's experience, we do have the opportunity to go more in depth with the question. So we'll have a set of uniform questions that we're asking every single candidate. But when there is our additional questions that can be elicited from one of the candidate's responses during the interview, let's say, it is perfectly okay that we venture outside of the standard questions to get to the heart of their qualification experience. What I have, Madam Chair and Commissioner, in the past, I have, when I've worked with folks, also here too, here in MGC, we've identified what are the essential skills, the critical skills necessary in this job going forward. We know how it was done in the past. But what are the skills that we think the top three to five skills that are parallel that this individual would need? And then outside of the job posting, outside of what's already indicated on the job? Well, when you look at the job posting, that's a lot of information. But there's normally, out of that job posting, we would identify three to five, six criteria that are essential to the job for experience. And then I would put together an open-ended situational question, behavioral question. For example, I would say, David, I'm looking at your resume. Can you give me an example when you've had to manage X scenarios across multiple platforms? And how did you devise that? I'm just talking out loud. But that would be a question that we feel would test their collaborative skills, test how their methodology is. And then we would ask that same question across. Mina would review them and say, okay, but we would ask that question of everyone. Their answer is going to allow us to go into other avenues based on how they answer it. But the first question will be consistent with everyone. And we have up to six to seven questions. After that, it's hard within a 45 to an hour interview. Because you also, in the interview, if you do it in 50 minutes, you need time to regroup and talk about what your thoughts were for the interview. Oh, wait, I don't know if we can do that. I've done it in the past. So that was the process that I was viewing to make sure that we are asking the right behaviors and matching the behaviors to the skills. Mina, how is it that Commissioner Hill and I can weigh in on a set of interview questions without them, without walking through them during a public meeting? For obvious reasons, right? Yeah, so that can be a little tough. One of the things that we sometimes, what I think you can do and maybe makes the most sense is to get down to the kind of core competencies, as Dave just mentioned, and you could have a discussion of that in an open session, so that you have a sense of at least the topics that you want to have asked about without necessarily the particular framing of them in an open session. Then, whether you turn that into forms of questions or you can keep it at that level and then sort of have somebody in charge asking about each topic, or you can have Dave circulate a list of questions at the beginning of the executive session interview internally just to have the actual form of question. They don't have to follow the suggestion, and that's okay too. You're not really discussing it at that point, but you're using it as a cheat sheet. It's just a piece of information. I also suggest if you're going to set up, whenever you set up the interviews, give yourselves a buffer, maybe 15 minutes before, 15 minutes after, and the 15 minutes before would be a discussion for, here's our candidate, Mina's a candidate for this one, I'm going to be, but here's a candidate for this. We want to get into the lack of prosecutorial experience a little bit more. We want to make sure we understand this issue on the resume that was of interest, or this gap on the resume that was of interest. You can have that discussion about the particular applicant in the 15 minute, in the sort of pre-meeting and executive session, and then you could use a follow-up at the end of it to make sure you got what you needed out of the interview as well. But in terms of finalizing the actual interview questions, there's no opportunity to do that? Not really, but I think in practice, I think that often in these sessions where folks are trying to figure out how this is going to work in an open meeting format, it can feel harder than it is. I think realistically, the list of generic questions are going to be obvious to anyone who applied, or at least the form of what you're going to ask about. It's really the more detailed follow-ups that get at it. That's not to say that what you ask in executive session certainly doesn't have to be limited to those. Each of you can reserve the right to ask a question that may be of personal interest to you that you don't want to reveal upfront. If you want to ask it consistently, that's fine too. Okay. What I have found, Madam Chair, in doing these, you have the generic questions. Out of those generic questions during the interview, things will pop into your mind, and then you just ask questions that come to mind from the answers that you are being given by the interviewee. Yeah. No, it's those generic questions that I want to make sure the three of us are on the same page because there could be 10 or 12 generic questions. Then the more substantive questions in terms of core competencies. I'm less concerned about those, and more concerned about the core questions, the core generic questions. I think, Chief Muldrew. Sorry. I'm sorry, Commissioner Hill. Let me just add that, Dave, the questions that I was given and the staff were given for the director of sports wagering were very good questions. Okay. I think that would be a great starting point. Okay. I think there were 10 questions that we were given. Yes, there were. I think that would be a great starting point. I think, Madam Chair, you'll like the questions that were asked. They're very, very appropriate for this position as well. Yeah. Okay. I was going to say, Chief Muldrew, that I thought I heard you offer to draft up those first questions. It sounds like your job just got a lot easier. Yes, I did. All right. Okay. We're good there, right? Mina, what else? I think that is really it for now. Again, once you start scheduling these, there will be other logistical questions. Do you want to have folks come here for in-person interviews, in which case we'll have to figure out the public session and an executive session? Sometimes entities decide for the interview portion in the executive session whether to have that right on site or somewhere else just to, again, to protect anonymity. There's all those kinds of questions. It's probably premature to start talking about that. What you'll do for someone who might be across the country who would love to be interviewed for screening but can't quite make the travel work, all those kinds of things. But some of that, I think, can get hammered out as you go. Yeah. I think, though, the more immediate need is getting time on our calendars for those interviews for January. Thank you, Commissioner Hill and Chief Maltrew. But I think it's going to be important for us to communicate to any potential candidate to disclose to them whether or not the interview will be in-person or virtual. Do we have a sense of how we want to? I think I have, I'd rather just do them online for now because we ourselves are still not live. So that's right. Let's not put ourselves in a position. Let's agree today. Let's do this electronically. I think you make a good point because I would think that when it's time for the full commission to interview for this position and the ED that we might want to see them in-person. So first step. Okay. So that's that. Looks like I'm frozen. But we can hear you. All right. Okay. So I think we have our marching orders. I think we're in a good place right now. Chief Maltrew, we'll leave you to draft those 10 or 12 or 15 questions for us to consider. But you know, what you're suggesting is just I want to be clear. Commissioner Hill and I won't have the opportunity to review those until the next public meeting. Until the next public meeting. Yeah. You know, you could post it as part of your agenda for the next public meeting. So you have a few more days ahead, but yes, you won't be able to get a communication of that. And as a committee, are we okay with publicly sharing those questions? Okay. All right. So I'll get another meeting on the books. And if that is all, we can move into agenda item number four. And I will read this blurb into the record. Before you do, yes, I just want to be clear about process between us. Like if I, for example, wanted you to see a resume that maybe we didn't bring up or want to move forward. And I sent it to you and said, Hey, check this out again. I can't do that. Correct. You cannot. No, you have to read. You should say that till these meetings. Okay. But Commissioner Hill, if you have someone that that you want to have us take a second look at, we do anticipate moving into executive session today to review the two newest. Yeah, understood. So you could do that at that time. I just want to make sure we're all understanding how this works. Okay. So that mistakes, you know, it's their mistakes that, you know, no one does it. No one would do it. You know, right. Chief Mildrew, you good. Okay. The committee anticipates that it may meet an executive session in conjunction with initial screening process to consider specific applicants for director of the investigations and enforcement bureau in accordance with general laws chapter 30 a section 21 a eight. If the chair declares that an open meeting will have a detrimental effect on obtaining qualified applicants for the position. The committee anticipates that the open session of the meeting will not reconvene at the conclusion of the executive session. We have a motion. I would move that we go into executive session for the reason stated by the chair and that we would not come back into public session. Thank you very much. We have a separate link for the executive session and see you all in a bit.