 Okay, good. Good to go. Thanks, Dave. All right. Good morning. This is a convening of the master of this gaming commission. We're holding this meeting virtually. So I'll do our roll call. Good morning, Christian, Brian. Good morning. I'm here. Good morning, commissioner Hill. Good morning. I'm here. Good morning, commissioner Skinner. Good morning. I like the red that's going to help me throughout the day. Commissioner Skinner and good morning, commissioner Maynard. Good morning. All right. It started today is May 16th. We have a really full agenda today. Thank you to everybody for all the preparation and my fellow commissioners for hanging in there throughout the day. We have starting public meeting number 453. Good morning, commissioner Hill. Good morning, madam chair. I move that the commission approved the minutes from the November 29th, 2022 and December 1st, 2022 public meetings that are included in the commissioners packet subject to any necessary corrections for typographical areas or other non-material matters. Thank you. Any discussion? Everyone had a chance to review them. Okay. A couple of typos that I'll circle back with you on bread. Just at one point it says like policy instead of police, a couple of things like that. You guys probably already found them, but. Yeah. Oh, that's helpful though. Those little nits. Actually, there were a couple of boo boo's and we, we, we did identify them, but that one, I don't think we did. So I will find that one. I'll flag it for you. Thank you. Extra eyes always helpful. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hi. Misha Hill. Hi. Misha Skinner. Hi. Misha Maynard. Hi. I vote yes. Five zero. So we're going to turn to item number three Karen. Do you have, good morning. Do you have. Dr. Rose, any updates for us? I have a couple of things for you this morning. The first thing I just wanted to let you all know is that I have a question for you. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Gully and our office. Received a notice from Bill McEvoy, who's the executive director of the supplier diversity office. Inform him, the Massachusetts gaming commission has earned the full participation in the SDO annual reporting award for FY 22. We have done a really good job this year with the supplier diversity work. See from an email from John for FY 23. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And also have spending in two categories with a bench. Marks have not even yet been established. So I just want to congratulate the whole team on that effort. There's going to be a ward. Ceremony and luncheon on Thursday, June 1st. But it's just, you know, it's part of, you know, you know, historically the gaming commission has always been supportive. Of efforts for DEI. And that was a renewed effort on that. So I just wanted to compliment the finance and the whole team, because all this spending really involves the different divisions in the office. So I just want to congratulate them and let the commissioners know, because I think it's a great news. And they do a lot of good work. So just wanted to let you know. So that's, that's my first day. And Kathy, what's their comment? I think it's really exciting. And many of us know Bill personally. Bill McEvoy has done a superb job. Making Massachusetts a model in this area. And I'm thrilled for the gaming commission that we've reached our goals. And I know that we repeat it frequently. That takes a great deal of intentionality. And we thank all the members. And I know all of you have been thinking about this in your procurement. And I just would say continue the good work. It's again, requires just that continued intentionality. So excellent. That's really exciting. Yeah. Congratulations. Finance department on the lead on that. So great work there. And then the, the other item, I just have a Dr. Lightbaum here this morning, just to give an update, you know, on the horse racing, just the health and safety efforts that go into a horse racing, particularly in the Commonwealth. So I'll turn it over to Alex just to give you all an update. Good morning, commissioners. Good morning. So with the Derby, a couple of weeks ago, there was a lot of unfortunate spotlight on injuries. And we just thought it would be a good thing to talk about what we do here in Massachusetts. We have numerous veterinary positions at the track. And for the gaming commission, we have myself as the chief veterinarian. Then we have blood gas veterinarians who do blood gas testing free race on the horses. Not every jurisdiction does blood gas testing every day. And some of them do limited amounts. We do very similar to what we do for the post race testing. We do two horses out of every race. If we have a big race. Yesterday we had a $100,000 race appointment. We tested every horse in the race. We tested every horse in the race for blood gas. Then we also have for the commission, we have the veterinarian that does the post race testing in the, in the test barn afterwards. And again, we test two horses at least from the races, the winner. And then the judges decide who else they would like to send. If a horse is claimed, they'll send them. If a horse is claimed comes up positive, the trainer claiming the horse has the option to send the horse back. So that's important. And otherwise they can send a beaten favorite or a horse that wasn't expected to do well, that did well. Or if nothing seems out of the ordinary, just a random horse. So we do do extensive testing. And so they're going to have to do a little bit of testing. And so they do a little bit of testing. They're going to track itself, Plain Ridge employees of veterinarian referred to as the association vet. Their responsibilities are to watch the horses as they warm up and make sure they're sound and fit to race. If they notice one that's a little lame or little off. Or maybe the weight is decreasing. Anything like that. They can scratch the horse. Put them on what we call the veterinary list. And then the other time is that the association veterinarian has given them. So this, this really gives us a lot of control over what horses are racing. The association that also is responsible if there is an injury on the track for addressing that. And getting the horse off the track, doing emergency treatments and all that. In addition to that, we have a Lasix veterinarian, a private veterinarian that works for the trainers. That administers Lasix, which is the only permitted drug on race day. The plant with the standard breads, the injury rate is much lower than it is for thoroughbreds. Part of it, it's just a different breed. It's a different gate. Whole different, you know, it's a very different activity. So, you know, sometimes at Plain Ridge, we don't have any horses that expire over the years. Sometimes we may have one or two. And again, there's methods in place to take care of that. And we do autopsy, any horse that expired at the racetrack, whether it's from an injury or, you know, Infectious disease, whatever. Interestingly enough, some of the information out of Kentucky, they talked about having McPeterson, who is the person who they have reviewed their track surface. Suffolk has used him for years. And more recently, when they were doing their festival racing, the gaming commission as part of their acceptance of the application for Suffolk to race included that as a requirement to have the track evaluated before me and McPeterson was the one who his group would come down and do it. So that's something we've been doing in Massachusetts for a long time. We started that with the Suffolk. And at the time the commission said, why don't we also do that with Plain Ridge? So Plain Ridge has been doing that all along as well. They have somebody else come that, you know, they have track superintendents that are more familiar with standard bird racing that come to their tracks and evaluate if before the meet begins each year for any suggestions. Just getting back a little bit to the Derby issues. PISA, which is the new federal group that is responsible now for the rules and regulations of thoroughbred racing. Except for on the medication side, but they've already put their track safety and veterinary records and that type of thing into effect. They're going to be doing, you know, obviously a full review of all of the incidences that happened at Churchill. The horse racing commission for Kentucky obviously will also be doing that. PISA will make their findings public. They already do many of the same things that we do. You know, they'll send the horses for autopsies. They'll check any track maintenance records. They'll interview the doggies, the trainers. They'll review veterinary records. And, you know, look into all of those different things. Santa Anita did have a number of injuries. Injuries several years ago, and they put numerous practices in place. And they were able to significantly reduce the number of injuries and fatalities that they had. So I'm sure Churchill has already done a lot of this as well. And anytime this happens. Well, it's an ongoing thing. Every day there's veterinarians, it's tracks, there's judges, stewards, track management. Everybody's looking at these issues, trying to minimize any injuries to the horses. Just to note, it's, the injuries are distressing to people in the industry as well. This is not something that they take lightly. Last year, one of the horses that expired, they all have sentimental value to their owners and trainers and the people who take care of them every day. Most of them don't have the remains returned to them after the horse passes away. And one of the horses that passed away last year did have very sentimental meaning to their owners. And they wanted to try to get the remains, the ashes back, but it is expensive. And so I had talked to them, I arranged for the autopsies and, you know, the remains and all that. So I mentioned it to Steve O'Toole and right away, Steve said that Plain Ridge would cover the cost for that. And he was able to return the remains to the owner and it meant a lot to them. You know, Steve didn't want any public, public knowledge of it. He just wanted to do something behind the scenes. So I didn't mention it before, but I thought this was a good time to bring that up. Just to show how much the industry itself does care about the horses and also how track management also does too. Another, just quickly, there was some comments in the media about Forte coming up positive. He was the Derby favorite who was scratched for other reasons from the Derby. Since the Derby, he, it was announced that he had a positive finding for an anti-inflammatory drug. And there was some comments in the media about how long it took for that information to come out. I won't comment on that myself because I'm not, I don't have any personal knowledge of that. And there's different things put out there in the media. But just to talk about what we do here with our lab, we have a, by contract, a three-day turnaround on any negative findings. If a sample comes back that they might be, that they look suspicious, they have a 10-day turnaround to announce it either as a non-finding or as a adverse finding of positive. So we get our results back pretty quickly. Those are business days. So depending on where the weekends fall, it may take a little bit longer. So once we get them back, we notify the trainer right away. They have an option. If they would like to do a split sample and we give them, I forget if it's 48 or 72 hours, but they have time to decide what they want to do. If they want to have a split sample done, then I send it out to, there's eight or so accredited labs that we use. And I send the request out to all labs asking, you know, saying that the trainer has requested a split. It identifies the drug, the level of the drug, whether it was found in blood or urine. The labs would have two or three days to respond back to me with how much it will cost and what their turnaround time would be. And if they can accept the sample. Occasionally a lab is just, they're way too busy with whatever their normal testing is. And they'll just say we can't accept it at this time. But usually we get, you know, two or three, maybe four labs that will accept it. And I give that information to the trainer. They get to pick from that list. You know, they may take into account the cost, the turnaround time, and then pick it. We then send the sample out as quickly as possible. It can take four to six weeks to get that back. So the process can't, if there is a split sample request, it can take a couple of months before we finally get it here and done. But, you know, for instance, we had a positive earlier this year. And it took 16 days from the testing to the hearing and when the trainer was notified of what their penalty was. So, you know, we really try to get these things adjudicated quickly. And obviously on some of these cases, if there's going to be attorneys involved in all and the attorneys one extra time to do their own investigations and things that can add time to, to a, getting through the process. So I don't want to, minimum, I don't want to say that everybody should be able to get through the process that quickly. There's other factors that go into obviously how fast it can go. But we do try to be conscious of how, moving these things along for everybody's sake. And then we don't know, we don't make a public notification of the positive until the ruling comes out. That, that's to provide a little bit of, I guess, privacy for the trainer. There were complaints, not, not about us, but in general that if a jurisdiction gave out information that of course had a positive and then later down the road, it was found to have been contamination or the split sample didn't come back as confirmed or something like that. You know, that the trainer's reputation had already been, you know, put out on the line there. So we try to, so we don't put that information out ourselves. In practice, usually the trainer tells a lot of people right away about what happened and they talk to their own veterinarian about what happened and try to figure things out. So a lot of times within a few days, I'll hear back from other people about the positive. So it does get out there, but it doesn't come from us. Are there any questions or comments? Missures, any questions for Dr. Leipzig? I thought that it was important for us to get this helpful update. Dr. Leipzig has in the past reminded us and the public of all the safety features of our race program. All set, Missures. Commissioner Barry, are you leaving yet? Just, no, just to say thank you to Dr. Leipzig. I remember when I first got here, we had at least one that had to do with split samples and whether the sample was in fact taken properly, said we had a lot of information about the care that's taken in that. So you're understating the level of care that you and your staff put into that process. So just want everybody to know that. I just second what Commissioner O'Brien said, and thank you, Dr. Leipzig. Thank you. Thank you. Karen. That's it for the administrative update. Thank you. And thank you, Alex. Wonderful job as usual. Thank you. Really important. All right. Then we'll move that item number four. And sheet delaying. Good morning again, Joe. Good morning. Thank you, Madam chair and commissioners. So we have a few items up for you today. The first item is. The on core Boston Harbor quarterly report. And we have with us today. Jackie crumb, Juliana, Catanzari and also Tom. So with that, I will turn it over to Jackie and. You can take it away. Good morning, Madam chair and commissioners. And I'm as chief Delaney said, I'm joined today by Juliana Catanzari from the legal department and Tom copy our executive director of security. And I'll turn it over to Juliana to get started for us, please. Sure. I'm just going to share my screen. Can everybody see that? Perfect. Good morning, Madam chair commissioners. We appreciate the opportunity to present our first quarter report to you this morning. So thank you. And as Jackie mentioned, we're joined by Tom coffee today, our executive director of security investigations who will present the compliance portion of the report. So we're going to get started with gaming revenue and lottery sales. So our gross gaming revenue for table games during Q one was about $87.5 million. The gross gaming revenue for slots was about $103 million for total gross gaming revenue of about $191 million. This resulted in about $48 million paid to the Commonwealth and taxes. Here is our year over year comparison. It's really just the first quarter of 2023. Obviously that we have to compare. So for this quarter, we've also included revenues for in-person sports wagering, which are provided on this slide. If you remember, there was only one day of sports wagering in January. So that January figure just represents that one day. So the total quarterly revenue was about $1.5 million, about $217,000 in state retail taxes collected. And just to be clear, this is just the in-person sports wagering, nothing online. Here we have our lottery sales for Q one, which were in excess of a million dollars, which was about a 31.5% increase over the same quarter. Of last year. And here's a more detailed year over year comparison. But again, we only have Q one to compare. So moving on to workforce. For this report, we've also separated out employees involved in sports wagering. So there's going to be two different charts. In order to have two distinct numbers, we took out employees who work in a sports book itself or who are dedicated solely to sports wagering. And those are who we put in the sports wagering bucket. Of course there are employees who aren't solely dedicated that work on sports wagering related items. But that was the best way to sort of segregate. So this slide provides figures for employees not related to sports wagering, of which there are a total of 3,526. So 58% of that number were minorities, 2% veterans and 45% women. So can I ask again, I know you guys are consistently working on that women's number, but can we talk about the goal being a little bit shy? It's been kind of stuck there. Can you guys talk about what you're doing in that regard? Yeah, I think to move that number takes a large volume of hires. So I think what we're doing is we're focusing on retraining people who are looking to move into different positions so that we can open some of those non-traditional positions. We've continued to go down that path. We're also looking at gaming schools and trying to figure out how to specifically see if we can get some women into the gaming schools because that's not a path that we've seen traditionally. I know there was some talk early on too about the service industry and some of the amenities being the basis for the number going down as you've gotten back online. Is that, do you feel like you've maxed out that capacity? Yes and no. I mean, obviously the opening of the sports betting, sports wagering enabled us to hire additional employees. We're also opening tomorrow night an extension of Rare called Rare Lounge. So we were able to add a few employees in that venue as well. So I think definitely we're continuing to see growth, but not so much coming off of COVID, more just normal growth patterns. Okay. Thank you. Jackie, I know Juliana hasn't gotten to the sports wagering slide yet, but I do note that in the women category, you are exceeding your goal. Did you have any women coming from going from gaming into sports wagering? Sure. We actually had some of our cashiers, our cage cashiers move from the cage into sports wagering. And we, to determine whether people were going to be able to perform in a sports wagering capacity, we administered a brief sports test and a woman far exceeded our gentleman in terms of passing that test. So we were able to recruit and train a number of women for those cage windows. Thank you for highlighting that again. I remember you mentioned it a while back. So that's good. But hopefully in the non sports wagering world, you'll continue your efforts to increase women in the workforce there. Well, I'm joined by my colleague over here, Tom Coffee, who's heading up security. And so we've told him that he needs to continue his efforts to find wonderful woman security officers. Thank you, Jackie. I don't chair. Yeah. Jackie, I completely understand what you're saying to commissioner Brian. And my former life when I was tasked with something very similar, I had to make a radical decision, which was do not bring me anyone. That's not, you know, a qualified female candidate. And I literally had to say that to every director and every head in state government actually. And, you know, I, I'm no way suggesting that that's the answer here, but I do think that the ratios only work when you're able to, you know, bring in high volumes and numbers. And if you can't bring in high volumes and numbers, you got to try to expand the pool. So I appreciate what you're doing and, and support, support you putting that pressure on. Thank you. And I can speak from experience, but that's the absolute truth with respect to the position that Jordan. Commissioner Maynard was in the past and his predecessor. And then the results did bear out. So I know it's a challenging commissioner Brian. You often ask about child care. I know to shift work is difficult. If you had to guess Jackie, what's the barrier that you and I'm feeling out of it that you face? Yeah, I think it's a little bit. Sorry. I think the barrier, the main barrier that we are seeing is some of the positions that we have. Have not traditionally had women in them. And I think when you, when you look at an organization, it's, it's always more difficult to recruit and hire into positions where the women are such a minority part of the team. So that's why we're really focusing on things like the dealer school where we know that that's an issue. We know that we're upside down in that department and try to make a concerted effort to really bring people and make them feel comfortable in those positions. Chair. Yes. I have nothing to add on this particular issue. I think my fellow commissioners have really laid out concerns and slash our priorities in regards to the minority veteran and women numbers. What I would like to ask Juliana, could you go back to the lottery page for us? Sure. So I found this to be quite impressive actually. If you haven't heard us in the past, and I'm pretty sure you have making sure that we don't hurt our lottery is something that this board really cares about. And I am seeing some very big increases over last year. And I was just wondering, are we seeing an increase in patrons in the casino, which is why we're seeing increases here. Any idea why there's such an increase? I'm happy about it, but I would like to understand it as well. You know, I don't know that we're seeing an increase in patrons. I'd have to look into that a little bit further and get back to you on that one. It could be related to some promotions we've done. It could be related to large pots available through the lottery. So some of those big jack pots, but I'll look into that more for you. And then my next question would be, do you partner with the lottery? Do you have discussions with the lottery on a regular basis to ensure that the sales continue to be as good as they are? I'm curious as to what your relationship with the lottery is. Sure. We actually have an agreement with the lottery. So a lot of this is laid out in that agreement. And I know Chair Judd Stein is smiling because she's well aware of this. And so we talk about things like where the machines are, which machines are underperforming, which are the places where we could expand. And we also, our promotions team speaks to the lottery about what we can do to partner with them to give away lottery tickets on occasion. So lots of different, different planning tools. Okay. Thank you madam chair and thank you Jackie for that update. Thank you so much. Thank you. Commissioner Hill, can I do a follow up on that please? We, you may have heard us. On core folks. At a earlier meeting indicate that. I think I indicated that I'd heard a public statement from. Mr. He had not heard. Of any of the online sports operators and given that you do have two tethered to your casino, I am hoping that they have reached out to the lottery. Exactly. I will, I will speak to them about that. That's great. Because we did ask, I think. I think we made sure, between the two of you, you covered that in every interview, some of us joined in, but to make sure that, like our commitment under 23 K, the treasure asked in person came to our meeting and asked that we work with the online sports operators to, again, protect and promote the lottery. So we're looking forward to that commitment and some creative ideas and they, many of the operators had some great, good ideas that we want to see implemented. So thank you. So we're back then to Juliana we disrupted but it's okay. So we're back on page. I think we're on slide down. This pertains to the non sports wagering related employees this is just a breakdown of supervisory and above in that non sports wagering related category. I know I'm going to start. It's going to feel like groundhog day but can you speak to again the sort of the position of women and the supervisor and above what you have in place to get that number up. So we have initiated throughout the property leadership training programs. And so, as part of that leadership training program we are, we talk about the fact that the importance of diversity, not just women but diversity within the department and the need for diversity at management levels. I think we all know that when you promote someone into a position that encourages other people to work under that person and expands the role of both women and minorities in the department. So that's definitely a focus of ours. We're working with our VP of diversity and inclusion, who is based in Las Vegas she comes out here once a quarter to make sure that we're addressing that as part of that leadership series. Is there any way that you can get either a Boston position or maybe out here a little more frequently than once a quarter. I think she'd come out more often if we asked you to. So here are the sports we drink related employees specifically. As Commissioner Skinner mentioned 52% were minorities and 52% were women. We don't have any veteran sports we drink employees at this time. And then here is the breakdown of those sports we drink employees for supervisory and above the numbers obviously very small given the total population. But we broke down the same chart record list. So moving on to operating spend. So our total discretionary spend for Q one was about $26 million of that 26 million 12% was spent with minority business enterprises 2% with veterans and 12% with women. And here's that spend broken down by local. So as you can see 58% of that 26 million was spent in Massachusetts with more than $3 million in both Everett and Boston. I want to hand it over to Tom now to present our compliance statistics. Tom Madam chair. Yes. Well the way we've been running this like, if I can ask a question on a. Yes, we should do that. Yes. Julie Hannah can you go back to the sports wagering employees and the veterans. So when I hear zero, I was a little concerned about that. So my question to you is, does on core reach out to veteran organizations, or more importantly like to the, in the state government we have a whole agency for veterans, where they do look to get veterans jobs. And I was wondering if you've reached out to them to try and get that number up a little bit. There's a lot of veterans that need help. Yes, we do partner with veteran agencies and for all of our positions. And, you know, have been pretty successful in terms of doing and doing that. A lot of these positions were people that were trained from within. I'm not sure. Not sure why there is zero veterans one of the, one of the issues we sometimes have in this department is that people don't necessarily self identify. But, but we'll continue to work with the veteran organizations that we have partnered with. Thank you. Thank you madam chair. Thank you. Does anybody want to ask any questions about the operating spend or the diversity or local. I know you don't have year over year quarter over quarter but I feel like 6.9. The total diverse spend a little over about 30. Is that that's because that sounds good to me, but is it have you done that in the past showing up, you know, or is that consistent. I think that's consistent. It may actually be slightly higher than it was last quarter, but I would have to double check on that in the 20 in the mid 20s. Right. And so you haven't seen the sounds that it's consistent that it's not dependent on a one off. No. Okay, great. Thank you. This is Tom coffee. Thanks for allowing me to present today. So, as you can see the numbers on the screen. Miners intercepted in gaming or prevent from gaming told us 20. What I'd like to do instead of just going over these, this chart I'd like to sort of give you the numbers within the numbers and try to put this sort of in, in focus. So, if I could consult with casino marketing, we had about 760,000 casino visits in the first quarter of those visits, 285,498 IDs were scanned into the Verdox Verdox system, which is our technology. And of those, we discovered 49 fake IDs and four IDs that passed the Verdox system so that means that the ID defeated the technology. Excuse me. So what we do in that situation is we contact Verdox immediately. And through a representative and we are able to get these IDs to them so that so then they can sort of retool the technology to catch up it's always a cat and mouse game with the fake IDs. Those are very difficult to detect. So, I think on those it's really a technology issue that we're constantly chasing. I divided up the others into sort of categories. We had for what I'll call door pushes through alarm doors, and one of those involved a several couple involved ready, which is an alarm door which we post when it's open, and two of them involve a door up in the high limits area which we tried to address with the city of ever, but their fire department came in and insist that is a that is an emergency exit. One of those events were alarm doors that we were able to catch up to through surveillance and camera work and none of those people were able to drink or game. And there's the the category of what I'll call needs improvement. And that's on us. So we had a total of seven guests that made it onto the floor that were not identified. Now, to me, one is too many, but if you really look at the numbers. That's point 0000921 of all the guests that arrived here on call Boston Harbor to get to me once too many. So, in those cases we issue discipline to an officer if they if they make a mistake and certainly would counsel them. At least none of these of those seven. None of those folks gambled or drank. So that's good. And then I'll go to the third category and that's the fake ID that makes it onto the floor. All three and this I noticed it says for there. So that we would comply with surveillance camera property. And we always, we always check our reports to make sure they match theirs. That's really three but one gentleman came twice so we kind of full disclosure. We count that as a different day a different body. So that's for for what I would call instances where someone drank or gambled, all of those involved a fake ID. So that particular was egregious, where the gentleman was here for two or three days he came on for multiple times. I looked at the ID myself I look at all these cases personally but I looked at the ID myself. I mean maybe some of us would have caught it some of us wouldn't. But he also had a second form of ID which sort of backed that up. So those are the challenges for us. I look at it. I think we're doing a good job we can always do better. And certainly on course given me the resources to make sure that this is the top priority for our security team. So, Tom, I was good to see you. Any other questions for you. The seven that you isolated when you were talking about them was there a friend in terms of what was the method or that he used. Was there one that stuck out as most used to get on the floor and circumvent security. Those are really just awesome stakes. Commissioner Brian that's one of officers either distracted or simply just maybe has a brain cramp and, you know, and again, age as you know can be very subjective. You know someone that I may think looks, you know, 30 someone else else may think looks, you know, 21. Those are just really human error. And as I stated in our previous meeting we, we do require 20 hours of ID training during our break in period for our new security officer so we want to make sure they are comfortable and we're not putting them in a difficult position. Again, the, the, the fake ID challenge is what it is everybody knows that the, the area where I am always looking to improve is where one of our officers just simply makes a mistake and allows somebody to walk in. Right. Oh yeah we wrote, we rotate every two hours. So they don't become stale. Yeah. So, that's my presentation. And can you talk about the five hours 38 minutes episode. Yeah. Five, the other five or 38 minutes. Yeah, that's that's the gentleman with the fake IDs, the, the, the two fake IDs. And again, I looked at it myself, you know, honestly, I don't know whether I would have caught it. I wouldn't like to think I would have. But, you know, I think it's 5050 on that one. Some people would have caught it somewhere. Eventually we did catch up to him. Someone did, did think it didn't look like him. So we just, excuse me, eventually did catch him. Let's see, just to follow up with he at the table was he a slot machine. Yeah, he was everything he was at the tables he was at slots he was he was all over the place. So, again, he was comfortable with his IDs. How was he in real life. In real life. He was there with me one second. He was 20. For any of the ones under 18 children who just went with their parents, or are there just. So we had we had several of those commissioner and chair and we had a father who brought three underage persons back of house and made it onto the gaming floor. I don't think with any any real ill intent, maybe taking a shortcut or I don't think he was trying to do anything illegal, but we do count all of those so that's just the public to understand that it's not 17 year olds who are necessarily coming into gamble, but it could be very time consuming. Correct. And we had we had a few of those this time. We did one of those they gentlemen pushed through security and had to use the restroom. Real quickly whether that was a ploy or not. I don't really know but we were able to wait for that job. To use the restroom and then we just squirted them out, but we count that as well. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions commissioners. I don't have a question. I do have a comment. However. Tom, I appreciate your presentation. Clearly there are some blemishes here. And I'm pleased to see that you have taken a look at this compliance issue through your lens. I don't look at compliance in a vacuum. And so, you know, just as important. For commissioners to see these numbers and address them is the efforts by you and on core to mitigate them. And, you know, I'm encouraged that you have made your appearance during these compliance reports. And I don't think we've seen that already. And I ask that that continue because the information that you've provided the transparency that you've given during your presentation today. I don't think we've seen that in connection with this compliance slide in previous meetings and so I would encourage you to continue to do that and continue to add your lens to mitigating the issue. You've stated that on core ensures that you have the resources that you need. And I applaud on core for that. So thank you once again. Thank you. Okay, other comments or questions for Tom. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, thank you. I think Jackie was going to. Okay. So we wanted to share with you some of the feedback and resulting action plans we've taken as a result of focus groups that were conducted last year and how that feeds into a new round of focus groups that we started just a few days ago. So approximately 360 employees participated in our last round of focus groups both in Las Vegas and here at EPH. We have participants from pretty much every department, and both management and line level employees. The results were aggregated accordingly. So we wanted to give you just a sampling of some of the results and the action plans that we developed in response. One thing we made we made an effort to try to understand the most effective means of training and we asked employees to identify the trainings that they had received. The majority of participants recalled their online and in person trainings on the following topics, human trafficking, preventing harassment and discrimination, leadership training, addressing inappropriate guest behavior and responsible gaming. Next slide please. Giuliana can you. You want. Okay, got it. We also asked employees about the channels for reporting claims of harassment and discrimination, and employees were able to identify, pretty much all of our channels for reporting including the anonymous hotlines. Participants also identified that they felt most comfortable reporting to the immediate manager or supervisor, the person with whom they knew best on property. In 2002, participants reported that they were comfortable speaking with employee relations. However, after learning that participants felt most comfortable reporting to someone they know, we launched a campaign to make our employee relations counselors, more known around property, more approachable. A lot of them started going to pre shifts in the various departments we also put up signage get to know your ER counselor. We also included our speak up campaign, which encourages employees to report guest misconduct 89% of the respondents felt comfortable reporting inappropriate guest conduct 8% responded that they were unsure or that it was situational. One of the action plans that we developed. The purpose was to reinforce the guest behavior training with by adding a knowledge tests at the end of it. Add a guest behavior video to the annual compliance training. Do human resource compliance program quarterly communications, highlighting the different compliance policies including messages from a leadership and implement new leadership development courses to improve communication. This just came out in April from our CEO, regarding the importance of preventing harassment and discrimination. This was circulated to all of our employees by our daily we shipped tool which is reviewed during pre shipped. And there was signage and continues to be signage in our heart of house areas as well. Another important initiative that we undertook for the first time was an employee engagement survey which happened in December 2022. And we're pleased to report that we had a 71 participation rates, and overall engagement was rated at 76% at EVH, which is 3% higher than the benchmark of other hospital US hospitality companies. 86% of the participants shared I am proud to work for when and I would recommend when as a great place to work. The culture amp is the platform for the survey culture amp was founded in 2009 and provides a core and provides core engagement questions, as recommended by their data and insights team. This team consists of leaders with PhDs and masters in psychology who have extensive experience and organizational behavior, culture, and the design and analysis of surveys. They've created a series of questions focused on critical factors that consistently predict employee engagement. Culture amp was also able to provide benchmark data across multiple industries including a hospitality specific benchmark comprised of 55 different clients. Our specific focus was on four major topics, one engagement to leadership and management, three communication and for enablement enablement meaning do I have access to the training or tools that I need to do my job well. At the conclusion of the survey managers were given access to culture amp to view their aggregated anonymous results. Overall areas of improvement was shared across the property, and then department managers received or shared specific feedback with their employees through we shifts team meetings skip groups and focus groups. Each manager was then required to create an action plan based on the results that culture amp recommended, and the specific feedback that they received through these to these team member meetings. And then the department head was required to present the action plan to our CEO or CEO CEO for approval. And so I just want to give you an example of one of the action plans. And so this is for our spa, which in full disclosure I will say receive the highest engagement scores of any department at on core. The next slide shows a more typical department and these were the results that are that we saw more typically across the company. And so culture and provided each department with their schools relative to others in the company. And then the action plan required each department head to disclose the means by which they gathered information. So I think on the next slide. And so for example in this one the employee feedback was one on one interviews pretty shift small group meetings and skip line meetings. And they disclose in the action plan what they heard when they conducted the meetings. And then the action plan. Each, each department was required to come up with three different action plans to address what was gained as part of the survey, as well as what they learned during the meetings. So some examples of the action plans included developing better ways to communicate training plans and identification of tools that employees may need to better complete their jobs. And that is, I think we can move unless there are any questions on that we can move to the next category. Jackie, I don't have a question so much as a comment that I'm pleased to see that you guys are doing this, particularly the spa, you know, given sort of the historical in that area. I'm glad to see the company being proactive on this. I'm really happy to see that. We honestly the results of the spa did not come as a shock to us the, the woman who runs the spark is her names Virginia Lara and she has developed a team that communicates really well. They're able to address problems they feel comfortable coming to her with problems so it really is a testament to her leadership. And we've actually asked her for some tips on leadership that we can use potentially to bring to other departments. Thank you. And bring other women into. We're trying. Thank you for this echo my appreciation for the entire deck on that particular topic. Very, very good. Really helpful information. Thank you. So, our patrons have continued to utilize our donate your change program, raising money in Q one for custom era, which is Boston's largest provider of domestic violence awareness efforts. Last hope can I rescue clearly people love their pets. And this was our most popular nonprofit in Q one. The pan mass challenge which raises funds for the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts. In Q one our employees volunteered over 1000 hours of their time for local nonprofits. We collected more than 1300 pairs of socks for residents of Pine Street in and donated over 15,000 worth of baby formula to bread of life to be distributed to residents of Malden, Medford and Everett. In conjunction with game sense we celebrated problem gaming awareness month throughout March with an extensive heart of house campaign and an in person experience near our employee dining room. We also celebrated national employee appreciation day in March with a game room for our employees. Five minute massages kindly donated by our team from the spa and an elevated menu at our employee dining room. And that is the conclusion of our presentation. We are open for questions, questions, questions, comments. Just so thank you. Great report, a very informative and very appreciative of the work that you're doing with the concerns that we have brought up in past quarterly reports. Thank you, Commissioner Hill. I'll set glaciers. All right. Thank you, Julianne and Jackie and Tom. Appreciate it. Have a great day. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay. Yes, we next up we have Plain Ridge Park casino with their first quarter report and, and I guess with the alternative over to North Brownsville to get started from PPC. Morning Joe good morning, Madam chair good morning commissioners Plain Ridge Park is pleased to present our q1 2023 update joining me today are Heidi Yates Akbar our vice president of finance and Kathy Lucas our vice president of human resources. So with those introductions I'm going to pass off to Heidi and she's going to walk you through the financials. Good morning Madam chair and commissioners it's good to be with you all again. As you can see for q1 we had a total of net slot revenue of 38 million state taxes of 15 race of three and total overall of 18.8. As you can see that this beats any quarter that we had in 2022, and we're really pleased that these results echo back to pre pandemic quarters for us. So, it's kind of exciting to be able to do our first report on sports wagering. Our q1 also as mentioned by our, our fellow licensee it on court that January does represent only one day, but we had 972,000 in sales will weight during revenue that represented as a payment to the state of 145,899 and lottery so and Commissioner Hill I'm going to answer a couple of the questions that you had asked before as well in that that's that you know we had 500, almost 89,000 in sales and q1 part of that was that there was that big mega millions frenzy in January around that $1.3 billion jackpot that they had going on as well. We have visitors increase as well some of that is related to the sports wagering. Going live on both the 31st and as well as online on the 10th so we do have an increase in visitors that very well could have also led to an increase in lottery sales. So our call total qualified spend for q1 is 1.5 million. A year ago in q1 2022 it was 1.2 million. You can see it's almost evenly split between the state of Massachusetts and then Mississippi Illinois Louisiana, New Jersey, Colorado and other states. So the host and surrounding communities of that 732,000 660 2,000 was spent in our host and surrounding communities being playing bill rent them north out of rural Foxboro and Mansfield that spend in q1 2022 was 76,900 and what Heidi, can I ask a question before you move on to the diversity numbers in terms of the spend. I know if you go back one more slide in terms of sort of that 5050 split. And I know that your company's presence, you've got some sort of centralization of some of the purchasing that you make but is there any way to get that Massachusetts northeast number up. Well sure, you know there's I can report on that if you'd like me to in the future I'm happy to do that would be great. Yeah, well we'll do that and we've got a great team behind us that that pulls that thing to pull those things together for us. And I'm sure we'll be able to focus on that get it for you. Great. Thank you. You're welcome. All right, so vendor diversity. So we hit our goal of 21% we exceeded it that 22% are women spend is down 1% to our goal for q1. We exceeded our minority by 1% and as well as the vendor spend. So we'll see that in the next slide that represents the dollar figures so we had 166,000 in q1 versus 175,000 in q4 this was specifically related to promotional materials that we needed in the early January that the spend happened in q4. And that is what drove that number down and it is what represents that one point percentage miss in total women, I am not concerned about our ability to hit the goal overall for the year but it is a little bit light in q1. Minority is also minority is also down 51,000 sorry north. And I just wanted to mention that that is specifically also related to a capital project into in q4 of 2022 that did not repeat in q1 2023. Great, thanks Heidi so I'll cover the compliance information here and I'm going to start my comments by drawing your attention to a new column. Going forward you will see a column shows the number of underage and minor patrons escorted from the sports wagering area. While we don't have any instances to report in that area this quarter I did want to call it out. So in q1 of 2023 ppc prevented a total of 120 guests from entering the gaming establishment of that group 14 were minors. 50 were underage and 135 had expired invalid or no, no identification. So we'd have one underage person escorted from the gaming area, we did not have any instances of underage gaming, and we did not have any instances of underage gaming underage alcohol service. So with that I will pass it to Kathy you will walk you through the employment and community relations information. I can make this chat. Commissioner Brian I just want to make sure commissioners questions. One is a comment one is a question. You guys have always been great about breaking the stats down. And you did that proactively on the sports wagering I appreciate it. And as usual your numbers are good. I do have a question on. So what was the longest period of time and the circumstances for the one who had to be escorted off the floor. I had one instance of a person on the gaming floor and that person was on for less than 10 minutes. Great. And that's the one escorted off right in February. Correct. Yes, ma'am. Okay, great. Thank you. You're welcome. Good morning, chair and commissioners. I'm sorry, Adam chair. I'm sorry Kathy good morning I don't mean to interrupt you but I did have a question I'm sorry to go backwards. But you guys are moving really quickly this morning. I have a question about the diverse spend slide. Heidi mentioned I think this is directed to Heidi, who mentioned that the decrease in diversity spend. Between quarter one and quarter four is due to the completion of a capital project and I wondered if there are any plans to offset that for upcoming quarters how do you plan to get those numbers back up to where your goal is set. All right, so as you can see, we actually hit our goal. The goal is 21 and we we hit it at 22. And the decrease on that capital was actually in the MBE spend and you can see for q1 we actually exceeded our goal by 1%. So, and we all we always take into account when we're looking at capital and those kind of things. We always make sure that as much as we are able we're working with our diverse vendors in areas that we can that's it's just represented the change from what we spent in q4 2022 to what we spent in q1 of 23 in the minority spend is where you can see it dropped on the next slide. 51 grand and that was what was related to that 58 that capital project but we definitely hit our goal. Okay, I see that now Heidi thank you. I was focused on more focused anyway on that this slide that you have up so that makes perfect sense what you explained. Thank you. Okay, so we continue to exceed our diversity goal of 15% in q1 with 20% of our team members being diverse. A lot of that is due to be referral program we've been fortunate to have team members refer other team members which is also helpful with us from a retention perspective, as well we exceeded our veterans goal of 2% in q1 with 5% of our team members identifying as veterans. We, we have our pen heroes program that allows us to recognize team members that work for us that have served. We also have a partnership with rolling thunder, which has allowed us to bring an external community program and use our internal community program to partner with them to to to actually participate with community activities to keep the awareness of cow and MIAs in on property and an off sided property that allowed us to actually have a couple of team members who didn't pass, come forward and be recognized on our wall of veterans. And finally I'll share a little bit later what we do with recruit military to help us gain more veterans that's allowed us to exceed that goal. In q1 43% of our team members were women. We continue to maintain this number and our focus has actually been on retention with fierce competition and opportunities until we're able to expand our team member roles. To keep the talent we have with that we have led with our women leading at 10 which is actually spearheaded by Aaron Chamberlain at the corporate level. And we have five of the women who went through our ELP program program that I shared with you probably two quarters ago, actually promoted into new roles. We're graduating that program. We also use our leap program which is an internship program to retrieve recruit and retain women we actually have Emily from J. Woo and the program now and then we have beta who will be entering into the program coming from Penn State. So while we're not hitting our goal in comparison to pre COVID conditions are focused really until we're able to open up more venues and allow for more hiring is to keep the women that we have and actually not to keep them but allow them to grow. We also have 33% of our team members that are local which is slightly under the goal of 35%. We also have 380 team members in Q1 which is slightly down from Q4 of that 65% are full time and 35% are full time. Do you want to go to the next slide Nora. So actually Kathy before you go to the next slide this is Commissioner Brian. I mean that that's funny that percentage at 45% women is sort of the same that he VH just gave us. And when you comment on you see not really being able to get traction until you're able to open more amenities do you mean because of the labor shortage or do you mean other reasons that are preventing you guys from reopening some of the amenities that would get that number up. I think what was spoken of earlier in regards to, you know getting that that hiring up, needing to be able to open our restaurant or our restaurant will allow us to probably add 20 to 30 more roles which we would be actively recruiting for that have been traditionally held by females. So that's a significant drop from us from 2020, since we haven't had foods. We have done some non traditional stuff in regards to what was shared earlier also in regards to recruiting women into roles that have been traditionally male driven so we have over the past two quarters. And brought into female flat technicians, which was predominantly male driven in the past. We've also seen with the opening of our sports book, our cashiers come over from cashiering into sports book in a non traditional area so again our focus is been on retaining the females that we have, and then also backfilling some roles that traditionally in the past may have not been until we're able to add mass, more opportunities or roles, more full time equivalents into position. Yeah, and if you're going to assess it addresses later let me know but is there anything that you can speak to in terms of when you see what used to be fluidies reopening. I will leave that to north. That's been kind of like a, a sliding calendar for me for the, for the last, almost year and a half. So, okay. I'll let Norris hear that. Yeah, I would say that we're not yet ready to announce a date that that area will open obviously construction is ongoing at this point and you know those timelines are always one where, you know, as you get into construction it can come up along the way we're just not ready at this point to give that but I do believe that that is progressing and will be, you know, sooner rather than later we had committed have said publicly a late summer opening and I still think that's probably what what we'll be looking at. Thank you. Thank you. Next slide. We've also added our employment numbers around sportsbook and you'll see that on the diversity we're at 17% in q1 we had zero but I would tell you that in q2 so far we've had two new employees that identify as veterans. We have 22% that are women 17% are local and then 55% are full time. And our supervisor and above category you'll see that again 14% identify as diverse 4% are veterans, and then 33% are women. In this area we continue to focus on the leadership development and also through talent acquisition and promotions, building that strength of our management team. We've done a lot of action planning to make sure that that we do have a thorough way of recruiting and promoting hires that that will help us with these numbers but also making sure we have qualified candidates to, and then the training, the training will allow them to stay in place and grow with the organization a little bit longer. Next slide. So these last two slides really speak to our initiatives and q1 around community and team member. You'll see here that we were able to support organizations that line with our commitment to meeting our local diversity and women's goals. In the right corner I believe you'll see we supported the Boston Boston Pearl Foundation, and then the North out of our animal shelter with Tito box donations. We also participated at recruitment and job there's we were at the out of our high school, Johnson and Wales University, and then the recruit military job here at Gillette. We were also seeking local culinary and veterans for our open positions, and making a difference. One of the things that we did that first quarter was to sponsor the efforts at the Adelborough Habitat for Humanity House and then we donated time and skills to build the home our team carried in all the appliances and did all the detail work during the last week of the build out making it ready for the family coming in as you can see north doing some measurement there on some of the woodwork that we're doing on the staircase from the basement up into the kitchen so really really feeling good about what we were able to do there. Next, next time I see a habitat for humanity picture I want to see north with a big sledgehammer, going into a wall and taking it down. So, we have a video of him carrying the refrigerator up the stairs where I think he built kind of like this makeshift kind of slide thing so that we can end up. So, he put in his work that day. Commissioner hill I was going to say he looks north looks very official with the pencil behind the year and all without the sledgehammer so we're hanging a handrail. And one of those things that you know and a shocking turn of events I felt like it needed to be precise. I did one habitat for humanity project in Boston and I got to take the sledgehammer and just go after a wall. Best day of my life. I did want to add also that we have been working with developing a stronger partnership with Bristol County Community College based on a comment you made to us earlier they they have a culinary program there that we are seeking to tap into we've had a couple meetings with their deans of different programs and are working on that so I hope I think those are relationships that tend to take time to develop. And we are, you know, absolutely took that feedback to heart and are working, you know, solidly to move that one forward. I'm so glad to hear that because over here in the North Shore the North Shore Community College has many relationships with many of the restaurants around here, and it's been a great pipeline for people to get jobs. So thank you for that. Yep. Thank you to update. Next slide. So we'll share some of the final things for Q one. In that top left corner you'll see that North hosted our town hall with our team members we actually do this to make sure that the team members are aligned with not only the company, the property, and then the state initiatives. But as they're, they're going about to their, their daily jobs they understand how it all connects. We also attended and sponsored the International Women's Day Breakfast in Boston. There's a picture of Mayor Wu, and then we came back to the property and hosted our own celebration that afternoon. We also enjoyed Black History Month Women's History Month Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day with plenty of activities and of course North is always involved and leading by example, with the engagement and hospitality here on property. I'll turn it back over to North. That concludes what we have to present to you today and obviously we're available for your questions. You can take down the power plate. Please. Thanks. Yes. Thank you, North. Welcome. Kathy and Heidi. So nice to see you both. Any questions for North? How'd the hand around come out more. It was good. It was good. I had a lot of coaching. I had someone kind of really help make sure that I knew what I was doing, but I learned something I feel like if I had to do on my own, I could probably do it. I might have to phone a friend, but I think I could probably do it. They were great. They were great to work with and it was a very worthwhile project and Heidi does sit on the board of that entity, the old colony habitat. Good news is, is that the contribution that you saw us make on the opening day of sports wagering is leading to their next build, which will be in the, I believe in the Norton area, correct? Heidi. Yeah, more groundbreaking is June 1. Yeah. Yeah, that was a great fundraiser that day. We're grateful to be in the backdrop for that. Thank you. Any questions. All right. I think we're all set then, Joe. North. Nice to see you. Thank you. Likewise. Thank you. Have a great day. Okay, so the next item that we have up is for a discussion of the Encore Boston Harbor East of Broadway project. Can I stop for one second? Sure. If you want a five minute break before we get into this next. Yeah, I think we could all use that. Let's do it's 1123 try to get back and 1130 ish and, and we'll start off with the, this important discussion. Sorry to cut you off, Joe. No, no, no, I could use a break myself. Excellent. That's what I thought. Thank you so much. Okay, Dave. Thank you. This is a convening of the mass chooses game. Excuse me. And because we're holding this meeting virtually, we'll do another roll call. Good morning again commissioner Brian. Good morning. I'm here. Mr. Hill. Morning, I'm here. Mr. Skinner. Morning. And Christian leaders. Good morning. I'm here. Excellent. Thank you. We'll get started again. Good morning. Thank you. Good morning. I am for C on our agenda. And again, good morning. Chief Dwayne. Morning, Madam chair and commissioners. So today what we want to do is sort of continue our discussions on the east of Broadway development and what our next steps are in this process. So we're going to take a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little approach in doing this. There's been clearly an awful lot on the commissioners plates. Since the fall, when we, when we first started this process with sports majoring at all. And. So we've been taking this in, in kind of a small steps, but what I wanted to do first is just give a brief history of how we got to where we are. And what are some of those particular goals that the commissioners and commissioners need to be. So if you recall back in February of 20 22, Encore, Boston harbour submitted some plans for the east of Broadway development that did not include gaming. And at that time, the commission determined that the project was not part of the gaming establishment, but did put some conditions on that development. Last fall in the fall of 2022, Encore refiled the plans with the commission to include a poker room and sports betting. And because of that, that would by its very nature require that to be part of the gaming establishment, which then makes it subject to the review and approval of the commission. So the very, the first step in that approval process was for the commission to determine whether or not gaming could be allowed on that expanded site. So at that time, Encore was asked to address whether that earlier June, 2013 referendum adequately covered the expansion of the gaming establishment onto the new property. So the first time the commission took this up was back on November 16th of 2022. And Encore made a presentation that argued that the original referendum was adequate to account for this project. The commission had quite a number of comments and asked for additional information and some other opinions from the city and other agencies and so on. So after we got all of that information, the commission reconvened those discussions back on February 8th of 2023. And at that meeting, the commission ultimately voted that the original referendum vote included the East of Broadway parcel and therefore gaming could be allowed at that location. Just as a four-to-one vote, Joe, that's the only thing I would add to your memo on the historical, as a forum. Exactly, yep. So after that happened, the commission held a public hearing on this, on the project back in the end of April, we got a lot of attendance at that, which was great. We heard a lot of good comments, we got a lot of good written comments on that. We also did hear from some folks that they didn't hear about that meeting. So the commission will hold an additional online public hearing just to make sure that everybody who has the opportunity to opine on the matter can do that. And I think it was a June 6th, have we set the date on that, Chair? Yes, I think it's June 6th, and I think it's confirmed for us. Or yes. Yes, June 6th. So this is our first outreach on the meeting. And it would be in the virtual, as you said, on I think 11.30 during the lunch hour. Yeah, yeah. So- Would you wanna just note that the outreach was extensive before? I wanna commend our communications team and the others who took part of that. But we did hear from many who didn't feel that they had gotten notice. So we're hoping that they'll join us for this virtual. And I think we have also more input is better than less. You know, anything that we can hear from folks, I think we wanna do that. Madam Chair. Yes. Could I have to follow up on your comments with a question actually to Joe, I guess. Will there be any outreach to the city of Everett so that they can post the occurrence of the meeting on their platforms to the extent possible? Yeah, I mean, we can certainly request that. And actually for really of all of the communities that are host and surrounding communities, everyone has some say in this, you know, of our concerns, I should say potentially. So I think what we will, you know, previously we sent it out to all of those communities into a number of people in them. I don't think we specifically asked them to post it on all of their platforms. I think we maybe assumed that they would do so. And I think maybe some did it and some didn't. But I think we could specifically ask that question or request that of them to please post it on their website and get it out to their networks specifically just so that, you know, as many people hear about it as we can get. Thank you, John. Okay, so that leaves us up here where, you know, the next thing that we really need to do is review and approve the plans that Encore submitted. And more particularly the expansion of the gaming establishment boundaries. Now what this really does here is that we'll be required to do a couple of things. One, we will have to amend the gaming license to include this property. And we will also have to amend the operation certificate. Now, historically we have done both of these things on a much smaller scale. You know, I think you might remember at Plain Ridge Park we added a little piece of the apron outside to their gaming establishment. And, you know, at Encore we reconfigured some of the outdoor spaces and things like that. So we've done all of these things and we have rules and regulations around them. But of course this is a much larger effort than those earlier pieces of it. So what we have done internally is we looked at all of our regulations on those things that control these amendments and so on. But we also looked at, you know, what was really the intent of the overall gaming law in the development of these facilities and felt that some of those things are certainly still appropriate for this expansion. We also looked at things and determined that, you know, some of them probably aren't appropriate for this expansion. Just one example was the requirement for a bond. On the original development a bond was required to ensure timely, you know, completion of the project. Where now a gaming license already exists, all, you know, revenues are already coming into the Commonwealth, you know, ensuring the timely opening of this new development is probably not as important as it was for the original development. So, you know, we looked at that and said, that's probably not something that we really need to need to consider. So I reviewed and Todd reviewed the regulations and we looked at some of, and also from the things that we heard at the public hearing. And what we've done is put together a little bit of a laundry list of items that we think that Encore should address as part of any submission to us for approval. And I'll just go through these things quickly. And of course, this is just, you know, my view of this, if the commission has any other strong issues that you think should be considered, we could add them to this list. Or if you think strongly that we don't need to see some of these things that I've included on this list, we could delete from that list as well. But the first item is regarding the reopening of mitigation agreements. I think at the public hearing, we heard loud and clear that many folks wanted to see the reopening of the host community agreement with Everett and a renegotiation of that due to the expansion of the Encore facility. We have also heard, the commission has also heard from the city of Boston and a couple of other communities that were interested in reopening their surrounding community agreements. So I think in this case that we should certainly ask, and we do have regulations around the reopening of these agreements, which include the host community agreements, surrounding community agreements, as well as the impacted live entertainment venue agreements. And I think as part of any application from Encore, we should certainly ask them what their intent is with respect to these agreements that they have. And as you know, the commission is not a party to these agreements. These are between Encore and the host community, surrounding communities and the ILEVs. When they were originally developed, of course, the commission was involved in looking at them and making sure we were comfortable with them, but we are not a party to those agreements. So I think that's the first thing is, we should certainly ask that question of Encore and how they intend to deal with that piece. Joe and Todd, if you got either one of you, did they have to have those executed before the license issued in the first instance? I know they had them executed before the license was issued. Was it a prerequisite, a condition precedent, or was it just? The whole process had to be resolved before the licensing decisions were made. There were a couple of arbitrations and whatnot, but that was all resolved in advance of the license. Right. Remember, it was also part of the referendum to show that the... Right. So one of the questions I have on this topic is the timing. Like I absolutely agree about asking on status. The question is clearly a leverage the city has would be prior to the issuance of any redraw of the boundary, right? Commencement and expansion of the gaming facility. And so it would seem like part of the intent was to get that leverage to the cities, municipalities at the time. So I throw out for discussion, not only the fact of asking what's going on, but whether there should be any timing considerations on the completion of those. Yeah. What I would suggest is that, what we would hear from Encore initially and any license or amendment that we would issue, we could certainly condition that to say that, let's say if Encore says, yes, we're happy to compete with all of our communities and talk about their agreements and that kind of thing. We could certainly put a time certain on that if that needs to happen. And of course, the way the regulations are written, there's a process in there. If they can't come to an agreement, there's an arbitration process and so on that would be triggered as part of this. So I think we're pretty well covered with respect to the regulations on how, what the triggering events are that would cause a reopening and so on. Because that was one of the questions that came up several times when we did the public meeting for comment was sort of just the citizenry wanting to know the process and wanting to know what the city was going to get out of it given the increased impact. Sure, sure. Brian, to your point, I had a note here. Just, you know, I know just respecting the fact that the commission isn't a party to that HCI. But I would like to see the city of Everett engage its citizens, its residents as much as practicable in its discussions with EVH around the reopening of the or renegotiation of the HCA. As Commissioner O'Brien indicated, overwhelmingly there were concerns expressed to this body that should rightfully be expressed to the city of Everett. And so hopefully we can encourage, heavy on encourage the city to engage in the way that's meaningful for folks who are impacted. Sure. Chief Delaney, Joe, can you remind me so the, for the signatures, is it the Mayor and Encore for the House Community Agreement? And then for the, then what about the surrounding community agreements? Should we take those separately or are we clumping them all together? Because we don't know, yeah, go ahead. I think, you know, I think what we're saying here is that we will ask Encore how they proposed to address those. I mean, they could propose to address them differently. I mean, for instance, they could say, we agree we need to reopen the host community agreements, but we don't think we're having an impact on the surrounding communities. And we don't want to reopen those. I mean, I'm not suggesting that that's what they're going to say, but I'm saying that they certainly could say that. I'm not saying on that at all. I mean, I'm hearing Commissioner Skinner encouraging the city to make sure to hear all its voices. And, you know, again, we were kind of reading of, I don't know how many people were at that public hearing. Do we know how many? They said that the room seated 60. And I'm going to say that we were a pretty darn close to capacity. Yeah, so, you know, there were 60. And so I'm not going to jump to any conclusions over what the entire city wants. Because I mean, minded of the original vote, but Commissioner Skinner's point, she's hoping that they hear from probably more than 60, right? Commissioner Skinner, but at least in that room, there were certainly a number of individuals who expressed a desire for reopening. So you're saying we'll wait for the lead from Encore for all three types of agreements. Is there anything that we want to message further on that, Commissioner, other than that general, well, Commissioner O'Brien? Well, so I don't know. Do we generate some sort of notice or require EVH to sort of affirmatively report back as to each one they have a prior agreement with as opposed to sort of a general give us an update? Yeah, I think what we would do is sort of the result that might come out of this is that the commission instructs staff to write a letter to Encore that asks them to address these very specific things. And we can certainly spell out each and every application or each and every agreement that exists and saying, please tell us what you're going to do with respect to each one. Or we could just break it into sort of the tranches of host community, surrounding community, I love, you know. Okay, so the second point, things that we heard about significantly in the public hearing and in some of the letters that we got was traffic, parking, transportation, demand issues. Now, you know, traffic has always been a major concern of the original development it is of this development. And the commission plays a role in that. Of course, MassDOT takes sort of the lead on this. They're the lead agency that reviews these things. But the commission has historically taken a lot of responsibility for this as well. And the way that we have done that is through our section 61 findings that are done as part of the MEPA process. So the project right now is in the MEPA process. They've submitted an environmental impact report that's being reviewed right now by MassDOT and others. And what we have done in the past is after all of the issues regarding traffic and transportation have been addressed, MassDOT is required to write a set of section 61 findings on those particular traffic items. And what the commission has done has essentially referenced all of those requirements in our own section 61 findings, which essentially just gives us an extra level of control over those things. And so we have done that in the past and we certainly expect to do that again. But what I would suggest for any application that they're submitting to us, is that they should at least give us a summary of where the MEPA process stands today, or as of the date that they are submitting the application. Supplemental draft environmental impact report is going on I think somewhere around 2,500 pages. And much of that is traffic related and it's extremely detailed. I'm not sure any of the commissioners want to try to pour through 2,500 pages of traffic minutia. I've looked at a lot of it in depth, but I think what we should at least get is an executive report of summary report of that traffic study that they've done that shows us some of the key points. What are the increases in traffic associated with this? What are the key mitigation factors that are being considered? And so what's the expected culmination duration of this process and things of that nature, just to get a good update on where traffic stands? Because I think the commission should have mass.be in the lead on this. This is what they do. It's their expertise and it's, while I have certain expertise in that area, it's certainly not as in depth as what mass.possesses. So I guess- So my memory of the license is that there were several outstanding section 61 conditions when they opened. Yeah. And so I would also like there to be an update to the body, this commission of those conditions, how many, if many are outstanding still. Yeah. And certainly with the pandemic and all, there were certain things that were backed off on on some of the original commitments. And I'm not sure- I know we're outside their control. They were trying to pay and there was a logistics question. Right, right. Yeah. So we can certainly ask that what we can ask for an update, not only on the MIVA process, but on the status of the section 61 findings. That's perfectly appropriate, I think. Right. Okay. Any other questions regarding the traffic issues? Also, commissioners, they can go on. Okay. You know, this was one of the things that we had not internally particularly identify. This is something that we heard, I think primarily through the written comments that we got on the public hearing. We did hear several comments that discussed the impact that EVH has on police and fire services. I mean, we know that there certainly is an impact and that is really part of what the host community agreement is supposed to do. There are impact fees and so on that are associated with that, as well as of course there's the community mitigation fund, which we have funded many Everett applications for both police and fire over the years. So I'm not sure, I think in this case we probably just want an update, I would say from Encore on what they anticipate doing with increased calls for service and so on and how they expect to mitigate that. You know, and that I think really is more of an agreement between the community and Encore rather than something that the commission is sort of party to. I think on the other piece of it of course is the expansion of the gaming establishment will also expand the jurisdiction of the gaming enforcement unit. So the gaming enforcement unit would be responsible for patrolling that area and whether or not that the expansion of the facility would require any changes to the gaming enforcement units. I think that's maybe something we also want to ask them is, you know, what impacts that might have, the expansion might have on the gaming enforcement unit. Madam Chair. Yes. So, Joe, something that I was a little frustrated at the hearing that we held was that we as a commission weren't able to really interact with the public as well as I would have liked in terms of getting information out to them that they were asking for in this particular issue when it came up. I wanted to be the proud commissioner to stand up and say, do you know what we have done for the police and the fire through the community mitigation grant program? And we didn't bring it up that night but I would like to see if possible us get that information together so that when we are asked again about this issue that we can point to the hundreds of thousands of dollars that have gone into the police and fire of ever through that program. I don't think the people who were testifying that night, the citizens actually knew what we had done it frustrates me that the citizens of the towns where these casinos are don't know exactly what we have done and I think this would be a great opportunity for us to show them what we have done in our partnership with these communities through the last 10 years. Sure, sure. Thank you, Madam Chair. Welcome. Okay, any other questions on the police and fire aspect? Nope, okay. So the next item is sustainable development and this really goes back to the very beginnings of the entire expanded gaming act that this was always envisioned as an important aspect of the program. I don't think anyone ever intended it for the facilities to be LEED certified and then have any expansion not deal with that piece of it. So I think it certainly is within the commissions jurisdiction and purview to ask about sustainable development and LEED certification and all of those. And in fact, Encore has already committed that this is gonna be LEED gold and I think they may have even mentioned potentially being a net zero facility and so on. But I think we should certainly ask them that question about sustainability and get that whole laundry list of things that they're proposing to do with respect to that as part of their application. So the next item is talking about, we talked about labor harmony. We heard a lot about this at the hearing. We got a few letters regarding this as well. So just quoting 23K section 18, it asks, whether the applicant has included detailed plans for assuring labor harmony during all phases of the construction, reconstruction, renovation, development and operation of the gaming establishment. Now, of course, that was written in pertaining to the award of the original license, but I think the way that it's worded, it certainly carries over to an expansion of this nature. I think that it's, and again, it's certainly reasonable for the commission to ask those questions about labor harmony. And again, for an application, I think the question that we just simply wanna ask is, what are those plans? And if that includes using union labor or project labor agreement or whatever it might be, I think we wanna understand what commitments on core is making with respect to that. Any comments or questions about that in particular? Any concerns about whether it's applicable to the expansion under the, I'm in agreement with Joe's interpretation. Okay. I think it's acceptable. You think so, Commissioner O'Brien? Yeah, definitely. You're comfortable. Yeah, okay, great, thank you. So the next item is, construction and operations, diversity. So our regulations, we have a lot of regulations around this and obviously during the initial construction, diversity was a huge component of that and each of our licensees, they developed diversity plans for both construction and operation phases. We have reporting requirements. There's a lot of pieces of our regulations that seem to have contemplated this long-term rather than just for the original construction phase. So again, I think it's reasonable to ask what the proposal is for on core, particularly on construction, since that will be the first phase of this. And I think we should also ask about operations, but of course, I think my general assumption on operations would be that they would follow the plan that they have for the overall facility since this will be part of that. But I think we should certainly ask what their plans are with respect to diversity for both the construction and the operations stage. And this might be a time where it makes some sense to revisit the original plans that they submitted if they think certain things need to be changed for whatever reason. The construction plan goes back to 2015, I think, and the operations plan goes back to 2018. So they're all getting a little bit dated. So it might make sense to just sort of dust those off and take another look at them for on core to do that. And I would say for the purposes of an application I would ask them what their intent is. And if they needed to modify these, maybe that's done as a condition to the license modification, probably isn't something that has to be done for the approval. Similarly, we didn't approve their operations plan until 2018, they were well under construction. So it's something that I would suggest if they need to make major modifications to their plans that be done as maybe a condition to any approval that you would give. So Joe, this is probably covered in what you've talked about, but some of what will happen and what will be placed across the street is gonna change what's in the existing footprint. So I would like to have a discreet discussion, presentation from them to make it easier on all of us to digest on exactly what the changes are gonna be to the existing EVH. I don't foresee it being anything we would go back to the original application just make sure that they're still complying with those, but we may have thoughts in terms of what changes are gonna be at the existing structure. Right, right, absolutely. Okay, so the next item that we have is just essentially jobs. I mean, jobs has always been one of the big parts of this whole thing. I don't think that we need to really do much if anything more than ask what they are proposing for construction jobs and for operations and what impact that's gonna have on their overall job level. But I think it's certainly reasonable to ask that question. I know a lot of commenters asked particularly about jobs, how many new jobs is it gonna be? Are they gonna be good jobs? Are they gonna be, what's it gonna be? So I think we can certainly ask that question. So the next item is just sort of the monitoring of construction. Again, in reviewing our regulations, a lot of this was designed for the original construction and a number of the things in here are probably not pertinent to an expansion, but obviously we need to have sort of unfettered access to the construction site to inspect and to do all of the things that we need to do. Burke on the poker room and Bruce on the sports waging areas will need access to make sure that surveillance is all proper and all of those kinds of things. So we definitely want to have access to the site. And what I would suggest on this one is that we could come back and do a little bit of a deeper dive on those pieces that we think we really need access to and some of these other things that probably really aren't necessary. So I would suggest that something like this could just be dealt with as a condition to any approval that we have access and that we would then enumerate those particular things that we want to be able to look at and so on. And I think so the last item here, yes, okay, is again, reporting to the commission. Back during the original construction, we used to get some very detailed reports on the construction and contracts were put out and diversity statistics and a whole lot of different things on a quarterly basis. I imagine that the commission will want to still receive some reporting from the licensees or they can probably just add that on to their regular quarterly report and give a construction update. I'm not sure it needs to be quite as detailed as what we got during the original construction. But again, I think this is something that I would suggest doing this as a condition to any license amendment that for the duration of the construction report to us quarterly and that's that this quarterly report includes ABCD and that kind of thing. We haven't kind of gotten down to that point of exactly what it is that we want to see yet. But I think that's something during any review process, we can sort of finalize what those particular pieces might be. So, I like the idea of a quarterly report except I would propose that it be separated out from the quarterly reports that we get now. We might not, as you suggested, need great detail in these reports but whatever detail is provided on the extension I wouldn't want to be buried in the quarterly report. So that's my suggestion. Sure. And I think we're probably going to be hearing from a different team of folks who will probably be Chris Gordon and this team will be back talking about the construction rather than Jackie and her team talking about the operations. So that makes perfect sense. Commissioner, I just need to go ahead. Commissioner's going to do a follow up. You're all set. Okay, Commissioner O'Brien. Where in the original process, I know each of the brick and mortar licensees made commitments to building or providing affordable housing. Where in the original process was that? Oh, the only one that was to providing housing was MGM. Okay. So MGM was actually, and they were providing market rate housing, not affordable housing. Now, apparently from what we heard and I don't have this directly from Encore, but I thought some folks alluded to Encore making some commitments to affordable housing to the city of Everett as part of this expansion. Okay, that's probably what I'm keying off of. Maybe we should again ask them that question. Yes. What the commitment is. Yeah, because I know there's just, there's a lot in Boston and the surrounding areas across Commonwealth in terms of affordable housing. So if there is a component to this, particularly where people did talk about, there was some comments at the public meetings about displacement of people who had been long time residents. So I would like to know a little more on that. Yeah, that great, great comment. Great comment, yeah. Just to clarify though, Joe, with respect to this expansion, will there be any displacement of residents? No, there shouldn't be. I mean, anybody, I mean, these are parking lots now. You know, now did they buy residential properties as part of this? Absolutely. And they bought them and they tore them down and, you know, and, you know, I mean, they were paid for their property. It wasn't, it wasn't that they were, you know, it wasn't eminent domain for sure. You know, so, you know, but yes, were there some people that had to move from that area? Absolutely, but they should not be as part of this development. This affected it, right. That's what I'm wondering, but not in this part of the area. Okay. No, although some of those may have been rental units. And so while the landlord may have pulled to the property, there was comment about people being displaced from that neighborhood. So that's why EVH is talking about is doing something that important. But I think when you ask that question, my understanding is that no, that all those areas have already been cleared, but could they own a house there that they haven't torn down yet? That's certainly possible. So I think we can certainly ask that question. I'd like that clarification. Thanks so much. Okay. So, bones were... Joe, I, oh, sorry. I do have, I have a comment. It probably pertains to fire and police, whatever number that is. But I think I see that it says in addition, should the East of Boston development become part of the gaming establishment fall under the jurisdiction of the gaming enforcement unit, which is funded as part of the casino operation. So I think this is about the impact on public safety services. So maybe it's a separate category, but I think as one commissioner, I'd be very interested in working with Encore on its plans to develop this, you know, a new expansion to make sure that rare that can be state of art improvements around public safety measures that we would be able to stay apprised of those. I know that when we first looked at the expansion before it was even going to be including gaming in the early, it has been measured in long standing process, Joe, but we did, we expressed concerns about the bridge and security measures there. We expressed concerns about security measures in the garage. It's my understanding that possibly the nightclub will be shifting over to that space. There's opportunities for some of our concerns around the patrons' entrances and exits of the nightclub to come up. So I think that probably the game commission should be part of those discussions on the early side rather than having to have a reactive side. Yeah, so I think what we could certainly do is when we go out to Encore with this letter asking for this, we can ask what their plans are with respect to security, because I think a lot of this, especially with a bridge that's connecting two different facilities that's open to the general public and then you have areas that are more restricted that there are probably some nuances there that we need to understand. All right, I just think that without getting into any details, there's opportunity here for planning purposes that are integral to the construction as well. Yep, yep, absolutely. Not solely security provision. So, listeners, I don't know if you want to build on that, but I think we should just put that maybe as a separate category. Okay, so those were all of the items that I came up with and Todd has been nice and quiet here and letting me take, do most of the talking. And Todd, did you have anything to add at this point? Oh, I think the hallmark of a good lawyer is knowing when not to say anything when someone else is doing a lovely job. So no, nothing else specific unless there are questions. Well, I have a question. Sure. So I'm assuming the application requirements you've laid out in your memo are based on the phase two, phase two process as part of the initial license application review. And I wasn't part of that process. I think there are a few of us being today who were not part of that process. No, none of us were part of it. Oh, okay. Yeah, all right. That's what I mean. In other words, as old as those plans are, right? This process here. So my question is, is there anything from the RFA-2 process that you didn't include here? Because maybe you were of the mind that they might not be applicable. And I say that, I ask that because, you know, ABH, I guess through the city is relying on the fact that the HCA, which I know was born out of the RFA-2 process contemplated the expansion. And there were conditions placed during the RFA-2 process on the casino. So in my mind, I would take the position that every single requirement and condition that was relevant to the RFA-2 process might be relevant here. And that might be overbroad, but I'd like to at least get a sense of what did you, what did you leave, right? What did you leave from that RFA-2 process? What did it make it into this memo? A lot. Maybe, you know, the RFA-2 process was a lengthy process. You know, we had literally, you know, the encore application took up about six feet of shelf space on a, you know, a bookcase. But, you know, as an example, one of the things we talked about was a bonding require. You know, so we required, so one of the things we required was a detailed schedule from the licensee. And they had a certain, you know, they said they were gonna open a facility at a certain time. And if they didn't do that, we could find them up to, I can't remember now if it was $50 million or $100 million, if they did not meet that deadline to open the casino. Well, the casino's open. The casino's generate, you know, part of that was to make sure it happened in a timely fashion. This case, you know, if it takes, if they tell us it's a two-year construction schedule and it takes three years to build it, do we really, I mean, we want it to be done as quickly as possible, I would imagine, but do we want to penalize them or find them for not having the place open? You know, if they said it was gonna be two years and it takes two and a half years, you know, there didn't seem to be any sort of reasonable, you know, reason for wanting to do that. You know, because part of the big part of it was getting the casinos up and running quickly. And we wanted to make sure that the timelines were as aggressive as possible. And now that is not particularly important. I mean, we already have a poker room, we already have sports wagering. This would make it a bigger poker room and a difference, you know, additional sports wagering, but we're not sort of relying on this thing being open to generate revenues for the commonwealth. The facility's already doing that. So that's just one example of a couple of the things that we looked at that we said it just doesn't really make sense at this point. Yeah, and I will come through. Sorry, go ahead, Todd. Oh, I know, my apologies. As Joe was saying, there's a whole slew of them. And another one of the big ones is the financing and capital structure of the proposal. We haven't proposed that you'd look at that. Of course, that was critical in the early stages as to whether the facility could be constructed and how they were planning on doing it. It seemed less of a concern at the moment, but you could look at the financing structure, things along those lines. How are they going to make it happen? The tourism? Todd, to that point, there'll be capital investment requirements that they have to continue to do. That would apply for that expansion, right? Certainly. Well, I think that's a really important point, Madam Chair, is that, and Joe referenced this, but just to be crystal clear, all of the principles, and this is what Commissioner Skinner was suggesting, too, that applied early on would likely apply here, too, because this will now be part of the gaming establishment. So all of the objectives and criteria that were looked at under sections 18, 19, and 21 of Chapter 23K would still be applicable here. So things like ensuring that the capital expenditure plan includes this area would be required. And all of the other plans, employment plans and vendor plans and all that would still apply here as well. Those are things, though, to your question, Commissioner Skinner, that we haven't necessarily proposed that you take a close look at here, like how will this improve tourism in the region? Things like that were important in the RFA II process that weren't really included on the list that Joe just walked through with. And that's understood. And I don't take anything away from your and Joe's recommendation. However, just even if for nothing else, but to have an educational opportunity, I'd like to understand exactly what those conditions and requirements are, those overarching principles. You just gave examples of to do my own independent assessment as to what might apply here or what I would like to see move forward as we continue to evaluate this project. Again, your recommendation, I'm sure, is found. What we did this recently, I believe, in connection with the category two proposal that we're considering is we related back to the RFA II phase, and we whittled down what might be relevant for that project today. And so I'd like to do the same with this project. And I'm happy to just set aside some time with you, Joe and Todd, to do this separately. But I think other commissioners might benefit from that exercise as well. Yeah, so 205 CMR 119 outlines the entire RFA II process. So I'd be happy to sit down with you, Commissioner, and walk through that and the particular pieces of it. And also 23K sort of mirrors what's in 119. But yeah, absolutely. But that's sort of what we went through and said, hey, let's take a look at these pieces and which ones seem to be most pertinent to this new development. But I think like another example of something that you didn't include, yes. So to follow up on what Commissioner Schanager said, though, is I think it's probably helpful for all of us. Or I know I would want to join in that conversation broadly because I've forgotten about the tourism aspect. And then when it comes to the finances, I know this particular applicant may not have any concerns. But I also want to think about this in terms of it. This is the procedure we're going to set forth for anybody going forward. We may have licensees who we don't have as full of confidence in financially, right? So is it something that, to Commissioner Schanager's point, we might want to have as we would potentially want to hear from this, we don't feel the need in the circumstance so that we're not boxing ourselves out going forward? Sure, absolutely. I think as an example, we talked about a minimum spend. Of course, that was for the original facility and not for this one. We don't have a number, particularly for this one. So again, it's one of the things we didn't include. But anyway, yeah, you're correct. If we had some questions about the ability to capitalize this project, we'd want to hear about that. And we can certainly ask those questions. I mean, if we want to know what the total value of the project is, and that kind of thing, we could certainly ask that. Again, it didn't seem, again, knowing what Encore has built and their ability to build something of this nature, it didn't feel like it was something that we needed to really delve deeply into with this particular applicant. But we could certainly do it with any other help. Joe, I just want to add one more thing. I do think that we did do a 2x2 on this somewhat earlier, and I think Commissioner O'Brien and I were paired together. And we definitely, when it comes to capital and design, yeah, we believe in when and when's ability to produce a good product. But I do remember saying that I think we both agree. We would like to see kind of what that looks like before anything is green light. Yeah. Yeah, and we will certainly get a full set of plans on the project. And that's absolutely sort of the barest minimum that we would get on that. But anyways, OK. But yeah, so Commissioner Skinner, I can have Barry or Lily reach out and set up a couple of 2x2s on this so we can walk through the particulars if you'd like to do that. We're going to add another category then. Again, that commissioners can weigh in on plans and preparation of public safety features, right? Yeah. OK. Joe, if the commissioners don't have any other questions, we probably should move on. Is that in terms of next steps, Joe, what would you like? So I guess the one question that I would ask of all the commissioners, if there's anything in particular that we didn't hit here that you would like to have more information on, we'd love to hear that. And then I guess going forward, I'm not sure we necessarily need a vote of the commission per se, but or just a sense of the commission if moving forward with drafting a letter to Encore asking for information on these things. What perhaps I could do is draft up a letter. We could have a couple of the 2x2s to go over some of this and see if there's any other areas that we think are of concern. And then we can draft up a letter to Encore and bring that in front of the commission for approval. Yeah, we can do our discussion like we did here as opposed to 2x2s because you can't really get any feedback from us in a 2x2 that way. So we're good on doing this. But commissioners, we've had this. Commissioner O'Brien, you were about to weigh in. Do you feel that it's necessary or what you'd like to do? No, and I actually think it's a little premature because we have another public meeting on this setup. And so I'd be loath to actually make representations to EBDH that that's the universe of things we want when we're not even 100% certain because we wanted another chance to hear from the public. So I think we're moving in the right direction. I like where we're going. I don't think we're quite sure. Why don't we, we'll have the public hearing. We'll have some 2x2s. And then I think what we should probably do is try to reconvene as soon after that public hearing as is available on a commission meeting and then try to finalize that list on core and get that off to them. I think obviously we want to keep the process moving forward, but I would say that the MEPA process alone is certainly won't end before the end of July and probably we'll extend some time into August, maybe to the end of August. So we have time to do this. It's not like we are holding up on core at this point in particular. And I suspect on core is listening to today's meeting. So they know they're getting some direction. And we have a consensus on all the points that were raised here. Yeah, I think we do. Certainly. Commissioners and we all in agreement that these are good priorities and look at feedback from on core and feedback from the next public hearing and see if something else comes up. And everybody will do some homework to look at the earlier commissioners priorities and the application process that preceded. And we can revisit and finalize that. But I think what I am hearing is that we are going to want to be kept a prize along the way of progress and construction. Is that fair commissioners? Yeah. Okay. Anything else, Joe? No, that does it for me. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Nice work. Okay. Now back to Dr. Lightbound. Thank you again for the comprehensive report this morning. It was really important to, I know probably many of the members of the public and certainly all commissioners to be reminded of all the good work that goes on at the track. Dr. Lightbound. So thank you. But now you're turning to, with a commissioner Maynard and commissioner Hill, a new topic. Yes. So historically certain what they call track matters were delegated from the old state racing commission to their director of racing. And then when the gaming commission took over the regulation of racing, they also approved it out of meeting on June 13th of 2013. And so it's been 10 years and it felt like this was a good time to update the document. The documents for this topic start on page 88 of your commissioners packet. To make it easier, I included the old document and redlined it. We didn't have the word version. So Grace worked her magic and gave us a PDF or converted it. But with the formatting, it didn't quite work. So there is an official memo in the commission archives from the June 13th 2013 meeting, if anybody from the public wants to see the actual document. In the packet right now, we just have the text of that document. So the major changes are including the legal division in the sending of notices and demand letters and extending the authority to violations other than just the statutory, statutory required payments. After discussing it with general counsel Grossman, I felt more comfortable with this and this is the way we felt we could go forward on that particular item. We eliminated the executing of show cause orders. We weren't exactly sure. We couldn't remember any instance where that had been done and felt that that might be something that would, if something rose to that level, it might more fall under the legal division to do that. And also it might not be an emergency type thing. It might be something that could be brought up to the commissioners. We just cleaned up the language on the changing of post times a little bit. Eliminated the approval of premium free simulcast days. As you commissioners know, that's usually included in the application for racing dates and then for subject down where they don't have to put in an application anymore. We do that near the end of the year for the following year when they submit their simulcasting requests and things like that. And that's not really a type of thing that would be that time sensitive. So I felt that that could be something that could be brought up at a commission meeting and wouldn't necessarily need to fall under this particular document. And then at the end, we added the last delegation point of approving other ministerial routine or administrative matters that require prompt attention in the judgment of the director of racing. I do recognize that the commission now is very nimble. And if an emergency arose that we really needed to bring in front of the whole commission, the commission is nimble about arranging those meetings. But this delegation just helps streamline some of these processes. Does the commission have any questions? Let me know if you're a commissioner or a manager and commissioner helps. Please, I think they work for you on this, right? Yes, they provided great comments on this and helped work through this very well. And as well as general counsel Grossman. Thank you. So commissioner mayors. Happy to madam chair. Dr. Lightbound caught the essence of the changes and I did have something written, but she said it better than I could. Essentially, this document was 10 years old. It was written at a time when I believe the director of racing was an attorney. Part of the way we were looking at this just so my fellow commissioners can hear it is, how can we write this in a way that it applies to whoever the director of racing is and whatever their background is, no matter what they've done in the past. And Dr. Lightbound pointed out a lot of places where the commission is already brought into an issue and so we could strike. There were places where obviously the legal division, I believe her and Todd worked on that very closely, should be brought in a little closer. And then at the end, and I'm sure commissioner Hill can speak to this too, what we realized was a lot of these things are happening. They're happening to the satisfaction of the commission. It was really, we wanted to expressly state that the commission should be updated on these matters in a timely fashion, just because we wanted the notification. And then of course we wanted to give Dr. Lightbound some flexibility and that's where that final piece comes in to make some routine decisions that need to be made pretty quickly and changes. So this was really about not undoing any delegation of authority, but in fact cleaning up the delegation of authority and making it match the realities on the ground 10 years later. And as Dr. Lightbound said, we have worked from home capabilities with technology that we did not have 10 years ago, right? And so the ability for us to be quote nimble and move quickly was important to us and we tried to capture it and thanks to Todd also. Christian Hill? Adam, Chair, there's not much more I could add that hasn't already been said from Dr. Lightbomb and commissioner Mayden. I think we went through a process, we looked at it and this is what we came up with. And if anybody has any questions, we'd be more than happy to entertain them but I think what's before you is a good product. I'm wondering if we should, oh, go ahead, commissioner. Thank you, Madam Chair. The only thing that gives me pause on this delegation list is the approval of racing officials. Is that, I seem to recall, we had the judges come before us for approval. And so that would be a change in the practice as I understand it, is that right, Dr. Lightbomb? So you're correct that the list of approving racing officials comes before the commissioners and it usually comes in March for planeage where they open in April and the commission gets a whole list of people to approve. What happens occasionally during the meet is maybe somebody gets sick or has a family emergency and there's not already a backup person that can do it and the track needs to bring somebody else in very quickly. And so there have been times when I've approved them to bring somebody in and then they can be brought again as Commissioner Maynard pointed out, bring this back to the commission at a future meeting to say, here's this person and this is why we need it to approve them right away. So just to follow up on that, it's pretty good. He has a lot of his people cross-trained and they're cross-qualified, so that if, and he himself is qualified to do a number of the different jobs. So a lot of times just, somebody can pop in and do it, but there are occasionally times when a perfect storm hits and numerous people are out and they need to bring somebody else in quickly. So this particular authority Dr. Lightbomb is not, it's outside of the annual process that the commission undertakes to approve these officials, right? So we would continue with that process and then on the chance that someone's on vacation or sick or something, then you would be delegated the authority to approve those. Okay. That's correct Commissioner. Okay. Would you like to clarify that in the language? Do you want to add that? I would, that would be helpful. Because it's real. No time approval. Okay, yeah. With an obligation to circle back to the commission. Yeah, I didn't get to my recommendation and part of that is that the director of racing will advise the commissioner or the commission at their next available meeting of any actions taken under this delegation of authority. And there are certain things not to extend this discussion too much, but certainly now I notify Karen and sometimes I might notify the chair if Plain Ridge is canceling a day for heat, say if other commissioners would also like me to send a quick email saying, you know, Plain Ridge is canceling today due to heat. They're going to reschedule on such and such a day under my delegation. You know, I've approved that. I can send that out right away. So you should tell us all the commissioners. Correct. So all commissioners know, you know, really quickly about it. And then again, at the next commission meeting I can bring it up. And as you might remember from last year, near the end of the season, when we were pretty much guaranteed that we wouldn't be having any more cancellations, we did bring Plain Ridge back. There was one day that they did not make up. And so that was brought back to the commission to approve that because the commission approves the number of days as part of the application. So that we did bring that back to the commission near the end of the season to say, you know, would you approve that one day not being made up? Are there questions or concerns? The second director was, if you want to, just in terms of finalizing this, what would you recommend? Yeah, so we'll have, the legal department will draft up the actual memorialization of that for the commission. And it may be you want to take a look at the actual document itself at a further meeting for, you know, a very, very quick approval, but it sounds as if we are, you know, there is a consensus here. So if you want to vote on it, we could then bring the document back. Yeah, I think I did see the other document. There were a few recitals and then this language was separate in a memo. So it would be nice for Dr. Whitebound to have a, you know, a true delegation authority document so that she can look at, Commissioner Bryan, you're nodding your head and there may include some recitals to support why this is an important delegation that the commissioners can sign off on it. And then you've got your document. Yeah, we can take care of that. Yeah, that'd be great. Commissioner, is there anything else that we need? This was a really good exercise and I appreciate the three of you getting together on this. Dr. Whitebound had mentioned it to me a while ago that there were a couple of things that she said. I'm not really sure I even want to do them. So I'm assuming now you're all set, Dr. Whitebound. Yeah, yes, thank you. And to that point, Madam Chair, I have to say that Dr. Whitebound flagged this for Commissioner Hill and I last November. But that said, we were working through some sports wagering issues and we did have multiple meetings on it, but she was always on top of it. It was never her that was on top of it. Oh, no, excellent. This is a good thing to get them to really thank you to all three and to the legal team to talk. Thank you, and we'll just finish it up and it will be a good, clear document going forward. Thanks. Anything else on that, Tricia? So now it's, I'm just looking at the time. I'm going to be turning next to a legislative update, which is going to be relatively short. I believe, do you want to do it before lunch, bringing us up maybe to one o'clock for a lunch break? That makes sense, commissioners. Thank you, Commissioner. That would be fine, yep. I got an immediate thumbs up from Commissioner Skinner. You all set, Commissioner O'Brien? Okay, and Commissioner Rader? All right, thank you. And then we'll turn to Grace Robinson and Patricia Hill. And Grace's role does include being external if there's manager for us. So when we have any kind of legislative contacts, no, our point person is great. That way the legislature and agencies, the Commonwealth know who to reach out to, and then Grace will be figuring out who she works with. And on these particular legislation, she said she's worked with Commissioner Hill and of course legal, but the two of you will take the lead today. Yeah, thank you. And just for starters, I'd like to thank Crystal, who drafted the initial memo for you all back earlier this year that we worked off of for this one. So thanks, Crystal, for getting it started. So I'll just run through quickly each of the pieces of legislation on this memo. There are two in which Commissioner Hill and I thought there might be additional discussion about any actions you all may want to take. But of course, we're happy to discuss any action on any of these items. So starting off with sign-all casting. As always, there's a few bills for extending sign-all casting. There's one that the MGC filed, as well as a bill from representative Chan and representative Mediro respectively extending sign-all casting to 2024 and 2026. So you all may want to provide comment on any of the three bills or further comment if you'd like. Fishers, this has been traditionally just one year at a time, right? So this is the departure, Commissioner Hill is that right? Yeah. I thought it might be important for the commissioners to weigh in with the letter stating that there are some issues that may come up by going year to year and by extending it out two or three years would be helpful not only to the operators, but to the commission as well. So we thought this might be something that we might want to weigh in on. Historically, we have sent letters from all of us on this matter, Commissioner O'Brien. I have a memory and maybe it's not this area where we had a statutory mandate to provide a proposed statute. Is it this arena or was it another arena? Because in addition to the disruption of the only one year at a time, there's also the broader question of simply rewriting 128a and d. So where does that... Because I'm not being outside the scope of today's discussion. This is all things that are pending. Right, but I'm saying if we're talking about chiming in, it would be, I think, helpful to redistribute what that proposal was. I mean, it predated me, I believe, but it was out there. I would think we would want to revisit that proposal. No, I do too. But I'm saying we were sexually obligated to put it out there. It was put out by a prior commission. So it might be worth adding to the agenda, getting that original one out there so that, wholly apart from commenting on this, whether we want to take another deep dive into, because I think one of these in here is sort of the proposal is to scratch the existing 128a and 128d and just redo them. So we might be asked to give comment on that sooner rather than later. So Commissioner O'Brien, it's a good point. There is a mandate that the commission provide and put on the horse racing bill overall and the past it has been filed. I don't believe any action has ever been taken on it. So I don't think it was. Yeah, no. And so it would be my recommendation that we keep that sort of big, that's a big item for us to review at a future date. And I think Commissioner Hill's got it in his scope, so does Grace. And today, this is, so that would be a filing on our part. And yes, it was a filing. I think even legal would think that it needs to be revamped. And so this is today is just on what's in front of it. Yeah, no, I know. But what I'm saying is if we comment, I wouldn't want that letter to be written in a vacuum and not acknowledging that there may be broader issues here that need to be addressed. We can add a sentence to certainly say that without attaching the other bill that was filed. Yeah, I'm not suggesting we attach it right now, I'm saying, but I do think we need to give a nod to the statutory previously submitted version and the fact that there are broader discussions to be had. That would be fine. Commissioner Bryan, what you're referencing might, you might be alluding to this, but is there a reason why we find ourselves in this predicament every single year where the extension is not for beyond a year? I guess I presume, but it would be helpful to understand that as a new commission. And the answers might lie in that legislation, Commissioner Bryan, that you just referenced. I don't think that's not the case. I'm going to keep our conversation moving. I think the legislature has chosen to do it annually. And so this time they're actually suggesting a longer period. Commissioner Hill, am I right? I think you're 100% correct. For whatever reason, the legislature has chosen to do this year after year. And I think there are some now who see that that may not be beneficial to our operators and to the commission. Yeah, to be clear, there are two bills, I guess, that we're discussing now, one extends to 2024 and then one extends through 2028. But I guess, is it as simple as that? It's just that's what the legislature has chosen to propose, that it will extend beyond the year. No substantive reason for that. OK. And in the past, we have basically in the past, we've reminded them of the annual deadline approaching so that they wouldn't let it go. And if you recall, it got signed around maybe 2 in the morning on August 1st of 2022. And look at Dr. Lightman smiling because she was staying up watching it because it does impact jobs. Commissioner Skinner, if it didn't get passed, it would affect the first community. So the more reason why it's puzzling that we can't figure this out by now. But yeah, I'll leave it at that. Thank you. And again, it's just something that the legislature has chosen to take that approach. And we've appreciated them being attentive, but now they're suggesting a longer period. So I think, Commissioner Hill, you're looking for perhaps a similar letter of support for either? Or is there a, what would you recommend? I think three years is fine, but anything is better than one year. Commissioner Rainer, are you in agreement? I totally support it. I appreciate our legislature and general court. But I would like for stability to be seen not only by our team and our staff, but also by the licensees and those whose jobs depend on stability. Yeah, Commissioner Browning, you're all set with the letter being submitted? I mean, except for this. Yeah, so what I'd love to see is the sentiments expressed by Commissioner Hill and Commissioner Maynard, but rolled into that because that would provide the opportunity to have a deeper discussion at the structure of the statutes that ideally would then allow for a more permanent solution to this year over year. I would like there to be a nod to the fact that we think there needs to be, in addition to the lack of disruption in the year to year, that it is right for a conversation that would make a permanent fix to this. Not without getting into details, that's something that we then deal with after, but I would like there to be a nod to that in the letter. Excellent. Commissioner Skinner? I agree. I certainly don't sit in the legislature. I'm sure there's infinite wisdom as to why things have shaped up the way they've shaped up over the years. So I do think if we have an opportunity to comment and influence, we should. OK, Grace. So the next two bills deal with Racing Authority. The first one would create a new state racing board to regulate horse racing in the Commonwealth. And the next bill, which I, sorry, Commissioner O'Brien. So my question on that, and is that something that would still lie within the jurisdiction of the Gaming Commission, or is this carving this out for a separate board? It would be within the Gaming Commission. And the next bill, which I believe is the one you were mentioning, Commissioner O'Brien, revises and grants extensive regulatory authority over force breeding and racing with our race and simulcasting licensees to the Gaming Commission. Then there's just a couple additional bills related to racing. The first bill here amends the Department of Agriculture's powers and duties related to thoroughbred breeding and a number of other thoroughbred regulations. The next two bills would allocate funds from the Race Horse Development Fund to the Community Preservation Fund. And the last one in racing has to do with the town of Plymouth and any conditions it will set up before they lease an application for horse racing within that time. Moving on to sports wagering, there haven't been very many, if any, bills related to sports wagering. At this point, there was one bill from Senator Keenan, which has to do with sports wagering advertising and adding it to Section 2 of Chapter 93A. On to gaming, the first one is actually an amendment in the House version of the budget. And just so everyone is up to speed, the Senate, the budget is with the Senate, their amendments were due on Friday by the end of the day. And there was not a similar amendment proposed in the Senate version of the budget. So this House amendment to the budget would grant ABCC authority to regulate and control distribution of alcohol within a gaming establishment, but not within a gaming area. So Christian and I thought you all may want to see clarification on the language of this bill. I know Loretta or someone from the IB was planning on joining as well. So hopefully they're on. If you all had any questions for them, I know Loretta had a couple of clarifying questions that she was helping to get answered. Before we turn to Loretta, commission, how did you want to add anything first? So the concern, I shouldn't even say concern. I mean, it would be a change of the way we do business in regards to alcohol over at Encore. So I thought it would be appropriate. There's some outstanding questions that the commission, I think, has or will have. So I thought we might reach out to the legislature via our staff for them to get together and go over what those concerns might be. Example, you know, I'm just trying to think like, does this mean all the restaurants within EVH? You know, what would our authority be? Things like that. So I thought it'd be appropriate for maybe our staff to first reach out to the House members and try and figure out exactly what it is they're trying to do here and then come back to us with what they say. And then if we have any concerns, we could then write a letter either in support or not supportive of what's going on. But I think there's some outstanding questions that need to be answered. And I think our staff working with the legislative staff can present those questions on our behalf and then come back to us. Grace, and so Loretta, could add in, I know the clarifications that you've wanted to, Director Lillianos. Sure, so I had some of the questions I have are how the proposed language would impact other statutory provisions in particular. There's a provision of chapter 10, which is part of the Expanded Gaming Act. In particular chapter, the Expanded Gaming Act added section 72A to chapter 10 around the ABCC. And I was interested in knowing how the proposed provision would interact with section 72A. And I was also interested in understanding how the proposed language would interact with two provisions of 23K, in particular chapter 26, I'm sorry, in particular section 26. Yeah, you don't need to go through all the details. But you have, you're seeking clarifications to correct. Yes. Yeah. I think Commissioner Hilly got probably a good approach in terms of having the staff reduce, go through Loretta's list, find out from legal, and then perhaps Karen and Loretta and Todd and Grace can meet with the staff over there, right? Commissioner Hilly, you in agreement with that? I think that's the appropriate process for the, at this point. Yeah, I think so too. Grace, can we get... And I would just add that because it was a House amendment that was adopted, but it has not been put in the Senate. If it's not adopted in the Senate debate of the budget, it then goes to a conference report and then we wait and see if the language is adopted. That would be the process for this language moving forward. And this is in the budget, right though? Correct. This was in the House version of the budget. Got it. Okay. And I believe the Senate is doing their budget starting tomorrow. I'm not mistaken. Yeah. Can we, before we move on, Grace, could we just go up to the sports wagering and Senator Kenan's bill? Commissioner Hill and I had the privilege of meeting with Senator Kenan. And I know that he's written a couple of letters to all of the commissioners outlining some of his concerns. I did extend an invitation to Senator Kenan to come in front of the commission and over his concerns, the issues that he raised in the letters. And now, we could ask him to come again if he'd like to address his bill. But we did extend that invitation. Commissioner Hill was there when we extended that. I do think we also asked our legal team, and A&K particularly, because they're working so close on advertising, to look at every recommendation that Senator Kenan is making so that we can be smart about his concerns and see if our extensive advertising reg needs to be tweaked. And then to see where, if this legislation passed how it would impact our reg. I think they're looking at that. So commissioners, I didn't know, I didn't want to skip over that because I know we all heard from Senator Kenan and we didn't want to be remiss noting that. He's been, you know, communicating with us. Anything else you wanted to add? You all seen his letters. Commissioner Hill, you were at the meeting. They reached out and I know that you stayed in touch with his chief of staff. Anything else you wanted to add on that? No, I think again, the process that we're using for the other bill we would use here is that staff reach out to his staff and make sure that we're getting him the answers that he wants. And again, with the letters that he sent, we could certainly look at our regulations if we need to make any changes. Okay, great. So Karen, if we could add that one too for reaching out and I know that Commissioner Hill's got Chief of Staff's contact information. Thank you. All right. So Loretta, thank you for your details but I do think that you'll be able to have more influence within a group. Commissioner Skinner. Oh, sorry. I didn't think you heard me. I was looking and thinking at the same time. Thank you. Just on the question of correspondence or the issue of correspondence from Senator Keenan, did we get correspondence from him relative to this particular item advertising? We received two correspondence from his office. All right, I'm trying to have one of them but it could just be me. So Grace, I'll follow up with you after this meeting to try to get a hold of that. I can resend you the second letter. Thank you. I'll send you the mail. I'm sure it's me, but thank you. Anything else on the sports weight ring bill and then the gaming first bill? So I think I interrupted you. Data Grace, you were gonna move on to floor 18. Yes. So back to gaming. House Bill 418 would allow veterans organizations to operate up to five slot machines. I believe this bill has been poured in years past. The next bill would allow the commission to issue a category two license allowing for 30 table games and 250 additional slot machines if a licensee is made for a quest and the number of local officials approved it. So can I ask the veterans organization, is this the one we did send a letter over on last year? Or maybe even two years ago. Okay. We could, is it the same language or? It's not the same code. It's not the exact same language, but the concept is the same. Okay. So are we thinking about doing the same or waiting to see what the posture is? I think what everybody is doing right now is if you remember we're actually studying where to place some of these slot machines with Mark. They're deferring until we do that. Exactly, because the veteran organizations I believe are part of that study. Okay, got it. But if this were to proceed, I think Commissioner O'Brien, your point would be if this got ahead of it. We would have some concerns about our ability to regulate, right? Correct, yes. Commissioner Skinner? I agree. I think what Commissioner O'Brien might be suggesting is that the commission resend that letter just as or update it. And I don't know that there's anything to be updated, but at least just resend it so that our position is front and center as they're considering those language. Could we maybe pull it out and take a look at it, Commissioner Hill, and see if it's interesting. I'm wondering if my memory serves me correct and I could be wrong, but this language was put into either the economic development package and it didn't make its way all the way through. I believe that a letter was sent, an overall letter with different concerns. And I think this was part of that letter. It might have been, it might have been a standalone too at one point. That preceded you. Why never is there was a standalone at some point as well. So probably before I got here. I think it was before you got here. Yeah, I think so. But we should read it. I think, you know, we really support the veterans, but I think we also have to be concerned about integrity issues, right? So those, maybe we brush off that letter and Commissioner Skinner, and then revisit it at one of our real upcoming meetings and just revisit it somehow. See if that makes sense. Commissioner Hill, I don't know how I remember the letter if it was drafted and circulated before I was appointed. That's still, but it might have been just from my participation in the meetings as a staff. I know there was something that we sent during the language when it was in the economic development, but we had sent a letter that had other issues as well. And this was part of that if my memory serves me correctly. Okay. But that's okay. I understand and we'll find it. It is of concern to many of the staff as well. And then it's connected with the study. So we couldn't even reference the study for an update, right, in order? Yep. Thank you. Okay. And the final bill under gaming would allow the commission to issue a fourth category, one license in the North Central region of the state. So that would be the acronym for Blemester, Lindenburg and Westminster. Moving into finance budgets and appropriations, the first bill would appropriate 32.5% of the commission's education fund to early education. And the second bill just relates to distribution of revenue from category one licensees within their own municipality. A couple of additional bills, this first bill and act of establishing boxer protection would create a new state athletic commission within the gaming commission to regulate boxing, kickboxing, mixed martial arts and other unarmed combative sports events. The next bill is relative to the gaming commission having at least one commissioner via resident of Western mass. So this would be one of the five missioners. And the final bill here is an amendment in the Senate's version of the budget related to data and security. So it directs the MGC to establish certain data and security requirements. That bill, I did ask NK to take a look at it in conjunction with the red, that I'm not sure if there's intersectionality there or not. But I did say, as we were working with NK on the data security red, it's gonna come from the bus June 1st, on just a note that mentioned in a meeting yesterday. I just don't know if there's any, anything that we could take from that recommendation for legislation or if it's completely separate at that point. Kind of like the point each. Grace, items of note. Yes. A couple of really quick things of note as you all are aware, there are a few bills to establish an online lottery. So we'll be watching rows, of course. And then a couple of things just happening around the country. The Tennessee legislature recently sends a bill to the governor of Tennessee, which would amend the state sports way during tax system. So they would be now vetted taxing the handle at 1.85%. And this is the first state to make this change. And the next exciting one is that the Vermont legislature has sent a bill to legalize online sports betting to the governor. It is on his asking, he's expected to sign it. Can I add something there too? I know that Kentucky passed it. And so I know that we've not had a conversation about that and it's been signed by the governor. And I know that several people on the staff were approached by some of the staffers in Kentucky asking for some help, which I'm sure we're happy to provide. I hope we're happy to provide and I'll say it here. Well, it's interesting because that's your home state and Vermont is my home state. So I don't know if we've been approached by any Vermont as I know that the executive director from New Hampshire, Charlie McIntyre, did testify during the thick of our review of applications for Vermont did ask him to testify. So the New England states are thinking about how to do this. And I like to think that it's in order to make sure that there's a strong legal market offering strong consumer protections and responsible gaming tools so that we can extinguish that illegal market. So here we go. And Kentucky, that makes Kentucky number, I've lost track of where we are in terms of the number of legal states. I will note that Kentucky had a six month deadline to get it up and running. So they did not have to worry about some of the ambiguity that's in other legislation. It was in there six months. They've got to get it up and going. Bet they'll be calling executive director Wells. Just staying nimble, Kentucky. They have my sympathies. Well, hopefully they can, they have authorization to use virtual capacity. Yeah. That's really important. Yeah. All right. Any questions for Grace, for Commissioner Hill? This is really thorough. Thank you so much. Anything, Sharon, do you have any questions for Grace and Commissioner Hill? Nope. Great job. So a few pieces where we'd like you to meet up with staff and come back, Commissioner O'Brien, you're leaving it. Getting ready for lunch. That's what I'm doing. All right. Grace, do you need anything further from us for clarification? Not this time. Yeah, I'm sorry. The one regarding, I just put my document away. Here it is. The bill that pertains to information technology, it's the very last one, the very last bullet before you get to items of note on page five, Grace adds a section directing MGC to establish its approach for the privacy of data. Can we just consult with Katrina just so that she can have the opportunity to weigh in and consider any implications for that if that hasn't already been done? Yes, we, I think, I forget who pinged her, but I asked her and then I think Kathy did. So legal got her the language and she sent some comments which I just forwarded to Grace. So I think I may have pinged you and somebody took care of reaching out to Katrina. So she's on it and then A&K and legal are on it. Make sure that. And let me just remind Commissioner Skinner that this is an amendment to the state Senate. So it has not been debated yet. It will this week. So it may or may not even move forward. Right. But we'll know by Friday, Grace, right? But if there's anything in there that's really a note, Katrina has eyes on it. Yep. Good. And same with our legal team. So, you know, we could weigh in between now and then Commissioner Skinner, if need be. Have you heard that from Katrina? Karen? Oh, Grace has. She sent an email back and that, or she sent an email with some comments and I sent that over to Grace. So she has. Okay, excellent. All right. Great minds, Commissioner Skinner. There we go. All right. Anything else? Lunch. So when we come back, there's one thing that apparently, I mean, Mark does something, a hard stop. So Grace, I think we need to move our legal up. That means, and Karen has been, I guess that Nina has a hard stop at 2.40. I just want Bruce and team to know that we're going to bring legal up when we get back from lunch. So 2.40 is his hard stop. If we do lunch till 1.40, that gives me an hour. Does that work? Illegal, somebody from legal, will that work out? Kate, there you are. There, yes, that should work. Thank you. Okay, great. Commissioners, we convene at 1.40. Does that work for you? Okay. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Excellent work, great discussion. See you at 1.40. Okay. Sorry, a couple minutes later than I expected. Just taking care of something. This is a convening of the Pastures of Planning Commission. I think we've got everybody here. I'm holding it virtually, so I'll do our roll call. Good afternoon, Commissioner O'Brien. Good afternoon, I'm here. Good afternoon, Commissioner Hill. Good afternoon, I'm here. Good afternoon, Commissioner Skinner. Good afternoon. And good afternoon, Commissioner Wiener. Good afternoon. All right. So now we're going to turn jump ahead on our agenda to accommodate our legal team. Number nine, I'll turn to Todd and Caitlyn. Jerry. Good afternoon. Today, today we have three regs for you. They are 205 CMR 222, Capital Investment and Monitoring of Project Construction. This is the third time you have seen this regulation. And we have it marked up for a vote today, if we get to that point. And this would be the first time that this wreck has been voted on. The second wreck is 205 CMR 239, continuing disclosure and reporting obligations of sports wagering licensees. Today, we'll be presenting a proposed amendment to you. And we also have this marked up for a vote. And then finally, we have 205 CMR 256, sports wagering advertising. You've seen this one before. Well, you haven't seen these particular edits before. You've seen this wreck before. These are some amendments that we have proposed for you and again, also marked up for a vote. So with that, I will turn this over to Attorney Macarius from A&K. Thank you and thank you, Madam Chair, for accommodating the schedule change. I appreciate the flexibility. So as Caitlin mentioned, the first item up on the agenda here is 205 CMR 222, Capital Investment and Monitoring of Project Construction. This begins at the background memos on page 180 of your packet and the regulation starts at page 182. This is a rag that, as Caitlin mentioned, you've seen twice before. This is coming for the third time. So I will walk through the changes rather than going through the entire rag. The changes are intended to reflect the feedback from the last meeting. I believe Attorney Combiners did most of the presenting last time. So the first set of changes is at 222.02 on page 183 of your packet. Changes are shown in blue. 222.02 includes new language or additional language that the Commission shall not unreasonably withhold approval of elements of the project plan consistent with information just close to it. This is intended to retain the discretion for the Commission to review the project plan but also provide some additional assurance to the applicant, which I think was one of the comments that you had received last time around about the scope of that review and how it would be carried out. Any questions on that? All right, further down on the same page there are a few additions regarding the affirmative action program that should be included in the project plan. And really the changes here are twofold. One is to give a clear reference to Executive Office of Administration and Finance, A&F's administrative bulletin number 14, which has been kind of the standard that you've been using in other contexts. As a standard here to aim towards and to also provide a possibility for demonstrating that there is good cause to deviate from those goals which is something the applicant could bring to you. So again, I believe this was the result of a conversation last time. Mr. Scherz, on set. Mr. Scherz, thank you. Do we need to, I guess, flesh out what good cause would be in the circumstance that we're waiving the requirements here? This was intentionally written to provide you flexibility to determine that in both directions. There may be circumstances we can't foresee now that provide good cause and there may be circumstances where the applicant believes there's good cause but the commission, after you're questioning the justification given, says actually, no, there is not good cause here. So that's, it was intentionally written to be somewhat broad, Commissioner Scherz. And then the next change is on page 185. It's a small change, but in 2204 at the bottom here, there's the addition of the word approved project plan. Again, to clarify the standard against which you're measuring the applicant's progress under the plan. The final change to discuss is on page 187, which is part of 2207, to gee, there's, by the way, there's a small cross reference before that, but on the prior page, but the final substantive change is this one. There was a discussion last time regarding how to account for the potential for expenditures on simulcasting equipment. As I believe, General Counsel Grossman and Attorney Combiners explained, this is really a policy call for the commission of what to count and what not to count. There's certainly policy reasons to go one way or another. What we are proposing here is to allow counting the cost for simulcasting equipment, provided the costs associated with that equipment can't exceed one half of the costs associated with sports region equipment. So that allows some control to make sure it's not purely a simulcast project, but allows for it to be counted towards the capital, the capital expenditure, the minimum of seven point five, that's required. Madam Chair. Yes, Mr. Chair. Mina, so that was something that I was concerned about or brought up. So thank you for putting that language in and I'm satisfied with that. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm very comfortable with the 50% policy discussion. I think it had been on the cutting board, Commissioner Hill, that I remember correctly, and we wanted it back in here and then it was the idea of how could it outlay? We're okay with 50%. I actually thought that number was a little, oh, I'm sorry, Commissioner Skinner. I thought the number was a little high. I don't know if there's a reasoning behind it, why it would be 50%. Commissioner Skinner, is that what you were gonna say too? Yes. That's fine, that's the question. I wasn't sure if it was me. I don't necessarily think that it's too high. I'm just wondering what the basis is for the recommendation of that. Sure. So keep in mind, it's not 50% of all project costs, it's 50% relative to the sports wagering equipment. So the thought here is that the overall capital improvements which are the building, the facilities, et cetera, those would sort of be an integrated project, even if they do include some sidemalcast space, so that was less of a divisible area. It was really about sports wagering equipment. I think the initial question that came up last time from my recollection listening in was based on whether equipment would count as capital in the first instance. I think there were some comments that it should. And so this is really with respect to the equipment and not knowing, frankly, which equipment might be needed and at which, at what cost, we want to at least make sure it wasn't more than the majority, but obviously that number could be adjusted downward if the commission feels that's appropriate. I think the attempt is to keep simulcasting equipment from car with sports wagering equipment. And if that's the case, why wouldn't we just simply say shall not exceed the costs associated with sports wagering equipment? Like why is it limited to one half? Because I still am under here. So it's not actually on par. So let's say it's one, and I'm making up a number just for ease. The way this reads now, let's say it's one million for sports wagering equipment, the simulcasted equipment would it be more than 500,000 as opposed to one-to-one? No, and my question is why wouldn't it be? What is the justification? What's the policy behind that, I guess? I think the comments that we heard and we were trying to reflect the comments, but again, if the balance is not right, that's really up to the commission was simply that the investment being made here, I think there's some sentiment that the sports wagering investment should be the basis for counting the seven-five. That's what the legislation was passed to encourage a new type of investment. And so as opposed to upgrades or renovation of an existing simulcast facility. So I think there were some concerns about over expenditure of sports wagering, excuse me, of the simulcast equipment relative to sports wagering, but obviously that could be met anywhere by from zero to up to keeping it on a one-to-one ratio. That's helpful and it seems fair. I worried that it came across as arbitrary, but that doesn't sound like it's the case. So thanks for the clarification. Just helpful to know where that, what that thinking is behind the language. Just a reminder and sure everybody remembers this, the discussion is that simulcast is the link for category two to have sports wagering. So we felt that it should have to place some part of the capital investment. So how's that feel to you? And Commissioner Brown and Commissioner Maynard, 50% of the sports wagering and Commissioner Hill, how's that? All right, let's go. All right, Madam Chair, that's it for the changes to 222 in that case. Thank you, Commissioner. I know that Caitlin's looking for us to, instead of voting on it today, we've seen it a few times, it's uncomplicated, are we set to go today? I have a motion. Or do we want to leave? I'm ready to go on this one. Go right ahead. I move that the commission approved a small business impact statement and the draft 205 CMR 222 as included in the commissioners packet and discussed here today. I further move that staff be authorized to take the steps necessary to file the required documentation with the secretary of the Commonwealth by emergency and thereafter to begin the regulation promulgation process. I further move that staff shall be authorized to modify chapter or section numbers or titles to file additional regulation sections as reserved or to make any other administrative changes as necessary to execute the regulation promulgation process. Second. Thank you. Any questions or edits, thoughts? Commissioner O'Brien. Hi. Commissioner Hill. Hi. Mr. Skinner. Hi. Commissioner Maynard. Hi. I vote yes. Five-zero. Excellent. Thank you, Mina. Are you on for the next one? I'm on for all three today. I'm out of time. So the next one is 205 CMR 239, this says on page 191. The legal team took another look at this in the context of category two licensing to ensure that no further updates were needed. We determined no substantive updates were needed as a result and actually in coordination and speaking with the IAB. However, there were two stylistic or typographical things that we just wanted that needed to be picked up. So this is a fairly straightforward explanation. On page 192, you'll see two changes. First, you'll recall that there was a question that we had received at some point whether bi-monthly meant twice a month or every two months. This is language that's in 139. So rather than have the regs say different things, we put in a parenthetical that a bi-monthly means twice per month, which was always the intent and always the way had been read. The other issue was just an incorrect cross-reference to 205 CMR 255, it actually should be 204. It's not clear that the strike I went all the way through there. I'm sorry, it should be 205, not 204. I got it backwards. So it's just correcting that cross-reference in a couple of lines down there. I didn't review this for the question that Karen raised. I honestly forgot to think about that question until right now, Karen. And I had seen the few revisions here. Does this address Karen, your concern about how the commission wants the operators to report publicly versus, no, right now we do quarterly reports with the casinos. Caitlin, does it address that? So I'll let Mina and I have talked about this and sort of the different reports that are in some instances required and in some instances are custom. So I'll let Mina handle that. Thank you. Yeah, so Madam Chair, I believe what you're referring to is a question of incident reporting. No, actually not. I'm not sure if I'm more talking about the same question here. I am curious about incident reporting too. So that definitely, but just our general reports, for instance, today we had two quarterly reports from the casinos on information that we want to hear from them. And they appear at the court. Oh, yes. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I misunderstood. There are sort of two issues to be talked about. No, no, I may have misunderstood there. This does require the quarterly reporting is in accordance with 230905. This particular regulation would include all of that information, including the statement attested by the operator about the status of the last quarter. The language here is no different than it is under 139, but you certainly could have that be done as a public presentation or not, but that was never part of 139 either. But that's that document that we can get, the big document that comes, and then of course we have the public presentation. Todd, is that public presentation in any way a matter of a reg practice or is it just a matter of salt practice that we've adopted it? Yeah, the public presentation is not required by regulation at all. And in fact, a lot of the contents of the presentation are things that have evolved over the years. They're not even discussed, a lot of them in the quarterly report regulation. So there's no requirement that there be any public presentation. It's just been a useful tool the commission has employed over the years to gain an understanding. But this regulation just ensures that both on the gaming and sports wagering side that the operators are testing to a number of things similar to certain SEC attestations in light of the Enron situation. That's where this all came from. That there's someone on record certifying the financial health of the operation. That's really what this is intended for. That's the context. And so I can follow along in this discussion. What, Karen, could you let us know what your question is? I don't remember it. She's just... So my question had been to the chair just in our check-in meetings. You know, as I'm looking at what the commission is going to be doing going forward in public meetings and all that, I was curious as to the commission's thoughts on sports wagering and these reporting requirements as they pertain to the public meetings. Because we're going from three licensees and now we've got an additional 10 licensees with the mobile operators. So that adds a lot of volume. And we have 13 of these quarterly reports every quarter. Does it sort of overshadow some of the other things that are going on in the work of the commission and the public meetings? So I'm trying to figure out what do you want from the sports wagering operators, if anything, in public meetings? Should they be reporting quarterly? Yeah, I can't wait if you can help me. Sorry, and I'll just clarify one thing. So what the regulation, what 139 and what 239 do are require quarterly reports that have a lot of different information and those have to be sent in, no questions there. What the commission wants to hear in a meeting is not a regulation. So the commission can decide whatever it wants to hear with regard to both the casinos and now sports wagering. So kind of slightly, we learned in the process of working on this rag that there's sort of separate issues, one again done by regulation, one by custom. I didn't hear that because I was not prepared to weigh in on that today. Well, I asked the question because she's got all converters now who are trying to wonder and you're gonna be coming up to a quarter and so she's asking the question. It's not in the regulation and some of the information that comes in on these reports does make it to us, right? In the public sphere, but we just happen to have three very compliant casinos who show up and answer our questions and we've known that some questions are harder ones than others. We can have this discussion outside of this regulation but it's important that we know that it's not by regulation but at some point Karen is gonna look to us to find out what we want from our online. Madam Chair, if I may just to keep in mind, although it's not in this regulation which has to do with written reporting to you and what's submitted, keep in mind that 205CMR 212 among probably other regulations does require ongoing duties to cooperate with the commission and with the bureau. And so to the extent that the commission does decide we want public quarterly meetings with the operators and you're getting pushback from the operators, I think it would be worth looking to see if they're complying with their obligations by regulation as well. Well, our three casinos have been one report. One. Commissioner Brown, are you moving in? I can break the ice on this one. I would want reports and it may sound like I'm a broken record but we are early in into this process, we're early into this new category. I feel like more information and more interaction, the better if we find that it's just too taxing, Karen, on the team and too taxing on the commission, we can always adjust what information we want perhaps make them somewhat abbreviated but I kind of want the information. We certainly pass for instance on supplier diversity and we said we would be following up with that and lottery and I feel like we definitely need recording and should we try it? I don't see how we can't do it in public because otherwise we can't share them on ourselves. We can just look at them towards them and put them to bed. So. I realize this is outside the regulation. This is not something we need to decide today but it's food for thought as you're thinking about what you might need, what would make sense and I can work with the whole team on coming up with potential format because we may want some template that they submit every quarter, something like that to make it a little more efficient. Patricia Skinner? Yeah, I'm with Commissioner Maynard on this. I fully expected a more fulsome discussion on what we want to see from our sportsway during mobile operators. I mean, you mentioned it, Chair, we talked about it in the context of the lottery and what we expect relative to diversity hiring and spend and really just essentially ensuring that the commitments made during the application process are kept and so I think that there's no better way to do that than to have the discussion in public and develop the criteria for reporting on a going forward basis. So if it's not incorporated in the red, that's fine but maybe to Karen's point, we have a template and maybe we share that we look at the reports in public and then say, oh, we have questions and just ask particular operators to come in if we have questions that we may want to hear from them for a while just to keep our relationships strong to protect the partnerships and we want to see them. I know that there are 10 that you could probably figure out a way to be pretty efficient. Okay, so we'll put that in the parking lot for Karen and again, I'm sorry that I didn't review the reg last night with that in mind, Mina, but I didn't want to forget Karen's question. So thank you. No, no problem at all to the other point that I did raise since there was a question that had been asked, do we need to add anything into the reg particularly for reporting of a particular incident when it arises? And we did look at that issue. The concern was that the casinos do that under the way they've been governed to date. The online folks have it as part of the account management as well as the play management that we have in the mid-play management of games and other regs. So there was a concern, would there be a gap in it for the category twos? And that's what I was referring to at the outset. We determined there wasn't, although it's not covered as a separate topic in 239. Again, can't point to just one regulation but between the internal controls regulations and their callback to the 100 series, as well as within the sort of specifics of particular reasons for incident reporting. The legal team determined there were sufficient places where an operator would be required to alert the commission of a circumstance of a violation or a threatened violation of the regulations or 239. So we're comfortable there. Is it clear who they alert to though? I mean, I think that's one of the things that you're struggling with. A few came to us, our attention, and a few have gone a different, another one went a different way. So I don't know if that's part of, I know there's a process document underway somewhere. I think that is part of that, Madam Chair, that where that would be addressed. When I say commission in this case, I mean the Massachusetts Game and Commission as a body, but I do think, again, sort of what happens when that gets reported to the body as a matter of where it goes internally, I think it's probably a topic for that kind of internal process documentation. And that will come to us for public consideration. We're waiting for that one. I'm excited to get that one, Caitlin, Todd. Looking forward to getting it. So all right, that's helpful. So right now, at least we don't think that that needs to be in here. And then maybe once we see that process document, we can always return to this immediately. Correct. All right. And that is it for 239. Hey, Caitlin's looking for a vote on this one as well, commissioners, do you have any further questions for Mina or Caitlin? Do I have a motion? Madam Chair, I move that the commission approve the small business impact statement and the draft 205. CMR 239 is included in the commissioners packet and discussed here today. I move that staff be authorized to take the steps necessary to file the required documentation with the secretary of the Commonwealth by emergency. And thereafter to begin the regulation promulgation process. I further move that the staff shall be authorized to modify chapter or section numbers or titles to file additional regulation sections as reserved or to make any other administrative changes as necessary to execute the regulation promulgation process. Second. Okay, any further questions, comments? Mr. O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Mr. Skinner. Aye. And Commissioner Maynard. Aye. Aye, zero, aye. Great. Madam Chair, if it's okay, I'd like to... Move on to advertising. Yeah, to advertising. So there are two policy questions that we wanted to bring back to you. One, I don't believe we've talked about at least in a while, certainly as a separate one-in-one we talked about last time I was before you. The first one is on page 202 of your package. It's in 250.6013. This is a question, this is a just what we wanted to make sure that the commission's policy goal aligns clearly with the language. And the question has to do with exactly what kind of revenue sharing is prohibited or not. So we're back to revenue sharing with the affiliate marketers. The language that you had before you, if you recall, we were in a process when we wrote this language, you had just finished revising 234 with the sort of different levels of licensing and followed in many ways and model that New Jersey allows revenue sharing but has different levels of licensure depending on the type of app. The question that we got was a fairly narrow one from an operator, which was the language had read that no sports-waging operator may enter into an agreement with a third party to conduct advertising broadly out going into all of it in exchange for a percentage of net sports-waging revenue earned from users that the third party directs or causes to be directed to the operator. The narrow question we got was whether the use of the word net sports-waging revenue meant that an operator would be prohibited from only from sharing losses essentially versus total amount wager. In other words, just to use the two examples, could an operator enter into an agreement with a third party marketing affiliate where they pay 10%, let's say I'm speaking up a number, 10% of all amount wagered by an individual or not. And if the answer is that the commission would rather, would prefer not to allow revenue sharing based on amount wagered, it would still allow the pay per click, it would still allow the pay per sign up, for instance, a number of new accounts entered, et cetera, but does not want to allow based on the amount wagered, it would make sense to remove the word net to avoid any confusion there. However, if the only thing you're trying to restrict is that you could actually in that circumstance allow someone to pay 10% of amount wager just not 10% of amount lost to avoid an incentive, which I think there was general agreement about that there shouldn't be an incentive to draw people to lose money or to losing bets, you shouldn't be paid in exchange for that. Then you would leave the word net and if you're trying to make a distinction between the two. We did circle back with the New Jersey regulators to try to understand how they have addressed this issue. They noted that they use the language, however, the issue has never really been one that they've had to address directly because they allow both kinds of betting, it's just a matter of who's licensed and but they've never really had to come to address this issue at that fine of a point, money wagered versus money lost. When you said they allow both kinds of betting, do you mean both kinds of revenue? Both kind of revenue sharing, my apologies, yes. And a reminder, the New Jersey model, and we did adopt it to begin with, requires a heightened licensure. Correct. We had I think five, I believe, who did apply for that heightened licensure and they paid the fee. Now, have they been engaged in any kind of revenue sharing with the net in place, Karen? Do you know? I don't know if Tara is on, hold on, can you just? I did ask Karen for an update on the return of that $10,000 licensing fee because they couldn't participate in revenue sharing anymore and there seemed to be some ambiguity around the return of that. Commissioner, was there intent for it to ban revenue sharing altogether or ban revenue sharing on losses? Commissioner O'Brien, do you remember your intent? We'll go through just one at a time. Yes, I have a, before I even get there, I thought I understood what was in place, but Mina, some of the examples that you're giving seem to imply that the language we have now allows for pay-per-click revenue share agreements because I did not want that and I didn't know that we had agreed for pay-per-click. Pay-per-click isn't revenue sharing. That's different. That we did allow for pay-per-click. So that's what the memo has written is talking about permitting rev share based on pay-per-sign-up or pay-per-click and that's what's got me confused. How is there a rev share and a pay-per-click? That's right, that's confusing. I apologize for that confusion. It's payment of money. It's not necessarily revenue sharing. It's that you are allowing a payment based on that. So that was confusing in the memo. Yeah. Okay. So we're right now, I think the Attorney General's Office agreed that with the pay-per-click and cost per acquisition. Correct. And there was a lot of discussion around revenue sharing that looks like the net was a holdover from the New Jersey model. The New Jersey model on revenue sharing was agreed upon. I'm not sure if it was unanimous, can't remember that, but it was coupled with a heightened license. Correct. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and to be fair, the operator that asked just wanted to clarify whether all revenue sharing was out or if the commission meant to allow some kind of revenue sharing. My recollection is it was all out, but that despite the question, so I just want to make sure before we move on. I really appreciate the operator asking a question. That's a good question to ask. Commissioner Byrne, do you remember how you felt? My intent was to not allow rev share at all. I don't know that I was, that everybody felt that way, but that was- No, I'm gonna go one by one. I'm just gonna go one by one. Commissioner Skinner, do you have a recollection of what you would have wanted? Generally, these meetings are always hard because it's so much time and preparation goes into the actual meeting that it's hard to go back and review what we decided and what we might have said in prior meetings, but based on my recollection, and Commissioner O'Brien was certainly more vocal about this than I was, but the specific piece relative to allowing revenue share based on the amount wagered, that we did, it was our intent not to allow that particular form of revenue share because we were concerned about the operators, or excuse me, not the operators, the marketing affiliates potentially steering patrons to more riskier vets. So with respect to that component of revenue share, I think my recollection is that we did not want to include losses, to include an opportunity for marketing affiliates to benefit from patron losses. So, this is very confusing. The memo itself is confusing. And I think that we do need to come up with the definition of what we intended or kind of interpret our own regulation. So the way I understood our prior discussion, we would go with, I think the latter language and that is removing the net. I'm assuming we took, and let's put you off. I'm sorry, Commissioner Skinner, but just to move along, I'm assuming that we don't have, we took out the sort of height and licensure piece elsewhere in the rag because the intent was to not have sports, revenue sharing altogether. Commissioner Maynard, Commissioner Hill, do you remember your thinking? I know that I had a more, another concern about getting rid of revenue sharing, but that was just a point. I just saw Mina was trying to jump in. I was just going to clarify that on the licensure piece, Madam Chair, we wanted to get through this part of the meeting. It is essentially, I believe, Caitlin correct me if I'm wrong, that is something that needs to come back under 205, CMR 234. But if it's not allowed, it's essentially a kind of NULSAT certification halfway at the moment. Commissioner Maynard, thank you. Madam Chair, the Attorney General's Office, Wade, and this pretty publicly, General Moore did show up and had some observations as well as in letters. I believe that where we are right now, and I would support not allowing revenue share. I am open to be convinced otherwise there's a national conversation going on about this. That's kind of where I left it, is that we had kind of struck a deal to allow some affiliate marketing, but to restrict some affiliate marketing. Commissioner Hill? That's my memory as well. And Commissioner Skinner, I think I couldn't have said it any better. That was my recollection as well. So, and that's my recollection. I think I was quite concerned about the reason why I remember that there's balance as to wanting to allow the third party affiliates to have some means of doing their business because there was an RG component. I also was concerned about the fact that we were maybe eliminating share revenue possibilities because we learned that they could impact small businesses, minority-owned businesses. And I was concerned about that. But I think at the end of the day, there was a consensus among all of us that we would go with the Attorney General's recommendation and not have any revenue sharing. But again, I think, Commissioner Manage point, we did say about let's see what we learn and how it may impact those businesses. Is that bringing about to the Commissioner Skinner? I think you know, we had had some concerns about how it would impact the MBAs and the smaller businesses. Because, Mr. I forget the name of the organization that submitted the letter on this. So we had some data on it, right? So I don't remember us having this new discussion about profit versus losses and somehow allowing any revenue share. So I'm in agreement with the net coming out. Yeah, and the only thing that's a little fuzzy for me is I know we talked a great deal about the New Jersey model and some of the exceptions that they allowed. And I thought we were somewhat in alignment with New Jersey. I just, I can't speak to it definitively because I haven't had the opportunity to go back to review. I think we were when we adopted our second try. Our first try, we learned that from our round table that it was too extreme. Then we went to the New Jersey model that allows for both types of third-party affiliate pay. And then with the heightened licensure on rev share. And then we got some, you know, very constructive input from the general office. And on our third time, I believe that's where we landed. And so the net I think might, then we just didn't understand it or it was inadvertently included. I think Madam Chair, in fairness to the commission, I think part of the reason that the, this particular operator was asking the question is because it could be interpreted either way as net of what is it? Net of sort of other expenses or net of losses. But I think the fact that it raised the question is what led us to recommend that if your recollection, which is consistent with mine is what you meant to do was all revenue sharing that it may just be clearer to take the word net out since it's no longer serving the purpose of matching up with the heightened licensure requirement in 234. Since that will change as well. So if you're good, we'll keep out in that. But can we, if you don't mind me now for two seconds while we have Kara, Kara does that, does this discussion help you with respect to the licensing fee that folks pay? Sure. And I think, you know, when we have had some internal discussions, I think part of what we wanted to wait for just in case, you know, there was further discussion on a heightened level of licensure that, you know, certain companies had submitted applications for. We then said, all right, we're no longer allowing revenue share. They still want to take advantage of being a marketing affiliate in Massachusetts. So essentially they, and they understand that we are no longer allowing revenue share after the April 14th deadline. We essentially are treating them as registrants as opposed to the full level of licensure. So we stand ready to, you know, do as the commission, you know, wants and we just didn't want to start refunding and sending applications for that heightened level back before this discussion essentially happened. So that we're not just, you know, making them read submit payment, that sort of thing. So my understanding, Madam Chair, is that the commission has all said that there is no rev share, that we don't require the heightened level of licensure. So we can go ahead and refund that money to those applicants. Is that right? That was my understanding. Yeah, I raised it a little bit and you jumped right in and said, yes, there's an equity issue, you know, take care of it. So I did let people know that they had been refunded. I guess I just, there was a little bit of a miscommunication. So yes, I would think commissioners that, you know, those that registered as vendors, but that heightened was so that they could participate in our second version of this reg where revenue share was allowed. Maybe verse course, five of them did that. The others were always going to be registered. There's going to be other third party affiliates who are going to just be the registrants. So I would like to make those five or six or however many they are held out because I don't think we're giving them the opportunity to at this point in time engage in that rev share. Commissioners, are you in agreement with that? Should go ahead and do that now? I thought we had agreed to that last time. We're perfectly happy. We're funding the money. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, so let's make them home and we'll get rid of that. Thank you. That helps. Thanks, Kara. Thank you, Kara. Okay. All right, and thank you everyone. So 250605 is the other issue for discussion for today. If I may turn to that, that's on page 218 of the packet. 218. Yeah. So in our last discussion, we had a conversation about removing the word branding from 250605 one, which was at the, would have the effect of making basic branding, such as logos and trademarks not require a 21 plus disclosure or statement next to it. However, there would still be other prohibitions, of course, on marketing towards minors or groups where there's 25% or more at the audience might be folks under 21, et cetera. So those would all stay in there, but it wouldn't require for the sake of just branding, not all advertising the 21 plus disclaimer there. There was a discussion during the meeting and an ask that we try to see if there is language to the extent the commission was interested in having a policy that all branding or at least some subset of branding it also included 21 plus disclaimer. And where we understood that conversation to leave off for the language you wanted to see, I think there was a decision reached one way or another on it, but just the language you wanted to see was there was not a concern about branding or logos or trademarks on materials such as business cards or letterhead that would be distributed that way. There was also not a concern about paraphernalia that might be that someone would have to choose to put on a hat or a T-shirt, but there was at least some question asked about whether a 21 plus disclaimer was appropriate on a fixed location that might be visible by individuals under 21 in circumstances where less than 25% of the audience is under 21. Cause just to be clear, if more than 25% of the audience is over 21 that advertising should, you know it would be covered by other provisions of your rules. So this is the language, if you were, if you wanted to go in that direction that's what the language would look like is we're not necessarily here to recommend it but just for consideration. I don't remember us asking for this kind of language. I know there's a lot of discussion but maybe not a lot of agreement commissioners. Commissioner Ryan go right ahead. Yeah, no, so I had asked for this and I thought there was agreement to try to come up with it to see what it was like because we didn't want to include business cards and T-shirts and baseball caps. But there was the idea that if you're going to have the sign at Fenway that still should have some, that's basically an advertisement. And should we say, you know what it should say 21 plus on it. And so this to me gets you there where you've got sort of a fixed static essentially billboard advertising that either is intended to be or will be displayed to people under the age of 21. And so I like this language because it doesn't mean they have to be doing this on T-shirts and hats and letterhead and coaster that all of that stuff is out of this. This is the language that I was hoping to see that would get that across and have the 21 plus have to be on those fixed signs. So maybe I joined commissioner O'Brien on this conversation. I think our scalpel sizes were somewhat different but I think we were getting towards the same place. I'll give an example on staring out at Catholic Memorial High School right now and over top of it is they have two billboards, right? That sit there. Something that's there, right there at the high school. I would, if someone made a decision to market there, first of all, I wouldn't want marketing there at all, right? It would be covered under the other but let's say it's off the campus. You probably should, right? Include something. That's a bad example but I'm trying to draw bright lines here. If it's somewhere, even on the billboard part commissioner O'Brien, if it's somewhere where 76% of the audience is not under 21, I would probably say that's okay to have it. That's just me, the logo standing along. But I'm happy with this as it was going to be. Somebody just mentioned the 25%, I think Mina said that but I don't think it was you. Yeah, if I could, Madam Chair, just to clarify that because I think just to make sure I'm understanding commissioner Maynard's feedback correctly if the audience was more than 25%, it would be covered under 256.05. I'm just looking at the right. Oh, four, four, yes, yes, it'd be. Well, the branding piece because branding is still covered in four. So if it's over 25%, you would already be covered. I would also note that if it's advertising and the way we've been distinguishing that as a term is really and this is why the logo or trademark issue came up is advertising with a call to action of some sort. It would also require, which most billboards have are not just logo or trademarks, it would still require the 21 plus regardless of the possible audience. This addition in yellow here would really would require a logo and to use the most obvious example but there are others is the logo on the green monster. I think was the one we talked about quite a bit or above the green monster or a logo standing alone on center ice, the TD Garden, where it's not, there is not necessarily more than 25% of the audience and expected to be under 21. Adding this language would require a 21 plus disclaimer just to be clear on what that would look like. So I just want to be clear on what this would do. It's a commission's choice whether to require that but we want it to be clear about what it would do. And so that's where I think Commissioner O'Brien kicked off and I was interested in seeing what you came up with here and that's why I mentioned the scalpel size conversation. If it's Disney on ice, right? Shouldn't be there, right? If it happened to be there, let's say it was most of the parents at Disney on ice, they were all over 21. Let's say 76%. I still think it should be there, right? The 21 plus Disney on ice, right? I would be more likely to break from Commissioner O'Brien and this is just my perspective if it was the Bruins, right? And so I think that's where I am. I think I'm pretty close to where Commissioner O'Brien is but I would allow a standalone, I'll give an example. Wednesday night at TD Garden on the parquet, a standalone logo without a 21 plus. I would probably allow that. There's gonna be somebody under 21 in the audience, there, Commissioner Ringer. And right now the way it's written is that it would require that language. That it doesn't require the responsible gaming language but right now on a billboard it requires the responsible gaming language plus this language that you have to be 21 and over. All of our billboards require that now? Correct, yeah. Cause that would be advertising, not just branding. I guess I haven't really noticed the 21 and over so much on the billboards. I've noticed that our key language, I'll look for it now. Okay, Commissioner Skinner, Commissioner Hill. I have a question. The language, the new language added, the game that Commissioner Maynard referenced, you know, at TD Garden, that like it's likely to be viewed by persons under 21 of age. And so I'm gonna use the example, fanatics. You know, fanatics has an advertisement that just says fanatic, fanatic. Not a branding logo or branding, a logo, a branding logo that just says fanatics. No fanatic sports book, you know, no sponsorship of an athlete in terms of placing a wager. Does this language require the, our messaging, our responsible gaming messaging? No, it requires to say that it's under, that you'd have to be 21 years old to that. Wager. And see, I think, you know, we're talking about sample sizes. I think that goes, for me, as an individual commissioner, I think that goes too far. I don't think that that is the intent or my intent of what, you know, what we need to do as a responsible body. I think that goes too far. And I think it's overbroad where there's not a mention of sports betting. There's not an encouragement to bet. It is just, you know, a fanatics brand. I just, I did that. So that's where I stand. I don't think that I'm not in support of this language if it captures that scenario. Thank you, commissioner Skinner. Commissioner Hill. So let's, let's keep going down that path so that I'm clear, Mina. So when I see right now fanatics, I think of sport, I think of the sporting wear. I don't think of game gaming. So under this language, am I hearing correctly that they would have to put in language when it's to do with clothing? Because it just says fanatics. Commissioner Hill, fanatics presents kind of a unique situation because they do both things. But yes, to the extent that they use the same logo, which I believe they do is my recollection, the same logo and trademark for their sports wear brand as their sports betting brand, adding this language would mean that they have to include a 21 plus on that logo as would all the other operators. So is there language that can be added that would, that would not have the fanatic clothing line have to put this language? An exemption, if you will, of some sort. Barstools, for instance, barstools, it's more than the clothing line and it's more than sports betting. I mean, they don't have clothing line, it's more than sports betting. But they have radio, they have podcasts, things like that. I mean, I guess I'm just giving that as an alternative. I'm online with commissioner Skinner. I think that we are really doing a very, very good job on advertising and we are out there setting the right messaging for the nation to follow. We've got other states that are following us and we've got ideas from them. This is the logos, it's not a call to action. If we put in there, but you can't bet, it's almost like helping them to think about betting. You know, I just, there's no call to action. I just, you know, I'm thinking, if Bentley when I saw MGM Casino Resort for years and we never had this discussion, we see the lottery logo everywhere, but frankly, we have the Masked Gaming Commission logo. And we're not calling to action anything. The lottery uses its emblem. I just think, are we asking too much if we are going to start? I also don't know, why are we stopping with, you know, you have to be 21 years old, why aren't we including our G language, which I suspect Commissioner O'Brien, you'd like that too. But again, they are not advertising. It's just- No, but it's branding and branding is part of marketing and advertising and actually for the very example that Commissioner Skinner gave is why I like this language because they are actually trying to do just that. They're trying to get you to have a brand loyalty to fanatics and have that come into your lexicon prior to 21 and then it's 21 and to me, the lines get blurred and that's a choice that they're making to continue to use this where some of it's 21 and some of it is not. I don't have a problem at all saying that you have to distinguish if this is a gaming to say 21 plus. I wouldn't be upset at all if it went into other industries and they did the same thing. But I'm not finished now, I'm not trying to- Brian, I'm so sorry. That is the exact reason I was interested in hearing the language and having it out there. We all have differences of opinion. It's the very reason and the very rationale of the fact that it morphs from under to over with no clear delineation that troubles me and why I like the language. I realize I'm the only one but I did want to get that out on the record that that's exactly the part of the branding that bothers me and concerns me. Madam Chair. Yeah, and just to be clear, I guess, Commissioner O'Brien, you worked with Mina to get this language in and I could have done the same and worked on other- I didn't work with Mina to get any language in, Madam Chair. We talked about this at the last meeting and I had everything like everybody else. So this is what we all talked about seeing whether they could come up with language from other states and this is what they came back with. Okay, thank you. Commissioner Hill, are you gonna go in? So I'm gonna keep asking for examples because in concept, I like the language but in putting it in reality, I think we're gonna have some issues possibly. So Mina, so when I'm sitting at the Boston Gardens and during the game in the upper rafters, you will see advertisements going in a circle very quickly. You'll see a Drafting, you'll see a Fando, you'll see a Bank of America, you'll see a pizza shop. Would that under this language, they would have to somehow put- I would think yes. I would clarify real quick, please. Commissioner Hill, you used the term advertisement and I wanna make sure we're, because I think on advertisement, we are more aligned. I think this is about logo. So when you see just the logo of Drafting, let's say. Yes, thank you for the clarification. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Mina? Correct, yeah, I think you would. If you have, anytime you're using the logo or branding in a display like that, where that's what this language would do. Again, more presenting it because at the last meeting, we understood that there was a request to see what it might look like. We thought about other ways to cut this more finely and did look to be candid. We have not seen other states do this kind of cutting. So this would be something that the commission would be taking on, cutting at this finely. And we did, I think I promised at the last meeting to also go back and to review comments from the operators. There was a lot of requests to remove the word branding from 250605, but no suggestion about putting it in other places. I would reiterate that even if you remove it, if you remove, you don't include the yellow language and you remove the word branding, which would also be affected by this. You still do have limitations. And I think just to go back to an example, I think I can't remember if it was you, Commissioner Hillard, Commissioner Maynard used. If you have a Disney on Ice event at the garden, let's say there's a fixed static physical side, not an electronic side. You certainly couldn't use electronic sides. You were using maybe during the Celtics game, but I think the way the reg is written, you also would be required to cover up in some ways outside and arenas do that in other contexts when necessary. So that would be how that plays out for that issue. But this would require 21 plus. If you added this, it would require 21 plus in those contexts. And again, Commissioner Maynard, you had imagined that it would be likely to be viewed by persons under 21 years of age, regardless of the majority, just if they're 21. So that would mean, for instance, Commissioner Maynard, we just never, and this may be why it was so important to start the discussion about advertising back, you know, Commissioner Hillard, we talked about it, you know, that hadn't been really something that the commission had looked at extensively until we started talking about sports-patring together when we were marching in and felt again. But, you know, to the extent that the casinos are advertising just their license, their logo, to the extent the lottery is, you know. We don't have jurisdiction over the lottery, but I would not be opposed to having the conversation about the CAT-1, CAT-2 licensees either. But I realized that I'm in the minority on that. I don't know, maybe you're right. Can I ask a Commissioner Hillard type question to Mia? So I just heard you. And so this is where I think, like, I really, Commissioner O'Brien, I think I'm closer to you than, I'm pretty close to you on this, right? Because when I just heard Mia say, well, you know, the Disney on Ice Fix sign could potentially stay up or could potentially be covered, depending on what we do with this, I would say 100 times out of 100, it's gotta be covered, right? And if we're not doing that, that's what I would want to do. Yeah, Commissioner Maynard, I'm sorry if I misspoke or if you misheard me on that, because what I'm saying is, regardless of whether this language is in or out, it would have to be covered up under other sections, because in those circumstances, I mean, maybe someone could try to get queued and say, well, I counted and more of the parents were there, but that's clearly an event aimed at folks under 21. And it is also clearly an event where a reasonable person would expect 25% or more of the audience to be under 21. So I would say under your existing regs, it absolutely would have to be covered up. And I'm sitting here thinking of things that aren't that bright line too, right? Things that are a little more in the middle, I would want to be more protective than less, right? Because I'm sitting here thinking to myself, and the chair made a really good argument earlier about logos, but I also believe that logos are a form of advertisement in their own way. And you are creating brand loyalty and you're getting eyes on it. And so I don't have a great example in my head, but I do think we need additional language. I think some additional language has to be here because I would want to make sure that on those close to 50-50 situations that the operator err on the side of either having the 21 plus language or removing it, removing the sign altogether. Like that would be my preference. It's probably language that's not in front of us right now. It's language that would have to come from somewhere, right? But I don't think I'm at the spot where I would allow unfettered logos, even if the ratio of eyes on it was different. I think I wouldn't do that. So Barstool does have a clothing line too. I just wanted to note that. So I'm sorry to keep asking questions like this, but this one is specifically to my colleague, Commissioner O'Brien, Madam Chair. You're okay with that. So I've looked up a couple of scenarios. I'm going to allow other commissioners to weigh in now. So I'm just going to. Of course. So if you look at the Encore emblem at the football stadium at Gillette Stadium, it's embedded into the wall. And I'm not sure how we would even be able to implement this language into that. I'm looking at it right now. It's like literally embedded into the area where the suites are. And I'm not sure. And to the right of it, I just don't know where you could possibly do what you want to do. And again, the concept I like. And then I'm looking, of course, we talked last meeting about the green monster. And if I'm not mistaken, that is MGM resorts. And then if you're looking at that, would you then have underneath that, no betting under 21? Commissioner Hill, I think now you may be looking at an older picture. I think it's about MGM now, instead of the MGM resort. So I'll sports offer at Benway. So I'm just trying to look at how we would implement this in certain scenarios. Commissioner Hill. I'm going to play the part of commissioner Maynard in this moment. I'm going to be the person who is optimistic because I will say that I can imagine that if this were required, they would be able to figure out a way to add a 21 plus to the signage and or cover it up. Somebody's not paying the licensing fee. That sign probably come down pretty darn fast. So I'm not exact. I don't think that the challenges to doing it are a reason to not do it if it's the appropriate thing to do. There could be challenges just to clean the beginning while they get used to it. But this is something that does trouble me because I'm of the mind of commissioner Maynard where there is advertising in branding. There is marketing in branding. And to draw the bright line to me is troublesome because I feel like particularly as written these are sort of fixed captive audience displays. So when you have fixed captive audience displays to me if children are walking in there I don't think it's so beyond the pale to say it should be 21 plus marked on that branding. Can I do a follow up? How about MGM Music Hall? Yeah, but now you're being specific as opposed to fanatics with no clarity, bar stool with no clarity. And that's what we're talking about. If you're then saying come to a concert that's very different inherently in the branding than simply an image that could go in any direction. And in my view, if the one of the directions it could go is gaming, 21 plus should be on it. You want to make clear I'm not talking about that be more clear with your branding. Well, if you're joining us I wish it's gonna go ahead. So we're talking about a venue. The majority of this discussion has been about a venue. So you have a kid, you know, you're example commissioner Brian and have a kid walking in there. What if, you know, I'm wearing a hat. That's his fanatics or a t-shirt. These are fixed static advertisements. These are fixed static advertisements. I'm not talking about a choice that an adult puts something on either a hat or a t-shirt or a sweatshirt or on a mug, that sort of thing. I'm talking about static. I can't get away from it as a kid. It's staring me in the face. And to go to that event, which I should otherwise be allowed to go to, I'm gonna be facing that branding in my head, face. I'm troubled by that. Yep. And I understand your position commissioner or Brian, but the language as written would encompass that. It would not. No, it's not. It's fixed, fixed. I didn't mean to have to jump off. That was the whole conversation is how do you write it? So it's clear not to be encompassing things like t-shirts, hats, sweatshirts, business cards, letterhead, that sort of thing. Okay. That was a request that you made. I'm still taking branding out in the beginning of 250, 605, subsection one. And if it's not called for action, that we allow logo to stand. I understand that logos are everywhere. And while you're sitting at Fenway and sitting at Disney on Ice, there's beers, there's all kinds of products that are advertised that a lot of parents don't want their children to engage in, whether they're legal or not. And that's where I say, no, they're businesses, the legalized business and industry in Massachusetts, whether we're the regulators. We didn't weigh in on that. Yes, we are. We're the regulators. We didn't weigh in on the industry, but it is a legal industry in Massachusetts. 21 plus. Yes. Right. Right. I get that three of you do not do that. I have said that, I have to go show ID to get the beer. I've either got to drink it somewhere else, show ID in front of the kid when they're coming around at Fenway to get the beer. There is no such demarcation if I'm staring at a branding on a wall. I mean, I think I've said my piece. I think we should be out front doing this type of thing and looking at a way to do it where if you are in an event like that with a fixed branding and they are not making it clear that it is their entertainment branch or their resort branch for hotels, I think it should be airing in the side of caution in saying 21 plus, so kids understand that. Okay. But we have a lot on our agenda today. So it seems to me that you're... I was just gonna allow the other speaker, Commissioner Skinner. Oh, well, so I was just gonna say, obviously there's quite a lot of discussion that has been had during this meeting. I, for one, would like the benefit. I'd like to sit with this language. Commissioner O'Brien, you mentioned the briefing around this language earlier. I, for one, did not have such a briefing. So it would be helpful to really kind of just assess this a little bit more. And I would ask for the opportunity to do that. I don't know where the other commissioners are, but I'm not able to vote on this language today because I think there's still a lot that needs to be worked out. I think it can be fine to just a little bit to kind of come to a happy medium, maybe not so happy, but to come to some kind of compromise. I wasn't briefed on this language either. So that's why I know Commissioner O'Brien needs, I thought that maybe you and Commissioner Maynard spoke with Mina because I wasn't briefed on it either. Commissioner Hill, I don't know if you had a briefing. Can I clarify the process, Madam Chair? Because I think we're, I don't wanna make too much of it. There was no briefing, so to speak. There was a request at the last here, at the last meeting for us to come up with language. At most, Commissioner O'Brien and I had just, I wanted to understand, since she had made the suggestion last meeting, what the ask was, and that was it. There was no briefing on this particular language or any other language. So there's not much more to say about this, to be honest. I guess I would just also like to interject that there is a, you have a waiver to the 25th, I believe, on this particular provision with respect to branding. We have, I can assure you, try to cut this as finely as possible. It is very hard to describe branding on different media in other ways. So I think that there's, if the commission would like us to come back with more language, we can certainly try, but we would appreciate some guidance on what you want in or out if it's not this, because at the moment, again, just to reiterate, under 21, 25% or more under 21, not allowed. And if it's, you know, and that's the sort of the Disney on Ice example, if it's aimed at someone under 21, not allowed. On a college or high school campus, not allowed. And this is all logo. I'm just talking about logo or trademark. And if it is advertising or other promotional materials beyond that, it needs to have the 21 plus material. So I think what was left was just this slice of potential exposure to a logo or trademark. So I think we just need, from our perspective, if we want to bring back language, we might, we could try again, but that's, we just would need some guidance on where to draw the line, because it's a very, very fine line. So the fine line is this, if it's fixed anywhere where a 21 year old, under 21 year old person could see it, it needs to include language that you have to be 21 to bet in a sports wager. That's what it is. If it's fixed anywhere where somebody under 21 would be that language would have to be there. So in other words, fixed signage anywhere, where there's a just on low. That's the intent of what this says. Yeah, that's right. And so I just want to see if there's a line or a logo. There's going to be a risk of somebody under 21 seeing. So in other words, no, if you're buying branding space at Gillette or, you know, just say the three big venues, Fenway or TD Garden, it's fixed, not electronic. They would have to as of the 20th, how about that all change? And I think I mentioned that the last time too, they would have to go and paint or whatever they do and change that and then you get there rather than just seeing that MGM, you're going to see, you know, sports betting or if you see fanatics, I think that fanatics might have something that's fixed or if you see draft kings, they're going to have to change it unless it's electronic. They'll have to paint it on or whatever they do. This will be as a result of this. Is that a fair summary? I mean, just from a, yes, it's a fair summary of what this would do. Madam Chair, yes. So I have one more question and I apologize. I just want to be clear and I'm not so sure that it's clear even with that nice explanation you just gave. Sorry. So if I'm looking at the green monster and it says MGM resorts, now we know you can do sports betting there, but they're proposing to just put a logo for the resort. Does this kick in if that language is adopted? I believe not. And I believe that's just a virtue of even within the resort. And if I'm wrong about this, I'm sure that lots of people can correct me that bed MGM like wind bed, even for the category one have branded the sports betting portion separately. So I think that's one way around that. But so yes, it would create that dichotomy where advertising just a casino might be allowed, but not it's affiliated sports book. And of course we don't have any kind of the requirement on the course racism for that either. We're 18, so we haven't had that requirement. But you can bet at MGM resorts, you can bet at Encore even though it's not being presented that way. So to be clear, Mina, you just said, no, they would not have to put this language if it's the resort that's being portioned. Is that accurate? Under this reg. Correct, Commissioner Hale. And keep in mind, again, this is branding or this is the branding piece. So obviously no one can bet even online just because that's there, but that's the branding for DraftKings to use a more obvious one, which is just above the monster. That's branding for a sports book or an online sports book. And I would like to clarify, I think somebody might have talked on me when Commissioner O'Brien, you mentioned you have to show an ID to buy a Sam Adams beer at Bedway. Remember, you can't just bet unless you are a page. And I just wanna make sure that everybody who might be listening, we are very, very strong in terms of our KYC requirements, in terms of under 21, you cannot bet. You have a chair. Yes, Commissioner Skinner. I would like to try my hand at offering some guidance, the guidance that Mina requested in terms of moving forward. I think we've gotta get this right because I thought I heard that Massachusetts would be the first jurisdiction to impose this kind of requirement on operators. I wonder if we could understand what the branding rules are in other industries. I think, Madam Chair, you mentioned alcohol. What are the rules around branding and that? So, Commissioner Skinner, sorry to jump in. No, no, I just want you to know I'm not expecting an answer to that now. I can give you some of an answer, just a little bit anecdotally. I can't quote you chapter and verse, but to use the example we've been talking about, Fenway Park, I was there last night, and obviously it was this in mind. The Green Monster starts off left to right, a Jim Beam sign, no 21 plus, a Red Sox Foundation sign, Bet MGM sign, and then another charity and IBW local. The Sam Adams actually has a large neon sign above center field and used to be a Budweiser sign years ago. So I think the short answer is I am not aware of any restriction on alcohol branding from a regulatory standpoint. There are certainly entities, I believe that T had contemplated this. I don't know if it's still in place in the past about whether or not to allow branding. That was an issue I know that came up several years ago. And so certainly venues choose to do that. With respect to tobacco, it's an area that our firm knows well on this. There are a little bit more rigorous requirements as result in part of settlements with the tobacco companies from state attorney general's offices about where advertising can go. So that's one reason you see less tobacco advertising and there's pretty rigorous point of sale advertising requirements at places where tobacco is sold. But in short, at least with respect to alcohol and certainly with respect to casinos in Massachusetts, there is not a similar requirement. And so with that, I'd be concerned about any constitutional implications. I'd also want to hear from the operator in terms of for something like this. And if I remember correctly, this is something that we discussed or it was raised. Anyway, the last time we talked about this language being revised to address the specific matter that we're discussing today. Correct, the request initially came because the language had the word branding included and the operator did request that it be removed. I think the ask from last time was, could we come up with a more nuanced split to make the distinction between paraphernalia and signage? And that's what this would be. But that's the policy choice before you now is whether even with this nuance, you'd go that far. Yeah, until May 25th, it's May 16th. I'm gonna take a straw vote right now. If we had to decide today, would you favor this kind of restriction or something close to it? Some, if it's, you know, I don't know, give me something that all I know is that if you do something, it's gonna mandate action by the operators on the date that we enacted. If it's more than just the logo. Where are we on that? I can tell you I'll start because it's pretty obvious how I feel. I think I want to concentrate on our advertising and making sure our regulation is strong. I want to hear about all the best practices across the country. I want to be really nimble and smart and humble and fix it. I feel that this is a kind of a red change. If we have to visit our red down the road, we will. But I do think that this is somewhat arbitrary and we'll probably have really interesting consequences. So I would say I would like to not include this language and I would be willing to strike branding for now so that there's compliance for our providers who now have their brand on its signs around the country. Commissioner Sutter? Similarly, Madam Chair, I would also be in favor of striking the word branding from this particular provision. The only thing I'll add to your comments is that I want to be sure we strike the right balance. I hear what my fellow commissioners are saying. Commissioner O'Brien, I hear you. I think you're sort of the conscience on all of for me anyway on these issues. And I respect your views, but I do think that I don't think that. I think this is somewhat extreme for what it is we are trying to accomplish as a body in regulating advertising. And I would add to my comments that striking the balance is exactly right. Commissioner Skinner, thank you for that. I feel that I do that on a regular basis. And I do think about business and consumer protections. And my conscience is clear that I have the interest of all in a commonwealth. And I right now would not be comfortable with the recommended language, but it stayed true. So I appreciate you adding, you're adding because that's exactly right. I wish I had said it myself, Commissioner Skinner. So thank you. Commissioner Hill, Commissioner Maynard, I'll go to Commissioner O'Brien. Commissioner Maynard had his unmute, but not first. Miss that sign. I've just left it off. So it's been off for a while. I think, you know, and Tamina's point, I think Commissioner Hill and I both said, well, can we define this? And you gave us, this is at the meeting, not in any sort of briefing. And you gave us all the reasons why it was really bad idea to define this. And I tend to agree. So, you know, if this is the language that I've got to start with, Madam Chair, the way I look at it is this, and maybe Commissioner O'Brien appealed to my optimism a little bit. I think back to when NASCAR made a decision to change the name of Winston Cup and Bush, the Bush series, and they did that. And at the time, a lot of people were really angry about it and thought it didn't make any sense. And now no one notices or cares. You know what? Every now and then you've got to be a trendsetter. And I think if I had to vote right now, I'd vote with Commissioner O'Brien. But could you say rather than Commissioner O'Brien, could you actually say what we would, what do you support? Do you support this language as written? I'm trying to get clarity from women. Yeah, I think it, absolute language that would get us somewhere in between, I would probably just support this language. I mean, how hard is it to write 21 plus under a logo? It's not like we're asking to, you know, feature a person who's lost their house or something. Are they going to say 21 plus, or are they going to say sports rager at 21 plus? So think about that. I would vote with Commissioner O'Brien if the vote were held right now. I think it won't just say 21 years and older. All right, Commissioner Hill. So I just believe there's going to be some unforeseen consequences if we were to move forward with this language. I told you at the beginning of my comments, I agree with the concept, how we get there. I don't have enough information for me to be able to vote for that today. So if you're asking me how I would vote if the language was put before me, I would have to vote no today. Okay. And then again, that's kind of how I feel that we may get more information down the road. And then, you know, for me, I'm humble and perfect. Commissioner O'Brien, do you like the language still? I don't know, ready drum roll. Everybody's waiting to see what I say. This is not going to show anybody since I'm the one that asks for the language that I would absolutely vote for it, that I don't have a problem at all with the fact that we'd be the first ones doing it. We are inundated with complaints about advertising in general. I have a lot of concerns when I watch the interplay of branding and crossing over between things and getting people loyal when they're younger. I mean, I said this one, the better application came up. Getting people loyal to the brand when they're under the age and getting an affinity and affiliation to something. As Commissioner Maynard said, I do not think it's a huge ask to put 21 plus on it. And if you don't want to differentiate, so there's a vagueness to your branding that says, well, it could be my sweatshirts and it could be my gaming, then slap 21 plus on it or differentiate your branding. And if you're not doing it, then you're doing exactly what I'm concerned about, which is arguably being predatory with your branding and trying to blur the lines between how much of it is under 21 and how much of it is over. So not shocking to anybody on this call that if we were to vote on a proposed language then I would be a yes today. And in the interim, in that I would give a waiver in the short term to continue to work on the language. My fear in saying strike branding is the horses out of the barn to use the racing analogy and we're not circling back to it. And now we're swimming upstream, trying to get out in front of something that I think is really important. So that would be my vote. Can I ask a clarifier? Would the language be 21 plus or it'd be something else? I believe it's 21 plus. But it would just be fanatics, 21 plus. Yep. They could put more on if they wanted to but that would be the bare minimum. 21 plus. So what's the time in Caitlin? So we have right now it sounds like Mr. Skinner would you vote? I know that you're looking for clarity but right now you would say no, did I get that right to this language? That's right. And there's an alternative if we decided we were not going to vote today, we could extend the waiver period. Just as another, you know. I guess what I want to make sure that's not conveyed that somehow the three of us who are struggling with that balance in any way are less committed to the welfare of 21 year olds. We have been all clear and united from day one that we will focus on ensuring the safety of those who are ineligible to bleacher. And that includes of course 21 and under and those who are in vulnerable populations like our BSE. So I appreciate Commissioner Maynard your position and Commissioner O'Brien your position of course but I do feel that without activated language it's different. And I do agree with you Commissioner O'Brien and on a logo and what their intent is to do, they are trying to get business. Remember Calvin Collins, I mean it's what advertisers do and it is part of the branding and I do appreciate that. So I guess I'm just wanting to make sure that because we might be struggling on this, it doesn't in any way for me and I'm going to speak for Commissioner Skinner and Commissioner Hill anyway make us waver from our commitment for the well-being of the under 21. It is striking that balance right now. So we have a three, two. Caitlin, what's the timing? Again, sorry. The waiver is in place until the 25th. So then could it be extended? What are our options on timing? Yep, so the options basically three options today. One extend the waiver and then we can come back and have a conversation again I guess. Vote on the language that's proposed or that is highlighted in the reg or vote to remove branding. Those seem to be sort of the three options for moving forward. Oh, I guess that was options for timing. Sorry. So yeah, so the option for timing would just be it's the 16th probably extending the waiver and getting this back on a later agenda. But there's no outside date that's too far into the future? Not that I'm aware of at this moment. Karen, on the regs, we can just... Yep, nope, the regs are, this would be a fresh start on these sections. So yeah. And again, as I think I've tried to stress, we can always visit our regulations at any time. So we probably are, our operators are probably looking to us for some clarity. Commissures, Grace, in terms of our next meeting, we don't have a general meeting before the 25th, correct? We have a three hour one on the 23rd but it's committed to community mitigation, right? No, sorry. So there is a meeting on the 22nd that is this time a full agenda. That includes community mitigation. The 23rd is a presentation. And the next meeting after that would be the 30th or June 1st. So on the 22nd, what do we have? The community mitigation, yes. We have community mitigation and a couple other items, the MGM quarterly report and a few items from IPV. Would you recommend, commissioners? Commissioner Hill, commissioner Skinner, the three of us. Madam Chair, I have no issue continuing the dialogue of this because I think you heard me loud and clear that the concept is something I agree with. So I would have no problem extending the exemption. Whatever that date may be, we can all come to consensus on. And Mina, I don't know if this, you've heard our concerns, you've heard our views. I don't know if there's language that can come back for another discussion. I have no problem with that. I just am not prepared to do it today because I need some more information. And quite frankly, I would like to hear from our operators. You know, once we put language out, maybe this isn't, maybe this is very easy to do. Maybe it's not, I'd like to know that. So I have no problem moving forward and continuing the dialogue. Mr. Skinner. Sorry, commissioner Skinner. I agree with commissioner Hill. Okay, so that means we would keep our waiver in place so the 25th, we need to visit it again before the 25th or we could extend the waiver to a date later in the month or to June and revisit it then after our operators have a chance to give us more information. I suppose we could also hear from the advertising community. I might say just two things, chair. First, we actually could take a vote on 256.01, the rev sharing issue because that's different and we can vote on that one part of the reg that would be helpful for us to keep that moving. Excuse me. On the waiver, given that I think we need to come back internally and figure out next steps, if you kind of give us a little bit of a longer date on the waiver, maybe mid June, that way we can hopefully get some input and come back before mid June. I know the meeting on June 1st is quite busy. So we might have to come back after that. So I think you're right, it's the June 1st one. I thought this was the busy one, Commissioner O'Brien. I think they're getting longer and longer. So Commissioner O'Brien and I both commented on their agenda today, earlier in the day. So, Mina. Yeah, Madam Chair, if I can just make a procedural recommendation then just based on what I heard. And I apologize to staff and others and other colleagues here because we're doing this a little bit in real-time. It may be useful to get the feedback you're looking for from the regulated community, whether it's advertisers or operators, based on the language in the packet today. But rather than necessarily put this back on an agenda with an extension of a waiver and given the need to get the other parts finished, you could move forward by not including the yellow language today, not including the word branding, but set a date to discuss it at a later time and get the feedback in the meantime. My only concern with kind of adding it in the future is that I have to be, again, candid, I'm not sure that I'm hearing a finer distinction to make in the regulatory language. And so I'm curious if this language, I think one of the questions that Commissioner Maynard and Commissioner O'Brien asked is, and I think Commissioner Hill just asked is, is this actually a big imposition or not? And that may be the feedback to get. In other words, have the draft out there, but not, but continue with the promulgation of the rang as is. I don't know if Carrie or Kaylin, that complicates things more or less. No, that's fine. Sorry. Apologies, I'm just gonna say it is posted on the website, so that's fine, we could always leave this version posted for comment, but not move forward with any filing. I'm not sure that the reg would be satisfied if it just said 21 plus, because I don't really know what that means. Our reg would say, shall state that patrons must be 21 years of age or older to participate. So I just wanted to note that. If that's the only change, that's certainly one we could bring back. I guess what I'm coming back to is... No, I guess I'm going back for some society. I hear you saying that we could take it out, but is it the same thing, whether we extend the waiver or, and then bring this back? I will defer to others on the legal team on that. I don't think there really is. I just, I don't wanna over promise that we're going to come up with a better way to skin this particular cat, is my only point. Can't get a cat. Mango takes offense at that, Mina. I apologize. Now, Commissioner Bryant, I'm really not having a good day with you. Well, I... Somebody said, kill a bird the other day. We're all like, you can't kill a bird anymore. But I can't think of a better way to write this regulatory language. Just forget metaphors here that would get at this. So I would think they're made, the policy question may still be a live one and that warrants getting input from folks who would be affected by it. But I don't know that it's, so it's, you know, whether it's a waiver or not, that may be fine, but that I just don't wanna over promise that there are other solutions out there that we have tried and couldn't. I do think we all have a consensus that if we're going to not vote today, and it sounds like I've got, you know, that no one is prepared to vote today. So we would have to extend the waiver. And I mean, if we acted by taking the branding, we'd have to act. So this would just extend the waiver. And in terms of, I understand that you are out of ideas. I get that, but maybe we'll hear from operators and I would also invite the advertising community to weigh in on this, you know. The venues, to have the venues weigh in, you know, what it will mean for the venues in terms of how they sell their space. And I do think the one clarifier would be, I don't know what 21 plus means. I would put that out. If this is going, if we end up requiring the operators to, you know, do this, then we probably should have it be effective language. And if we're afraid to use the term sports wager in it because that activates the language, then I think we should think about, well, maybe that's why it's a logo. That's just my thought. You know, because right now the, right now the waiver is the advertising shall state that patrons must be 21 years of age or older to participate. It doesn't say 21 plus. And if we want advertising to just say 21 plus somewhere in the corner, I just want to make, I want to be clear today. I mean, in my mind, I can hear in my head there must be 21 plus to participate. And I feel like I've heard that in other advertisements in other contexts. So to me, that's what I'm thinking of in this. Okay, so it'd be, you know, the logo 21 plus to participate. Or 21 plus, you know, either display 21 plus or the phrase must be 21 plus to participate. Those are, that's what's in my head. I don't know what our billboards say now. Commissioner Skinner. Yes, one voice that is missing for me is in this discussion is the responsible gaming community, including Mark. I don't know if he has weighed in in previous discussions, but I think that's right now what I would like, who I would like to hear from as part of my decision on final language here. In addition to what's already been mentioned, the operator perspective. So let's extend it to Grace, give me a date. Grace, let's hear, what are you thinking? Looking down the calendar in June when we would come together again and have some time to chew on this and maybe have enough feedback from operators and the general public and anybody who wants to comment. Yeah, depending on how long legal things they need, we might need to add another meeting just on this. Since I think it will probably be a more substantive discussion and I don't think we have the time. We might be able to add it to June 5th, but I would say we might want to add a meeting the week of June 5th, just on this subject. June 5th. The week of June 5th. Not June 5th. I want to talk to Trudy about all the things. I can't hear you, are you saying the 6th or the 5th? Sorry, I'm saying we might need to add a meeting and I would say that the best week to do that would probably be the week of June 5th. So one of the days, the week of June 5th, I need to check in with Trudy to see what would work for all the commanders. But that's probably the best way to get this done timely. Okay, can we shoot for that? For sure, so you all sat on that. That's where Grace can work with legal and sounds like there's kind of one outstanding question in terms of figuring out. I would just ask timing wise, the 5th is actually pretty soon. That really only gives us a week to do everything and get it ready for the packet. So I might ask a little bit further out than that given the number of entities that we're being asked to go talk to. How about the week of the 19th? I know the 19th is a holiday, but do we have a meeting scheduled that week? You have a small legal department that week. That's okay. Interval meetings can always be flexible about that. We can do the 15th if that's not too busy. The 15th, yeah, there's a meeting on the 15th. Fine, we'll add it to the 15th, right Grace? Does that look good? Depending on how long we need, it's possible. And I can look into timing and if it doesn't look like it's gonna work, I can try to see what can be moved or if we need to have a meeting, week of the 19th. There's also a meeting on June 29th, just throwing that out there. I may be speaking at a conference that day and just we'll find out what time it is as long as I'll find out the timing on that day. It might be the day before. It is the day before, Madam Chair. So I could be available. I just hope to attend some of the conferences as well. I can do a shoot for the 15th and I can circle back with everybody if it doesn't look like that's gonna work. We'll push to the 29th. And why don't we do the waiver through June 30th and then that gets flexibility to do scheduling. Sounds good. Okay, do I have a motion? Mr. O'Brien. So you're gonna need two though because you're gonna need, hang on, because you're gonna need language on. The waiver. This is the waiver. The waiver, but then they also wanna remove the net. The word net needs to come out. Oh, we're gonna do you want them separately? Yeah, let's do this one separately just extending the waiver. Okay. Does that work? I think that works. Kerry, I know you just were gracious enough to forward this. I move that in accordance with 205CMR 202.023 the commission isher a waiver to a licensed sports wagering operators from the requirements that are outlined in 205CMR 256.051 that branding state that patrons must be 21 years of age or older to participate through June 30th, 2023 as granting the waiver meets the requirements specified in 205CMR 102.034 and it's consistent with the purposes of general law chapter 23N. Second. Any questions or pets? So branding is waived. Mr. O'Brien. Aye. Mr. Hill. Aye. Mr. Skinner. Aye. Mr. Schrimaner. Aye. I vote yes, five, zero. Now the net. That's in everybody can scroll up. 56.013, Madam Chair. Yep, thank you. On page 250, okay. Do I have a motion? I'm sorry, I mean, could you do the subsection again? Sure, 256.013. Three, correct. Thank you. Okay. I move that the commission approve the small business impact statement. Or am I only amending on my approving the small business impact statement? Approving the small business impact statement as well. As well, okay. And we'll promulgate just that section so it won't tie up the rest of the average, correct? Okay, correct. So I move that the commission approve the small business impact statement. And so much of the draft of 205CMR 256.013 which is included in the commissioner's packet and discussed here today that strikes the word net prior to the words of sports wagering revenue. And I further move that staff be authorized to take the steps necessary to file the required documentation with secretary of the Commonwealth by emergency and thereafter to begin the regulation promulgation process. And further that staff be authorized to modify chapter or section, numbers or titles, the file additional regulations sections is reserved or make any other administrative changes necessary to execute the regulation promulgation process. But I second? Second. Thank you, commissioner Skinner. Okay, any questions or comments? Commissioner Bryan? Aye. Commissioner Hill? Aye. Commissioner Skinner? Aye. Commissioner Maynard? Aye. I vote yes. Five, zero. All right, there we go on advertising. Mina, I think we have kept you way over your time and to any other client, I am very sorry. And to any family member, I'm even sorry. So hopefully he's gone. Can pass on my message to him. Okay. It is quarter four. Pressures will continue sports wagering division, item number seven on our agenda. Yes, madam chair. Today we have three items in front of you. Two of them have to do with house rules, which our operations manager, Sterl carpenter will proceed with. Good afternoon, madam chair and commissioners. Today we have being presented to you proposed changes for better for their house rules. The request are defining two terms that are new for better. And just a small corrections to grammatical changes. So they're adding two definitions. One definition is for a script or scripts where is where it is possible to choose a number of legs. A leg is defined as one or more chosen selection in an individual event market. All script bets placed are subject to the sports book rules that apply to each individual sport that relates to any leg of any script bet. If any selection in any leg is a non-runner or otherwise void under the sports book rules of EG an abandoned match, then the script will be voided. They also have the same definition similar for a combo. A combo is where it is possible to choose a number of legs across multiple event markets. A leg is defined as one or more of the selections in an individual event market. All combo bets placed are subject to the sports book rules that apply to each individual sport that relates to any leg of any combo bet. If selection in any leg is a non-runner or otherwise void under the sports book rules, then the voided leg will be removed. The remaining valid combo leg multipliers will then be combined and recalculated. So I just wanted to give a little highlight. It's just defining where they have legs of a Parley wager. A script is being described as something that is in one event, where a combo is in several different markets that can be combined together, okay? So the second change is for their Parley related rules and they've adjusted to just add better clarity. So they're new, the new way it will be read in section 12 under Parley related rules is that better reserves the right to not accept certain Parley bets. Limit the number of Parleys due to what is known as an outcome dependent related contingency and also other factors and scale back stakes solely at its own discretion. Parley wagers have various minimum and maximum wagers depending on the wagers selected, the number of combinations used and other risk mitigating factors. So they just wanted to make that very clear to the person who was wagering on Parley wagered rules, related rules. If anyone has any questions, I'll take them at this time. Yeah, I do, Sterl. Thank you. So the first, the question is regarding the first change, adding the definition of script and combo. Scripts and combo, those are wager types. And that's their types of wager. They're trying to drill down for the, they're not going to have the same language or it's simplification of, this is a Parley, but they want to make sure that everyone knows the difference of just a general Parley, they're getting more specific for their customers. So they know exactly what they're referring to on wagering. Yeah, my question is on process though. So back in January, the commission approved a series of wager types. My understanding is to be added to the, not the catalog of events, but to be a component of that overall document. And so I'm confused as to how this is coming to the commission as part of a request for better to change their house rules, as opposed to just a broader discussion around adding wager types to the commissions or to that document that we discussed and created, you folks created in January. Because wouldn't it be, I mean, if we're talking about adding wager types, shouldn't that be open to all operators and not just depicted as a change in the house rules for one operator? I understand the question, but I believe in my assumption and my understanding of this is this is not anything new. This is just, this is a Parley wager. They're just, and they're using it, it's just their definition, right? So no matter what they call it, it still acts as a Parley wager. Okay, which we did approve as the wager type. Exactly, right? So they, I guess an easier way to say it is, maybe someone will come in and instead of, they don't like to use the word round robin or maybe it becomes something that's not commonly used or they wanna create something new, but it acts as a round robin. They just rename it, but it acts as a round robin. So they can, they're just defining what it is. They're not creating a new wager, they're just calling it something different, I guess is what I should say. Yeah, I see, thank you. I have another question related to the second change, but I can pause for another commissioner if they have questions. I actually wanted to key off what you were saying, which was, I hear what you're saying, Sterl. My concern is we had talked about actually trying to get consistency to avoid customer confusion. My worry is this creates customer confusion. So should the house rules at minimum, basically say just what you said, which is better is gonna call, you know, Parley's combos and they're gonna call, you know, legs. I mean, should it say that so that it's very clear that their combo is somebody else's Parley? So they do define a Parley wager as well. And we do have someone from better on the call as well if you wanna ask them. I'm sorry. Just a second. I was gonna just follow up on a comment that Commissioner Browning said confusion. I do remember when we did, when we interviewed better, they did one of their approaches was to use a different approach that they thought was friendlier to newer wagers. That would be actually different from the approach that other operators take. I just wanted to remind folks of that. And that's why, you know, theoretically they're gonna have fewer events and it would be to take away some of the mystery. So I guess I just wanna mean, I think I'm right on that. My memory was it was more the in-game betting options they had were gonna be very unique and more attuned to that audience. But I mean, I still have the same concern about confusion. Not in opposition to them using the terms, but if someone looks at house rules to be able to go to the more commonly known and go as a cross-reference. That's all. Do you wanna hear from now? Commissioner Skinner's comment. Commissioner O'Brien, I'm sorry. I couldn't hear you. Just following up on the comment that Commissioner Skinner started with, which is we went through sort of the broader definitions. So I feel like we should use them or refer back to them what appropriate for clarity. Yeah. I guess I just wanted to remind everyone of my memory that they were going to take a little bit of a different approach. I know that we have Mr. Ursa here. Commissures, I wanna hear from you first, Commissioner Skinner. Oh, if it's if what Mr. Ursa has to offer is related to that first change, I think he should go right ahead because my question changed to the second change. Thank you so much, commissioners. We understand and I think we're happy to make that adjustment to make sure that we can say, like we call scripts, same-game parlays, but I think for education purposes, basically a script is a same-game parlay. You might know, but Fenduel already has a trademark on that term. So better using same-game parlay for on our product. Fenduel could be litigious against us because they have a trademark for that. So we wanted to avoid any kind of, let's say challenges that can also be original about it. But we are more than happy to add further language to clarify that in the house. Well, that definitely clarifies why you're going with the language. So about the addition D, so we can approve it with a condition perhaps. Sturrell, how, to commissioners' question, when we term the types of wagers, what's the term of art we use? We use parlay, when he's saying same-game. So Fenduel, Alex has just informed us as a trademark on it. It was used, but now if they've trademarked it, it will have to be changed in everyone's, so it's a parlay. It's gonna be changed in everyone's right. Exactly, but it's still a parlay, right? It's still a parlay within the same-game. Exactly, right. And so if, I don't know if Alex, the chair was asking if you had any language or know of how you would clarify that just for, we are happy to add more, maybe another paragraph to clarify that, just to avoid some doubt. So there's no concerns on that in the house, and we consider that the parlay definition was already covering scripts. We had a conversation with the team, with NBC team here, but we want to be more specific about scripts because they are the same, in the same game. So that was the reason we wanted to break that down. This means that we wouldn't be able to approve this today. We have to roll it over. How does that affect business? We're gonna have a pair here. Bruce? Yeah. For us, we still, we have upcoming changes as well. We'll have to be added. I know you have a very busy agenda coming up next. So, commissioners, do we feel this isn't necessary? Okay, Commissioner Hill. Madam chair, I don't know if this will change anybody's mind, but anybody who is in the bidding world knows what these definitions are. Yeah. As soon as I saw them, I knew them immediately, but again, I'm a follower of sports wagering more than most are probably, but this is something that's well known throughout the sports wagering world. So I don't think there's a lot of people who don't know what this is who are involved in sports wagering. And you're talking about the definition itself, that it's a parlay? Yes. We could approve the proposed request just with a condition that within X days, they supplement with a reference to our definition of parlay. And then they amend it, right? And then they can come back within 60 days or something, but then it doesn't hold them up. As long as we think it's necessary. We'll do that. Like thank you so much. You're very kind, Mr. So thank you so much. We appreciate it. So they would be including in their house rules language that would say these are parlites somewhat. Okay. So do you have other questions? Can I just get another question on one of the other changes? Yes, just generally the language added in scale back states. Can you just tell us and stir a little bit about what that is about? So parlays, the more legs in which you add, the more events they go up exponentially, right? So hang on, it's really just what's precipitating this request for change. It's just clarification so that they're, so they're actually being very proactive. We have several questions that come in and disputes when legs are deleted off of a parlay, commissioner Skinner, so that their odds would get reduced greatly, right? So a person whose leg will be voided when they think they're winning 1,000, it drops to 100. It's because it's harder to win with more legs that are on there, right? And so what they're saying is they reserve the right to not overextend themselves as a business. They won't, they'll scale back the stakes. If somebody keeps on adding, they don't wanna take on that risk. They give themselves the right to say, we don't wanna accept that risk. We're going to not offer that. It's in our regulations. And so they're just making it clear to the customers that they understand that. Okay, and that that decision is solely at the operator's discretion. That's consistent with our regs and that's industry standard. Correct. Thanks. So all of that language that's being placed in there is just to try and help them under the consumer understand if they're not seeing something on their parlay wager. Are there any other questions? I have a motion. So are we prepared to not move today? Do we not want to move? I don't wanna. Oh, I'm prepared to move. I wasn't, I was having issues finding the, my motion. Okay. And I may need an assistant play somebody when I further move something. So bear with me. I'm going to amend it to include some kind of clarifying language that I guess we're not going to preview, but it will be to say that clarifying language that this applies to parlays. As discussed. Yeah. Too dead. All right, let me take an attempt at it. Thank you. So madam chair, I move that the commission approved the amendments to the house rules submitted by the category three sports wagering operator, better holdings ink DBA better as included in the commissioner's packet discussed here today and further move that better provide clarifying language defining parlay as discussed here today. Second. Thank you. Any further clarification or discussion? Good commissioner, right? Hi. Mr. Hill. Hi. Mr. Skinner. Hi. Mr. Maynard. Hi. And I vote yes. Five zero. Thank you, Mr. So for your help. Appreciate it very much. Thank you. Madam chair. I hate to ask this, but I do need a five minute break. Okay. Please. Can I say I probably need an eight hour break, but we'll do five minutes. Sure. Okay. Thank you. Four or three will be turned back around for 10 or so. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, where? Wait, just to say. Bruce, you're on. Thanks. Okay, Dave. Thanks. All right. Oh, just a reconvening. A meeting that started at 10 a.m. this morning. Been a lot fun. We're holding it virtually, so I'm going to do another world call. Commissioner Ryan. Still here. Commissioner Hill. I'm back. Commissioner Skinner. I'm here. Commissioner Maynard. I'm here. And I'm here too. So we'll get started. And so as thorough, I think you were just going to move on to your next item. Mr. Carpenter. I was chair in the next subject will be changes to the house rules or updates for a Fandall. So the commission received an email with changes to Fandall's house rules under 205 CMR 247.02. No sports wagering operator can change or modify their house rules without commission approval. The division has reviewed these changes and recommends approving all changes as present as presented except for the change to round robin language. The sports wagering division is asking that the commissioner to look specifically at the section due to the discussion and resulting change of how obvious errors are dealt with. The division reached out to Fandall when we received these changes and inquired about this change. We asked Fandall to provide a large sample of different examples that would fall under these voids. Fandall was also asked if they offered the selection to the patron that it would then be Fandall voiding the legs on these selections. So the question there is once the patron is in the app, they select all these selections, the bet is accepted, and then we're asking then after the fact Fandall would be voiding these legs on these selections. Fandall emailed to reply on this question for selections being removed from the wager. They also adjusted their original language in the response to this email. Items are listed as followed in your memo in the packet of the original language, the Fandall response and finally resubmitted language for page 14 of section 17. So with all of these changes, what happened is Fandall then responds and says that they did not have a large sample of incorrect wagers in regards to what this is trying to clarify, but they stated that one example would be that a customer submitting, and this is gonna get large, so I'm gonna try and go slowly. A nine by six round robin parlay. So what that means is that you're getting nine options and six games inside each option of the nine. All right, and then you're having a money line winner for a soccer match for a total of 54 parlay bets, right? With two of those matches selected having related contingencies, the result of one match impacting the other match. The customer that would then be notified that there are relating contingencies in the same round robin wager and the bet slip would be adjusted accordingly. Now the section then was changed to what it reads currently. Down into the round robin wagers are subject to settlement in accordance with the parlay rules in this section. Round robin wagers cannot combine different selections when there are related contingencies. If selections with related contingencies are attempted as part of the round robin, only eligible selections will be accepted at the bet placement stage. However, if selections with related contingencies are accepted in error, Fandle Sportsbook may settle the individual wager combinations which include two or more of the related contingency selections as single wagers. Even though the language has been changed the division is unsure if the commission would want this type of void to be done without approval from prior conversations. I want to, there is a lot of changes that are gonna be going forward but I wanna stop here and we also have Fandle on the line but I'm going to ask, is there any questions on what I just went through? No? Okay. So when it comes to that language it's going to be presented down do we wanna vote on that particular section? Now do we wanna go through the entire changes and then vote on just the thing as a whole for process I guess for understanding? We typically vote on the entire. Okay. Okay. All right, so in sum the total amount of changes that are in this is the addition to in no event may a Massachusetts account be funded through a form of credit in our funding of wagers section. Revision to the sport by sport maximum winning sections leaving in our general rule relating to maximum winnings on a daily basis to simplify the section for patrons. The third change is clarification on same game parlays and round robin wagers. And I'm sorry if I pronounce round robin wagers that's tricky for me. I don't know why I keep on having a problem. Specific sport rules were updated and then in particular baseball section 4.1 the six bullet the innings rule was removed from the initial update but has been reinstated with this smaller language change 4.3 on player props. The fifth bullet was changed as a result in plate appearances which had been amended from the initial update to clarify hit by pitch settlement and intentional walks with no pitch thrown. So those all those smaller changes are because of rule changes in baseball and they're just making sure that the patron is aware that their bet will have action with these changes because of the changes in the rules before it might have said that, you know after four pitches but now in baseball you don't have to throw a pitch by having somebody walk. They can just say, we intentionally walk them. And then finally a large change I wanna bring to the attention is in ice hockey. So the sports wagering department and fan duel had several discussions due to a patron dispute in which it was confusion on the way they offered period markets in a hockey match. So they added additional language inside of their wagering on under period markets to assure that it is perfectly clear that when somebody is wagering on the second quarter score it is not the score at the end of the second quarter. So the settled on the exact score of the specified period by G wagers on the second period correct score markets will be settled based solely on the goal scored during the second period without regard to the game score up to that point in the completion. For settlement purposes, the third period does not include any overtime play dead heat rules apply in the highest scoring period market. Finally, of course, technical and grammatical formatting fixes were also performed. So you will receive the large amount of detailed changes in the packet. Do you wanna go through each individual change or do we have like any questions or any sections that we wanna focus on? Commissioners, any good questions for Strahl? Strahl, I hate to bring you all the way back to the very beginning, but is there any reason to have language inserted that says, you know, not inconsistent with and then we insert the reg that says we have to approve cancellations except in that narrow circumstance? Well, see, that's exactly that's what I'm asking is because is it your interpretation? They're stating that they're doing an error or they filter out the errors, but in the event that somebody has selected and it's gotten by them to have a leg inside of a round robin that is like redundant or too close to another leg, they're just going to void it and then it's gonna reduce it. And of course, you're not gonna see that they avoided it, they're just gonna settle the wager, right? Our obvious section that you voted on in the reg says that all voids will be reviewed by the commission before. Right, right. So it seems to run afoul. Yeah, it does seem to run afoul, that reg. May I provide a point of clarification? Andrew Winschelt, Director of Regulatory Affairs with Vandal. I think there is just a slight bit of confusion. Strahl basically got a date. What happens if there are coordinated outcomes, and I'll use a much smaller number to get to this. If there's a six by four round robin, which has 15 potential results, but items one and two of the six are related contingencies. Six of the 15 potential bets would have items one and two in it. So those six, when the customer went to place the bet, place the round robin, our system, if it's working 100% perfect, will pick that up and will not let them place it. So if they were going to place that round robin at $10 per parlay, if they were all uncoordinated, it would be $150, because it would be 15 outcomes, $10 per outcome. Our system will catch that bet placement and should only charge them $90 for the nine viable potentialities. What we're saying is, if there was some sort of malfunction or system error, like we do with other obvious error or other items that come up and have that potential, we would want the ability to void them. I will say we don't have a problem including language in there that says, pursuant to regulation, we will do this with the approval of the regulator. We, there is at least, I know, at least one other jurisdiction, Connecticut, where we have that explicitly in there anywhere we talk about voiding bets. So that's not a problem for us to go back and put that detail in there, but we just wanted to fly that for the customer that if something got through, there is a potential that it could be voided. In the House will, so they would know that this, if we accidentally accepted it's not 100%, we're still gonna seek to void that market. So you're trying to flag for them the potential of voiding, you're not trying to get language that gives you more authority to void an outcome. Okay. That would be great. And I think what we're hearing is that they would, the commission would also like that also reiterated there that you're not going to just do it. It has to come in front of the commission for them to for you to void it. Okay. Great. Any other questions or would you like me to highlight any other changes? Do you have any other questions? Is you, you flagged that baseball changed a lot of their rules. So obviously they had to read, are the other sports specific changes the same thing? Is it just tweaking based on rules for the governing body and the respect of sports? I can chime in here. It depends on the situation. There's a number of different, there's a lot of different changes in here. A lot of them, there's several categories under which trigger these changes. One is if there are, because we are in so many jurisdictions, things pop up and we learn from that and regulators come to us and ask. So specifically that the one that Sterl pointed out about the period, the scoring in an individual period market, that has been something that's come up elsewhere that has then caused us to reevaluate it. Some of these also relate to data feeds. So like the way that markets are, the rules around specific market might be impacted by if we use a certain data provider or they provide the data in a certain way to us, we have to change the way we run the market because we're only receiving the data in that way. So like, if there's certain- Okay, so for purposes of settlement, like the round admitted markets, that related to your data? I'll say like in the golf section as it relates to whether one stroke versus yeah. Yeah. So things like that, yeah. Okay. Madam Chair. So go ahead, Christian Hill. Andrew, I'm just being nosy. The hockey period one really a red flag went up for me. There were a lot of instances where people thought it was the total game and not just the period score. I wouldn't say it's a lot of instances. There at least was one that had popped up that was significant. Sometimes, yeah, without getting into the nitty gritty on it, you sometimes look at did the person know better and just thought that they were pulling one over, and then claimed, oh, this wasn't clear in the house rules. We do get the versus, was it something that was more specific? But we thought it was worth the extra language to specifically clarify that to eliminate any confusion. A big hockey fan. So anytime I see hockey related issues, I have to ask. Yeah, so Commissioner Hill, that actually came up here in Massachusetts and that we, there's certain scores in which a game and then if the score stayed the same and it was said, you know, the understanding was that he didn't believe that they would score again. So the score wasn't going to change. So he wagered one zero because that's what it was at that time before the second period started. And so when it stayed at one zero, the scoring though in the second period was zero zero because it stayed the same. So that's why we wanted clarity because arguably he was looking for under the rules, it would have been two zero. Well, it would zero zero was one zero, it stayed one zero and he said it was going to stay. So he placed one zero, but it was actually zero zero, right? So I could see how he was confused if he didn't see that he was seeing the same score but that's why we had the discussion with the Fandle and we hope that this has clarified the language more so that it's understood it's the score in that exact period, it would have been zero zero. Yep. Thank you, Madam Chair. Charles, are you satisfied with the interest explanation of the language then that you were concerned with? I am that they are saying they will not void anything without commission approval. And I am then very satisfied with all the changes. Do we need to conclude that? I don't know if you've got the language from Connecticut. I'm assuming it's what we're thinking of which is consistent with the requirements of two or five CMR and then I don't know what the site is on the top of my head but I think that should be inserted in there so it's clear. They're disalerting the customer. There's a chance of voiding but they're not saying they're gonna do it in contravention of the statute that they have to come to us. Andrew, would you be comfortable with that decision? Yes, we can do that, yes. And then, Patricia, does something else have a question? To be clear too, Sturrell and Bruce, you've reviewed all of the suggested changes and the only one that you really invited our attention to is one we just talked about. So, and everything else you felt was appropriate, right, Sturrell? Yes, Chair. Thank you, and that's in your memo. Yes, we approve all but we wanted to bring to your attention specifically that one section about avoiding of a leg. Maybe we have that clarification. Commissioner Maynard, Commissioner Skinner. I'm good. Would you, Commissioner Skinner? Good. All right, do I have a motion then? I'm happy to make a motion again, Madam Chair, but again, need a little help with the amended version of it. We discussed. Commissioners, I just happened to pull up the Connecticut language that we have in our house rules. And so basically where we reference voids, we use the, it says, you know, all wagers on the selection shall be void, comma, subject to regulatory approval. Is that something that would be fine to just insert here to say the same, that Vandal reserves the right to avoid these subject to regulatory approval? If there's a way to get our specific reg site in, that would be great to the one that says it has to come to us. Okay. Yeah, I don't know if your team is on board, or do you know it, Sturrell? I, you know, unfortunately, I looked this up with Caitlin just the other day and I'm not remembering. I thought it was in 247, but I'm not finding it. Oh, it's here. So maybe, you know. 238. Personally, if we want to keep it moving today, I'm satisfied with the Connecticut language. And then we just, maybe we can clean it up once we get the actual site. So it's clear. You found it, Sturrell? Yeah, I believe I did. So 238 subsection 35 is canceling and voiding of wagers. And what's the number again, Sturrell? 238 subsection 35 canceled or voided wagers. I think it's down. I apologize. One second. So subsection two, for all circumstances that are not set forth in 238, subsection 35, subsection one, a sports wagering opera may request the commission authorize the cancellation or voiding of all wagers of a specific type kind or subject. The sports wagering opera to shall submit its request to cancel avoid the wager in writing and such the description kind and subject. In section A, B is the description and C is the explanation of the cancelization avoiding of the wager and the best interests of the commonwealths to ensure the integrity of the sports wagering industry. So Todd, my concern there is it's may, that they may request the commission. So I'm not sure if that's exactly what Michelle Bryan's talking about. I remember when we went over this, which is why today maybe we move forward with the Connecticut language that Fandu has and then we can clean it up because I feel like there were two or three spots where voices came up and one of them was mandatory and some of them were the may. I feel like there were two or three references in the regs on that. You are correct. There are a couple of references. So I think the safer way is with the Connecticut language today. And have legal lay in, I think. Yeah. Thank you, that's not, it doesn't have to be your job today. Thank you. You're not your job either, so thank you so much. So do I have a motion that can just be some general language that will clarify this? Thank you. Brad, I thought you were moving. I thought you were as well. So go ahead. True confessions, I've got Gremlins back. So my draft language is not as accessible to me as normal. So the language, how many of the comforts do you have it? This suggests I have fed up if anyone with a suggestive right of change, if that would be helpful to, I don't know. So I think I have it now. I think I have it now. So I moved that the commission approved the amendment to the house rules made it by category three, sports, waiter, operator, Bedford interactive, DBA, fan dual sport book as included in the commissioner's packet and discussed here today, specifically with the addition of the language as to cancellations or voids that they add the language subject to regulatory approval. Second. Hey, any further questions or comments on that? Mr. Browning. Hi. Mr. Hill. Hi. Mr. Skinner. Hi. Mr. Maynard. Hi. And I vote yes. Thank you to Banda. Thank you, Andrew for charming in and helping. Thank you very much, Commissioner. Yes, thank you, Commissioner, for your approval. Thank you so much. Okay. Then last. Yes. Madam Chair, commissioners under 205 CMR 251. I have a request from category three operator, FBG Enterprises OPCO LLC for a sports waitering operation certificate. Particularly, FBG Enterprises OPCO LLC, better known as fanatics betting and gaming has submitted everything that we requested. They've passed their internal control submission through GLI, their staffing vendors and non sports waitering vendors were approved through our licensing department. They're in compliance with the complete operational audits of waitering procedures and practices and technical security controls as required by the commission's technical standards governing sports waitering within 90 days of commencement of the sports waitering operations. They've passed their geofencing capabilities as approved by the GLI and tested by GLI. The player management system was approved by GLI. The responsible gaming plan has been approved and reviewed by our problem gaming division. And the house rules was approved by the commission. Do you have any questions or anything on this? Questions for Bruce, commissioners. Everybody had a chance to review it. Internal controls had no comments on this whole thing either. It was a complete clean internal control package. Commissioner Hill, you give a question. I was ready to move on the issue, Madam Chair. Okay, let's just check, make sure that everybody's all set. They've indicated that they would start to operations at the end of this month. That's great. Okay, everybody's had a chance to review any questions for Sterl or Bruce. Okay, I'll take a motion. Madam Chair, I move that the commission find the requirements outlined in 205, CMR 251 have been satisfied and that an operations certificate be awarded to FPG Enterprise Opto LLC, DBA Fanatics. For the purpose of operating a category three sports waitering operation commencing March 10, 2023. Conditional upon FPG Enterprises Opto, LLC, DBA Fanatics, completing operational audits of wagering procedures and practices and technical security controls as required by the commission's technical standards governing sports waitering. At 205, CMR 243.01, 1S, and 205, CMR 243.01, 1X within 90 days of the commitments of sports wagering operations. Good second. I'm just looking at the dates. Should March 10th be adjusted? To March 16th. And I figure it was on for March 10th last week but perhaps was moved. Today, it's actually May 16th. May 16th, yeah, I saw. If the date's good, I'm good. I'm just trying to make sure that we aren't missing a date. But Todd, could you help out or Caitlin or Kierry? Because obviously they aren't convincing on March 10th, 2023. That's right. Yeah, I would put in today's date on that. Sorry about that. I think that's just the typo for me carrying it over from a past motion. That's right. That's what I thought. Thanks, good catch, Commissioner Mayer. So I would just make a friendly amendment to change it to today's date, May 16th, 2023. I know they may start later, but... Does that work? I'll accept that. Friendly amendment. And that works, right, legal? Yeah, I think so. Yep, that sounds fine. Second with that. Friendly amendment. Accepted. Okay, thank you for the discussion. Thank you, Kierry. Commissioner O'Brien. Hi. Commissioner Hill. Hi. Commissioner Skinner. Hi. Commissioner Mayer. Hi. And I vote yes. 5-0. All right. Our Executive Director has suggested that we could roll over number eight. I am still going to check in with you on that, Commissioner Skinner as well. And then we would move if we decide to go into the Executive Session that is set forth in item number 10, with respect to the MGC office. Commissioner Skinner, how do you feel about that? I'm okay with that. It's just a recording out of the Q3 budget. So there's not an ask that's being presented today. That is timely. So it's good that we, if I'm fine with rolling it over, I don't know if Derek's on, he may disagree, but I think it's fine. Well, we have the Executive Director too. Good. And I did give him a bit of a heads up. Yeah. It's 446. So. Still here. But yeah, that's fine. Okay. So then. Thank you. Then moving on to item number 10. As you know, I have to read this into the record. The commission anticipates that it will meet in Executive Session in accordance with GL, Chapter 30A, Section 21A6 to consider the lease of real property, specifically the commission's office space at 101 Federal State in Boston and associated considerations as discussion at an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the negotiating position of the commission. But sure, do we wish to go into Executive Session to discuss our lease? And if so, I'll take a motion. I move that we go into Executive Session for reasons outlined by the chair. I just would offer a friendly amendment and say, and for the matters specified by the chair as well. And the amendment accepted. Thank you. Seconded with that friendly amendment accepted. Excellent. Thank you. Michelle Bryan. Hi. Michelle Hill. Hi. You're all in the same row right now. It never happens. Commissioner Skinner. Hi. Michelle Maynard. Hi. I vote yes. Five zero. So I think Dave can transfer us into, or do we have a separate link? Chair, you got me right now. Dave had to leave for a medical appointment, but I did just want to confirm that we will, will or will not be returning to the public session. Thank you for that. So commissioners, I think we will be all done at the conclusion of our Executive Session. So we will not return to the public session. And with that, are we going to be virtually? Yeah, I will end the stream now. And then I will move folks to a, a breakup room. And to everybody who joined our meeting. Thank you so much to the team. Thank you for all your hard work. It was excellent. Thank you.