 That's a leap your job. I didn't know how to take it. I was, I was about ready to jump for joy. And we're going to start Jordan and I were just talking. Oh, good, good morning, everyone. This is convening of the Massachusetts gaming commission. We're holding this meeting virtually saw to our roll call. Good morning, Commissioner Brian. Just me myself. I am here. Good morning, Commissioner Hill. Good morning. I'm here. Good morning, Commissioner Skinner. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. I came on joking a little bit because we do have an extensive agenda. I'm suggesting we might finish this morning. We look forward to a good productive day. It is sleepy or February 29 2023 and it's public meeting number 506. We've got some minutes. Madam chair, I move that the commission improve the minutes from the May 23 2023, the May 30 2023 public meetings that are included in the commissioner's packet subject to any necessary corrections for type graphical errors or other non material matters. Second. Any questions, edits on the minutes, everybody had a chance to look at them. Commissioner Skinner, you're leaning in, but for papers. Okay. Commissioner Ryan. Hi. Hi. I'm just gonna. Hi. Commission made it. Hi. And I thought, yes, thank, thank you. Commissioner Maynard and thank you to your team. All right, I'll turn right to our interim executive director and general counsel. Good morning, madam chair. Good morning commissioners. Good morning to all the members of our team and all who are joining us here today. I do have two matters to present to you here today. The first pertains to the non disclosure agreements we have with our gaming licensees and the second a proposed adjustment of the classification of our director of racing. So if I may, I'll jump right into the non disclosure discussion and just note that as we've referenced on a number of occasions, the commission as knows we have executed non disclosure agreements with each of the three gaming licensees. And where this does come up periodically, it seemed like a good opportunity just to refresh everyone's recollection as to precisely what these agreements are and what they cover. It's important as we do this to note that these NDAs only apply to the gaming licensees. They do not apply to the sports wagering operators or the racing licensees as the law does not allow for that. So begin briefly with the law. And this all begins with the public records law. As you know, all documents and other materials that the commission has in its possession are considered to be public records subject to public disclosure unless a they fall into an exemption. And of course, you're all familiar with the more common exemptions, things like the privacy exemption that we can use to protect an individual's personal information like their social security number, or the investigatory exemption that we use oftentimes to protect information that is subject to an ongoing investigation. And that helps us from having to prematurely disclose such materials. There's also what's referred to as the statutory exemption, which is how we get into the NDA discussion. And the statutory exemption essentially says that if there's a statute outside of the public records law that allows for certain documents to be withheld. Then they may be withheld under the authority of that particular statute. In the case of casino gaming chapter 23 K includes such a provision. And it's located in section 21 a seven says that as it pertains to gaming related investigations that materials that the gaming licensee considers to be a trade secret or detrimental to the gaming licensee if it were made public may with the commission's approval. Secondary to be protected from public disclosure and the gaming licensee may require a non disclosure agreement with the commission before disclosing such material. Based upon that language you may recall the commission adopted a regulation, which is in section 139.02, and that governs the NDA process. The NDAs themselves are public documents and in fact the commission publicly reviewed the request for an NDA that was submitted by the licensees prior to their commencement of operations. The NDA with win, for example was executed in December of 2018. And that's the agreement I thought I would just walk through really quickly with you. And I'd be happy to display it so you can all see it. We can kind of just take a quick look through it. And of course, happy to address any questions that come about. And I know you've all seen this before so I'm happy to just kind of walk through some of the highlights. Let me make sure it's picking up. There we go. So the first section here is what we call the recitals of course and this basically just sets the stage it talks about the public records law and sites all the laws I just mentioned before, and addresses that all the materials that the commission has essentially that are submitted by the licensees are considered to be submitted pursuant to a gaming related investigation. And then we walk through the fact that the licensee considers them to be trade secrets, or be detrimental if publicly released. But it's this section right here that is really the nuts and bolts of the non disclosure agreement. This is where we lay out all of the categories or specific documents and materials that are included and covered by this NDA. So we're all submitted to the commission by the licensee for review. And ultimately, the commission had to make a determination as to whether they did fall into that trade secret or would be detrimental with publicly released category and the commission ultimately voted to agree that these were some of them are familiar to everyone. Some are probably slightly less familiar. I've submitted a few that I thought were particular interest. The first are the internal audit reports that the licensees themselves put together and submit to us those of course are sensitive and we have agreed to include those here, the certain parts of the commission itself conducts are considered to be sensitive. So those are included here. This is where we address the capital expenditure plan. Of course we go into executive session periodically to review the capital expenditure plans each of the licensees several of their committee meeting minutes that we received and reviewed periodically are covered under this agreement. The daily revenue numbers of course we release monthly revenue figures publicly but we also receive periodically daily revenue numbers and those are considered more sensitive so we do not release those and those are included here as well. The floor plans of the casinos, the sensitive areas of the floor plans I should say are covered so we don't release those publicly. Certain marketing materials that we received to review prior to their public release are considered to be sensitive. We receive reports about the complimentary services being offered at the casinos and those are sensitive as well. Number 23 is an important one that is what we call the slot machine master list that's a list of all the slot machines at the facilities and how they're performing and the payout percentages and what have you those are obviously highly sensitive and those are covered by this as well as are of course the internal controls that have been reviewed and approved by the commission for each of the operators so that's number 24 vendor disbursements issues related to their surveillance system. The compliance binder which is the material that each of these publicly traded companies compiles and shares with its compliance committee and boards with directors oftentimes are also considered to be sensitive. So those are all of the categories I will just represent to you that the three NDAs we have with the licensees are slightly different but all very similar. This one is just the best representation of a holistic view as to all of the areas that are covered by the NDAs but they're all will look substantially similar if you look at them separately. And then just real quick a couple of other notes that are worth mentioning. By agreeing to this the commission has noted that it agreed that the materials that are listed above are considered to be either a trade secret or would be detrimental if released publicly. Number three says that the licensees themselves have an obligation to mark any materials they send to us with the letters NDA confidential so they have to flag those materials for us so that we are aware that they consider it to be covered by the non disclosure agreement. Number four is the part where we agree not to voluntarily publicly release any materials that are covered by this agreement and that if we receive such a request we will assert the statutory exemption to the public records law and withhold the materials. Number six is important because it clarifies that nothing in here precludes the commission itself from making use of any of these materials either as part of an investigation or for research or for other purposes that we may have. And then eight nine and 10 are also important they're all somewhat similar but slightly different nuance. They all say that if we are required to release any of these materials pursuant to a court order an order of a different state agency that may have jurisdiction. If we want to share the materials with another gaming jurisdiction as we commonly do, or we receive a subpoena, then this agreement will not preclude our doing so. The rest are all fairly common provisions that we find in contracts of all types and are included here as well. And then you can see in this particular case or former executive director at Bedrosian and Jackie Chrome from when assigned this agreement. So that's a high level overview of the non disclosure agreement. I'd be happy to pause there address any questions. You may have but we thought it would just be helpful to take a quick walk through our non disclosure program and that that is. Any questions for Todd commissioners. Great, I'd be be happy madam chair commissioners just to move on to item three be on the agenda. Yeah, just to be clear Todd before you go on and I appreciate first off thank you for the, the overview of non disclosure agreement. The next item, I wanted to make sure that commissioners understood that our internal executive director asked for that to be on the agenda. It didn't, it didn't come up during our agenda setting meeting and so I just want you to know that it was put on. If there's any concern about continuing this is your chance to say something. Are we all set to continue then. And I want to raise this that the agenda indicates it does the discussion will involve Dr lightbound and she has indicated that she is going to not be present in our meeting so she is leaving our virtual meeting, but should we want her to join for any reason we can make sure. Okay, so thank you. Thank you madam chair and I see Dave Mulder is on the meeting here too and there is, and he will be joining in the conversation as well. But thank you for that introduction, madam chair and I just would tee this up by saying that I am proposing that the commission authorized me or sent to my adjusting the classification and compensation of our director of racing. Dr Alexander lightbound, specifically, the proposal is that she be moved from the category seven to a category eight on our personnel classification chart, and that her compensation be adjusted to reflect that of the others in the class, including positions like our CIO or CFO, the general counsel, the IB director and the director of responsible gaming. It's my view that the director of racing position requires the sort of specialized knowledge and expertise and enjoys the overall significance in the construct of our agency that it warrants being classified alongside these other positions. Furthermore, the person presently holding the position Dr lightbound I need not tell you has long demonstrated her commitment to the work, contributions to the agency and unique expertise, such that she is entirely deserving in my view of this type of recognition. Accordingly, I bring this proposal to you without any reservation whatsoever. I'd like to just invite our chief people and diversity officer Dave Muldrew and for a moment if I may to add a little bit more texture to my remarks and good morning to you Dave, you'd like to. Good morning. Good morning, Madam chair good morning commissioners. I had an opportunity to speak with Todd and I know we had discussed it in the past, I am 100% behind this particular move. For Dr like bomb. I believe that her expertise, her experience or critical business knowledge to our industry is critical to DC and warrants to be included at the sea level, receiving also the same compensation as the others and that that is. That's really the, the gist of it is that I am 100% behind it and it, and it's the right thing to do. And I've hopefully this will occur, but that is my recommendation from human resources. She commissioners questions. Todd, as we explore this. This is a country question is consistent with what the commissioners have established as expectations for him during the interim position to come forward on these kinds of recastations. Madam chair. I don't have any questions, but I would like to comment on this with that this be that time to do that. Absolutely. Thank you. So I want to thank the interim executive director for bringing this forward. I am fully supportive of the initiative by Todd. Mr. Grossman. I feel strongly and I'm going to first not look at the individual, but look at the position itself. Which I feel absolutely the position should be moved from a category seven to category eight for many reasons. The position, as you know, not only. Overseas the horse racing. Industry but that individual also is a partner with Dave as an HR person because they have to look at hiring seasonal employees every single year for the racing season. So that's one one. Leg of the stool. They also have to coordinate with our legal counsel the regulations and the mass general laws of the horse racing industry. So I think that's number two of the leg of the stool and number three being a veterinarian. And being the operations manager. There's the third leg of this stool. I mean, there is a lot of responsibilities for anybody who would be in this position and absolutely, you know, should be a category eight in classification. Now I will look at the individual. There's none better in the industry across the Commonwealth certainly but I think across the nation. And she's been recognized not only here in the Commonwealth, but across the nation for the work that she does in the racing industry. So for those reasons that I just presented to you madam chair and through you to the commissioners. I think this is something that we should be doing. And I would hope that my fellow commissioners would agree with my sentiments that we should move Dr. light bomb to a new classification from category seven to category eight. Thank you madam chair. Thank you question and I'm going to skip my unusual and I'm going to go second. This is something that I just overjoyed to see the recommendation coming forward from our instrument second director for the exact reasons concerned how stated on the position merits. Heightened position in our car and I do that she won't really overseas and has married that really since I feel, since section because racing is one of our significant oversight regulatory oversight responsibilities. But second, I feel this is overdue mainly because of the individual. And Dr. Lightman is exceptional at what she does. She makes our job extremely easy. She always has prepared us made sense of an archaic statue. She is faithful to the law and using her own acumen and the resources that are provided through our legal team. She has worked closely with our fellow my fellow commissioners and different initiatives with special mannered recently to make sure that her delegation of authority reflected our concerns. She brought that forward herself. She just has great judgment. We are so lucky to have her leadership. And as Commissioner Hill said, she her strengths really extend beyond the Commonwealth's boundaries. She is recognized as a leader in the her field of racing. She also happens to be of that nearing by not sure that's even necessarily part of the position. We just always sort of put it together. We are just so fortunate that she comes with that background. And then in terms of producing the first community, she's just recognized as really someone to turn to the racing community, horse community. And she's an advocate for them, but also a strong regulator. So now I'll step away. My apologies for going second. Commissioner Bryan. Sure. I won't draw the meeting out by repeating what you and Commissioner Hill have said I agree with you. And I think in essence, I've watched Alex run that group and I think structurally that group is almost its own sub entity. You pointed out sort of the obstacle in the HR component and all of that. And there is also sort of an IE component because it got pulled in a way that doesn't really quite get subsumed by 23 K. So she does also provide a function there for us and for ID that is not asked of the other directors. And so I do think that's also a part of this for me. And so I support the request for what you said and then that extra piece for me that I think has also played a role and I think the benefit of Alex, Dr. I think on the person in terms of what we benefit from, from whether it's helping to take blood, that's when they need it, that sort of thing, she's, she really has kept that industry. And the last racetrack here functioning, not only for the ops and everything else that she does, but also because of her expertise as a veteran area and so I support the request. Thanks. Thank you, Commissioner Hill. Commissioner Skinner, I see some things. Thank you, Madam Chair. I won't add too much. Commissioner Hill, starting with Commissioner Hill and rounding off with Commissioner O'Brien, the case has been made, not that I needed to be convinced. So I support the sentiments of each one of you. I support the request for the authorization for Todd to reclassify Dr. Lightbound as indicated. And full support of Dr. Lightbound herself and all she does for the agency in the horse racing industry. Thank you, Commissioner Skinner. Commissioner. Thank you, Madam Chair. I think Brad, Commissioner Hill laid it out perfectly as far as we have to look at it as the position first and the person second. I will say that the position is important. It's extremely important to the Commonwealth and the person is more so. It's important to me and to this organization. And so I also support it. Great. So in terms of steps ahead, Chief Motu and in terms of Director Gressman, I don't think you need a vote from us. This is, you've gotten a fraction for us from us. And then I think probably if you could just, you know, record back to us through an email as to when this is all executed and finalized. It's a important move today. So thank you. And Madam Chair, before we finish, I just had one procedural question too. I mean, we've all talked about how this is overdue. And so I'm in my mind thinking about any retroactivity that might apply to this move. And so I, for one, would see that as an appropriate ask particularly given that over the last several months she's been a direct report up to us through Commissioner Hill. So I just want to throw that out there in terms of where I'm coming from on implementation date. Very good point. So what would you recommend Commissioner O'Garion? I'm thinking in particular of going back to when we made that shift, at least in the summer, I was thinking July one really sort of beginning a fiscal year because she did at that point really step up and has been dealing directly with Commissioner Hill and us. So for me, that was sort of a bright line. We've talked about how maybe this was overdue even before that, but I'm absolutely comfortable going back to that date. I don't know how the other commissioners feel. I would support that, commissioners. What do you think? I see Commissioner Skinner is nodding. Commissioner Maynard, what do you think? Whatever the recommendation of Todd and Davis is good with me. We think we're not to agree with Commissioner O'Garion. So is this where we need to ask? I'll ask Todd and Dave, what do you think of Commissioner O'Garion's suggestion? I support that, but I was just trying to make sure I understood the... So we're talking about basically the date in late July. July 1st, the beginning of the fiscal year. Okay. That's easy. Commissioner Zaynum in forward reading. Okay. Okay. No, thank you. We will certainly take care of this. We appreciate the support and we'll get it done. Absolutely. And thanks, Commissioner Maynard. We sorted it out in our public forum. I gathered that probably everybody was aligned, but that's clarification. So thank you. Commissioner Hill, you're all set with that? I'm all set, but I'm ready to switch my hat to my treasurer's position. And I just want to make sure that, you know, we have the funding to do it back there. And I believe we do for sure, but I just have to bring that up. We have Derek Glennon. He's going to make it right here. I was looking for his square. Well, I saw it and I knew he's always listening. Thanks, Derek. Yes, that should not be a problem. And I think you are appropriate in going back at least to July 1, because then you'll be able to capture the two 4% increases. And Dave and team will be able to just follow what, you know, our salaries looked like at that point. So I think that is the right move because July 3rd was the date you had to be in the position to get the first 4% and January 14th for the second 4%. So I think that would be appropriate. Thanks. Thanks, Chief. Is that helpful, Commissioner Hill? It is. Derek always, you're so good about knowing exactly where we might need additional funds and you plan for that. So I'm not surprised by your answer today. And we thank you. We'll hear that at the second, you'll hear that at the second quarterly update too, that the adjustments you approved in the first quarter have made it much better on the racing side. So we do have the money for that. Good. Thank you. Thank you. So again, thanks. Thank you, Chief. So in terms of, Commissioner, I don't think we need a formal vote. I think we're all clear on the consensus. You have our direction, Todd. It sounds consistent with what you'd hoped for and what you'd hoped for, Chief Montreux. So thank you so much. All right. Excellent. Trudy, maybe you can send Alex out. An email to let her know that we're all set now. In case the... I suggest that you go back and watch. I'd hate for her to miss all the nice words, right? That everybody said about her. I'm hoping, I suspect that she will encourage her to do so. Thanks, Trudy. All right. Oh, sorry. So we're gonna go right then to our sports racing division. Again, Todd, thank you for the good report on the NDA and on this initiative. And thanks, thanks, Dave. I'll move on, Chief. Absolutely. Okay, thanks. So now we're training the sports racing division, Director Bann and fellow manager, Steph, and good morning. Good morning. I know Director Bann is out this morning at an appointment. So we'll start today. Good morning, Madam Chair, commissioners. I only have one item for your review today, beginning on page 29 of your packet is a house rules update from Caesar Sportsbook. Within your packet is a memo prepared by our division on page 34 of the packet. It's a table summary of changes provided by Caesar's. And then lastly, beginning on page 40 of the packet is the entire red-lined house rules document showing all the submitted changes. And it looks like that carries us all the way down to page 517 or 518 of the packet. And commissioners, as the changes are occurring throughout the entire house rules document, we thought it might be best if it were all included in the packet here today. I believe this is Caesar's first house rules update since launching with their initial set of rules last March. As you may recall, several of the operators request or submit changes to their house rules throughout the year to include different markets or events. Caesar's recently had submitted to our division all their changes at once. And while it may appear from the memo to be very substantial and a lot of changes, it is in fact more of an update to condense, consolidate, and streamline markets with their current approved sports plus additional language for the new events or sports which are approved in our event catalog, they now wish to offer. For example, if this were approved today, Caesar's could now offer wagering to the customers on athletic track and field events, badminton, the entertainment awards, footsaw, field hockey, pickleball, pool, rodeo, rowing, sailing, swimming, and beach volleyball. All of these sports are approved in our event catalog. However, Caesar's had not offered these events in the past and now wishes to offer more variety to the customers throughout the sporting calendar year. Throughout our review of these specific new sports updates, we compared the language of the new offerings to our other operators who have been offering wagers for these events already. And all the language submitted here is comparable and nothing stands out as out of the norm. Additionally, if you're flipping through the red line document in your packet, Caesar's, as I said, is looking to condense most, if not all of their currently approved sections as well as simplifying much of the language for better understanding for their customer. This consolidated language removes a lot of wordy and very specific examples, which can make it more confusing to the customer. Again, this condensed language is also comparable to other operators. Nothing Caesar's is requesting here today is not something we've already approved in other house rules here in Massachusetts. Also to streamline their house rules, some sports sections were just moved from one area to another. No actual changes were made to the house rules, just a reorganization of the sports, which also contributes to the lengthy red line document, I believe cycling and competitive eating fall under that streamlined category. And there are some helpful changes within the consolidated rules. For example, in baseball for player specific markets, instead of the specific player just playing in the game as initially stated, they now require the player to start the game for the waiter to have action. For their lacrosse section, they've added or defined additional markets for wagering. Previously for rugby, the event was divided into two different categories within their house rules. Caesar's has now combined those markets to make it easier. And this is something we've seen across the operators as well, where leagues are consolidated for easier understanding. Lastly, throughout the general betting rules, which is back towards the top of the house rules, Caesar's is also updating and clarifying language, adding and consolidating sections and removing some 40 examples, while also adding some very helpful examples, all for the better understanding for their customers. For example, they've added language to their house rules on persons excluded from their properties or online wagering. I'm sorry, the maximum winnings has been changed to $3 million. They have added clarification to the field. They've added an example for dead heat, which I've seen has been added to other operators house rules recently just for better clarification. Their parlay rules section has been cleaned up and more definition was given to their super parlay rules. And futures bet settlement section has been removed altogether as it is addressed in other sections. And this does occur for other sections as well, where duplicate language may be removed because it is addressed in another section of their house rules. And all of this is outlined in the table summary provided by Caesar's as well as a memo from our division. And I said it a few times though, but all of these changes are in effort to help streamline and improve their customer experience. If approved, it would condense their current 368 pages of house rules down to 165. Additionally, and an important note here, these changes were submitted and approved in every other jurisdiction in which Caesar's operates. I confirmed this the other day that all of the jurisdictions have approved these updates already. And all the language submitted here today is almost identical to what was submitted in the other states. Caesar's made people to clarify that. I've had the opportunity to read through these changes twice and was actually my third read through this morning and have not identified any requests that other operators don't already have approved in their house rules. And to note, to help me answer any additional specific questions, we do have two representatives from Caesar's here today. Digital Compliance Manager, Curtis Lane and Director of Trade Compliance, Tina Spickerman. And just a side note here, a very big thank you to Curtis and his team for being patient with us as we review these updates. Caesar's did submit these updates early February, February 4th, I believe, with the hopes of being added to the 14th or to the 15th meeting. With all the changes, it did take a little more time to review the updates, taking time to review side by side the current against the revised version. We wanted to be very thorough in our research and review. So thank you to Curtis and Caesar's for bearing with us. So through an extensive review of these changes, the Sports Wage and Division confirms all requirements have been met pursuant to 205-CMR-24702 and has no reservations with approving these updates. Madam Chair. I just want to ask for a motion. That was an excellent overview, Manager Steffen. And thank you for the thorough report or report and for your memo. And thank you, Mr. Lane. My question is going to be to Andrew, the level of cooperation around these changes and it sounds as though Caesar's continues to be a great collaborator. So thank you. Commissioner, is questions for Andrew? I had one for Caesar's. Andrew sort of hinted he said they're almost the same as what's been sort of given to everybody else. So curious what the almost is and why. I'm assuming that means there's a slight difference for us and I'm sure there's a reason. So I just wanted to find out what it was. And we do have four more representatives, I think today. Sorry, I did mention two only Curtis and Tina. So thank you, Lisa and Craig for joining as well. Yeah, thanks, Andrew. Mr. Lane, could you or maybe it's whoever wishes to respond to Commissioner O'Brien's question. Good morning, Madam Chair and commissioners. I am Tina Spickerman. I'm the director of trading compliance for Caesar's and commissioner O'Brien to address your question. All of the operators may have slight variances in some of the rules. However, in nature, they are all very similar. Just to give you a specific example, when we have statistics changed formally by a governing body, we all have rules in our house tools and they vary in differences with wording, basically. But industry standard is pretty much the same. Maybe I misunderstood. I thought Andrew had said that what's in front of us is virtually identical to what you've given to your other jurisdictions, but I thought there was maybe a slight tweak for us so that I was just trying to see is there's something slightly different from Massachusetts because of our rules and regs compared to your other jurisdictions? I mean, they're basically very similar in nature. Can I reframe the question perhaps, Commissioner O'Brien? Just say, substantively, are they, is there no difference? It would just be wordsmithing or something to align with Massachusetts, maybe a reg standard or something like that. Yes, that would be correct. Yes, ma'am. Okay, is that helpful? I think for the record, Commissioner O'Brien, I think it's an important piece that you've raised. Right, that's what I thought. That clarifies it. Thank you. Okay, great. Okay. Madam Chair, oh, sorry. I'm gonna let Commissioner Maynard go first. Commissioner Hill, do you mind? That's fine. I am. The body movement. There we go. Thank you. I asked this question of Andrew and Primate, so I'm gonna ask him public, right? What's going on with the maximum winnings going down? Quite a bit. We're not talking about small percentage here. We're talking about millions of dollars. I understand that there's a prior approval process that can come, but I'm trying to figure out what the basis justification, if there's something we're missing. Good morning, Madam Chair, Commissioners. I can answer that question. What we do is, I'm pretty sure you've all heard of Mattress Mac, for example. So, any major that we took, it used to be 25 million, but that's still have to go to the board for approval. So, the three million is anything where I can approve and my immediate supervisor, thereafter it goes to the board for approval. So, it's usually a discussion with the customer. I'd like to bet to win substantial amount of money and that way we've got the processing place. I appreciate it. Thank you for that answer. No problem. Okay, appreciate it. Madam Chair, if you can indulge me, any opportunity I get to learn about a new sport, I try and take advantage of. So, please bear with me, my fellow commissioners. And I bet it's gonna be Craig that answers this question for me. So, I noticed that you're adding snooker to the list of bets that you can take. And I just have to ask, I watched the snooker championships, I think it was a year ago, and I don't know if it was on FS1 or if it was on ESPN. I have never seen such packed houses for what I would call pool, but snooker of course, people going crazy on each shot that is made. So, I just have to ask, is this a sport that a lot of people bet on? Good morning, Commissioner Hill. It's, as an Englishman, I can speak to snooker because it's a hometown sport. It's been exceptionally popular for the years. Wasn't exceptionally popular when the TVs were black and white because you can't differentiate between the colors of the balls. Yeah. But extremely popular, well maintained and has a high level of standard and integrity. I could not believe like there were thousands of people watching the snooker championship when I was tuning in and it was by accident. And by the way, I think it was two in the morning that I was watching it. But thank you for that. It just amazes me the sports that people bet on. And then when I start learning more about them, how popular they are. Yeah, a lot of these sports do have popularity. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Thank you, my fellow commissioners. Okay. Anything else? Commissioner O'Brien, you all set. Commissioner Skinner, you all set. She's all set. Commissioner Skinner, O'Brien, you're all set now. The one point of clarification following up on Commissioner Hill, what's in the house rules may not be a perfect lineup with our catalog, right? I mean, there's still a request that would have to add it officially through the catalog if it's not in there, right? Might be another opportunity for you to learn more about snooker. Well, snooker already in. And it's just, is that being added today? We're not adding anything to the catalog. No, no, that's right, yeah. Okay, so, all right, so I just, good, good. You picked up on the same thing I picked up on. Right, just to clarify, and I may say this, but at every sport that's in Caesar's house rules is approved in our catalog. There's no additional rules. No additional rules. It's not like they're adding sports to their house rules that isn't approved and they're just waiting to take wagers on it when it is approved. If there's a sport that's not approved in our catalog, it is not in their house rules. Yeah, so snooker's been. Snooker is approved in. Yes. Commissioner Hill, I'm trying to imagine you watching. That's really where I'm kind of enjoying it most. All right, so we clarified that. Thank you. Anything else for the Caesar team? Or for Andrew? Okay, again, thank you. And thank you for the four of you showing up today. And I appreciate, and also the work that Andrew's done. Andrew, all that homework makes our job so easy. So thank you so, so much. Yeah, and I said it earlier, but thank you to Curtis and the Caesar's team. Huge help here for me, guys. Great. So if we'll be moved, Commissioner Hill. Sure, Madam Chair, I move that the commission approve the updates to Caesar's house rules as included in the commissioner's packet and discussed here today. Second. Any questions? Okay, Commissioner Bryan. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Commissioner Skinner. Aye. Commissioner Maynard. Aye. Yes. Aye too. Thanks so much. And thank you again for your patience. I know we're a little bit later, but I believe here's not a bad place to start. So thank you. Thank you, commissioners. Thank you, commissioners. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much. Okay, then we're going to turn to the IEP. Good morning, both chairing Cramer, Kathleen, and IEP director Monahan. Good morning. Oh, and there's a counselor. Mercer, good morning, everyone. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. So today we have two potential non-compliance matters to bring forward to you and I will turn those over to Kathleen and Zach in just a moment. I just wanted to set some procedural framework first before we get going. As you'll probably remember from our last meeting, Legal and the IEP are working together on some potential on a memo related to when the IEP is a witness versus when the IEP is a party in Judicatory hearings related to non-compliance matters. So that's coming at the next meeting. Today, the commission could choose to do sort of one of two things. You could hear these matters just for your situational awareness and put off any decisions on how they're to move forward. Or you could decide today to, you know, one of the three options that we talk about every time, either taking it up as in Judicatory hearing, sending it to the IEP for further review and action, or going through the penalty process where the commission sets a penalty and then sends a letter to the operator. If you choose to make a decision on one of those three steps today, we will still revisit this matter to discuss whether, and you decided you wanted a Judicatory hearing, we wanted the IEP to act as a party or a witness. So that's a lot, happy to restate any of that, but that's where we are procedurally this morning. So any questions before I turn it to Kathleen? I'll start the questions. Great, Kathleen and Zach, there you go. Good morning, Chair. Good morning, commissioners. I have a very easy job today because I'm going to turn it right over to Enforcement Counsel Zach Mercer for the briefings on these. Thank you, Kathleen. Good morning, Chair and commissioners. The first of these two matters, this is an alleged instant of not compliance by temporary category three, sports wagering license holder, Crown MA Gaming LLC, doing business with DraftKings. The statute and regulation implicated in this matter is General Laws Chapter 23N, Section 3, defining sports wagering, and 205CMR 247.012A1, prohibiting wagering on any collegiate sport or athletic event with an outcome dependent on the performance of an individual athlete, including but not limited to in-game or in-play wagers. This incident involved the offering of an impermissible promotional wagering market on a single player's performance in the NCAA national football national championship game scheduled to occur on January 8th, 2024. There were 13 vets in total with a total handle of $457.80. I will note, in regard to this matter, the commission has considered a similar factual issue with a bet MGM matter, albeit on a much larger scope, which the commission was briefed on February 1st and opted to move to an adjudicatory hearing. And again, Zach, on that, we just really heard the basic facts. And we took the... That is correct, Chair. That is essentially kind of the basic facts of the reports that we've received. Yeah. And so we selected the adjudicatory hearing. Questions for Zach at this stage. Who would like to go first from the terms of recommending our... It was one player, 13 vets, $400 something, but one player, the NFL. NCAA football. So this was college football, Madam Chair. Sorry, NCAA, NFL, but yes, of course it was college. Yeah. Great. Madam Chair. Yes, Commissioner Spinner. I'd offer that the commission hears the prior matter first, the matter that we were briefed on, on February 1st, I think Zach, you said, right? At the adjudicatory hearing, so that we get the opportunity to set the tone, if you recall, the rationale for the commission sending that matter to adjudicators. I can't talk this morning, apparently, to an adjudicatory hearing is, because that was sort of a case of first impression for this commission, and we did want the opportunity to hear the facts, to question the witnesses and determine a penalty, if appropriate. And so I think that the stakes here are relatively low, 13 bets, a relatively low dollar amount. So I would like to see this be handled exclusively by IAB, but with the benefit of any guidance that we might put forward in connection with the earlier matter at an adjudicatory hearing. Can we share some of the reactions to that or your own thoughts? Commissioner O'Brien. I would like to get information on the first one, obviously on the first, I know it's a different operator, but I always struggle with these when we don't know exactly how and whether they went back in software anymore. I'm thinking of when some of these first came to light with the encore early on, and even MGM went back and did a look, I'd wanna know whether they went back and did a look to make sure this is truly the only violation on this. That's where I'm coming from. I guess I'm not really... Are you asking for IAB to further an audit? Yeah, I am actually, I think, because I'm asking them to make sure that there's been sort of an audit or a look to make sure that we're not getting a one off and then we're gonna find out a couple of weeks from now that they went and did an audit and found four, five, six more of these, so. So IAB would only move into their investigatory work that's been done to the extent that that may not have been done, that would be something that you would like to see. Correct. Commissioner Hill, Commissioner Maynard, what are you thinking? No, I'm agreeing with Commissioner O'Brien. And then, so, Paul, I just am trying to think when we would come back and make a direct, do we bring this back? I'll talk about that when Commissioner Maynard about the process and Kathleen moves back. Not I, Neil. Okay. Yeah, first glance, it's funny. I'm gonna sound opposite of everything I've said over the last year and a half, but I would initially just kick this down, but I kind of want a little more guidance to Commissioner Skinner's point out and about before we kick more down, but that's kind of where I am. I'm okay with going with the majority. That's my point. Can I ask a follow-up question? Madam Chair, I'm sorry to interrupt. I'll set. Really, so just to, Commissioner O'Brien's point, in the course of the investigation by IEB as they're reviewing this, should it be sent back? There is discovery that the scope is a lot broader than what is being presented today. Would this come back under those circumstances for a second discussion or at least another briefing for the commission to consider? Because I would think that if there's a material change in the facts as represented today, that we'd wanna have that matter come back to be reconsidered. Commissioner Skinner, that was actually the process I was going to suggest after hearing this conversation is that Zach could, the first question we could ask is just, have you done an audit? Is there anything else? If not, IEB can move ahead, if so, and there are many more. We bring it back for a further discussion about how the commission wants to proceed. I think in terms of IEB going forward, is that for exercising option two or are we going to hold for you to IEB and do that until the MGM? And we can hold, yeah, and I should have said that too. If the situation is we ask if there's any more, there aren't any more, IEB proceeds, IEB would not finalize this one, close this one until we have the guidance from the commission on the other issue related to player props. So we'd sort of hold it, do the investigation, but hold any final judgment and abeyance until we get that guidance. The process is clear to me and I'm in agreement with it. I will add, this is a statutory prohibition in Massachusetts and I'm extraordinarily proud of our Massachusetts lawmakers leadership and the governor who signed this into law for adding the statutory prohibition to Massachusetts. I know that Ohio is just moving to adopt this prohibition. It's betting on student athletes on their backs and from my perspective, these are high tech operators. I think they can figure out a way to have a block on not having a bet on the back of a student athlete. This is one where personally, I feel they got to get it right. So from my perspective, I'm not looking at the dollar amount. I'm not looking at, I look at that single student athlete, that football player, for some reason, there was a bet on him saying him because I'm guessing it was him. So I just wanted to acknowledge really how well positioned we are as regulators to have strength of the statutory prohibition to help us do our work because it's just sort of black and white from my perspective. So I really like Commissioner Skinner's recommendation to see how the MGM guns and members to come back if need be to commission. Otherwise, I'd be able to evaluate the tone of the commission sets. Okay, do we need, we don't need a vote on this. Everybody on set for Kathleen named Zach, nice job. We have another one, Zach. We do, correct. This matter is an alleged incident of non-compliance by temporary category three, sports, wagering, license holder, Betfair, Interactive, US LLC, doing business as Fandall, the statute regulation implicated in this matter are the same as the last. So general laws, chapter 23N, section three, defining sports wagering and 205 CMR 247.01 2A1, preventing wagering on any collegiate sport or athletic event with an outcome dependent on the performance of an individual athlete, including but not limited to in-game or in-play wagers. This incident involved the offering of an impermissible wagering market on a single player's performance in an NCAA football game scheduled to occur on September 9th, 2023. There were nine total wagers placed with a total stake of $69.81. Commissures, you're thanking, Michelle Bryan. I think the same thing. I want to know was there not it, were there others? It kind of speaks to your question Madam Chair, is how did that sneak through? Because if one went through I'm suspicious maybe there's others. And so I'd want to query affirmatively if did you do it on it? And if they didn't, I'd want them to do one and report back to IB because that is dispositive for me and where I want it to go from here. In line with the other conversation we've had and what Commissioner Skinner said in terms of, we're going to have a bigger conversation about this based on the one from the first. Commissures, I see the official manager, you're nodding your head, do you want to add? I think it makes sense. Makes sense. Commissioner Hill, Commissioner Skinner. Makes sense, Commissioner Skinner? Yeah, insert my earlier position, comments and question here for this discussion. Okay, minutes will reflect that, Commissioner Skinner. And I'll just add this, I may be real clear just now how I feel about the statutory prohibition. I'm going to add the additional thought that it is not lost on any of us that we have such high expectations of our regulated operators. Who we just cannot tolerate them betting on student athletes. In turn, we don't want to have an illegal market taking up that space. So it's a joint effort because if the regulated operators don't place those bets on student athletes, there is an opportunity to go to the black market. So that's not lost on us. So it's that balance. But I know we'll continue to work with the attorney general's office on working to make it a normal playing field. Okay, Zach, what do you think? Sounds good to me, Chair. Yeah, well, very, very nice work and such important work. So thank you. Thank you very much. Kathleen, Kate, what was that? Are you marking orders for this? Yes, thank you very much. Thank you. All right, so then next, I am going to, Judy, I'm gonna, if you're listening, it's not truly, I'll take any help on reminding me to watch the clock because at noon, we will need to break whatever we're doing and bring in Director Bobbitt because we have scheduled him like a scheduled meeting. Okay, everyone. So I'll take any help on what I'm timekeeping. Thanks, Judy. So we are turning next to back to the Director Monica here and Chief O'Brien. Thank you. And again, Kathleen, you're staying on the best. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Once again, I'm gonna turn this right over to Kara, but what we'll be discussing this morning are the temporary license requests for sports wagering and moving forward on those. And with that, over to Kara. Thank you, Caitlin. Good morning, Madam Chair and commissioners. As Caitlin said, we have for you this morning, the renewal of the temporary sports wagering operator licenses that the commission approved in January and February of 2023, including Plain Bill Gaming Redevelopment LLC, American Wagering Inc., Valley's Interactive LLC, Betfair Interactive LLC, BetMGM, Crown MA Gaming LLC, FBG Enterprises OCCO LLC, and Penn Sports Interactive LLC. The memo is on page 520 of your packet, but briefly, as these license expire from one year from their original issuance, the commission needs to review the renewal requests. As required by 205-CMR219, the requests were made timely and the application fee has been paid. The licensing division has deemed their requests complete and I am ready for any questions that you have. We also have representatives from each operator on the call in case you have any questions for them. Kara, thank you for the excellent work, commissioners. Questions for Kara or for the operator representatives? Well, I can say that remind everyone of the public that lack of questions is not the lack of interest. It's because we've been well-prepared along the way we've understood that this process was underway and so, Kara, thank you and to the rest of the IED team for keeping us informed. Really, early on January, we had our first preview of this process. Commissioners, if we don't have any questions, are you in a position to move? Commissioner Hill, you're saying yes, I'll welcome your motion. I'm not hearing any objection, okay? Oh, you're on mute. Of course I am, sorry. Okay. Alrighty, so Madam Chair, I move that the commission approved the temporary sports wagering operator license renewal request pursuant to 205CMR 219 for the following operators as included in the commissioners packet and discussed here today. Plainville Gaming Redevelopment LLC, which is Plain Ridge Park Casino. American Wagering Inc. Caesars. Bally's Interactive LLC, which is Bally Bet. Betfair Interactive LLC, which is FanDual. BetMGM LLC. Crown Mass Gaming LLC, which is DraftKings. FBG Enterprises OpCo LLC, which is Fanatics. And Pensport Interactive LLC, which is ESPN Bet. Very good. Thanks, Commissioner Maynard. Any questions? Kara is just, I can see her smiling. This is a very smooth process. Thank you so much. For sure, Madam Chair. I'm sorry, Madam Chair. I don't have a question, but just a comment. I discussed this with Andrew yesterday, relative to Bally Bet. It would be good for the commission to get an update on the status of their intentions for the commonwealth. And so I know there are discussions with the sports wagering division that are underway. So just putting that out for the rest of you, I would be interested as one commissioner in understanding what the status is. And Commissioner Skinner, you can bring that up with the agenda study meeting on Wednesday so we don't forget. Thanks. Well, thank you. Excellent. Okay. Commissioner Maynard. Hi. Commissioner Hill. Hi. Commissioner Skinner. Hi. Commissioner Maynard. Hi. And I vote yes. Five-zero. Excellent. Okay. Dr. Lightbaum, we can say congratulations to you. You've got nice news today. And we all thought you should reflect on it and go back and watch the tape. But right now you're in front of us and we weren't sure how the timing was going. So it's going well. You're all set. You and Chad to proceed. Yeah, we're all set. And we'll definitely be done. Well, I can't say for sure, but my intention is we'll be done well before noon time. Thank you so much. So I'll go ahead and turn it over to Chad now as it's doing with the promo and the capital improvement trust funds. Thanks, Alex. Good morning, Madam Chair and commissioners. So today we have three requests for consideration. And the first item we have is a request for consideration for the harness horse capital improvement trust fund submitted by Plain Ridge Park Casino. Each month funds are deposited into a capital improvement trust that the licensees can use to repair, maintain, or improve the property where racing activities are conducted. Distributions are made upon the commission's approval of the licensees request for consideration followed by a request for reimbursement. Today's request is in the amount of $1,066,505. And these funds will be used for phase two of the paddock and barn building renovations. I have reviewed the request and documentation that is included in the packet. I consider the request to be in good order and can recommend approval. Not sure if Steve, if you're on, but do you want to maybe provide a little update on the renovations and the projects? Sure, thank you, Chad. Obviously any questions that the commission might have for me as far as the project is going, but just a quick overview. The project is part of the design that we had brought before the commission earlier. It's not the complete design as laid out because the complete design was way out of our budget at the time. So what it entails is really a facelift of the existing building, restrooms, HVAC, which the paddock never had HVAC in those areas before, new paddock office, new windows, new air handling and things like that. What we intended to do with the concept was to actually connect barn to the paddock and make it bigger. But at this time, it's just not in there, within our reach to do that. So we pared it down a little bit. We pulled out the necessities and this request reflects that. Question later. I'm ready to move. Any questions before he moves? No, just a comment that I'm sure the HVAC will be greatly appreciated. Absolutely. It will by me when I go visiting. That's for sure. Commissioner Maynard, thanks. I move that the commission approve the expenditure of $37,500 from the Harness Horse Promotional Trust Fund in accordance with Chapter 128A, Section 5G, for the purposes described in the materials in the commissioner's packet. And as discussed here today. Second. Any further questions or edits? Okay, Commissioner Maynard. Aye. Wishman Hill. Aye. Mr. Skinner. Aye. Commissioner Maynard. Aye. I vote yes. Aye, Sarah. Well done. Thank you, Steve. And the next item we have is a request for consideration for the Harness Horse Promotional Trust, also submitted by Plain Ridge Park Casino. For the promotional trust, each month funds are deposited into the trust that our licensees can use to engage customers to increase attendance and handle. Distributions are also made upon the commission's approval of the licensees request for consideration followed by a request for reimbursement. This request is in the amount of 37,500. It will be used to put on this year's series of handicap contests. That will begin on March 30th and end on September 27th. This too, I consider and go to order after reviewing the request and can recommend approval. Questions for Chad? Okay. Do I have a motion? You can make this one, Madam Chair. Okay, next, Mr. Hill. I move that the commission approve the expenditure of 37,500 from the Harness Horse Promotional Trust Fund in accordance with Chapter 128, Section 5G, for the purpose described in the materials on the commissioners packet and is discussed here today. Second. This friendly amendment, is it 128A or 128? Is it 128A or 128A? It must be 128A, Mr. Dutton. Thanks, sir. Yeah, I think it's 128A, but I'll make a double check. That's correct, it's 128A. And just, I'm sorry to, I was having a slight case of danger over there. I may have missed it, but Commissioner Raynard's motion on the last one I thought you should be mentioning this amount. It didn't, I used A in it. No, I'm talking about the amount. Oh, he's talking about the dollar amount. It was a 37,500 instead of the 1,066. It's a sizable amount, but I just wanna make sure we got. Yeah, I wanna make sure that, yeah, yeah. You're right, I read out of the second motion and it was a total mistake of mine, so. I'm glad to be on, that's why I've been scrolling. I saw a much bigger amount. Steve, how's a $1 million amount sound to you versus the $37,000 dollar? I'll take, I'll take a million dollars twice. 37,000 dollars twice. You should have screened to the top of your lungs. And there's this reason for a little confusion here. We don't need to get into the details, but just so I'm, you know, there's a lot of else here. So let's undo, I'm gonna turn to Todd first. We need to undo Commissioner Raynard's motion because it wouldn't follow from our. It's confusing because he does reference the renovation and the discussion in the packet, but I think it's, yeah, it's probably cleaner to strike and do it over. I think we can reconsider it, Madam Chair, and I would move that we reconsider the vote made by Commissioner Maynard. I'm on the amount, right? Yeah, I think it was made an error. So maybe, you know, we could strike the whole past vote if everyone's amenable and start again. Well, I'm also sitting here thinking that there's another promotional fund consideration that I did make the motion for because to not get into it, as somebody said, we've reviewed multiple things in packet, right? That's right. I'm sitting here thinking, like, can we just talk about that project at some point and just integrate that? We just did. So should we finish this vote and then go back? Sure. Let's do that. Let's be clear, I like Commissioner Hill's approach. That is a reconsideration. Commissioner Maynard, your first motion, would you like how, Commissioner Hill, it turned to you? So, Madam Chair, I had just made a motion for the second one. So why don't we complete that one first and then I'll reconsider the first vote. And we have to accept the friendly amendment on the statutory reference. Right, 128A. The statutory reference is 128A, yeah. That's the, I destroyed it, that's correct. Yeah, so that's 128A. Do you accept that friendly motion, a moment? Do we have a second? I think I seconded it. Thank you, Commissioner. I'm sorry, I was doing the scrolling and not probably focusing. So thank you. Commissioner Skinner, you second that with that friendly amendment. I do. Okay, thank you. Let's vote on that. Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Commissioner Skinner. Aye. Commissioner Maynard. Aye. Okay, and I thought, yes. Now, Commissioner Hill, do we, I would have you move for reconsideration of Commissioner Maynard earlier or Commissioner Maynard do that? If somebody who voted in the affirmative can make that, so any of us I believe can make that motion. Commissioner Hill, I like that it was your good idea and I like the tone of it, let's go. And okay, so Madam Chair, I move that we reconsider the vote that we took regarding section seven A of today's agenda. Second. Thank you. Any discussion? Okay, Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Commissioner Skinner. Aye. Commissioner Maynard. Aye. And I thought, yes. Commissioner Maynard, we've had some discussion. Do we need any, and they're confusing. There's a couple of promotional fund matters in front of us. Would you, do you have any further discussion, need any further guidance, clarification from legal? Only that, a $37,500 air conditioner was gonna be really cheap. So I'm glad that we can redo this for Steve and PPC. Well, I, and my additional to chat and Steve, thank you for your patience, we're getting it just right. Commissioner Maynard, would you like to move? Madam Chair, I move that the commission approve the Harness Horse Capital Improvement Trust Fund request for an additional $1,066,505 in accordance with Chapter 128A Section 5G for the funding, or funding for renovations of the horse paddock as included in the commissioner's packet and discussed here today. Second. Okay. All right, Commissioner Maynard. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Commissioner Skinner. Aye. Commissioner Maynard. And I vote yes, five, zero. There. Thank you. And now we have item 7C Advertising, right, Chad? Yes, correct. So the final item is also a request for consideration for the Harness Horse Promotional Fund. This request is in the amount of $9,000 and it'll be used to promote the aforementioned handicapping series along with the triple crown races which include the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Steaks and the Belmont Steaks. And it's also gonna advertise the summer's live racing, specifically the spirit of Massachusetts. It's gonna be a billboard that they're gonna go ahead and advertise on if approved. And I also reviewed this request. It is in good order and can also recommend approval. Questions for Chad on that? Or for Steve? Okay. Do I have a motion? I can move, Madam Chair. See if I can't get this right. 7C, I move that the commission approve the expenditure of $9,000 from the Harness Horse Promotional Trust Fund in accordance with chapter 128A, section 5G for the purposes described in the materials in the Fisher's Packet and as discussed here today. Second. Thanks, Mr. Hill. Any questions? Nicely done. Thank you. Mr. Ryan. Aye. Mr. Hill. Aye. Mr. Skinner. Aye. Mr. Lader. Aye. And I vote yes, five, zero. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Steve. Good to see you. Thank you, Mr. Lader. Thank you. Before we go to the next item on the agenda, 6D, I just want to point out, similarly to 3D, Dr. Leibbrand did reach out to Trudy and me to see if we would be able to include this item on the agenda. Again, it did not come up with an agenda setting, but there was some timeliness, time factors that Dr. Leibbrand was weighing. And so I'm presuming you're all set to go forward on that. I'm sure you have the materials. Okay, thanks. Good morning, Dr. Leibbrand and Chair. Good morning. Good morning. And thank you very much for all of you for considering the classification of the director of racing job. Much appreciated. So today we've got Sue Rodriguez, the VP of operations for Rain and Park with us. And they made a request to add the 2024 Saudi Cup through SIS content services to their list of simulcast import. And due to the timeliness of the request, I use the authorization that the commission granted in 2023 and approved it. And now as required in that authorization for the director, I'm bringing it in front of the commission for their approval. The import request for Plain Ridge and Suffolk did include this provider originally. So the commission has already authorized it for them. So, and again, this isn't a new, you know, a new service or whatever. The Saudi Cup has been wagered on in Massachusetts for a number of years. So my recommendation is that the commission approved this and Sue is on the line, if there's any questions for her. Good. Nice to see you, Sue. See you guys. Thank you. The commissioners. Dr. Lightbound has exercised, I think the authority that was granted, I mentioned the delegation, I think this was probably captured in that, right? Dr. Lightbound. The number six in that specifically mentioned final tasks. Right, so she's following right up and that's why she didn't really want to wait. So wanted to make sure the commission was all set. Any questions for Dr. Lightbound? Patricia, right? Just clarification. So the other simulcast already have this provider, right? Correct. Did I hear you right? Okay. The other two licensees already have this as one of theirs. So it's not anything new. It's not a new thing, right? Exactly, correct. Correct. Anything further? Okay, I'm hearing no further questions. Are you prepared to move on this? Patricia Hill, you're on mute. Yep, I'm just on mute there. Madam chair, I move that the commission approve the Massa Soya Greyhound Association and Totten Dog Tracks, Rainham Park. Three requests for approval of an additional 2024 simulcast import signal as included in the commissioner's packet and discussed here today. Second. Thanks, Patricia O'Brien. Any questions? Patricia O'Brien? Aye. Patricia Hill? Aye. Patricia Skinner? Aye. Patricia Maynard? Aye. And I vote yes, five, zero. So thank you, Sue. Nice to see you all. Thank you. And Dr. Leibhound, thank you. Thank you. And thank you, Chad. Good to see you. Good to see you again. Good to see you again. Good to see you again. Virtually. Nice to see you. Thank you. Commissioner, as it's 11, 1130, I am next on our agenda would be Director Bob, we're ahead of schedule. We have a half an hour. I am wondering if one, our sports wagering team is actually ready because it's maybe earlier than there. Anticipating going on, that would be PSI giving out their update if we could fit that in. Otherwise, perhaps our finance team is prepared to go forward now, at least in part. I see a thumbs up. Let's do that and dare excuse us if we have to stop and allow Director Bob to go forward. And then when he's done, I think PSI will be better positioned to go forward. All right, thanks. Absolutely, thank you. So we'll kick off with our second quarterly budget update. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and commissioners. I'm joined here by Douglas O'Donnell and John Scully and we're here to present to you the commissioned second quarterly update for fiscal year 2024. The contents begin on page 576 of your packet. As a reminder, the commission approved an operational budget of $55.8 million for FY24. And at the first quarterly update, we moved approximately 825,000 of administrative and shared costs from racing to sports, wagering and gaming funding sources. As attachment A of this document shows, this has put the racing budget back in a good position. We're at the midpoint in the year, that item has spent 50% of its resources and actually has a revenue balance sitting. We'll continue to monitor racing revenue and expenses through the remainder of the fiscal year, but that's the extent of the update on racing this time, which is a good thing for us. In this quarterly update, we're recommending adjustments to some spending and revenue items in both gaming and sports wagering, but we're not making any changes to the assessments on operators, bottom line dollar amount. Moving into gaming, this quarter we're increasing spending estimates by approximately $10,000 for the independent monitor bills processed and paid between October 1st and December 31st of this year. We're still tracking GEU costs, litigation costs and the IT data center move costs that were identified at the onset of the year as a potential areas of exposure. However, at this time, all looks good in these areas as of the reporting and John can follow up with that if you have any additional questions after the presentation. On the revenue side of gaming, we're increasing total revenue projections by approximately 25,000, which is composed of the revenue reimbursement from Encore Boston Harbor for the independent monitor, that 10,000 that we're increasing spending for, as well as some movement of fees within gaming where we have seen greater reimbursements for Encore Boston Harbor additional securities and less billings for primary vendor renewals and anticipated at the outset of the year. However, those have picked up and we've seen six or seven of those come across our desk over the last month or so. As has been our practice, we're also revisiting the gaming positions at each gaming facility as of January 1, 2024 to adjust the second half assessment on gaming licensees. The changes in positions as well as the share of the assessment is laid out on the tables on page two and three of the memo or page 577 and 578 of your packet. In sports wagering, we're looking to increase projected spending estimates by approximately 909,000, which is composed of the following. Increasing RSMs budget by approximately 622,000 from an initial really rough estimate of 750,000, I'd call it more placeholder than a rough estimate to 1.37 million for the actual anticipated costs through the year. We're also adding 500,000 for the ISA with the Attorney General's Office that the commission approved at our last public meeting. And we are decreasing the GEU line item under sports wagering by 250,000 for the officers that we're gonna be stationed at a category two license holder. It appears that this item will be delayed for FY24 or at least partially delayed for FY24. This item will be anticipating coming back in FY25. We're also increasing revenue estimates for sports wagering by $1.1 million for the additional billings for background suitability fees. If you remember, there was initial $200,000 suitability license fee that was required. We spent all but almost 300,000 of that last year. And now we're billing for another 1.1 million, which offsets the costs of the ISA with the Attorney General's Office as well as the additional money for RSM. Therefore, we're not looking to increase the assessment for sports wagering at all. Good news, a lot of movement within the budget. However, no real changes to the assessment which I think is something we've tried to maintain. When we have additional costs come up, we look to find decreases somewhere or shift some priorities around. And I think that this is a good presentation of that. At this point, we've come to the conclusion of our presentation. I know it's short, but that's only because we've given pretty in-depth two-by-twos. And the memo lays out all of these moves pretty clearly as well as attachment A. But we are here and happy to answer any questions you may have at this point. Any questions for Derrick, John, Doug, and I know this is the rest of his team is out there. Derrick's always very generous not giving credits to the Attorney General. As you all know, I am the mouthpiece up here and all the work is really done by John, Doug and their teams, as well as the directors. The monthly budget meetings really help with this. Keeping an eye on what's going on. The meetings I have worked behind me. I love the artwork. I got an update too. Got a lot of updating to do. Well, she's your course too. All right. Questions for our finance team. That this structure of not moving on this commissioners. This is an update. Sounds like you're all set there. Thank you. Thank you, Doug and John. Thank you. That went rather quick. I think it was six minutes. So if you'd like, we can get into the procurement discussion. However, during two by twos, this did take a little longer. I think the quickest we had gone through it was about 35 to 40 minutes because there are 25 slides. So we can move into this. I just don't want to cut into anyone else's time. So I would, I think commissioners, but I'm recommending it's 1133. If we could have the procurement slide presentation, and then maybe take a 10 minute break right before our director Bovitz. I think I could use a quick, quick break. I don't know if you could use that. And then we go into director Bovitz and then we can evaluate lunch, that kind of thing. Okay. So let's see how we do, John. All right. I will put up the slide presentation so we can walk around, walk through it. And John will have to keep me honest to make sure that I actually. And I'm not limiting you to that timeframe. We'll just revisit it after director Bovitz presentation. Okay. Can everyone see the presentation? Yep. All right. Good afternoon again, madam. Good morning, madam chair and commissioners. Today I'm joined by John Scully. However, we do have Noelle Lowe available for assistance. Should you ask us some question that we get stumped on? We're here to give an overview of procurement rules that the MGC follows. We fully anticipate the commission to use some of this material in a future meeting when discussing and deciding a delegated authority level for staff and contracting and procurements. And this presentation begins on page 585 of your packet. I'll be handling slides one through five, slide nine and slide 16 through 18. John will be discussing the rest of the slides. This is an intentional format as John Agnes and Noelle's expertise in knowledge of state procurement processes far exceed my own knowledge base. We're very lucky to have them. And as all three of them have taken and passed the state sourcing certificate program offered by the Operational Services Division. So moving on to slide two, first question we have for all of you and the public is what laws and regulations to MGC follow for procurements? Well, section 57 of chapter 23K created the MGC as a state agency for the purposes of state finance law. And as such, we follow state finance laws, certain sections of A and F laws as well as some of OSD's policies. So the commission adopted 801CMR-21, the Commonwealth's competitive procurement regulations as well as best practices established through 801CMR-21 in 2013. Page 14 of the commission's annual report documents this decision. OSD has put together a handbook for conducting best value procurements and the commission's finance staff follows this handbook on conducting those procurements as it is considered a best practices document for agencies. For goods and services not covered under 801CMR-21, the oversight department for horizontal construction is MASDOT and that's through chapter, MAS General Law chapter 30, section 39M. The oversight department for vertical construction and property sales and leases is DKAM and that is MAS General Law chapter 149, sections A through J. And the oversight department for ISAs and grants is the Office of the Comptroller and they have regulations as well, 815CMR-6 that covers those. However, we will be focusing on procurements of regular goods and services and best value awarding. Slide over to slide four. The MGC is required to use OSD statewide contracts including designated. So the question here is what are the roles? How do you actually go through a procurement? So there are some lists and priorities. The first is if there's a statewide contract available, use it. In those exceptions to using the statewide contract have to come with authorization from the commission and we've done a few of these in the past, whether it's a procurement, whether it is a best value posting, whether it's a emergency procurement and John will get into some of those. But the first thing is if there's a statewide contract you use it. You're using collective purchasing power of the state. The second thing that we have to do with the department is designate a chief procurement officer. Once again, I've been designated as a procurement officer. However, I have very talented people that know a lot more about it sitting within my department and a lot of times I defer to their judgment whether it's Agnes, whether it's John or it's Noel. They have all passed the sourcing certificate program. I've taken the courses, never took the test. Next thing is all departments must maintain and keep up to date a Combise organization account. And the reason we do this is because 801CMR21 says all procurement should be open and competitive when it's done through a state agency. Combise puts it out to everyone in the world to see what we're offering as a procurement. And then the final part is departments have to respond to requests from OSD for comprehensive quality assurance reviews, make sure we're using their system correct following the rules as well as, and we volunteered to do this. So the commission doesn't have to do this piece, but we volunteered to. And we also have to provide follow-up meetings to any person who did not win a procurement and they wanna know why they didn't win. I'll get, this will be my last slide and then John will hit you with a lot more details. So what are the authorized methods of acquiring goods and services under 801CMR21? Once again, and you're gonna hear this over and over again statewide contracts. That's your first option, use a statewide contract. Second thing is, authorize exceptions and due diligence postings. And we've done quite a few of those and then we bring them to the commission and we say this is an area where I think we can really do a targeted spend or we think that this person is uniquely qualified to provide these services. We can jump on to another department's contract as long as they have opened it up for other departments to use. And we can actually ask those departments to open it up. If none of those were available then we have to issue an RFR and do a procurement. Unless we fall into one of the six procurement exceptions under 801CMR21 or the seventh one that the commissioners authorized and John will talk about in later slides. Right, John? All right, great. Thanks, Derek. All right, so this slide basically shows a flow chart for the steps for usage of statewide contracts. First thing that anybody at MGC should be doing is first check and see if a statewide contract exists for these goods and services that they're looking to procure. The next step, I've got a little link in here. It actually links back to MassGov's OSD website for statewide contracts. But staff should then check that link, go and see if there's a statewide contract and see if there's a contract user guide for a full like description of scope of services and vendor list for that available contract. If the statewide contract, excuse me, if the statewide contracts exist and they're following the user guide, they should next check with finance and see if there's enough funds available first. And then also to see if finance has any spend targets or benchmarks set by SDO that still need to be met. Once MGC staff has that information, they should reach out to the vendors that are associated with those benchmarks, those SDO certifications and solicit quotes. Once they solicit quotes, you should again refer back to their contract user guide, check to see if a purchase order is needed or a statement of work is needed. And next slide, Derek, please. All right, so due diligence postings. MGC every once in a while has to do due diligence postings. What is a due diligence posting? What's included? So due diligence postings include detailed descriptions of the commodity or services being sought. They must include the company information for the commodities and services as well as any price that's available. An explanation of why these services are being sought should be included in the notice as well as any specifications. Typically the three options, three reasons why you go out for due diligence are if a vendor is offered something that is the best value, it's like a rock solid, rock bottom price. You still have to go out and post and make sure that that is the case. Another instance could be intent to purchase proprietary service or product, something that's unique, like such as Zambonis, right? For example, like only one, what one company will offer that. And then the last instance would be intent to purchase services from another governmental agency or entity. And how long do due diligence postings have to be put up for at least 14 calendar days? And if the services that are sought are actually over 498,000 in totality, then we would defer to World Trade Organization requirements and the posting would have to be up for at least 40 days. Next slide, please. All right, so what are the seven procurement exceptions that MGC like follows? First one is legislative exemptions or legal restrictions due to general special law or existing legal obligation. Next one could be for emergency situations. These require immediate acquisition or commodity of service to eliminate the emergency. The next one could be collective purchasing arrangements. An example of this is when cities or towns or states pool their purchasing power and create a collective procurement. The next item would be interim contracts. So in the event that a contract is set to expire and you wanna prevent a lapse in services, we can do an interim contract for 90 days, three months. Then the next item that would be a procurement exception is hiring contract employees. No procurement is needed for that. The next item would be incidental purchases. These are typically non-recurring purchases of less than $10,000. And the final one would be de minimis purchases. This one is one that was actually approved by the commission on November 10th of 2016. It's a procurement exception because the amount that was for de minimis purchases that was approved by the commission was $1,500. And this is just good business sense where it would cost more in staff resources to go out and procure this item than it would to just to go and get it at the $1,500. And then the next slide, I'm gonna kick it back to Derek. And I'm just gonna go back to this. We have really gleaned over these, but within 801-CMR-21 as well as within OSD's purchasing handbook, they have a lot of requirements for when you can use any of these exceptions. So, yes, they're there, but just like the public records allow you where you have exceptions, the devil's always in the details. And that's where we have to dig deep with our staff if they're looking to use one of these. Delegated authority levels. This slide we included as a good place to start thinking about at what point does the commission wanna be involved in our procurements, right? When do you wanna jump in? When do you wanna be part of the procurement team? When do you wanna be part of the review of statewide contracts? And there are already a lot of established delegated authority and secondary reviews set up either in statute or regulations by oversight agencies. So the first one, any contract that has a total value of 500,000 or more requires a secondary review of the state comptroller's office. And they're looking at, did we do the RFR right? Did we post it long enough? Did we make sure that World Trade Organization was handled? Did we take in competitive bids? Did we make sure that the SDO forms, the small business purchasing forms, the environmentally preferable product forms, all of these requirements that John's gonna go over later that I couldn't keep track of and I'm not creative enough to, and I thank God that we have people here that do do this on a regular basis, that we do this and we don't get our delegated authority reduced by the comptroller's office. Now the second one is 498,000 and that's this Commonwealth of Massachusetts as a total entity has engaged in the World Trade Organization's postings to make sure that any contract with a total value of 498,000 or more is posted publicly for at least 40 days. So anyone can apply for these opportunities. Next we get into some delegated authority levels that the operational services division has set and these have changed recently. It used to be the total value, now we're looking at annual spend. Anything with an annual spend of 250,000 or more is considered a large procurement and whether you're doing this off of a statewide contract or regular procurement there are all kinds of rules that come with this, right? Do you require only small business or supply or diversity program vendors eligible? Under 250,000 there are a lot less restrictions. Now you're just kicking into the SBPP program, the small business purchasing program. Next you get to the $10,000 level which is what John talked about, an incidental purchase, non-recurring purchase one time. So at the gaming commission and this is not set in statute or in regulation so they just say non-recurring in under 10,000. So what we've said is you have to every other year, right? You're not doing it more than every other year to hit that incidental purchase level. If you come back for it within the same year, sorry, that's not an incidental anymore. That's you gotta go out to procure now. You made a bad estimate the first time round. The de minimis procurement that John just touched on and then there's a statewide contract value because it is already procured through OSD through a competitive procurement process or through Comptroller's office through a competitive procurement process. There's not much of a secondary review of any and it's up to the departments to make sure you use the contract user guides and this is where that quality assurance visit through Comptroller's or OSD can really hurt us. So my recommendation would be whatever threshold you choose and there are some up here and you don't have to stick to these, make it consistent, make it for procurements, make it for statewide contracts, make it for whatever we're doing, whether it's RFIs, have the commission involved in reviewing it at that dollar threshold. All right, moving on to the next slide. Okay, all right. So what system is MGC required to use for? Pause, cause Derek, that's just a good pause for something to look to in the future. So something that could come on a genocidal setting if we want to get a threshold. In a well overdue as we've talked about, right? We have enjoyed this as a staff that I have not enjoyed at many state agencies have always had to send it up to either a secretary or an executive director for review at a certain threshold. And those have changed as dollar amounts have changed when we had the two by two, we're talking about 50,000 being the old threshold and that was when I actually joined state government. Now they've moved it up to 250. Comptrolls used to be at a hundred, they've moved it up to 500. So as you've seen state government grow and procuring grow in state government, these thresholds have changed but it's a good time to think about it and these are all relatively new, the 250 like I said started in 2022, the 498 used to be 400,000 that's gone up and the Comptrolls review went from a hundred up to 500. So it does show that state government is growing. Right, so something for the commission to consider its level of involvement and it could be setting the threshold amount not necessarily getting involved in the actual procurement process but maybe saying we wanna be a prize of the process after it's the right juncture but if it's a trigger of an amount I've seen it executed in many ways, Derek and I know you have too but right now the commission has received no notice necessarily of particularly large procurements they're done correctly because of all this nice process but the commission might wanna be better informed. So it's the same thing we did with positions, right? When does the commission wanna know that a position's being posted so that you can choose to be involved or not be involved in just delegated further? That's right, exactly. Okay, sorry, John, I'm gonna pause now myself, thanks. Okay, okay, okay. Madam Chair, Madam Chair may interrupt for a moment. Yes, and commissioners, I interrupted earlier but yes, Commissioner Hill, question. So you had suggested at 1130 you would like a 10 minute break before we have the commission to come on. So I would just bring that to your attention that I probably could use a little break myself and this might be a good time to take that break. Before John goes in, thank you. And I did, I looked at the time, thank you everyone. I just need a quick break. So we're gonna convene sharp at noon and Director Bob, it will be ready to go. And the only thing I've asked is for our team that he needs any help with his PowerPoint. Either Judy or Mel's or Dave can help him on that. And I do apologize to Derek and John for interrupting. We went into this full knowledge that it was gonna cut off at some point. Yeah, and thank you. It's very helpful, John, thank you so much. Thank you. Okay, but everything you want, I'm gonna bring down this thing, okay. Thanks, Dave. Dave and Tom, I'm not sure if I see Director Bob yet. Oh, there. Oh, good. I wanted to make sure you didn't have any technical challenges. Looking forward. Yeah, so we're live. I just haven't yet. We can be registering for a couple. We took a quick break before we start with you, my lovely. Nice to see you. Virtually, yeah. Okay, I think we're all back now. This is a reconvening of Master's, this game in commission, we took a quick break from our morning and because we're holding this meeting virtually, I'll do our roll call. Good morning. Good afternoon now, Commissioner O'Brien. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Commissioner Hill. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Commissioner Skinner. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Commissioner Mayter. Good afternoon. And we are really pleased to welcome back to the commission, Director Michael Bobbitt, who wears so many hats and just a dynamic public servant because he has so many talents that stretch beyond his role. And I always think as a voting citizen, how lucky we are to have you as our public servant. So you are with Mass Cultural Council and the reason why we are delighted to bring, have you come back to report us because your agency, we see some gaming funding and we are very interested in learning more about how it's spent and what your mission is and thank you. So, welcome. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be back in the room with you all and good afternoon, commissioners and everyone else attending. As Kathy mentioned, my name is Michael Bobbitt. I'm the Executive Director of Mass Cultural Council. I'm going to take a quick break and I'm going to be the Executive Director of Mass Cultural Council. I'm going to attempt to share my screen because we do have a presentation. I hope it goes well. There we go, let's see. Not quite. How is it? Fantastic. So here we are at the conversation about the gaming mitigation fund. I want to tell you a little bit more about Mass Cultural Council first. We are an independent state agency that is put in place by legislation to really bolster the sector. We do a lot of work in the economic vitality world, the support for systems change and transformational change and certainly to celebrate, preserve and inspire creativity all across Massachusetts. This is our newly enacted mission, vision and values statement. We're working really hard to advance the sector and try to infuse creativity in all of government. It's been a really exciting time building relationships across state government and also with other private sectors. Here's some information about the financials of our state. We are a 27.2 billion dollar industry in Massachusetts. That's 4.2 percent of the state's gross domestic product and a little more than 135,000 jobs. This is data pulled from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis for 2021. We're eagerly awaiting what 2022 looks like and hope those numbers go up. To compare the size of the creative sector you'll see we're almost three times that of transportation and about 4 billion dollars more than construction and tied with retail, which I think is often a shock to many people how big the sector is. One of the other statistics I like to brag on is that for every one ticket sold to sports ball events, we sell five to arts and culture. So it's a major industry and all the stuff people do before they go to consume art, they might get their hair done, their nails done, they might buy a new outfit, they're probably going to an arts event with other people and so there might be dinner and then the use of transportation, public, private, rideshare, gas, parking. After dinner you might have a drink or a drink or a drink and that would be fantastic. Here's a list of our programs our grant programs you'll see gaming mitigation fund which is a new title was gaming mitigation program but the word program confused a lot of people so we changed it to gaming mitigation fund and it's just one of the popular funds that we have. A little bit about the fund you'll see that the fund supports Touring shows and touring artists these, and it was designed to mitigate some of the sustainability of organizations that might be in competition with casinos around the state. And so here's some of the numbers that we'd like to brag on. So more about the statute, 2% of casino tax revenues collected are transferred into the Massachusetts Cultural and Performing Arts Mitigation Trust. This year, from mid-March until January, the fund revenue amounted to a little over $5 million. And the total deposits of the fund since its inception in January 2020 is $21.5 million. This year, we have allocated $3.66 million to the Gaming Mitigation Fund, and based on legislation where we can use 25% for other programs, we have dedicated $1.2 million to other organizations to support. To date, an additional $623,000 has accumulated in the fund, which has not yet been committed by our governing council. The Operating Census Bureau 21, this is now the fourth cycle. We've had 134 grants made to 54 unique organizations, totaling more than $10 million. The applicants for this year closed at the beginning of the month. We had 62 total applicants, which is a 40% increase from last year. 15 of those organizations have never received funding through this program. And then five are identified as black, indigenous, or people of color-centered organization. And again, $3.66 million is available for fines. And I'll leave it at that. I'll put the other slide up in case there are questions about that. The other thing I wanted to mention, in addition to loving this partnership with you all, I know that we had a conversation about the Community Mitigation Fund, and we were excited to see Mr. Mills's note to the legislature to maybe expand that fund to be used for other purposes, which could include arts and culture. I think it's a great way to even show more support from the creative sector and certainly to help mitigate in the spirit of what the law has mandated. But again, excited to be here. Thank you for adding me in again. It's good to see my friend, Jordan Maynard, in the room as well. And we'll just have some time for questions. And I was going to turn to Commissioner Maynard, Michael, because I know that you spoke with him about community mitigation. So if you want to take down the slide show, we can see everyone. And Commissioner Maynard, I don't know if you want to launch the discussion. How can I not with that introduction by my director, Bob? Director Bob and I have known each other since I was in an old job and he was just starting this job. So I appreciate you being here today, Michael. I think you hit the nail on the head, right? We we did send a letter over about getting the Community Mitigation Fund, allowing us more levers on that. And I'm looking for Joe as I'm talking, which is why I'm speaking slowly. But I think projects that benefit arts and culture are important, right? And when we think about mitigation, we can't just think about traffic. We can't just think about sidewalks. We have to think about everything that can be mitigated from the harmful impacts, potentially harmful impacts of wagering. So I appreciate your support on us sending that letter to the legislature. And hopefully we can get a fix like that. And it would benefit programs across the Commonwealth. Thank you for being here. Thank you for the great work that you're doing with the money and totally supportive from this commissioner, what you're doing, Michael. Thank you so much, Commissioner. One of the other things that I briefly talked about, we have to see what exploration we can do is our Arts on Prescription program, whereby health care providers can prescribe arts and culture activities across the to their patients as an alternative or supplement to medicine. We're hopefully in a few months, we'll announce hopefully a managed care provider that will be providing the reimbursement for that and major hospital system in Massachusetts. So we can scale this program up. But one of the ideas that came up in our last conversation was how can this be used to support those struggling with with gaming addiction, gambling addiction, addictions? So I look forward to, again, deepening our partnership and seeing other ways we might be able to play together. Commissioner Skinner. Good afternoon, Director Bob, it you and I have not had the opportunity to meet just yet, so it is a pleasure. Thank you for sharing the information that you've shared in your presentation. I'm not as familiar with the community mitigation aspect of the relationship with the Mass Council. So this was really eye opening for me. I do have, however, some experience with the Cultural Council in my days with the Department of Transitional Assistance. We partnered with you at that time on the EBT Card to Culture program. And I want to ask there's a similar initiative that is ongoing here in the city of Boston relative to public school students. And is your organization involved with that at all? We are not certainly the organization that benefiting from Mayor Woo's great program to get public school kids to go to arts and culture. We support those organizations and hopefully that can be a model for other cities and towns to think about how they can use their cultural assets to support students in their programs. We know there's so much research and so many white papers and academic studies out there that show how much kids who both consume and participate in the arts benefit from arts in schools and as citizens. So just to speak of the Card to Culture program, it's fantastic. I know Beth Ann is Beth Ann Steiner, our Director of Public Affairs is on the line. And I think she probably has the most up to date numbers. I know there are more than 400 arts organizations. Hi, Beth Ann. Do you want to tell us a brag about our numbers for that program? Of course. So our Card to Culture program is a mission that was started about 10 years ago. The voluntary partnership as which council have three other state programs that we program, which is run by DPH. Madam Chair, can I interrupt? I'm having a very difficult time hearing Beth Ann for some reason. And I apologize. No, and we all know, but we were just sorting it out. So thank you. Probably going to make you repeat everything, Beth Ann. Let's see if we're hearing the phones at work tonight. It's nice to see you again. Can you hear me better now with the headset? Excellent. Oh, good. Thank you. Sorry to quickly repeat, our Card to Culture program is a voluntary partnership that Mass Cultural Council started about a few years ago. And we have this partnership with three other state agency programs, the WIC program at DPH, the SNAP program of the EBT card, which is run by the Department of Transitional Assistance and the Connector Care Health Insurance program over at the Health Care Connector. And so what these programs do is if you are a individual or a family in Massachusetts that has one of those cards, WIC, EBT or Connector Care, then you are eligible for free or dramatically reduced admission to 402 different cultural organizations located all across the Commonwealth from Pittsfield to P-Town. And these are volunteer. This is a voluntary arrangement that cultural organizations do it because they believe in the access and the benefits of arts and culture experience. So thank you for that. I see Tom Mills has turned on his camera. He'll we were we were in sort of in the trenches together over at DTA when this program was introduced. And so we do know that access absolutely matters. And thank you for your work. Very, very proud that the Gaming Commission can be a part of funding this very worthwhile, these very worthwhile causes. Thank you so much, commissioners. Madam Chair. Yes. Hello and nice to see you all again. I, as you know, love entertainment and I love local entertainment. Can you just kind of elaborate a little bit more for me in regards to any grants or funding that you may be partnering with our local theaters around the casinos and, you know, in my case, North Shore and Metro Boston in that area. Yes. So the way the program works is that any tour any organization in the state that brings in touring artists, they can apply for funding from this program to offset those costs. And the idea was that it would mitigate the competition that the casinos would create with the performing arts centers. It's only for nonprofits. We as again today, I think the number was 59 on the slide. Fifty nine unique organizations having received one hundred and thirty five grants. So that's the goal. And those grant numbers can go as much up to, I think, in the past and as high as two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. So am I correct? And I should know this answer as a form of selection, but I don't. Is a city considered nonprofit or not? I think the municipalities can apply for this if they have an arts organization that's bringing in touring artists. OK. So that's very helpful. Yeah, if you want to introduce us to to any organization that's a performing arts, we do a lot of recruiting, we are reaching out to people trolling the internet, cross-pollinating from other programs. But if there are other performing arts organizations that you know are bringing in our artists from out of state or that their artists tour around the state, they should be in touch. And then Bethany, I think you, Michael, I just wanted to confirm that the statute says that the eligible organizations are either nonprofit or municipally owned that present those touring acts. Oh, Commissioner Maynard and I sit on our Community Mitigation Fund team and this is helpful information if we can't help in one way, maybe you can. So I know Joe is listening in and team. So when we start discussing. The applications that are before us, this information is very helpful. So thank you. And thank you for the great work that you do, by the way. Thank you so much. That's going to be. So, Director Bowden, I would like to follow up with really some thoughts that we had the last time you were here and actually with your predecessor because the prescription social prescription program is very exciting. And as you mentioned, that's perhaps an opportunity to help give some of that benefit to those particularly in need. If they are a gaming patrons who are experiencing some challenges because of their gaming practices and you'd I think you probably remember that we have our casino facilities, our licensed casino facilities, game sense advisors by statute. We have to deploy us a human. Resources individuals, not just pamphlets and documents on the floor to be able to offer assistance to those who are gambling at the casino. As it's really unique to the nation that we have these game sense advisors and they're very inspiring. And, you know, I think, Commissioner O'Brien, if not the other commissioners, remember, we thought about using the game sense advisors, perhaps ambassadors for this program, that perhaps they might suggest to a patron who's in need of alternative recreational ideas to be able to get one of these benefits of the prescription person. We do have some research on this as well that supports that, particularly, and I'm sure you know this, Michael, and with respect to the Asian community in at least the Boston area, they are so in need of recreational alternatives. So there's some real opportunities for connection and connectivity here to the extent without burdening your resources, that would be ironic being, you know, just the opportunity for partnership. Yeah, so in the in the past, I'm excited about this conversation. But in the past, the reimbursement of the art organizations that filled the prescriptions came from us, which which limited how many reimbursements we could do. And my dream has been to scale it into use programs and assets in policies that we already have in place. So the goal at the moment is to have managed care providers and insurers do the reimbursements as part of their benefits packet. You know, many of them are already doing prescription refunding and prescriptions for yoga and Reiki and acupuncture. So this could just add to that list. Our other hope is to to be able to use Medicare and Medicaid so that our most vulnerable have the opportunity to be prescribed part of the activities to help with their mental health issues or their social isolation issues and in lots of cases, physical health issues. So we see it scaling when we data tested this, we use health care providers, social workers and school counselors. The focus at the moment is on health care providers so we can get these managed care providers and insurers on board and major hospital systems. But we've already gotten calls from housing authorities. And in this conversation we're having about how we can leverage this for those struggling with gambling addictions. So I think the potential for this to scale at a zeitgeist level is pretty it's it's pretty intense. And so I'm kind of excited about launching this new scaled up version and watching the dominoes fall so that we can get more people involved into this. Well, keep this in mind. And Beth and me appreciate all the work that you're doing. It's such a it's an excellent program. And, you know, we we are I assume I think all five of us are quite informed about the mental health benefits or the entertainment. And I suspect that it just is a real real avenue for those who are struggling with the game world. So thank you. Thank you so much. Thank for having us. Any other questions for we could we lose Director Bob and that man. Just to say, Madam Chair, I saw Mark Maryland and come on and come off. He is the perfect person that then and Michael to to help bridge that gap on your your last request. So we can make that happen. Yeah, I'm Mike on that. Then I would love to connect with you and explore what some of the opportunities are. Because as Judge Ed Stein said so well, responsible gaming is finding alternative activities. And it's not just helping individuals who have gambling problem. It's this is prevention of a gambling problem. And I think that what you offer seems like an incredible resource. With thousands of assets across this great state. And so I'm looking forward to hearing from you and seeing how we can do this. Wonderful. Thank you. Well, I'll close with it. It's nice to meet you in person the other day. Michael, we just happened to come across each other. And I think we both realize we have only seen each other virtually. So it's nice to see you in person. Everyone, I think we spent our sincere gratitude for you taking time out of your busy schedule today. And Commissioner Maynard, thanks for helping to make sure this happened. We appreciate exploiting that old friendship and and having a might one team come back today with this update. So thank you so much. Thank you so much. Great to see you as well. Commissioner Maynard, great to see you as well. Take care, everyone. Thank you. OK, so that's a special, a special update. And now it's 12 24. I'm going to turn to. Director Bannes and in Crystal may be here. I want to just do a check in with my director. Hello, but it is crystal on this one. Yeah, and I am here. And I could tell you were here, Crystal, but I just want to do a check with the commissioners. Should we hear PSI report? Um, now go back to and have lunch and then go back to finance. I just want to check in to see if PSI is waiting in the in the way. Yeah, I know we were going to go right back to our finance group, but I think if we can help guests with their schedule, does that make sense? Go forward. Derek is getting the thumbs up, you know, and my appreciation to the finance team and their patients. Makes sense. Go with them PSI and then maybe take our lunch break. I always I always feel that we should if we have guests, we should not make them wait. So yes. All right, then there we are, Crystal. Good afternoon. Good afternoon and thank you. I know that Adam and his team very much appreciate that. I'm just going to sit here and munch the lunch. Never really I got some avocado, so I'm good. But yeah, I think I'll just turn it over. This is, I believe the final presentation of our quarterly reports from Q4 of 2023. And Adam, I'll turn it over to you. Thanks, Crystal. And good afternoon, Madam Chair and commissioners. I want to start by thanking you for your flexibility today. I know I wasn't able to make the presentations last week, but I'm very grateful to be slotted into a very busy agenda today. So I'm going to do my best to keep my updates brief by all means. That doesn't mean that I'm not interested in talking into anything about more, you know, more details or any questions. Please feel free to stop me, but I am aware of the time and I want to make sure that you have enough time to carry on today. And also, Madam Chair, I haven't had the opportunity to congratulate you yet. This is the first time we've spoken since the news. So I did want to make sure that I send my congratulations to you. And although our interactions have been, I would say, brief or few in the span of your career, it's been an absolute pleasure doing these presentations and having to get into interact with you on these calls. So I wanted to congratulate you. Thanks, Madam. I appreciate that. And you know what? You don't have to hurry today. We're just fine. So thank you and we appreciate your going forward. And I appreciate your talk with us. Thanks. OK, well, I'll share my screen here and we'll get started. Everybody can see everything. OK, perfect. So this is our this is our Q4 2023 update. I did want to highlight the highlight of our quarter. This was our ESPN bet rebrand launch that took place in on November 14th, 2023. So it was a very exciting quarter. And although that rebranding initiative project wasn't as complex as our platform migration in the summer of 2023, it was a big project and it did require a lot of combined efforts both internally as well as with MGC staff and the commission. So I also wanted to send out a thank you to everybody that helped us check all the boxes and achieve everything that we had to to make that rebrand a success. So on November 14th, we did launch ESPN bet successfully. No longer have any ties to Barstool Sportsbook, and we are continuing forward as the ESPN bet Sportsbook going forward. And you'll see some of the ESPN effect throughout some of our numbers during this presentation. And we'll start with the revenue. As you can see here, our total revenue and handle significantly increased in the months of November and December. This is obviously pre ESPN versus post ESPN. So while we did only have two weeks of the ESPN Sportsbook branding in November, we did manage to secure some very strong financial numbers. It was a very exciting launch, very successful. And we carried that over to December as well, as you can see, our handle actually went up as well during that month. So we look forward to continuing to report strong numbers like this. We're very happy with where we're at so far. So this is one of the one of the ESPN bet impacts that you'll see throughout our presentation. Any questions on revenue before I move forward? Okay. On to workplace diversity. You know, my previous presentations have sort of shown a trend of some moderate increases across the board and Q4 was no different. We had a 4% increase. Sorry, in our female employees, our women employee numbers, we also had a 5% increase in our diversity and minority numbers for all employees as well. So while we just continue the trend of hiring good people, making sure that we are equally represented across the board, we are trending in this direction for Q4 and beyond as well. Any questions on the workforce diversity numbers? No. Okay. On to our vendor and supplier spend. I think the highlight here is that our quarter over quarter total diversity spend went up 101%. This is directly attributed to a doubling in our spend and our women's business enterprise spend. We went from 325,000 in Q3 to 685,000 in Q4. Again, this was a direct result of a partnership that we had with a specific vendor who helped us with a lot of our promotional items for Q4. So there was VIP promotions, online gifting, apparel and things of that nature. We were really able to heavily utilize that particular vendor, which increased our spend twofold. Questions on diversity spend? I'll ask the question. Did you purposefully find a work for our first vendor for that? Does that... I don't want to say yes or no because I'm not the right person to answer that question. I will say that our team does have, you know, they do spend a great deal of time and try to coordinate efforts to locate vendors that can help in this area. So I'm going to tentatively say yes, that we did seek out this vendor for that reason. Like I said, our acquisition team and our finance teams do a great job of trying to identify local vendors as well as vendors that fall into these categories. So I'm going to tentatively say that that was intentional and that is who we targeted, yes. That would be great. I think we can all say that we understand that it might have been a one time, so to set expectations the right way, but at least now you have this vendor that can provide, you know... That's correct. And based on the nature of the vendor and the nature of the spend, you know, it is something that we will be able to continue to carry forward if that's the direction that we'd like to go. It wasn't tied to a specific event or a one-time instance. So we should be trending positively in this direction going forward as well. Thanks. Okay. And moving on to compliance. This is more my world and there's a couple of things that we can add here. So I did want to highlight the fact that we did have an executive session with yourselves a few weeks ago. I do hope that that was beneficial. We pulled a lot of really great takeaways from that conversation. We were very happy to demonstrate how some of our internal processes and our KYC work which directly tie to things like underage activities. So while we are reporting to for the quarter, again, these instances, they were not necessarily reported as confirmed underage access that required confiscation or reporting to the sports wagering team, but there were two events that we felt had potential ties to an underage individual who may or may not have been utilizing two accounts in the Commonwealth during the quarter. One of the things that we did talk about in our executive session was finding ways to share information that's not on the screen. So giving you more insight into the underage registrations that we stop, giving you insight into the underage activity that we may identify and address before the access actually takes place. So I did want to sort of confirm with this group here that, that is still very much a takeaway on our part. We are trying to actively find the best way to share that information to you because I understand that this chart or these two charts don't necessarily tell the whole story. So while there were two cases that we are reporting, I do know that there is an appetite to share more information on the, on the cases that we do stop at the door from, from going into the, from, from underage individuals getting access. So by this time next quarter, whether it's on a public hearing through these quarterly updates or in another manner, um, we will get you some more information on what you don't see on this page, which is all of the successful instances that we were able to identify and stop. Questions for Adam on this? I'm just leaning in to ask, um, so we don't see anything on this page, but can you give us a number? I don't need to see it on a page. I don't actually have a number for you. Part of us trying to identify these, it takes a little bit of data manipulation on our end to figure out exactly who was rejected and why. So commissioner Hill, unfortunately, I don't have enough insight for you, but I can assure you that it is more, it was greater than two understood. And thank you. Okay. We'll continue on the trend of, of responsible gaming and some more positive charts here. So the number of quarterly self exclusions, uh, it was 85 for the quarter, which is a pretty dramatic increase from 48 on Q3. This is directly tied to just the, the increase in volume that we're seeing on the platform. Um, as, as we start to normalize and have more, uh, life cycle with ESPN as, as our branded sports book, um, you should see these numbers start to level off. They will be higher than before. Um, but we shouldn't. Well, I shouldn't say that. I don't know for, I don't, I don't have crystal ball. We might see spikes quarter over quarter, but I would say a lot of our transactional activity and a lot of the, the financials and the, the patron activities that we are reporting on these quarterly presentations are going to be increased compared to previous quarters. So this is sort of the beginning of us trying to figure out what our new normal is in terms of the volume. Um, I also wanted to highlight some recent conversations that we had, um, with the MGC's RG team. So Mark Vanderland is on the call. Uh, we also met with long as well, uh, and our responsible gaming program manager. Um, we've had a number of recent conversations with the game sense folks as well. And, uh, I just wanted to highlight that we've been discussing a lot of best practices, a lot of, um, Interesting insights that we are pulling from some of our interactions that we have with our patrons. So I did want to give the commissioner some comfort that we are, that we are talking, um, to, to Mark and his team. Um, and it is something that we are actively looking to continue. Um, whether it's a quarterly basis or, or maybe something a little bit more frequent. Um, you know, the MGC has taken a very strong, um, stance on RG and is very open and willing to talk to operators like us to figure out, you know, what we're doing well, what we're not doing so well, where we can improve and just sharing best practices. So I did want to send, um, to let the commission know that we have been having those conversations and I am appreciative of Mark and his team for, for meeting with us and carrying these conversations forward, because we can only get better than more that we communicate. So I did want to highlight that on the screen. And I think Mark is actually presenting later on in the agenda today, but, um, from, from our perspective, I know that, uh, some of the stats that we typically provide on the slide are related to our cool offs and our, our timeout tools. So this is giving you an indication that the vast majority of people in the quarter went on a six months or longer, uh, cool off period. Um, these numbers fluctuate over time. And I think Mark will go into more detail about some of the more specific data points that he see. Any, any questions on, on these two slides before I move forward. Okay. The lottery, uh, this is a carbon copy of our slide from q3. That's because we've maintained the same, the same promotion q3 into q4. We've seen a lot of really good success in our partnership, but the lottery continues to expand. Uh, but for now we've, we've had online customers receive an offer to come and redeem a free, uh, Massachusetts lottery ticket at the end of the month. So we've made a lot of progress. Um, we've made a lot of progress with our property and any qualifying guest who signs up for a new online account also receives, um, Massachusetts lottery tickets that they can redeem it. Our ppc property. Um, so again, um, we are continuing this trend and we've maintained the same promotions that we did in q3 into q4. And if there are any new, uh, updates, I'll be sure to provide them for you here, uh, on the lottery section. good to end on this slide because I do always want to make sure that I emphasize the people internally at Penn Interactive that spend a lot of time, effort and energy trying to figure out ways where Penn Interactive can give back and a lot of the times they could beat unsung heroes and I want to make sure that I always give the credit where credit is due because there's a lot of work that goes into organizing volunteer events and charitable donations that sometimes go overlooked internally. So I just want to let them know that you know they do a fantastic job and I always like to highlight some of the things that we do here at the end of the presentation. So we'll start with Veterans Day. On Veterans Day we made a donation to the Travis Mannion Foundation which is a non-profit organization that supports and empowers veteran and military families. It wasn't just Q3 throughout the year we do participate in a number of events held by this organization such as fundraising for the 9-11 heroes run. And then lastly on this slide Q4 was over the holiday season so we know that winter are very crucial months for individuals and their families. So we did hold drives across all of our offices across the board and I'll get into more detail on that list down there in a second. But we did collect an assortment of winter clothing, personal care items, non-perishables that were donated to community food banks and local shelters because again we realized that the holiday season is a little bit more difficult for certain individuals and we wanted to make sure that we were given back in those areas. And as you can see here at the bottom the organizations that we did partner with and did donate and provide support to they really do touch every jurisdiction where we have an office footprint. So that's Massachusetts, Toronto, Ontario, Canada where I'm located, Philadelphia, Cherry Hill and Hoboken, New Jersey and we went all the way overseas to Europe as well for a Gibraltar initiative where our trading, our risk and trading team currently sit. So again, just wanted to highlight the work that this group of individuals do because it's a lot of work to make sure that we are given back and we are providing support in all of the communities in which we have offices. So I do always like ending on this note. And I did promise I would be brief, so this does take me to the end of the presentation. More than happy to go back or to talk in more detail about anything that I spoke about today, but if there are, if there are no questions, I do appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today. And again, I thank you for being flexible and allowing me to come in today. I know the schedule is very busy today. And if you could just take down your slideshow, then we'll be able to confirm no questions or comments, missionaries. Big thank you. Thanks, Adam. Thank you for the thorough report. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. On the final, you can settle on our gratitude for the community engagement. We we focused on that and we'd like to see the good work done. So thank you so much. Thank you again. OK, Crystal, are you all set? I think you're right. This was the last for this quarter. Yes, that is the end of that. And soon we'll be rolling into the next quarter. But thank you for your flexibility. I know this was a little more scattered than usual. Well, no problem. And then at the agenda setting, the commissioners can all confirm with you what your plan is for the next record. So thanks so much. Great. Thank you. OK, so commissioners, it is now quarter of one. Should we do the lunch break and then return to the procurement presentation? Yes, I am always one for breaking. However, since we are in the middle of that presentation and I don't think it's going to take much more than 20 minutes, I would like to see it move forward and then do lunch at one. I'd seen those coming in. I think I think some some folks planned Commissioner Hill for a lunch break when the chair mentioned it. So OK, just want to. Sorry, Mr. Hill, don't be sorry. It just didn't want them to have to wait. Yeah, OK, so everybody has taken their lunch. Commissioners, what time do you want to reconvene? One fifteen, one fifteen. OK, thanks. All right. So mostly everyone at one fifteen. Thanks so much, Eric. I love the new picture behind you. I think it's a new one of what looks next to the leprechaun. Yes, one's been there for a little while. I love that one, too. And the one right behind me. Let me move so you can see it. This one right here is similar to that. I love these ones. They've been through the ring of those. This one lost an arm. My fan starts blowing. The arm falls off. Gotcha. Now they're all down here in the basement. You know, those don't look great. I have memories of my of my kids. She's made so many new ones, too. It's amazing. Just a creative side to her. I don't, you know, I don't have that side to me. So I'm always amazed by how good she is at it. It is amazing that the artwork that these kids can do. Yeah, just a couple of minutes late. Well, we need a break. Thank you. So. This is every live now and I need to wait. We're all good now. OK, excellent. Good afternoon. This is a week convening of the Massachusetts Game and Commission. We had a really productive morning. Just had our lunch break. Doing this meeting virtually so long. Take care of our world calm. Good afternoon again, Commissioner Burry. Good afternoon. I am here. Good afternoon again, Commissioner Teller. Good afternoon. I'm here. Good afternoon. Again, Commissioner Steele. Good afternoon. And good afternoon again, Commissioner Mayer. Good afternoon. OK, we'll get started now. We're going to keep looking around a little bit today. And we started our a nice presentation on our procurement policies and they were disrupted briefly in order to take care of a couple of guests. I see John is not like back yet, Derek. There he is, almost done. But we are turning to I can be on our agenda and it's we're returning to meeting. Oh, goodness, I know one. Five, oh, six. And there we have our slideshow. And Derek, you want to introduce John. Are we all set? But I think I think we're all set. And we are on page five ninety four of your packet. The slideshow will be up, but we had kicked off. I think it's about slide 10. So John is going to walk you through what system we use and a few technical slides on procurements. Sure. And I guess I'll take it from from there. That. Thank you, Derek. So this slide is just kind of a segue into our other slides. But what system is M.G.C. required to use for its procurements? Combise is the platform that the common commonwealth uses for all its procurements. It is publicly available and it keeps an electronic record of each procurement and helps to ensure that bids are received fairly and transparent. OK, so next slide, please. OK. So this slide is basically just an overview of the required use of combines. And so combines is used to create all requisitions, requisitions in particular to initiate purchases off of the statewide contracts. It's also used for posting all solicitations, such as requests for responses, RFPs, in other words, requests for quotes, RFIs. It's also used, you know, for recording any procurement exceptions. And it's used also for. Any notifications such as due diligence postings or trade organization notices, requests for information. And then all as noted before, all responses to these solicitations and bids, they're all going to be coming in through a combines. And then combines itself is used to award contracts and in certain certain cases for master agreements. It's also used for creating electronic catalogs and placing orders. And then finally, announcements of grant funding availability and grantee selection for state discretionary grants is another use for combines. OK, next slide, please. Perfect. All right. So what are the three different size procurements and the requirements? You know, before we get into that, when writing an RFR, it is important to determine the type of procurement. The size of a procurement is determined by the dollar threshold. After performing market research and estimates of potential contract value will then be available to make that determination. All right. And then Derek is brought us to the first of the three different sizes. First one is the incidental purchase. The threshold for an incidental purchase, as mentioned before, are values of less than 10,000. You know, for procurement process and for purposes, it is advised to get three quotes if applicable for best practices. As far as responsibility goes, since it's not on statewide contract, the procurement it falls on the department, in our case, MGC. The requisite contract forms that may be needed with an incidental purchase, excuse me, as I stumble over my words. So anything less than $5,000 and invoices adequate, unless otherwise noted in the expenditure classification handbook. Other than that, services over 5,000 and up to 10,000, a standard contract form and associated terms and conditions may be applicable depending on what's noted in the expenditure classification handbook. And then as far as whether a secondary review is needed, because this is an incidental purchase and the threshold is so small, there's no need for secondary review from CTRO, STR, or other departments. All right, so getting into the next size procurement is the small procurement. The threshold for small procurements is annual spend of like less than $250,000 for goods and services. The process for small procurements is we'll post the bids on conbys and likewise accept them through conbys. Small business purchasing program language is required. We also add like preferences for SDO certifications for benchmarks that we have to hit as determined by the Supply Diversity Office. Supply diversity program plan forms are encouraged, but they're not required for small procurement. That being said, MGC does require them for our procurements because we take the diversity piece very seriously. All right, so procurement responsibility. These procurements, again, they're not on statewide contract. They're the responsibility of MGC and the commission. Documents, like forms that are required for these types of procurements are RFRs. The RFR itself, the request for response, is the document that actually has the scope of services that we're looking for and the information for bidders and what we're looking for in response. Along with that, terms and conditions, which are non-negotiable, those are required, the standard contract form is required, just like it is for all the other departments. Prompt payment discount form is required. A W-9 form is required. A contractor authorized signatory listing form, which basically says you can sign on behalf of the vendor with the Commonwealth, is required. And references to electronic funds transfer for ACH payments is required. Also optional forms, but forms that we require. Are any additional RFR attachments. The environmental, environmentally practicable practices form. The business references form. And again, the supplier diversity plan form is required. And things to take note, if this is a multi-year contract and the total value of the contract or expected services exceeds $498,000, a WTO notice would be hid. And, you know, if this is a multi-year contract and the total value of services exceed $500,000, the contract will automatically get routed to the office of the comptroller for secondary review. All right. And on to the large procurements. So the large procurements are done very similarly to the small procurements, except there's a different threshold and there's a few tweaks to the RFR itself. So for large procurements, these are for services that are $250,000 and over annually. The process, again, is almost exactly the same, except now the supplier diversity program plan, that is required. All the contract forms that we referenced for the small procurement, those are also required for the large procurement. And unless this is a one-year procurement, then WTO notice is likely going to be required. And unless this, again, is going to be a one-year contract, then this will also get routed to the comptroller's office. All right. I'm just taking a breath for a second. And now that John, yeah, absolutely. So now that John's walked you through some of the technical points of procurement, we come to an area where the commission holds both our licensees as well as us to a high standard of fostering growth in and working with diverse businesses. So what are the requirements for procurements? As John indicated earlier, OSD's threshold for large and small procurements is both an SBP as well as an SDP priority for opening bids. We'll review OSD's guidance, but then we'll let you know where we've adjusted those based on where we are with our benchmarks. So for the Supply Diversity Program, the Supply Diversity Program Plan, which is why it's called the SDP plan versus SDPP, because you have to throw the program in there, is mandatory for large procurements with annual values of more than 250,000. And this actually began in FY22 that the SDP plan submitted by a bidder must be evaluated at 25 percent or more of the total evaluation points. That used to be optional and it was recommended that you do 10 percent. Starting in FY22, that changed and it has actually been very helpful. It's been very good to grow business as well as provide more opportunities. So as part of MGC's own diversity initiatives, MGC's RFRs will note that businesses that are women-owned, minority-owned and veteran-owned will receive the full 25 points of diversity scoring in the evaluation as long as they complete an SDP plan form as well. This is a requirement. If you do not submit a plan form, we cannot evaluate your bid. All bidders, regardless of their independent certification status, must complete this form. And this is something that we had to give a little bit of leeway with at the beginning, but most bidders are aware of this at this point if they're responding to RFRs. Bidders offering more value in their SDP plan submissions must receive higher scores. That's another requirement from OSD at this point. And a nice thing is ancillary products, subcontracting, paper, supplies, printing, that can actually count as part of your SDP plan. So it's trying to spread as much of this around and there's really no excuse for a vendor to come forward and say they can't make a commitment. Everyone uses printing. Everyone uses office supplies. Everyone buys some food. There are plenty of vendors out there that you can do this with no matter how specialized your services are. So now going on to the small business purchasing program. OSD's guidance for executive branch agencies is that any small procurement, so once again, anything with a spend under 250,000 must be given preference to a registered small business if available. This means that an agency cannot even open up a bid from any type of vendor other than a registered Massachusetts small business unless there's not a valid or complete response from a SBPP partner. We at MGC crush this threshold. We hit close to 7 or 800 percent of what our benchmark is. So once we hit the 100 percent, we actually turn this into an SDP requirement and we don't open up anything unless it's a supply of diversity certified vendor that is at least a prime vendor that is minority women of veteran-known business. That's our first level of opening. If those people aren't available, a vendor of that certification, then we move to SBPP. If there's no diverse or SBPP program, then we move on to everyone else. So we really and we have gotten some good feedback from the supply diversity office on this. They said, you know, this is a great way of looking at the intended issues with the kind and the intended policies of the Commonwealth and making sure that we're not losing sight of how we're trying to grow in two areas, not just one area. They did notify us. So if you ever fall behind that 100 percent, we're not going to work with you on the SBPP program. They're not going to work with us on allowing us this variance. So, you know, that is an area that we have adjusted a little bit as a commission, and that helped us to meet our benchmarks last year. So I move on to John now. All right. So how does MGC conduct strategic sourcing? And I guess go into the next slide, Derek, please. So this slide basically illustrates from soup to nuts, OSD prescribed guidance on the procurement process, right? It's got seven steps that starts with the assessing, sourcing opportunity, going into developing sourcing strategy, you know, profile sourcing opportunity, then getting into the nitty gritty of creating the RFR, going through the whole procurement process and then finally managing the contract, right? So, you know, I guess, like, you know, some thoughts on that. You know, before we really start this process, like again, we're going to go back to the same questions. Are these goods and services, are they available on a statewide contract? Can we do this like through an incidental? Is there a grant or is there other cooperative procurement that is out there? If not, then we need to go through these seven steps of strategic sourcing and this, you know, OSD's thought process on making these the primary objectives are as follows. So it's one to reduce the cost of goods and services. It's also to capture resulting savings. It is the determined areas of risk to assess the level of acceptable risk MGC is willing to accept, create contractual alliances with suppliers to support long-term goals, maintain and improve product quality and improve business functions. All right, so if we can go and Derek's already there. So for the market research and forming a procurement team, these are the early steps in that procurement process where we're actually doing the research and backgrounds. So when forming the team, you're going to want to designate a team lead. They'll lead on all aspects of the purchase. You're going to want to create a procurement file. The official posting will be up on combines. But, you know, there will also be a file in our SharePoint with the process and the documents as it's ongoing. The procurement team, when you create it, you're going to also want to determine like whether who's a voting member, who's a non-voting member, for example, like who's actually going to weigh in on the score sheet or who might just be sitting in as advisory. You might want to establish a charter, like our mission statement for like the reason as to why you're doing this procurement. And then you're going to also want to do membership terms, which are basically, you know, non-disclosure agreements for staff so that, you know, they're not spilling the beans as the procurement's ongoing, right? So you're going to want to consider the value of the procurement itself. Again, like things to note, if it's over $498,000, that's going to dictate the amount of days this procurement has to be up. So it would have to be over 40 days. If it's over $250,000 annually, then it's going to be a large procurement and there's going to be some tweaks to the RFR to include the large procurement language. Next, you're also going to want to do like research industry trends for the broader market, you know, assess your own buyer needs and just see what the vendor landscape is out there. And then also, like, you know, when you're doing these early stages, you're going to want to determine if there are any conflicts of interest for any of your team members because this procurement must be fair for all bidders. All right, so the next slide. So this is the essential elements of conducting a procurement and, you know, when you're going to be managing this procurement and creating a timeline, like, these are the things that you're going to want to think about. So you're going to want to keep in mind the actual evaluation criteria that gets worked into the RFR. You're going to want to determine, like, the procurement calendar, things like, you know, again, the value of the procurement if it's over a certain threshold may require a WTO notice. So again, 40 days or more. Are you going to be doing any types of, like, bidder conferences, any other things that may affect the calendar? And then the next step, like, which is probably one of the most important steps is really creating that RFR, which is going to dictate the responses you get in this procurement and really lead into the negotiations later on. The issuing bids in combines, you're going to want to account for question and answer periods. Again, bidder conferences. And then, you know, if there's good points brought up, like, you threw any of the questions by bidders or if there's anything that, like, the team has identified, you know, maybe the RFR may need to be amended. So you want to build in a little bit of time for an amendment date. And then, of course, you're going to want to build in appropriate time, like, to evaluate the actual responses you get, right, into that calendar. So you're going to want, you know, if the team wants to do interviews and presentations, you're going to have to build in time for that and build in time to, you know, to reach out and do a best and final offer and then come up with the final scoring, of course. And then after that, like, you know, figuring out some time for how long you want to allow for contracting negotiations. And then at the end of that process, you know, you'll be reaching out to, you know, to award a bidder and to notify other bidders of their unsuccessful bids. All right. So the next slide is the importance of creating the RFR. Again, the RFR is very important at outlines, the scope of the procurement, why you're doing it. It gives the bidders themselves guidance on what documents are needed. And I'll just kind of go through this step right here. So again, as noted, the RFR is going to note, like what kind of evaluation for scoring criteria is going to be there. And our RFRs in particular, we try to eliminate barriers for diverse vendors and level like that playing field. The RFR will determine the actual contractor duration. So like any resulting contract from this procurement, the RFR will lay that out, you know, three years, like, you know, with two options to renew for a year each, right? So that would be ridden at the RFR. And then the RFR will also determine how many bidders we're going to award for this procurement. So whether you're going to just have one bidder or you're going to have multiple bidders that actually result in a contract. The RFR will also determine the compensation structure for bidders, whether it's a fee for service and outright purchase, or we have like a maximum obligation for a budget, where we absolutely just can't go past that number. That'll be outlined in the RFR. And the RFR should have clear instructions for submission and format of responses. And then all included forms or required forms will be put up with the posting as well. And then also for consideration is for IT RFRs, there's going to be a separate terms and conditions that will be associated with that. So that if you're putting out an RFR for IT services, you may want, you're going to want to look and see if those terms and conditions are applicable. All right, and then, all right. So taking a breath, coming on to the last slide and hopefully bringing us home, just to some notes for negotiation. As noted before, with the RFR, you're really going to set expectations for both departments and bidders, right? Those expectations are going to be set in a well-written RFR. And other parts of negotiations that you're going to see in particular, you're going to want to consider how, like whether this is going to be a single vendor negotiation or if it's going to be multiple bidders and you're going to be offering a best and final value option. So that's one thing to keep in mind. And then also, like while you're doing these negotiations, all responses to their RFRs, those remain in effect for 90 days, right? So while you're negotiating, like the bids that they submitted, they're good for 90 days. And we can get extensions on those if needed, if negotiations take longer. So bidders may negotiate costs down for a better value for the Commonwealth. They can't negotiate costs up. They can negotiate STP plan commitments up, meaning the amount they plan to commit for business or services to a diverse vendor that they'll be partnering with. They can always negotiate those up and that they can also negotiate any clarifications to the RFR. And one last thing that comes up a lot, unfortunately, the Commonwealth terms and conditions and the standard contract form, those are take it or leave it. Bidders may not negotiate changes to that. And with that, I think we're going on to the last slide and I will toss it back to you to the commission for any questions. Thank you and great job, John. I know you get nervous about these, but great job. Thanks, Derek. John, you shouldn't get nervous at all. This is, you did an excellent job and, Derek, you as well, I think commissioners, we sometimes forget that we get kind of conditioned to the public forum and our team does so well because it's a different forum, but John, you're a pro, so. Thank you. But it's really important stuff and what I love about this presentation and this training for us commissioners was that it was already in place. Now, John and Derek and team have this all down and they practice it and they deploy it and deploy it with our team members so that we are in compliance with all these rules. But really triggered this for me was, Derek and I talked about it because just been busy schedules, right, Derek? That probably it would be a helpful presentation and also the idea of thresholds. I've sat with different treasurers who have been appointed by us and each time it's always been like, oh, we should do this. So here we are. So I appreciate it. Commissioner Bryan, do you have any thoughts? I know that we've got some work maybe going forward. No, I joke with them that it was bringing me back six years to my time in the head cheese office. Getting all the certifications. I think it's a great presentation. I think they may do a fabulous job, but I also agree that it's probably something we should talk about as a body of five in terms of thresholds where we wanna be alerted and or sign off on it and participate sometimes in the procurement team. I do think it's very eye-opening to actually participate as one of the members at Betsy's. Yeah, I agree with that. Commissioner Maynard. Just to say I agree with Commissioner O'Brien and Commissioner Skinner and I have had an opportunity, her more so because she understands the licensing world a lot better than me, but to work on a procurement recently and it's been very helpful. I also really appreciate the work being done on the diversity side. We have a commitment to that and through procurement and when that was decided and I think it was adopted by the commission that statement of purpose in September of 2020, you guys just launched. It was already in place, but then it just was intensified and the results have been super impactful and I'm personally so proud of the team for that. It's been really good work, so great. And we're also really lucky to have John because he did come over to the Comptroller's office and one of the things I learned this year in this presentation was, I didn't know that the Comptroller reviewed everything over 500,000. So that's a great control and it just makes me feel even more comfortable for us to just be better informed as well. Great, anything for John? Chris, just get her. All set. Just a big thank you. I'm very lucky to have these experts on our team, John, Noel and Agnes and Derek, thank you because you're always so humble when you're referring to your team and I just think it's great to see it's good information. I too would like to just be informed as when we're bringing this forward for commission discussion, not interested in getting in the way of the experts, but it would be good just to be kept abreast of what's happening in the way of curements. I do enjoy participating in some small way in these as Commissioner Maynard indicated. Krishna Hill, you all set? All set, nothing to add, except great job, as always. Yeah, and as treasurer, you have regular meetings with these guys and know exactly what they're up to, so thank you. And we know that Commissioner Hill keeps you guys on a good short lease. So we've been very lucky with each treasurer to add to us versus, I mean, no one has been in the way, all questions are appropriate, everything has been very helpful. So we do appreciate all of the different points of view as well as assistants. Commissioner Hill, I didn't over, I didn't miss speak, right? We like that, so thank you. Okay, so great, so with that, we appreciate it. We have that slide show. Everybody can go be kept for reference and then we'll figure out the next agenda sitting meeting where you wanna go on that topic next. Okay, so now we're turning to Chief Delaney and I'm assuming our MGM on Springfield friends out there. They are popping up. Yeah, there we are, thank you. We'll turn right to you. This is item number 11 on our agenda, good afternoon. So thank you, Madam Chair and commissioners. So today we have MGM Springfield here to do their quarterly report with also an update on their impacted live entertainment venue agreement. We will also be talking about their capital expenditure plan, which we will do in an executive session once the quarterly report is completed. And we have with us our usual list of suspects with MGM. We have Gus Kim, Vice President, Legal Counsel. We got Dan Miller, Director of Compliance, Arlen Carvalho, Vice President of Finance and Beth Ward, Director of Public Relations. And I think Gus and Dan, you've got a special guest that you'd like to introduce to us and I guess I'll leave it to you to do so. Hey, Joe, thank you so much. Yes, we do have a very special guest to introduce as the commissioners, first of all, thank you, Joe and Chair Judd Stein and the commissioners. As always, we appreciate the opportunity to appear before you to discuss our performance. We are exceedingly proud of our property and we do appreciate the fact that we have this public forum to discuss our performance. As you are all aware, we had Chris Kelly leave us back in December. He went back to California to be with his family and who can fault him for that. But of course, we miss him dearly here at the property, but we were blessed and fortunate to find Louis Theros to step it and take over. And he has been sensational. It has been a seamless transition. Louis has done a great job, not only with our team members here on property, but also with our external stakeholders. And I believe, including meeting with you, Chair, a few weeks ago. So without further ado, I turn this over to Louis to introduce himself. Louis. Well, thanks, Gus. After that introduction, I think I should just drop the mic and go. I mean, it was my goodness, it's the lawyer's thing. So good afternoon, Chair Judd Stein and members of the commission. Wonderful to see everybody. It's a pleasure to meet you all over, I guess, Zoom here or the version of it. As you know, my name is Louis Theros. I'm the new president and COO of MGM Springfield. Let me just tell you a quick little about myself. I've been with MGM Resort since 2015, most recently as vice president legal counsel for MGM's Midwest Group, which is for our Detroit and our Ohio properties. Prior to joining MGM, I spent 26 years as an employment law litigator for two large law firms in Detroit. And recently was given the privilege to come and lead MGM Springfield. This is not my first foreign to Western Mass. I was here for the opening of the property for several weeks and also a little bit after COVID to help out on a three opening with some contracts. So I'm really proud to be able to now lead what I think is one of the most tremendous and beautiful properties in our regional portfolio. In my whopping seven weeks here, I've been digging in and learning all things Western Mass and meeting lots of the leadership of Springfield and many of the organizations with which we partner. And obviously I spent a tremendous amount of time meeting our employees to the best I can as I am still living in the hotel as I, you know, finding a place to live. But that's given me frankly an opportunity to meet employees over all three shifts. So I just wanna thank you again for welcoming me and for our team to present today. I look forward to continuing our work with the commission and building upon our partnership. So unless there's any other questions, I'll turn it over to the team and let them give our presentation. Well, welcome again, Louie. And no, you can't get away without hearing from all of us. I'm sure everybody wants to give at least a virtual welcome. So congratulations first and foremost on the position. You know, you've got a great team you're gonna see them in action right now. We'll be just welcoming you and I think all of us joined in your sentiment that it's a special property. And this commission is invested in, however we as a rigorous regulator can also be a partner in the success. So thank you. Thank you. Commissioner O'Brien. I won't draw out the day anymore than we need to but welcome. Thank you. You're coming at a great time of year to go into probably what the best Western mess has to offer too. So well done on timing. I look forward to meeting you. Same, thank you. Same. Commissioner Hill. Welcome aboard. And we look forward to meeting you in person. Same here. Thank you very much. Mr. Skinner. Yeah, Louie, I love how you kind of pulled back the curtain right on cue. Your screen was black and then Gus gave that glowing introduction. There you are. So I'll add to the theme just congratulations and welcome back to Massachusetts. Look forward to working with you and just meeting you in person to start. Absolutely. Thank you. Commissioner Hill. Welcome. And I have to say, if you're staying somewhere, that particular hotel has to be one of the best places to stay in the Commonwealth. So. I have to say it's hard to let go. I kind of like it. The rooms are fantastic. It's unique and everybody in the Commonwealth should go check it out. I agree. Well, thank you. Look forward to meeting everybody. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. So with that really, we're going to turn it over to your team and I'll turn it back to Chief Laney. Or I guess we'll go right to Gus again. Sure. Yes, thank y'all. That's right. Thank you very much, Chair. Anyway, really appreciate Chair and the commissioners on the warm welcome to Louis as Louis mentioned, you know, he was before coming here was Vice President and the old council for Midwest Group. So Louis and I have known each other for years. We work, we work great together. He's a terrific guy, a friend, as well as an outstanding leader. So we're really fortunate to have him here. Having said that now, I will go to the formal presentation. So Dan, I will turn it over to you to start the presentation. All right. Good afternoon, everybody. Lady chair commissioners. Are you seeing that okay? We can. All right, okay. And as normal, let me just do a full screen here for you. And then we'll start off with the wonderful Arlene Carballo, our VP of Finance. Hello, good afternoon, everybody. I'm hoping everyone can hear me okay. And we'll go ahead and get started. So our total gaming revenues for the fourth quarter were 66.6 million generating 16.7 million in taxes. The breakdown was October generated 21.5 million in gross, you can go back one slide. October generated 21.5 million in gross gaming revenue and 5.4 million in taxes. November it was again, 21.5 million in gaming revenue and 5.4 in taxes. And then December closed with 23.6 million in gross gaming revenues and 5.9 million in taxes. And then the next slide, we can see the total gross gaming revenues for the year ended at 271 million, which was an increase of 4% year over year. And the total taxes generated for the year were 68.5 million. And the next slide, we can see that the sports week generated 491,000 in taxable revenue and the total taxes were 74,000. But MGM generated a 10.3 million in total taxable revenue and the total taxes were 2.1 million. And the next slide. So our total lottery sales for the fourth quarter were 357, an 8% decrease year over year. And the decreases that you're seeing are patterns that match our GGR on a year over year comparison. However, in the next slide, you can see the total lottery sales for the year were up 7% closing at 1.5 million for the year. Our total diversity spend was 1.4 million or 21%. Our MBE spend was 448,000. Our veteran spend was 169,000 and our woman spend was 733,000 for the quarter. And then in the, sorry, and I did wanna highlight on the previous slide that the prior year we were at 12% of total biddable. So the property has come a long way in reaching our goals. Our total local spend was 3.3 million or 50% and our total spend within the state was 3.4 million or 60%. And then in the next slide, I just wanna highlight some of the procurement efforts. Our team participated in the GNEMS, G-N-E-M-S-D-C Annual Business Opportunity Conference in October, as well as the property hosted the Western Mass Developers Council Conference in October. The team attended the NMSDC Conference and Exchange as well. And then we also hosted the CWE Annual Supplier Diversity Awards and Matchmaking Event. So the team continues to participate in as many events as possible to ensure our diversity procurement efforts. Thank you. Madam Chair. Yes, Commissioner Hill. Do you want us to hold our questions or as we do each subject? But when we have Armin and she's thinking about this, why not ask her your questions? So I'm curious, because I've seen this, I think industry wide that December seems to be a month where all revenues seem to go up. And I'm curious about that because I would think with holiday spending and things of that sort that those would be the lower numbers. And yet everywhere I've looked whether it's, well, we know because of NFL obviously with the sports wagering, but in regards to gaming revenue on the floor, December seems to be a good month for everyone. Is there an explanation for that that I don't understand or haven't heard before? I like to think of it as everyone's got money in their stockings. So a lot of it has to do with that holiday week between December and New Year's. And then depending on your location, New Year's Eve is a really great night in the industry. Everyone's coming out. Everybody wants to be out and about. So although you're right, there is a lot of spend in general because it is the holiday season, but there's, this is also entertainment. And so you kind of just see the whole lift and that time between I would say Christmas and New Year's Eve, it's really good for all of the properties. So to reiterate what you just said about entertainment, do you tend to do more entertainment? Not necessarily, I just considered gaming is a form of entertainment. So it's just people are out and about doing things. Okay. Thank you, Madam Chair, I was just curious. It's a good observation, Commissioner Hill. Thanks, Arlen. Anytime. So, Daniel. All right, I'll take it back and carry on with our compliance numbers. As usual, I'm happy to see a lot of the green reductions in numbers. And I know that, you know, whenever I present these to you on the quarterly basis, we're aiming for that zero. We're trying to get there. Now, as much as we've also agreed that, you know, zero, maybe one of the hardest things to get to, it doesn't mean that we stop trying. And so you can see here with numbers in sort of the low teams for access, low single digit numbers for either gaming or alcohol, we do continue to try and head toward that goal. Now, I know usually Commissioner O'Brien has a couple of questions here about, so longest time period, three hours and 45 minutes, that happened to be someone who didn't gain. She was actually a 19-year-old daughter of one of our DJs inside our Commonwealth lounge. And she entered with him through an unmanned area. It was one of the gaps in the handrail and just stood behind him, his entire DJ set in the Commonwealth and just drank water. And it happened to be that she then stepped foot out onto the gaming floor to go get a soda at which point our security saw her, asked her for ID, and then we come to find out who she was. But like I say, she never gained at that time. And then just to sort of draw a note to the two instances of consumption of alcohol, neither of those were served directly from our employees in GM, to those parties. It was to a person of age, whether it be a mother, father, or family member, and they allowed the underage to have a sip from their cup. But our team, whether we serve it or not, we still report it clearly and we want to make sure that you know that we're looking for these things and finding them as well. Something I wanted to draw attention to, I know that past I've mentioned that marketing here went out on their own and created these great go-bow projectors. I always have to make sure I say that right because I want to say go-go, but buy one, get one, and get it incorrect. They did it again where we had these black decals that were on the floor signifying the quote unquote, under 21 expressway. And they thought, well, the 21, sorry, the black ones, one were getting a little bit beat up and two possibly weren't as visible as they could be. So they've now introduced some brightly colored ones to really kind of, you know, put that to bed and let people know where they can be when they're within NGM Springfield. Following that theme on, you know, obviously we worked with the commission to create another gap in the rail close to game sense so that people weren't being deprived of that access. And you're all aware that there were four TRUs to get redemption machines that were in that area and feared there might be a little bit of an obscurity to the view. Well, two were removed, placed in a different area within the gaming floor. And so now you can see in the two center photographs that would be, you know, at the center looking out to the floor, there's, you know, nice big area of open space there. And then from within the floor, good 30, 40 feet, you can clearly see the game center. So it's not out of view, out of mind. It's now quite sort of visibly there. And then just a sort of a final shout out. I know I did this halfway through the year and now I'm making this sort of a semi-annual celebration that any of our security that can go out on that floor and really, really look to detect and get underage off the floor that are there. This young man, Tanner McTagged, he managed to take 24 persons off the floor between June and December of 2023. And in all cases, that was less than five minutes that he found them and got them off the floor. So, you know, he was to be celebrated. And so we gave him what we call a star of the show as a recognition in January. And that's my piece on compliance. I will hand it back to Arlen for workforce unless there are any questions, of course. Yeah, Chris, is there any questions for Daniel on compliance? Okay. Chris or Arlen, you all set with that? Thank you. I am. Thank you, Dana. Thank you. Excellent. All righty. Thank you. So our total employees for the fourth quarter was 1,495. It is an 8% increase year over year, same quarter. We ended with 50% minority, 4% veteran and 41% woman. And then the next slide, we can highlight some of the workforce hiring efforts we have. So we continue to do our property tours and career presentations. In the fourth quarter, we had Holyoke Community College, Manchester Community College, UMass, the Veterans Administration, Perron Villages and Westover Job Corps. We also participated in a handful of job fairs, including Johnson and Wales, Springfield Technical Community College, Western New England, and Mass Hire. And we also have efforts on developing our workforce, including partnership with Dress for Success. We had a career conversation in early December. We participated in the core expungent event. And I actually believe it was posted here and Beth may have to correct me on that if I'm wrong. And then we also participated in the disability inclusion panel as well. So we're continuing to work with all of our partners, all the colleges around us to improve our KPIs. Any questions? Thank you. Take it away, Beth. Hello, everybody. Very nice to be with you all once again. I always say I get the really fun part, the part that I get jazzed about. And that is community outreach and special events. 2023 was a busy quarter for our team when it comes to community engagement. This is just a snapshot of what we've been up to, including the raise of hope, walk toward the cure of breast cancer, and Jim Springfield volunteered for the event, walked in the event, and we also sponsored the event, which is an iconic one here in Western Mass. We continue to support our veterans ahead of Veterans Day as we do each year. A large number of us took the entire day and made sure that a local cemetery that veterans were honored and their graves were decorated by American flags. Dressed for success, you heard Arlen talk about that a moment ago. We continue our partnership with them and another entity called Sudak Springfield, partnerships that we really value and continue this year in many ways, including an internal clothing drive that was just a huge success for us, something that we did for the first time this year. We continue our partnership with Springfield Public Schools by supporting our adopted school this year. You've heard me talk about it before this year. It's the Kiley Academy right down the road in Springfield with teacher appreciation events and donations, supporting student needs as well. And rounding out the quarter with what has become several signature events for us here at MGM Springfield is the Mayflower Marathon. Again, you've heard me talk about this. It's a 24-7 three-day event in conjunction with the local radio station, all leading up to Thanksgiving. This is the largest fundraiser of the year in Western Mass to support food insecurity in the Springfield area. And I'm happy to report that our partnership, we secured a record number of donations. So we're just super proud of that as well. Toys for Tots also record amounts of donations this year to support the marines and local families in need and what has become a tradition right before the holidays. We like to call it surprise squad kind of thing, publishers clearing house giveaway. We surprise several of our community partners with checks. These are community partners that we also volunteer. So it's a great way to end the quarter and the year by playing Santa Claus. If we could go to the next slide, please, Dan. Just before we do, Beth, I'll point out that I'm the little elf with the green hat on in those pictures, just in case. Can I point something else out too? Gus isn't doing too much weight bearing in that picture there with the box. Ooh, cool out. Ooh. I was hoping you were not gonna notice that kind of sugar. Yes, that's true. I believe he was guiding and supervising. I believe he's, what are you doing? Yes. It's sort of like the fake Starbucks in movies where they work on the empty cups, that's Gus. He just carries the empty cup and box everywhere. Someone that also guides and supervises. I support it, Gus. I think he put that picture in there for a reason. It was very good. Let's take a look at community outreach and special events. Again, just a snapshot of Q4. For the first time, Arlen mentioned this, but we partnered with a local law school to host a criminal record and expungement and ceiling event. We had attorneys on hand for members of the public who may have had marks on their records in the past to come in and for free talk to an attorney to determine whether they're eligible to have their records sealed or expunge. I have to tell you that this event that we held on property was just an overwhelming success to be able to see so many people who came out to take advantage of this free opportunity. And as you know, I mean, having that service and to have that go through unlocks so much for someone's future, including housing and jobs. We continue to take our job fair on the road, our show on the road, so to speak. And Arlen mentioned this briefly a little bit ago. We are partnering with Address for Success of Western Mass on a number of things, but we did our first job fair at their brand new facility that is literally just down Main Street from us, which was a great success. And we will continue that as well. We also continue to take our, we ended the quarter, I'm gonna point your direction to the tree lighting and skating rink opening. This is my favorite event of the season. It's a hallmarky moment, but we had so many families who came down to participate in this big event which has become such an annual tradition. In the bottom middle, you'll see we're supporting our local Boys and Girls Club. This is their biggest fundraiser of the year. This is held at the Mass Mutual Center across the street. We participate and support this event, the Festival of Trees, and then rounding out the year, the Bright Nights Ball. This is to support the nonprofit Spirit of Springfield. This is the largest event of the season, and so many people come out. We had over 500 people come to that event, which we sponsored and hosted as well. We wanna go to the next slide. This is just a snapshot. I won't read everything here, but a couple of things that I really wanted to point and I asked for your forgiveness and advance to just take a whole look at the year. Total volunteer hours, this just warms my heart over 3000 hours of volunteering that our team has put in. That's over 125 full days, giving update more than a million of direct and in-kind nonprofit support since we opened back in August of 2018. So just some numbers to round out the year, which we're just so proud of. Total foundation support from MGM Springfield team, what they have given to the foundation. This is something that they do voluntarily that they want to do. That is at 9.1%. That is more than double the year before. So community impact, you can see some of those numbers there that we set some records over the past year, particularly in the fourth quarter, and we have a lot of upcoming opportunities down the road. If we could go to the next slide, please. So I also get to talk about entertainment at the Mass Mutual Center. I seem to say record a lot in this quarter, but we set a lot of records and we're very proud of that. Bill Burr sold out in August with his first show. So immediately our team got together with his people. We created a second event in October, which also sold out. So we're very proud of that. And it's just a testament to how entertainment is doing here in the city and just driving all that foot traffic to downtown Springfield. I would be remiss if I didn't also bring up our fabulous Thunderbirds and AIC Hockey. They are selling out the arena, which continues to happen. And we're very proud to be a partner with them as well. If we could go to the next slide, please. Talking about ARIA Ballroom on property specifically. So a lot of shows there that are recurring some that are new in the lineup, Thunder Down Under and Bronze Tail, both returning shows that did very well in 2022, also did well in 2023. Tusk was our sold out show for New Year's Eve. You heard Arlen talk about how critical that week is between Christmas and New Year's. And that's a testament to just how well we did. We were rocking that night. And so that was a great show that we had in ARIA. And if we wanna move on to Symphony Hall, we had some fabulous shows there in Q4 as well, including sell out shows and notable names. See them there like Bob Dylan, Chelsea Handler, Jerry Seinfeld, I went to that one, he was fabulous. So it was great to see so much activity at Symphony Hall and we're excited about what's to come as well. And if we wanna move on to the next one, talking about war comedy club, I think I just really wanna shine a light on war and how our team continues to just pack them in weekend after weekend. We have such a diverse group of comedians who are coming, local favorites and some national names as well. So we continue to get sell out crowds in our lineup on war comedy show nights. So very proud of that. And we have some announcements that are coming up for as we look into 2024 as well. As I mentioned, some things coming up. I do wanna point out Free Music Fridays, we've talked about this here before, we have Free Music Fridays on our plaza that has been such a tremendous success that once again this year we brought it in, Free Music Fridays winter edition that just wrapped up. We had so many people coming to this show that we had to have waiting lines and when people came out, other people would come in. So it just goes to show that people are so excited to come down and take advantage of that. Roar, I mentioned we have some great comedians to announce coming up with that. And also in the aria ballroom, we have voyage. I think we're getting close to sell out on that as well. So fun stuff coming up. Thanks everybody. And that concludes my portion. So I'm gonna turn it over to Des for a few other thoughts. Okay, thank you, Beth. Thank you, Arlen. Thank you Dan for the wonderful presentation. First of all, before I turn over to what Joe talked about about our venue cooperation agreement. Are there any questions or comments about our slide deck chair or commissioners? Any questions? Madam chair, I just wanna know through Beth that the blushing bride sell out. That's a big band, a fun band. Absolutely, I can report yes. Excellent. Yep. If I may, just in, so our room takes around about 900 people. And as a gauge, our entertainment team has seen in the past that if they get good social media interest ahead, depending what that number of people is they can roughly double it. And that's the number we can expect. So they got about 200 to 250 interested parties thought they would get 500, but we were turning away. Once we hit the 900, they were turning them away at the door on that first night. So. Anything else? Okay. So at this time, I wanna make sure I got you all set for the public portion now. Yes. We do want to get an update on the expenditure report. But in order to do so, we would have to go into the second session where this is where Lily, you start to understand or you know it anyway as a lawyer, but our public process, I have to read this language into the record. I'm sorry, Sharon. Before we go on to discuss the executive session, I did wanna address Joe's point about the Impacted Live Entertainment Agreements. Okay, my apologies. Yes, that's okay, Chair. So as you know, back in 2014, MGM, Vine Blutarp entered into an agreement with the Massachusetts Performing Arts Coalition with respect to the theater here at Symphony Hall in Springfield as well as the Hanover Theater in Worcester. Back in 2014, I think everybody was looking to the crystal ball to figure out what the entertainment scenario would look like once MGM Springfield opened up. As you know, subsequent to that, MGM actually took over management of Symphony Hall. So one half of the equation that's set forth in the agreement no longer is relevant because MGM is directly involved in terms of marketing and managing Symphony Hall on behalf of the city of Springfield. Just coincidentally, although we have been trying for many months to try to communicate with the Hanover Theater, we had not much success, but this morning I actually spoke with the president of the theater this morning from Hanover Theater about this agreement. And as we were talking, I think that the Worcester is sufficiently geographically distant from Springfield that the president of the theater didn't think he made a whole lot of sense to talk about cross-marketing or cross-promotion of each other's events. So I think what we're gonna do now is with his agreement, we'll probably work on streamlining and modifying the scope of this agreement to take out the portion about cross-marketing, cross-promotion, and really just focus on the fact that MGM will not do anything to impede or to block anything that the Hanover Theater would like to do in Worcester. So that's the report that I wanted to present to you right now is that I think that we are, the parties are in agreement that we can probably streamline this agreement to a much simpler, much easier agreement going forward. Joe? Yeah, thank you. That's what we really wanna hear about these is that there were some conversations going on and that these agreements aren't just sort of a piece of paper that's sitting there, but people are actually looking at what they say and if there are opportunities to streamline it, I think that's great. As long as the parties are in agreement that this is a good thing, I think that's where we are. It's not an agreement that we are party to. This is an agreement between the ILEV and MGM. We obviously monitor that and that's what sort of we're trying to do here. Thanks, Gus. Okay. So this juncture, we're also okay to consider moving into the second session. So the commission anticipates that it will be in its second session in accordance with G.O.V. Chapter 30A, Section 21, Subsection A7, comply with G.O.V. Chapter 23K, Section 21A, Subsection A7 for the specific purpose of reviewing the proposed multi-year Capital Expenditure Plan described in 205CMR 139.09. In any corresponding materials submitted relative to MGM's screen field as discussion of this matter in public would frustrate the purpose of the statute and associated legal authorities where the Capital Expenditure Plan at issue is covered by a non-disclosure agreement between the Massachusetts Gaming Commission and MGM's screen field. The public section of the commission meeting will reconvene at the conclusion of the executive session. Do I have a motion? I'll move to Madam Chair. Thank you, Commissioner O'Brien. Second. Thanks. Any questions on that? Okay, Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Commissioner Skinner. Aye. Commissioner Maynard. Aye. And I vote yes. Five's there on that. Now we have some virtual magic. Tom, are you all set? We should be, Chair. David's gonna be moving the relevant folks that we've identified into the breakout room. You'll get a little pop-up box and you can click join. If we do miss somebody, please just drop a line in the chat to David Sousa and we'll get you right in there. Okay. Thank you and we'll return to public. Thank you. All right, everybody, I have sent out invites and added those who I have on my list. If there are others that have not received an invite, please feel free to either, you know, give me a holler or send a message in the chat and I will add you over as soon as I see him. Thanks so much. We're all transported, so David can take down the screen. Madam Chair. Yes. Can I just request a five minute break, please? I was going to check in on that. That's a good idea. So it's 2.46, I don't know, five of three, right? How about that? I only need a five minute break unless someone needs more than that. I'll take the time offered, five of three. Thank you. Thanks, everyone. Okay, David, you wanna take that down, please? Also. Thanks, Dave. There we are. This is a reconvening of the Massachusetts Game Commission. We had a busy day from holding this meeting virtually, so another roll call. Good afternoon, Commissioner Bryant. Good afternoon, I'm here. Good afternoon, Commissioner Hill. Commissioner Hill, just for the record, I couldn't hear you. I'm here. Thank you. I can see you. Thank you so much. Commissioner Skinner, good afternoon. Good afternoon. Thank you, Commissioner Maynard. Good afternoon. Great, thank you. We'll get started. We are now on item 12 of our meeting number 506. Director Vanhoen, thank you. And I don't know if I think you are solo today. I have to go for a file day anyway. Yes, good afternoon, Madam Chair and commissioners. I am solo. It's very rare that I actually bring something before you without either one of my team members or somebody from Research and Responsible Gaming Partners. So I'll try to do the best I can here. So today, I want to talk to you a little bit about considerations for behavioral risk identification and response technology. I'm going to share my screen. We all sat there. Oh, before I do, I just wanted to just make a quick statement. Tomorrow kicks off problem gambling awareness month. It's initiated by the National Council on Problem Gambling. It's a nationwide effort to highlight the risks and the harms associated with gambling. We have a range of different activities through our game sense team, game sense program, both front of the house with casino patrons, but also back of the house, recognizing that casino employees are at greater risk of gambling related harm. We're also participating in National Gambling Disorders screening day with the Cambridge Health Alliance Division on Addiction, which is on March 12th. And that screening day will be again, both front of the house and back of the house. So more to come and a lot of activities over the course of the next month. Before I kick this off, I wanted to just draw your attention to and recognize Judith Glenn with Pratt Solution. She's one of our research consultants. Has been for a number of years and she was really helpful in kind of pulling together some of the research on this specific topic. Judith is in the final steps of finishing her PhD at Gibraltar University. I believe that she's going to be moving on to being a lecturer there at the university. So congratulations to Judith and much appreciation for her support for this project. So this is what we're really talking about today. So the gambling landscape is changing, right? This is driven by innovation and technology. And if that's the case, so too must how we look at our response to mitigating problem gambling. What are our strategies? What are our responses? To that end, I think the commission should consider a range of strategies to effectively reduce harm across MGC regulated gambling formats using to the extent possible evidence-based approaches that target specifically as specifically as possible the characteristics and manifestations of risk unique to each of the gambling formats. The presentation today will cover just one of those possible approaches. Again, I think that we really need to, as we move forward, look at a range of different strategies as we have over the course of our work together. So we're talking about artificial intelligence. And I think this is a term that's bantered around frequently, but to really just kind of hone in on a simple definition. Artificial intelligence is an umbrella term that encompasses many initiatives that use computer to perform tasks that would usually require a human to complete. Another definition from the Oxford dictionary is a theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making and translation between languages. It is broadly used and it's used in a range of different issues. And in fact, last month, there was a Boston Globe article talking about how researchers are turning to AI to predict the risk of pancreatic cancer. And similarly to what I'm going to be talking about that those researchers are looking at, what are the early warning signs? What are the early predictors of this type of cancer in order to prevent or intervene as early as possible? AI is increasingly being considered or adopted within the gaming industry for a range of purposes, obviously including responsible gaming, but also marketing and fraud detection. Risk identification technology, AI-driven technology to identify and respond to risky gambling behaviors is one of those responsible gaming approaches. There's a lot to learn in this space and I'm far from being an expert in this space but I'm learning quickly. And part of that is to the thanks of the company of individuals that responded to an RFI that we released back in August of 23 in order to gather insight and to key considerations that we should account for and determining whether this approach is worth something that we should consider. And looking at not just our online environment but also taking a look at land-based casino and environments as well. So this is what we'll cover. Just quickly, key purpose and objective, a rationale for regulatory involvement, a proposed approach, insights from the RFI, state of the market and proposed next steps. So back in 2014, the Gaming Commission adopted a responsible gaming framework and it was updated in 2018 and there's a work underway to look at this framework again. The overarching goal has remained consistent which the commission adopted way back which is to create an effective, sustainable, measurable and socially responsible and accountable approach to gambling. Each of these terms are obviously important. Interestingly, even from the very first iteration of this framework, it stated that RG efforts and their entirety will retain flexibility and respond to emerging evidence in the evolving technological and cultural environment. And I think both of those are actually really important. The evolving technological, looking at the advancement in AI technology and how far it's come but also the cultural environment and what is accepted and what is appropriate in any given response that we would be considering. So to that end, the MGC released an RFI seek information about AI driven technology solutions to identify and respond to risky gambling behavior. This wasn't just limited in our approach looking at online sports wagering though obviously that is top of mind for us. It also took a look at land-based casinos including carded play and cashless wagering which we'll be talking about here a little bit more shortly in next presentation. But also like we are within the approved FY24 gaming research agenda, we have a study looking at kind of down the road and around the corner of possible action on eye gaming. And so I think it's important that we think about eye gaming though it's not legal or regulated in Massachusetts at this point but thinking about should it be down the road whether or not this will be an appropriate response. And so the ideal path forward ideal recognizing that this is the overarching goal and there's probably many iterations that we could take of this is a strategy that can effectively reduce harm in all MGC regulated gambling formats by using the evidence-based approach that target the characteristics and manifestations unique to each and every gambling format that's regulated by the commission. So when I talk about sort of these indicators what are the actual behaviors that we're looking at or that AI technology would look at and there's many and these are just a few examples of that that were delivered through the RFI process and they include use of multiple gambling accounts increase in frequency of bets repeatedly attempting to recover previous losses or chasing losses by placing more bets progressively increasing bet sizes frequent high sum deposits number of payment methods used for deposits declined deposits by banks, canceled withdrawals, increases increase in frequency and length of gambling sessions change in the type of sports that are wagered and change in the days and hours when wagers are typically placed. Each of these alone may be a single indicator but the true power is when you look at combinations of indicators then they can provide a clearer picture of the degree of risk. So there are actually, I think it's important to recognize that a lot of operators especially multinational operators licensed in advanced gambling jurisdictions like the US like Europe, UK, Australia, Canada already have AI driven solutions for identifying risk in various forms. And some of those are developed in in-house developing predictive models in-house and so it's unique and specific to the operator that is offering this tool. Some are configured solutions. There's been a number of companies that are in this space and there's been considerable investment in this space and a few of those I will be talking about as we look at respondents to the RFI. And then there's also a hybrid. So using both in-house predictive models as well as some type of external product or company, a product that they offer. So there are, this is not a perfect and there are plenty of areas where we should look at improvement and I'll just cover a few of those now. Some of it deals with a lack of rigor or reliability in the indicators. So the indicators that I just touched on or the thresholds that are used in order to identify the degree of risk. And so I'm citing one evaluation right here where an international research team found that a system based on nine markers of harm or indicators of harm used by consortium of operators identified less than 1% rather than greater than 6% of online players who self-recorded pathological gambling. Sometimes the response isn't adequately supported. And so most solutions, and as I'll talk about here more in a second don't have an integrated response technology. So you can identify the risky gambling behavior but it's not supported by adequate resources for the response of that. And then finally, it's not always supported by an outcome-based evaluation framework. And this is something that as the commission has moved forward and many of our responsible gaming strategies, we look at how is that coupled with an evaluation framework that can tell us more how do we maximize the utility of whatever the given responsible gaming strategy is. And so there isn't a great degree or body of research that supports that. The UK Gambling Commission shout out to them for developing regulatory standards that require regular evaluation of harm reduction efforts. Mark, can I just interrupt here? Cause this is interesting to me. I just want to understand it sounds as though you've evaluated other programs. And I'm wondering who you've done that with. Cause I know, I don't know what student was. Is that part of her work? And so she's evaluating the other programs. Now this is just a review of the evidence that exists within this space. So this was more like a literature review. Thank you. So regulatory involvement can be really helpful in a couple of different ways. First on the technology side, so the risk identification side and developing rigorous indicators, thresholds and proxies tailored to diverse gambling formats, whether it be sports, online sports, wagering or casinos or cashless wagering. And to assure that they're flexible and adaptable to diverse environments as needed. The second piece, which is what I just was speaking about is to assure that there's resources and policies in place to support individuals who are displaying a risky gambling behavior. And whether that's systematic evidence-based response intervention protocols, that also can be an evaluation framework that can continuously monitor how AI can continue to evolve into a better job and work as a RG tool. There's a lot of, I think there's a lot of hope in this space too, that there's a significant amount of academic studies have identified the risk using a variety of player data looking at play patterns, consumer communications and financial activity. So I listed to you a few slides back some of the key indicators, but those are just some. If you wanna, you could also look at customer communications and financial activity that is not behavioral based. And I'll talk a little bit more about that in a few of the responses that we received. Many of the, there was some interesting early studies on this looking at online sports betters, specifically and quite notably, there was a very large study by Harvard Medical School Division on Addiction just over in Malden. They partnered with a company BeWin between 2007 and 2014 and did an impressive study that really, really dove deeper into looking at gambling behavior and risk indicators. There's a general consensus that extreme plays. So the top one to 5% is a reliable concept for identifying risks. So identifying the one to 5%, you can begin to identify what risk indicators are should be trapped. And finally, that research is increasingly focused on risk indicators specifically online sports betting environments, such as in play, betting outside the normal hours and in betting on sports outside the top 10. So evidence suggests potential. Many studies have demonstrated that intervening with players simply be an automatic method. So whether it's a pop-up within the sports wagering app or an email sent to their account can actually have an effect at reducing gambling really. For players that are in sort of that top level, players indicate in greater degree of risk, there's studies that have indicated that person to person intervention. So something that's much more tailored can be successful at reducing harmful gambling amongst those players. And then there was finally, there was a study which found the high risk players who received a phone call intervention reduced their theoretical loss, I'm sorry, by 30% compared to 7% amongst those who did not receive the phone call. So this is very roughly a proposed approach. And I think we're into it at this point in time. So one is obviously the RFI risk identification response. Another is expert consultations. And finally, beginning to kind of narrow in on what is the target environment? What is the evidence in the market and role for regulation? And so some of that is continuing our due diligence in this space to identify whether this is a priority of the commission. And if so, where do we want it to go? What environment would we want to launch this in? One or four more? I think the next step is to understand the local context. Much like we have with Play My Way, our operators were incredibly valuable and important stakeholders in this. I think that consultation with Massachusetts operators to get a better understanding of kind of what their position is, what they currently have in place and what we could look to would be an important piece of this. I think consulting with other relevant stakeholders as well, the Mass Counseling and Gaming and Health has a recovery board that at a certain point, I don't know at what point in the process it may be worth consulting them about an appropriate response strategy. I also think that it would be really useful if the commission recognizing that this touches on many different areas would assemble a work group, both the sports wagering division, certainly the IT division and our legal division as well as the research and responsible gaming division. And consider further research to explore this. Next, I think it would be warrant us to prepare different options. And I think there's a number of different ways which the commission may wish to consider going, whether it's establishing regulatory criteria and outcomes, but leaving it up to the operators in order to meet those regulatory criteria. It could be identifying and mandating one solution for all operators. And it could be much kind of going back to consulting with our operators, collaborating and identifying a common solution or criteria in order to move forward. So just a general state of the market. Again, this is largely sort of doing a literature review and exploring what is currently out there. Most solutions market themselves as offering response functionality, though most of those leave it up to the operator to decide what that response is. There's one, a product called Mentor that provides an integrated both behavioral risk identification and a corresponding response functionality and they have a bank of automated messages. Most solutions are designed for implementation in online environments, but there are just a few out there that also have another module of it that couples into a land-based environment. Most solutions undergo extensive configuration process to build and train their predictive models and operator-specific data. I think that this is actually a really important step in making sure that the solution that's implemented in Massachusetts would be unique to Massachusetts players and unique to gamblers in Massachusetts and not built upon a predictive model from another jurisdiction. Most of the solutions, I'll touch on this a little bit, were developed by academic experts in the responsible gaming field and a number have been peer reviewed, but in most cases those include members of the development team. So going back, so I'm gonna just begin touching on the RFI respondents. So it was released in 2023 to get insight into key considerations. We received five responses, four from providers of the Act Risk Identification Solutions and one from the Mass Council on Gaming and Health. All of those responses are included in your packet today. The responses were really helpful in order to provide some insight into the state of the market and some of the details about how they work. And the Mass Council on Gaming and Health really supported the gaming commission's work and participation in this space. When I talked a little bit before about some of them, some of the solutions were developed in-house and some of them were outside companies. And so the ones that I'm talking about today were companies that have unique solutions in the space. So one is called BetBuddy developed by a company called PlayTech. It's an AI solution. It's evidence-based risk segmentation approach. In other words, you can see it places players into three levels of risk, low, medium, and high. Mark, can I, I'm sorry to interrupt again. My apologies. In order for me to sort of think about your presentation going forward, what are you going to ask of us? There's a couple of things that I can certainly skip to. That's a good point, Matt. No, I mean, just, no, I don't want to jump ahead. I just want to get my mind set right. I'm sure it's a lot of content and I just... Yeah, I know, I apologize. This is, it's a lot. It was a lot for me too, honestly. My wish for the commission is that we continue down a path of exploring whether this technology, it would be a fit for Massachusetts. And to that end, my recommendation and our very next steps would be to say, I would love to hear from our operators and what technology is available on their gambling platforms? What if any technology is available? I would love to assemble a work group within the MGC across divisions in order to continue to explore this. And finally, I would like to expand the scope within our current FY24 research agenda is a study on artificial intelligence, much to the credit of you, Madam Chair, who recommended that specific study early on. I would recommend that we expand the scope of that study to do what we originally intended and is scoped out in the FY24 research agenda but add an additional focus on this type of risk identification technology and how AI can be used in this space. Okay, so as we go through the RFI, we're not evaluating them. That's what I- No, no, no, this is, thank you, I appreciate that. This is really just for background. This was to help us begin to understand how what technology exists and what are important components as identified by the respondents to the RFI. Okay, Mr. Chair, I don't know if that was helpful for you, but if you have any other questions about framing this chime in now, I'll set. Okay, Mark, that was helpful for me. Okay, I'm glad. Perhaps I should have led with that. No, you wouldn't know how I'm viewing it through my lens versus your lens. It's just fine, it's fine. Okay, all right. All right, so back to the respondents to the RFI. And again, thank you very much to the respondents for this RFI. It's no small task to pull together a response and it's much appreciated and really helpful. I hope for the commission. So the first one is BetBuddy offered by PlayTech. As I said before, it offers evidence-based risk segmentation on three levels, low, medium, and high. It offers product-specific features and determining level of risk for sports betting with greater weighting in different ways and analytical adjustments for seasonality and big sporting events. So it isn't sort of a one-size-fits-all across any specific format. It's able to adjust based on seasonality, based on specific big sporting events like perhaps March Madness or the Super Bowl. And it has been piloted to a land-based environment as well. The second is a product called Game Spanner offered by Mindway AI. Similar to BetBuddy, it is also a cloud-based AI solution but this is based on neuroscience. In fact, the developers have 10-plus years research in neuroscience and neuroimaging. This is the one product that has been performance-tested and verified by GLI, the first producer. And I think that that is notable. Sorry, my dog just arched into the office. So Game Spanner defines risk score for each player based from one to 100 combined with thresholds and customized behavior. The thresholds trigger an alarm, but that alarm really, the response is still left up to the operator in order to determine what the appropriate response is. So these are two, what I would consider alternative or complementary approaches to the conventional risk identification response. So where it has sort of BetBuddy and Game Spanner are sort of the conventional product that's available on the market. IDPair and TransUnion are both products that would be complementary. And I'll explain that just a little bit more. So IDPair is an interesting product that offers data consolidation, a data consolidation platform, which means that it assigns a random number and play can be tracked across multiple operators. I think that this is an interesting product in large part because oftentimes players, especially players who are at risk, play across multiple platforms. And traditional technology really only tracks to the very specific platform. And it was IDPair pointed out in their RFA response that an estimated 76 to 82% of players have multiple accounts on different platforms. So this would be a direct response to that. There is no apparent integrated player-facing response functionality, however, and there hasn't been adaptable to a land-based environment. The next one offered by TransUnion is the player stability score. And what's unique about this one is that it focuses not on the behavioral data, but on financial data and such as individual loss amount, monthly loss amount, multiple deposits in a short amount of time. So what strictly financial-based inputs in order to establish a player stability e-score that relates to the person's propensity to be suffering financial distress. And similarly, there's no apparent integrated player-facing response functionality that would need to be developed. And in terms of its adaptability to land-based environment, that's to be determined. Two additional products that were not part of the original submission that are interesting and worth noting. One is Preventor Suite, offered by a sustainable interaction and cloud-based AI solution. That has a kind of grown within the market. The developers of that had experienced across different companies within the space, play-scan, green-gaming, and tendering. There is no apparent integrated player-facing response functionality. It notifies the operators to prompt an interaction and the ability to display messages or nudges through different communication channels, though those weren't defined. The final one, and I mentioned this just a little bit ago, is Mentor. It's the one that has the ability to both identify risks but it has sort of a range of different sort of built-in response features. And this was the one that was unique for that. It's an evidence-based approach with indicators and responses. And as I said, there's an inventory of automated personalized messages that the operator can deploy. And it has been implemented and utilized and land-based in land. So just quickly, what are the key implications while solutions do not market game-specific considerations? Sports-specific indicators and thresholds can be accounted for in the configuration phase. And that's what, earlier I said that that configuration phase is really important in order, if it is deployed in Massachusetts, that it's being built upon players in Massachusetts based on play here. Mentor was the only solution offering an integrated response functionality. And there were two solutions that have been tested in land-based environments, BetBuddy and Mentor currently implemented. So proposed next steps and Chair Jed Stein, I think this is where I kind of highlighted that just a few minutes ago. So in terms of next steps, I would recommend that the commission continue to move forward in this space. I think that there's adequate evidence to show that there's promise. But I also think that there's still a lot that the commission needs to consider and needs to learn. It's like that thing in that the more you peel it back, the more that there is. And while I think that we just need to continue to learn a lot about this. So part of that is consulting with our operator to explore what the current status of risk ID and response efforts are. What are the operational opportunities and barriers? What are their feedback actually to regulation? They may welcome regulation in this space or they may be willing to contribute to developing a consistent strategy for all operators. So I said before, I think it may be worth seeking the advice of the recovery board on the utility and specific elements of an effective response system. Not on the risk identification system, but mostly on focusing on response. I think that the MVC should develop a work group. And as I said before, we have within our existing research agenda now a study that looks specifically at AI technology. I think that it would be worth considering merging this with the RG evaluation project in order to just do a much larger product within this space. So it'd be taking two already approved projects but then the research agenda merging it into one in order to have a much more energy going towards this project. And that's it. Thank you. Can you take that question? I can. And again, I thank you for, I was really how to think about the responses that I needed to understand whether we were kind of evaluating them. All right, so that was helpful. Commissioner's questions for Mark. Commissioner Maynard. More of a statement, Madam Chair. Mark, I watched the rock bottom King's skit on Saturday Night Live last weekend. And I immediately thought of AI as a solution, part of a solution to this problem. It makes sense that if you can use AI to know that someone's more likely to bet on say a college basketball game, right? That you could use it to know if they're betting more than they should, right? And I heard you talk about models. You know, I think that it can help with intervention. And I think that we should be at the forefront of encouraging perhaps even requiring operators to engage with us on this because they do have the technology, right? And part of what you found shows that. We've been kind of the leader in research and responsible gaming for the last 10 years in Massachusetts. I think this is kind of the next frontier, in my opinion. And as someone who fits the demographic that is highly affected by this potential problem, I have to say that I totally explore support exploring this further. If I could, I want to jump on, Commissioner Mayer, because you kind of set the stage of where we are. Mark knows that I was familiar with what was happening in New Jersey. And I did follow up with our counterparts in New Jersey. They provide great leadership. And many of their operators are also our license operators. And they are right now truly cooperative, not through regulation, a cooperative, I think it's kind of like an MOU or something. Working, all the operators are working with our counterparts in New Jersey. And they have a list, I think of like 10 triggers that they would either look at account activity or behavior activity that's associated with patients who might have put at greater risk for gambling issues. And I hesitantly have to say gambling, problem or addiction. And then once those triggers occur, then there's a second sort of analysis where they'll do a degree of due diligence with the operators. And then there are three levels of intervention. And one of them is to send an email, the first one. The second one is to do, I think a tutorial mark, if I'm remembering correctly, a tutorial. And then third, they actually do have an RG team who will intervene with the patient. I love the idea of Mark continuing to explore and kind of see where it would be tweaked for all of Massachusetts sensibilities. But I'm wondering if it makes sense kind of explore doing kind of taking what they're doing and building our best practices. And I bet they would share back, they would take from us as well. I don't know, Mark, that's why I was wondering, I assume when you were looking at all those, the other programs that you had in New Jersey in mind, but it seems there's a lot of intersectionality there. Yeah, well, one, I really appreciate the work that New Jersey and leadership New Jersey has done in this space, I think it's wonderful. And I think that there is a lot that we could learn or partner with New Jersey if that's the direction that we go. And it was kind of contemplated when I was talking about what the different options were of possibly adopting a sort of a New Jersey style model and any work that we could do in collaboration with them, they have been really helpful and forthcoming with their information about this product. They should be really proud of what they've developed. And the operators are cooperating, I think, because you're first step, one of your first steps, and I agree with all your steps, the idea of a working group and figuring out how the AI, the technology can be elevated. But the operators, I think a lot of, I guess I said, our licensees overlap with them, they have a bigger group. You may hear that, just, I guess I'm saying, we shouldn't be surprised that they're saying, well, we're actually doing this. And I'm not sure what other states they might be doing it with you, you'd be more familiar with that Mark. I'm just more familiar with the New Jersey model. And it's- Yeah, I'm not familiar with other states that have taken, have moved in this space. I've had conversations with other jurisdictions in the US that are all very interested in this space. And I think there's a lot of sort of waiting to see what other jurisdictions are doing. And I've also had a number, I've had conversations with some operators in Massachusetts and elsewhere that I haven't heard that there's a lot of alarms. I think that there is sort of a willingness to participate in using technology for this purpose, but doing it right and making sure of that, that it's going back to what are our goals of the responsible gaming framework, that it's effective, that it's measurable, that it's accountable, and that it's socially responsible. So I think all of that is great. Yeah, I mean- So yeah, Mark, I was fortunate enough just to sit in this a while ago. I can't recall how long ago it was, Mark, you and I went through sort of the presentation from a vendor on this. And we've had conversations about how Europe has mandates in place, some of which, obviously when you take things from there and here you've got some, you always get to assess the viability of it state by state, but there is an element of compulsion in New Jersey. So there's a cooperation, but there is also a mandate in New Jersey to do this. And so I do law in New Jersey for sort of being in the forefront of this. I think this is something we've all talked about, stepping into this space. It also dovetails with the data privacy conversations that we have because this is the same information, right? That's the concern is, please don't use it to target, right? And create a riskier behavior. So it is out there. I love the idea of using AI and what's been learned in Europe in a more mature market to do this. I think we need to learn more. I do want to be more proactive. I feel like, yeah, there's a natural tension obviously with wanting to make more money and then wanting to stop somebody who's betting a lot, right? So I think there is gonna have to be probably a regulatory mandate, but I think before we move there to Mark's point and to your point, Madam Chair, and we need to find out what's out there and what is already being done by the operator so that we do it in a way that's the most effective. But I do think this is somewhere where we talk about Reg review and we talk about circling back. This is a top priority area, I think, for this body. I agree. Commissioner Hiller, Commissioner Skinner. I agree with everything that's been said. I don't think there's much more I can add to it. Looking forward. Yeah. I think building on, if we could early adopt some measures rather than nothing and then keep on improving, what is the saying? Don't the affection be the enemy of that or whatever. Mr. Skinner. No, I feel the same as Commissioner Hiller. I don't have too much to add. I do agree with what's already been said. The takeaway really is more education for us commissioners and information gathering and seeing where this goes, but I do think it should be a priority and I'm happy to see that we're already starting to think about it. Whether we're taking tips from New Jersey or some other jurisdiction maybe in the beginning stages as well of looking at this, I think it's a step in the right direction. I think that Jersey launched in January of 23, Mark. So they're just at that one year mark and starting to do auditing. So, you're inquiry one year later, right? This initiative, the timing is perfect and you've done a lot of research already. So I'm excited for you to get this going. I know it did come up during our regulation promulgation and it's a priority. So thank you. Thank you. May I say one? Oh, sorry. I was just gonna say, do we need to formalize any steps for you further? But go right ahead, Mark. I think in terms of actually it did dawn on me that if we're merging two of the approved research projects within the gaming research agenda for this fiscal year, is that something that would need a vote or approval by the commission? Still both projects, but it's just kind of merging it to one, which is a little different than I think what you had approved. I think we should think about that. I'm sure it talks about to weigh in for the agenda-setting meeting so that we could get it properly on the agenda. If that's something that you feel is needed, right? Yeah, it would be great. And I apologize. I should have thought about that before. Don, don means. No, no, no. This is why you're presenting. So you get some feedback, right? What are you gonna say? Because I interrupt. Oh, yeah. I was in thinking about what commissioner Maynard had said early on, we offer a range of tools, both casino-based and our operators offer different types of play management tool. And a lot, I think that almost exclusively that relies on patrons to take an active step in order to seek the information in order to enroll in what that tool is. And this type of technology, and I was really excited, exciting about it, is that it's a much more proactive approach to responsible gaming. It's not trying to be overly intrusive, but it's also there as sort of a check. Whereas I mentioned at some point in the presentation sort of a nudge and helping much like we do with the rest of our responsible gaming tools, increase in form player choice. Then it's important for somebody to know if you're moving from green to yellow to red to provide some input or to introduce play management tools. That there's a range of different ways that this can be used, but I think of it as far more proactive perhaps than some of our other initiatives. That's all. And Mark, you did it out on yourself? Well, sort of, I did have the help of the team here help me think it through and certainly kind of develop PowerPoint and Judith Quinn is always a wealth of information as one of our research consultants. Yeah, she's been wonderful. So no further questions for Mark? Okay, well, again, I thank you and thank you for helping me figure out the RFIP. So all right, and now we're gonna switch to your next subject matter. You're not going anywhere because we have item 12B. And that, I know Carrie wasn't feeling great yesterday. I hope you're feeling better today, Carrie. But this is a topic that we rolled over and we just wanted to make sure you have time. So again, it's dealing with cashless or digital payment. So big issue, thanks. Oh, and hi, Dr. Andrews. Yes, so good afternoon, Madam Chair and commissioners. I can get us started here. Dr. VanderLinden, Dr. Andrews and I are excited to talk to you about some of the responsible gaming considerations of cashless payment technology or digital payment technology in casino gaming. As you know, the question of whether to allow the use of digital payment technology at casinos in the Commonwealth is under review by the commission and we'll be coming to you soon with a proposed regulatory framework and policy considerations for the commission to weigh in on. We thought that it might be helpful before we do that to provide you with some information related to the responsible gaming considerations for cashless payment technology, as well as ways in which regulators might address some of those issues. So there's really no particular ask of the commission today. This is really just introductory information for you on this topic that will hopefully be helpful to you as we move into the regulation process. So Mark, if you wanna share the slides for us. Oh, okay. I hadn't pulled up, Carrie, and now I'm struggling to find it again. I'll just bear with me one second. Sure. Or Bonnie, if you have it pulled up. It was in the meeting packet, I had it just a second ago. Karen, I have the packet version open, I can share that with us. Okay, I'm sorry, Carrie. I had it all peed up. No problem at all. So I'm just gonna start on this definition slide here before we dive in. This is really when we're talking about digital payment methods. Generally, I'm not specifically talking about, with respect to gaming or casinos, but we're generally talking about payment methods such as debit cards, e-wallets, and wearable or mobile devices. These types of payment methods allow for frictionless contactless payments. And there's been an increase in the focus on these types of methods due to the pandemic. So I'm first actually going to turn it over to Dr. Andrews to discuss some of their responsible gaming issues inherent in the use of digital payment technology. Hey, thank you, Carrie. And thank you, everybody. It's wonderful to be here today. So when thinking about introducing digital payment methods, it's important to consider possible concerns related to responsible gaming and problem gambling. And I'm just gonna give a brief overview of some of these concerns as they relate to digital payment technology. So the first is related to play. And that's that some data has shown an increase in play in time on device using cashless technology. The second point is that there's a phenomenon known as the pain of paying. And that's that consumers experience negative feelings when parting with their money. The research literature discusses that there could be less pain of paying experience when paying with non-cash methods. So that there's the idea that when money is less tangible, there's less inversion to the thought of using money. In addition, looking at the broader research on consumer spending shows that there may be increased spending with less awareness using electronic payment methods versus paying with cash. And that this effect related to increased spending is stronger in younger consumers who's already a population of concern when talking about possible gamble-related harm. Another way to consider is just how people may also use cash to assist with responsible gaming. So for example, there may be no built-in break in play or enforced break in time for reflection as a harm minimization strategy, like if you have to get up and get cash. With using cashless payment, you may have access to additional funds when in a hot state or when decision-making is affected by emotions, which may compromise someone's ability to stay within their intended limits. Additionally, the use and withdrawal of cash itself may allow for a free commitment of the amount of money intended to spend. And lastly, there's the point that easy access to funds is correlated with increased spending by individuals who feel like it belongs. So again, thinking about introducing digital payment methods, it's important to consider how these possible implications related to play, access to funds and increased spending for people who experience gambling problems may come into play. And now I'm gonna turn it over to Director Van Der Linden, who's gonna talk about some of the responsible gaming opportunities that come with digital payment technology. Thank you. So there are also a lot of opportunities that present that are unique in a cashless wagering system. They can provide safeguards for anti-money laundering, rules and backgrounds needed for the KYC know-your-customer and additional barriers for underage gambling. And additionally, compared to cash, digital or cashless wagering systems contain features that can effectively prevent and mitigate gambling related terms. Much like in the presentation I was talking about cashless wagering system, where you're capturing player data, you can also begin to use that data in order to identify early warning signs of risk and develop a response system that would be appropriate. So certainly as the commission considers how we move forward with the type of risk identification and response technology, and as cashless wagering continues to move forward sort of in tandem there, I think that it would be in the benefit of the commission to look not only at sort of online sports wagering handling behavior, but also how it applies to a cashless wagering system. Kerry, I'll come back over to you. Yes, thank you. So with all of that in mind, there are a number of possible regulatory actions that could be taken to address some of these concerns. So we thought we'd just run through some of these possible options today. You could set digital wallet parameters. Some of these options, for example, you could require default limits on the amount a patron could deposit into their account within a set timeframe. You could implement a delay before deposits into a digital wallet can be accessed for gambling. You can restrict access to funds transfer on the gaming floor. These two bullets, number two and three, are very similar. The bullet two is more of a technological tool where there would be a delay actually built into the app. And bullet three is more of a physical tool which would require a patron to actually step away from their gambling in order to transfer funds. So this one would be more akin to the requirement that ATMs be located off of the gaming floor, but they would essentially serve the same purpose, those two options. You could require the automatic deposit of jackpot wins into player accounts. This would require a patron to take an extra step to actually use the jackpot funds to continue gaming rather than it being automatically available for continued play. So instead of it being continuing to stay on the machine that they're playing at, it would be automatically moved from the machine to their player account. And if they wanted to continue gaming with it, they would have to proactively move it back onto the machine. You could make it so that there's no limit on the amount of funds which can be withdrawn from the account or digital wallet. The ability of a patron to remove all funds if they're so inclined could remove the temptation to continue gaming. You could also implement some limit-setting tools. You could give patrons the ability to set a daily, weekly, and or monthly budget along with the ability to enable real-time notifications as the patron approaches and reaches their set budget. This would be similar to some of the play management tools that are included in our sportsway during regulations. It would prohibit you from gambling beyond a set limit which you had set within a particular timeframe. You could also implement a delay on requests to increase limits, meaning to increase the funds that the player has available and an immediate implementation of requests to reduce limits, meaning to reduce the funds that the player has available to play with. This, as Bonnie mentioned, this could sort of help someone to not act in a hot state. I did just want to note, however, Director Randerlin raised this issue that there are some arguments against this type of tool as it could increase player frustration with the tool and decrease players who use the function. You could also allow the use of a cooling off option, the ability for patrons to set a cooling off period during which their account is temporarily frozen for a predetermined time period. Again, this is similar to what we implemented on the sports wagering side and this can keep someone who might recognize that they need some sort of tool from acting in a hot state and would implement this break and play for them. You could also require or make optional real-time player activity statements to patrons. This would help individuals to see the actual amounts gambled immediately in real-time. With respect to tracking of or intervention for at-risk behavior, you could authorize or require such tracking and a system to deliver personalized messages through the machine. This is sort of what Mark was just talking about some of this player risk identification issue and the ways that it could be tracked and monitored and messages sent back out to the patrons. You could also allow the use of on-site game sense staff to intervene with patrons indicating high-risk gambling behaviors. In terms of intervention, there's a range of levels or degrees of intervention that could be considered, including the use of game sense staff, which could be especially useful with patrons showing higher-risk gambling behavior. And then finally, this is slightly separate from those above, but with respect to the research agenda, you could consider the effects of cashless wagering on gambling behaviors and the effectiveness of measures we've talked about when developing the commission's annual research agenda. So as I said, we do intend to bring a regulatory framework to the commission soon for discussion and it's likely to include some of these options we've discussed today. And these are all things that the commission might want to consider when we discuss possible regulations for this implementation. So I will stop sharing and we are happy to take any questions that you might have. Clashers? Clashers are fine. So the only thing when you move forward on this too, when we were down getting a demo review on this, we'd ask the question about whether you could delay the ability to even implement the request consistent with some of the research that's out there about impulse control and riding out the wave. I can too, the ATM has to be x feet away from the floor so the physical act of going there might slow you down. So whatever we do, I would like some discussion about that like that time period where they talk about the urge and the impulse riding out. So that you don't reload in that time period. Sure. Thanks. It's great. It's a lot of options and there's stuff to talk about. Thank you. Anything else, commissioners? Well, thank you for Carrie and Bonnie for your good work on this and for Mark. It made sense to have them presented together. So that worked out well. Thank you. Thank you. I guess, thank you. Thank you. Okay, great. Okay, commissioners, so we're going to go back to the mission statement. We needed updating and I want to extend my appreciation to Commissioner Mayer, Commissioner Bryant for working with a good team to think about this. I know that Grace helped formulate that team and it looked like a really good cross-section of the agency. So I bet you got a lot of good input and we've seen it. It's come to us a couple of times we just haven't circled back, right? Commissioner Mayer, Commissioner Bryant. Well, may I go first, Commissioner Bryant? You go first. No, you can go first. I'll just be brief because you're right, Madam Chair, thinking about John Scully and Lily Wallace and Grace. There were a lot of time, a lot of work that went into it that was really just observed and guided by Commissioner Bryant and myself. The goal was to set the tone to modernize, given that the MGC is more than 10 years old, modernize the language while integrating sports wagering but not just dropping sports wagering into what existed but thinking about kind of the values of what we want to push forward as a group. Same thing with the proposed updated core values. Again, Mills took a heavy lead on that. The language speaks for itself and happy for feedback and we'll turn it over to Commissioner Bryant. Yeah, I think the only, the role that Commissioner Maynard and I played really was being mindful of what this commission has consistently said were the priorities of the regulatory agency and making sure that as we modernized it and we pulled in sports wagering and gave a nod to horse racing and some of the other things to make sure it was all in there. It was just making sure that our priorities were referenced in it. And then there was a lot of wordsmithing, time spent on literal one word versus the other and going back and forth. And I think the team did a great job on it. I mean, I think it pulls it up into 2024 in a way that encompasses everything on our plate. I can give a specific example if you don't mind Commissioner O'Brien. For example, I remember we talked a lot about and allow an appropriate return on investment for gaming providers being mentioned in the original statement. We thought, well, what does that mean today? First of all, does the commission allow any private business allow to make a return? Well, what we really wanna do is foster economic benefits. And then we also thought about how important it was to foster diversity with that. And so there was a place where we kept the intent of the original language, but modernized it for today. And we tried to do that kind of over and over and over again. And I really appreciated what the team came up with. Yes, we really appreciate the three of you have anything to add, edit, you know? No, now's the time. Commissioner Skinner. Thank you, the two of you for your work on this and the rest of the team. There's nothing that sticks out to me as inherently wrong or incorrect about the direction that we're moving in here. So I'm prepared to give significant deference to the team, but two things I'd be interested to hear from our interim executive director and his thoughts on the core values and the new mission statement, but then also interested in any areas of disagreement or tug of war, if you will, that occurred as part of this group just so that we can sort of get an understanding of where there are sticking points. If that may... To answer your second question, I think Commissioner Maynard highlighted one of the main one was the tension of what exactly is our role in that regard. That was probably the most robust conversation. Otherwise, there was consensus on everything else really. But there were places where a word was used twice, for example, right? And we said, well, we've got to find another word. And then there was a lot of wordsmithing on the second word, right? And Mills can jump in, I don't know if he's on here and probably provide a lot of history on that. But really that was... I have been around to different conferences over the last year and a half and heard a lot of operators say, they like that we talk about the fact that it's okay for an operator to make money, right? And that we're kind of unique in that way. Lily pointed out that there are other jurisdictions that say that also. But again, we tried to think about how do we modernize it? So I think Commissioner O'Brien's right, that was probably the biggest substantive conversation we had. That's helpful, thank you. And then I don't know if Todd, you wanted to add anything? Not too much. I would just add that, for me, it was important as it was for everyone that the core values in particular reflect all of our core values. And that's why there are some adjustments made, including things like ensuring that we have an inclusive culture, that we work collaboratively, the transparency, the integrity, all of the things that we practice every day are recognized here in the core value. So it was really a modernization, I think of the values that were established long ago that have served us quite well, but this is really just a refreshed and updated version. I think it looks great. It was really, as has already been noted, a truly a team effort, which is often difficult, but there was such an agreement across the unit that it was not a difficult undertaking, really. It was really an interesting one. So I'm really pleased with the result. Right, I'm just gonna, I'm not sure if you knew that, Intermediate Secretary Gross was on that in that room. I don't know if you- Yeah, I did. Okay, good. A whole list, I don't know if we have, because we should be thanking all the participants. Do you have a chance, anybody? I think I have a- Right now, yeah, it's in the packet. I think that opening- So my apologies. Yeah. Okay, 776, Madam Chair. Although he's tossed, Grossman. Sorry about that. I wasn't gonna mention anything. It's like an old college nickname or something we put in there. That wouldn't come up in the spell check, so that's quick. And I do have to say, everyone was phenomenal, but I do have to say- Yeah, there it is. What you saw earlier with the procurement, et cetera. John Scully is a get it done kind of person. I mean, he would have redrafts and reminding everybody as you go. So if you have a task to get done, still away from dark. Yeah. And I did scroll right over that list. Commissioner Skinner, so I wanted to read everybody's listening and thinking just to thank you too. And I don't mind having you, Commissioner Skinner read those names. I know you weren't on it, but you just read it into the record to thank them. Oh, I'd be happy to. Commissioner O'Brien, Commissioner Maynard, Todd Grossman, Dr. Lightbound, Tom Mills, Judy Young, Crystal Balscheman, Lily Wallace, John Scully, and Grace Robinson. Yeah, so thank you. This is a very important, then look at John. He's there with a, he is there participating from behind his screen. So I am very, very happy with the work. I really looked at it before and I just think it reflects all the values that I know we work hard to live by every day when we're at work in this public forum. Commissioner Hill sounds like you feel the same way. No, no tweaks. Commissioner Skinner, did you say you still want some time I might have misheard or are you prepared to say? I am all set. I think it's thorough. I think it reflects the good work of the team. So. Yeah. I agree. Yeah. And you know, the beauty is just like a regulation, these kinds of policies or mission statements, you tweak them along the way. And so it's a living document, right? If a need arises, something shifts, it picks a just so. Thank you. Should we, I think, I think I reserved, yeah, for a vote and I think it deserves that. I have a motion. I'm happy to do it, but I feel I wonder if it comes better from something not on the group. You should lead it. You should lead it. That's fine. I can move. Madam chair, I moved that the commission adopt the revised Massachusetts gaming commission mission statement as included in the commissioners packet and discussed here today. Commissioner Maynard. Thank you. Okay. Great work. Mr. O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Mr. Skinner. Aye. Commissioner Maynard. Aye. And I vote yes. Five zero. Excellent. Well done. Mills, that would go up like immediately, right? They'll be publicizing for us and that's just exciting, exciting work that's completed. So thank you. Now we have, I think our final item on the agenda, force 10. I'm looking at page 103. Oh no, there's a couple more. So we have item number 14 on our agenda. That's the update from the screening committee on the interim executive director. Yep. So we, I think you've all seen the holds on your calendars for the 18th. That was the first date that looking, they could get a chunk of time for all of us to sit, do final interviews and take a vote on the ED position. So on advice of council, we had one more meeting. We have one more meeting on the 11th to make sure we've done everything we need to do. At which point they'll be reach outs. I would hope. And I don't see the reason why there wouldn't be to the candidates that will be asked to come forward and then their names and resumes will be forwarded to five of you no later than the Thursday prior to that Monday. So the 48 hour rule. So the agenda would go out with the names on it, resumes forwarded to the entire commission by no later than nine a.m. Thursday the 14th. Do we know how many candidates are not yet? There's obviously at least two. And we did, you know, it's, it is a tough decision. It is a good pool. So there will be at least two. I don't think we can really say anything beyond that at this point. So March 19th, Monday. The 18th, I believe is the Monday. Oh, I can't say that. Apologies that that was Sunday, the 18th. All right. So Monday. Oh, well I know it's cause it's February stone not having turned the page yet, still the 29th. So March 8th, that is, it wasn't Monday. I'm glad that I haven't been misreading the calendar out long. Okay, that sounds good. Chris, just get a question. He got any questions? Well, it's been a lot of work. So we appreciate your leadership on that guys. Thank you. Okay, I got ahead of myself. We do have another item on the agenda. And this is to go over executive session meeting minutes commission until these are your minutes. But in order for us to review them, it's appropriate for us to consider going into executive session, I'll read the language into the record. The commission anticipates that it will meet in executive session to review minutes from previous executive sessions as their discussion in an open meeting may frustrate the intended purpose for which the executive sessions were convened pursuant to GL chapter 30A section 21 subsection A3 January 24th, 2023 and GL chapter 30A section 21 subsection A7, February 8th, 2023. Do I have a motion? I'll move. Thank you. Second. Thanks, commissioner. Okay. Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Commissioner Skinner. Aye. Commissioner Maynard. Aye. And I vote yes. I should add that the public session of the commission meeting will not reconvene at the conclusion of the executive session. But before we do leave, is there any other business that you have commissioners? Okay, commissioner Skinner, I'm assuming you're hearing and I'm not hearing anything further. Then we have our marching orders to go into executive session and Tom and Dave will transport us. Thank you to the entire team for the good work today, a lot done and a long day. So thank you.