 The morning after Tuesday morning, April 2nd, lucky, you know, we made it through yesterday. I know. It was full shooting. And, but, we have a gentleman with us from the house, and I thought we would go through the timber as the bill. And so before we start, she had their bill introduce ourselves and into that. No, I shouldn't forget, you know, I need to. So, by a column or representing the Rotland district. I remember sitting in North, including for us. Right. Happy in Vanishing County. Richie Westman is working on. I don't know if I'm appropriate. It's got to do. I'm Bobby star. Welcome you to the committee. This bill. When it got over here. Went to the Senate Judiciary Committee. That committee felt their fight was pretty full. And that a lot of this timber just passed. That happened on woodland or ag land and, and a lot of farmers don't. Lumber people on this woodland. Yeah, so he asked us to take a look at it. Review it. And, you know, work on it. So this is our first attempt. Well, thank you. Chairman star and thank you committee. And thank you. Your administrator for the invitation for the record. My name is Jed Lipsky. I'm the representative from the world. One district which is still. And for background. I've been a professional independent login contractor for over 50 years. I am. A certified leap. A lot of. I am a certified master lot or certified by the. North. I'm a member of Montfort. Association. I'm a board member of the. I'm a member of the. New newly expanded professional login contractors at the Northeast. I'm a met. And I am a board member of the northeastern loggers association, which is actually headquartered. I am a member of the northeastern loggers association. And I'm a board member of the northeastern loggers association. The old fortune York, but includes Pennsylvania, Maryland. New York, and all things like that. In states. You know, I've been active, not just professionally, but as an advocate for active forest management. And so that's. Some of my background. 14 is an act to protect victims, landowners who have experienced what's now called land fraud or tuber trust pass. There's a difference between unintentional timber trust pass where there may be poorly marked boundary line and a contractor might have cut over a boundary, not intentionally confronts their mistake and negotiates appropriate reparation with either the force to represent a landowner or a landowner, but this is targeting a whole another class of crime that's actually done a great deal of damage, not moderate damage to landowners most emotionally and financially. And I could give you an example of this or a few if you'd like and Bobby if you'll just guide me, I can walk you through the bill, I can talk about some examples of why I think this is important and I'll take guidance from you. If you want five minutes, three minutes or 15 minutes, I'm happy to try to make our case. We need to understand the severity of it and the differences like intentional and nonintentional and what you folks have done over on the health side, although then we can read for, you know, the finding. Thank you. So I'm going to start with a background to give you sort of a picture of what it's like to be a victim and also how frustrating it's been. In my more background, I think, you know, transparency and accuracy matters in everything. But I was a little shocked, I was actually at a meeting with the professional contractors of the Northeast and we zoomed into meeting with the speaker and I was going to pick up the truck and the executive director of the Northeast Forestry Products, the Northeast Logger Association was there and also a logger from Orange County was a former deputy commissioner of Forestry Protection. And when we reached out to the speaker and our staff, she allowed, what are you doing about timber trust pass and that may have been in September when this conversation came after the zoom and the conversation ensued, not that none of us knew what timber trust pass was, but the crisis that had been brought to the speaker and that was a representative from, I think it was Marshfield, Plainfield Mahalik and we immediately reached out to him and wanted to get an understanding of why this was in the forefront. And in fact, he talked about some experiences he's had from frustrated stenchers. And in one case, there's a constituent for six and a half years now, had his land logged in violation of a verbal agreement, never received payment for any of the timber taken off this land and it wasn't, he had two of butters, one on each side. They all agreed that this would be a good thing and a source of revenue. The first property owner who was harvested on received payment for maybe 10, one or two loads and the next loads were never paid for. This other complainant had at least 10 loads, log trailer loads, takeoff is probably never received the timing and the third butter experienced the same thing. So they went to the local police, you know, this is out of our jurisdiction. They went to FPR. We do not have the staff work to handle this. So they went to the state police, same story. They went to the state's attorney, same story. And if I tell you what it's like in this, these are all older folks have their, have been managing this part of their survival fixed incomes, some next veterans, but what if it was another example of someone up in your neck in the woods, Jeremy Starr in Orleans County, who was an out of state owner, came back, found his land stripped, went to the local authorities and he said, I think I know who it is. He's a neighbor and the local authorities asked the neighbor, did you cut this person's trees? Yes, I did. Did you have permission to go on his land and cut his trees? No, I didn't. Did you ever remunerate or pay this owner for any of the wood that you told him? No, I did not. So full confessions and zero action from any law enforcement. And there were other, I'll give you one other example, just so you can understand the sort of viciousness of the peace line of action. There was another out of state owner who had their land in current use, a youth appraisal assessment program came and found that a portion way beyond what was approved was harvested as well. And these people had the funds to hire an attorney, take the perpetrator to court and found a favorable result in the court, which not only charged the timber thief, you know, a triple stunk of value. And to this day, that person is recovered, not one US dollar. Why does this happen? And these aren't the only three examples in Vermont. We took hours, days of testimony on this in our committee. And there is a theme. And as I stated, some of my resume and history as a professional law contractor, I want to state for the record, that most law and contrast spent my life working with her great integrity, great responsibility for managing the resource and the environment and water quality and wildlife habitat and songbird habitat and outdoor recreation. We have a lot on our shoulders today. And in order to survive in tough climate resiliency times, as well as economic times, it's a lot of responsibility. But as an organization, or as a community, both the Vermont Forest Products Association and the professional law and contracts that are all supported this bill, there is a scourge, there are criminals all over the world, or crack hearts get hacked or everything. There's no limit. But this is something that's been going on far too long. And I just want to point out, we had state police, we had FDR, and we finally had the attorney general's office and the state district attorney office, state's attorneys, all come in and testify. And they all believe that the wording of this bill, land fraud, sounds like a weird concept. But in this case, it clearly ties an additional area of fraud to intentional timber trespass and gives the responsibility for the attorney's general office to prosecute. So that the office of the attorney general shall consult with the department of forest and fire. But you're actually giving the authority to prosecute right to the broad division of the attorney general's office. Yes. So with that background, which was not brief, I could walk you through the bill, the sort of the summary section by section, if you would like. And this is, and I just want to acknowledge that Mahali, who I referenced earlier, it came into the room and frankly credited him with the fact, his advocacy to stop the scourge. And the scourge is just is being promulgated by predator criminals. They targeted individuals that are older, absentee, or the most vulnerable. Yeah, maybe. And Mark, Keith, are you blended on your time that morning? I'm okay. And so I get yanked back into appropriations to both. And I don't know when that is. So you think you've got time to sit through this, or do you want to give us a little bit on appropriations bill and go back to committee? Why don't I speak briefly before you go through the bill? Yeah, that's okay. It was repetitive. It's gonna be my honor. Thank you. Then you can be excused, or I can sit here till I get yanked. And it's more fun to hear them. That's a comfortable chair. I don't know if you know. No, I actually have not personally said hello to anybody. I recognize the face. Yeah, Brian Collamore representing the Rutland District. Brian, pleasant to meet you. I know, because we're in the same class. I can't be in Bennington County. Good to see you. Good to see you. Good to see you. I remember so much. I'm not Orleans County. A pleasure. Yeah, you're welcome. I'm Mark McCauley for the record. I represent Plainfield Marshfield in Calis. I got hauled into a meeting of about a half dozen of my constituents and discovered a problem that I frankly didn't even know existed, which is rather pervasive predatory fraud against people. Very careful who they pick. For example, people who have foresters, because they have land in current use. They tend to stay away from people. They're very good at it. And they knock on your door and say, we're in the neighborhood. And it's such a Vermont thing to trust. And people say, well, yeah, how about that bunch of trees over there? And they'll say, okay. And then they'll go cut them down and stay and cut a lot more. And then say, oh, but we'll pay you. And sometimes when people say, get off my property, they drag them physically. And they don't pay them ever. And then they get sometimes, as you know, it takes money to hire a lawyer and go through that. And a lot of people still have it. They sue. And as you heard, they're successful. They get a judgment. And not only that, there have been actions against these people over the years where they have fines. Well, when you get fined in Vermont, when you don't pay, it just turned over to a collection agency. The collection agency sent them the S-11. These people just don't pay for that. They don't pay. They don't pay. They don't pay their fines. They don't pay their judgments. And it worked. And so the only thing I want to add to what Representative Lewis, he said, or at least what I heard he said this, is I really made an attempt here because of the advice I got from waters, wonderful people. I mean, really honorable, great people. I resisted after Christmas tree this with requirements that waters register, that they license, that, you know, things like that. There are various things out there to regulate the lot of the community. I just felt like this bill, why punish all the good actors? And so the bill, the bill is about as narrow as we could make it. Well, I, it went through a house agriculture, which did spend a lot of time. And I really praise that they heard a lot of people talk. We worked, I met with the Attorney General and, you know, their office. And at their, a lot of this is at their suggestion. Then it went to judiciary, briefly ways for judiciary. I will say there was one aspect of the way it came out of the house, then as, you know, not entirely thrilled with, I just want to mention, I believe the only way that we can get to bad actors like this is not buy more fines, it's not money, they just don't pay. It's either jails or seizing their equipment. I was saying, Mr. Chair, that I don't, I think the best way to get to these bad actors is either by putting them in jail or seizing their equipment. In fact, I think if we did that, we wanted to do that, but the words get around. The jail time is definitely a possibility under the bills. You have it. There were a few people in judiciary who were uncomfortable with the seizure and they, I think the suit are 50 months, but they took it out. The seizure part, if they're kind of operators that we know they are, they probably don't own the equipment either. Right. You know, it's either that or they're behind on their payments or using seizing something that's really not of any value. You're right. And that's why the original provision, we met with the community of people here from the state who work at seizures. The original provided that if the equipment is seized, it can be sold unless someone demonstrates that someone else owns the property and they are not related in any way by corporate form or by family with their defendant. They have to show and they do not know nor could they have known by an objective standard how the equipment was going to be used. And if they can't show that too bad, they'll get it. And I get it was raised, a member of the committee raised exactly your issue and said, well, what about rental? What if they rent the equipment? And we thought that through and realized that if a rental agency really could show that they had no way of knowing, which is a little unlikely, then they would get the equipment back. But they'd never be able to rent it to these people again, because their name is on a list, they've been prosecuted and they know. So we felt like, hey, the problem that actually that was in the committee of procedure was it's a big thing to see. This is big equipment. The HE was saying, I don't know that we would ever do it. And I guess our feeling was, well, try it. You know, all you have to do is do it once. And then it's a word to get out. But there were a number of people on the committee who felt they just don't like Caesar generally. Because they think that the proceeds of seizure go to law enforcement and law enforcement becomes self-motivated. So the way to deal with that and the chair of the Judiciary Committee representative LeLon was considering that is just to provide that the seizure of this kind of, in this situation goes to the victims and the proceeds of sale. But it was near the end of the time it was communicated. And he just thought another time and left it out. I wish personally we hadn't left it out. But aside from that, I'm thrilled that it's gotten this far. And I'd be happy in the future to answer any questions that you might have, either an email or I think you're in the right direction. These people, the only thing they really have is time. And if you take the time away from them, they're really not doing well. So I mean, it's sad to say, but that means putting them in jail and take their time away for a moment. And because most of them, I've had them come over on my property, but bought it really quick. But they have two nickels to rub together. Then you mean you don't get any money, you know, the only thing you do is, but if you're older than I am, and maybe the opposite sex ends up with a property, I mean, my wife wouldn't be down there, you know, looking after things. And, you know, the forester, you can call them and they'll come, but you kind of just to look at a boundary line. But you've got to know that they're cutting, too. Is there anything in the bill where property owners, when they are cutting, has to notify the abiding landowners? That's not in the bill. There's protections. There was a concern on the part of the number of the loggers. They really, the professional loggers northeast wanted to make sure that you couldn't just inadvertently get caught by logging on a neighbor's logger and logging on a neighbor's property because they didn't know where the boundary was. And so what we did is we changed the standard of proof. And really, the most draconian parts of the bill, there are a few draconian parts deliberately. Specifically, if you have two strikes, that it's two fines or judgments, that you have not a, you have undained fines and judgments, at least two, you can't go on logging unless you post a $500,000, $250,000 bond or you're working for a legit logging outfit that you don't own and your mom doesn't own and your sister doesn't own. And that's in the bill, yeah. What does it cost to get a $250,000 bond? It's, I think probably north of $10,000. Okay. So what that, we just don't think that's not what's going to happen. But what it does is it means that all these people who have unpaid judgments and unpaid fines, it sweeps them in and says to them, you can't log unless you go work for somebody else. And if you do, it's a chronic pain. So a lot of this was trying to figure out with the AG, how do we tweak things so that it's easier for law enforcement? So with the bill, if there's a violation, it goes to the attorney general's office, it doesn't go to FPR or the state police or- It's either the AG or state attorney. I mean, part of the problem honestly in the past has been, I mean, some of us are going to have to carry out some education here because when people call up the state's attorneys very often, they say, well, of course, they're overwhelmed, but they say, this is a civil matter, hire your lawyer, you know. And so this is making it very clear this is a criminal matter. It's theft. And a lot of it, one woman who testified about met exactly your description. She's very elderly. It's a woman. They took $200,000 worth of timber off the land and she received not a dime. It's like you, the more people you talk to, the more people say, you know, that happened to my dad or, you know, that happened to me. It's, I think it's actually a little more pervasive than we know. Yeah. The only way to kind of prevent that is on all the land from the river to the road, to the other road and to the road that way. And then you keep them in hell. But have you ever heard, either of you, of anybody getting paid for this cutting practice where they just take the wood and run? Not that I know of. No one. I know the only judgments that I'm aware of were violations of AMPs where they drop grease into a water body and the landowner received heavy fines, but the landowner was never reimbursed. Now, I think that this is an important, there's a notion of salt in the wound. Let's say you have had your timber stolen in violation of contract and you have had, for a generation or two, your land in the use value appraisal system, also known as current use, where you, all of a sudden, you find yourself in violation of an approved forest plan. So your punishment is to have your current use removed. So not only did you get zero for your resource that you've been counting on, now you lose the tax value save because you're in violation. And that's what I call the salt in the wound. If you are doubled up, but by these acts. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So how many generations have to go by before that loss, if you will, is sort of back on track? In other words, trees grow at a certain pace. Is it two, three, four, or five generations? I mean, how long does it take to get a tax where it was? There are a lot of factors that go into that, but it's multiple generations. You know, particularly hardwood, softwood, 30 years, 25, 30. To a mature, merchantable size, it's longer. And there's another factor. When you went engage in a contract with a legitimate logger, there are closeout responsibilities. You have to put in infrastructure, water, bars, protect soils, other resource, residual, stand. And then you have very clear responsibilities and closeout of the contract responsible for making sure the main skid roads are open, free of debris. There's no tops near waterways or veins or property lines or any number of, in some cases, and this affects the value, the sum that value a landowner would receive. They may want some areas shipped or so there's not a lot of debris. One of the sadder pieces of this story is not only did you lose your tax status if you lose your resource, it was left a mess. And when you have acres and acres of tops that are not lobbed, it may take 15 years for them to decompose and be part of the soil. So your woods, you've lost them for recreation, for hiking, for hunting. So the carnage, if you're a victim of this sort of crime, nobody's, the thief did not have any good intentions in mind. So the damage is, say, permanent is not in perpetuity, but it's a half a century to a century and a quarter to get back to. So is there anything in the bill or did the Ag 8 committee consider a provision? I don't want to say this the right way, that if the logger brings, in essence, stolen timber to a processor, that processor cannot get paid or the logger can't get paid until the owner of the timber signs off on it? Yes, Senator. If I, I think that Ratma Ali made a clear decision about understands the law adding land fraud and timber trespass to criminal status went through the seizure and forfeiture eases, which were a disappointment to us as well. But I could go in depth of why it's complicated. You have the 77,000 pound machine, you have to hire a low boy, you have to store it somewhere, you have to know how to start it, you have to know how to load it. Very complicated. But to your point, I section 8 of the bill has passed by the House. It's called implementation, some are calling conditions of operation. Section 8 provides the requirement under 13 VSA, 3605, the person convicted 10th best pass goes on about the the penalties and being on a basically a black. They don't see anything after section 4. We're looking at it as passed by the House and we only have five seconds. Is that possible? Are you looking at a different version? Well, how about the Attorney General report on timber trespassing force? Yeah, that's section 4 at the bottom of page 9. Okay. Well, that requires, this is important, and to answer your question, requires the Attorney General to submit to the General Assembly a report regarding the current enforcement of timber trespassing within the state and potential methods of improving enforcement. The report shall include one, a summary of the current issues pertaining enforcement of timber trespassing statutes, two, summary of mechanisms or alternative use in other states. First, effectively enforce or prevent timber theft or similar crimes. And three, recommendation for programs, policy changes, staffing and budget estimates to improve enforcement and prevention, ensure consumer protection and reduce the illegal harvesting theft and transporting of timber in the state, including proposed statutory changes to implement these recommendations. So that gives them approximately one year to get back. And there were, for instance, members of FPR, Forest Vermont Woodlands Association, special item contractors from Vermont, along with state's attorneys and Attorney General participate in the development of a report back as to, rather than get bogged down, this bill died because, you know, Ferret Mahali and frankly, me personally and our committee, our industry, we needed to drive the stake in the grounds and give law enforcement to us. Okay. So that's why there will be professionals that will take a deep dive into all possible ways, whether it's tickets or track and trace, you know, where there's a paper trail where that particular load from that property on the left, which I expect in the future will help flesh out the effectiveness. But I do agree with Ferret Mahali. When you get with this bill on a blacklist of two strikes of untaid judgments or fines, you are not able to work. And we spoke to law enforcement but with state police, you know, the backlog of, you know, untried cases. We have a very dysfunctional crisis in the judiciary in our state. And they're saying there are murders, there are wounds, raids, very violent crimes that take a priority. And I'm sorry, folks, but Timber theft or land fraud is on the list, but they're not the top of the list. So that's the reality we live in. And that's why it was so important that this bill in this form was so. So you get on the West. How does Mrs. Sorenson find the West? How does a person know where to go to find the West? Who's going to do the education of getting the word out there? I just with Mr. Chair, if I might, there's some value to that list that I don't want to exaggerate it. The value is once you're on the list, no one can rent equipment to you because they either know or should know what's happening. Number one, number two, to get on that list means you can't log anywhere yourself. But in terms of the point you made, my personal view is that none of these victims are going to go look at that list. Some of them don't have much less inclination to use it. So it's valuable. It should be done. And it has a value, but I don't think it will help the individual. The only thing that's going to help the individuals is to get these people out of doing what they're doing. I've turned it to a long word. I've made the point that the two organizations in Vermont that are leaders in the forest products and logging industry have both unanimously supported this effort. Nobody wants this kind of black mark on their industry. And FPR is aware of it. And they, education, whether it's Mont Woodlands Magazine, The Northern Logger, which is published by Northeast Southern Logger Association. There are articles about this. It's not odd. But the education pieces, there may be recommendations in this report on timber trespass enforcement and recommendations that come forth if this becomes law. Yeah. My name was suggestion and asking the question was if I'm a bad actor and I know I'm not going to get paid until the owner of that timber signs off. It might make me hesitate. That's all. But I'm sure you considered that. Well, you know, frankly, it's not just the viciousness. But as Brett Mahali said, these folks are clever. They might ship these logs to one yard, put them on another truck. Some go to Canada. Some go to out of state. We're just saying that you're on the order. And, you know, the depth of crime is not shallow. That's a very interesting suggestion. Actually, fairly early on in the drafting, we were kind of attracted by the idea of requiring that the lumber yards that saw mills themselves not do something where they couldn't pay these guys. And we realized we are too small to stay. They just go to New Hampshire or Canada and they already do and they split the loads up. Yeah. So we thought about that. I think it would be great if we were a little bigger, maybe. Of course, self-contained. This whole, this whole practice has gone on forever. They leave your property with, say, 32 logs on the log, get to the mill and only have 28 or fell off some place. I mean, it's crazy. It's not good. Thank you. I'm going to go over to the other committee. I'm happy to help if you need more advice. If Linda texts me or emails me, I'll make sure one way or another to get back. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. I appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you. So, yeah. So the Attorney General from being the one that would be in charge of, you file your complaint to them about forest and parks. So they mixed up in this bill? I won't say regrettably not, but they don't have the capacity, experience, they are not licensed law enforcement. The law enforcement agency that possibly had the ability and skill set and power were efficient wildlife, they do not have a specific graining in these violations. So the buck was passed all over the state. And it would have taken setting up a new division. As you know, they're under siege just trying to do their own good work in the state. So I'm too convinced that way too much to do already. I mean, I heard that excuse forever. But they're the professionals of every county, I believe, that not every region has a force. There's a county force. And you know, if some elderly person who has been left off in plain search, I would think that they could almost find time to go in and measure the stunted. I mean, you can tell if a lot of them caught in the last few months. Uh, somebody's got to measure the stunted to know that can verify it, that can get some numbers, the HG obtained by that, that can do measure stumps. Some of these people don't even have a forester on the payroll. So they can't have their own do it. And if they did have their own do it, then it could be questioned that they had a self interest to exaggerate or to get the thing higher. So I would think you're a county forester goes in there and nonbiased, measure up the stumps and know the footage. So you'd have in the value of the product, whether it's high wood, salt, wood, maple, birch. Senator, you know, common sense and rational thinking, you know, don't necessarily apply here because county foresters on their approach, they say, well, this is not our authority. We do not have the time, the expertise, we're not being paid to go down the rabbit hole of inventory and building the case. I've heard this so many times, professional foresters that actually may be familiar with it, find it. Well, my time's expensive, who's going to pay for building this case and going, showing up in court, testifying, getting a judge and getting no residence. Coming back, one of these landowners and test sites said after five and a half years, he finally got a judgment, the perpetrator didn't show up. And after the second time of not showing up, he says, well, what do you want me to do? Find them and contempt the court. And the landowner says, yes. Well, he said, if you can do that, it's going to cost you this much for court fees, the schedule and by the way, five and a half years and multiple court appearances have taken place. I mean, the justice is not there. And would you think the county forester system might have that capacity being rational thinking, you might, but it doesn't, isn't playing with them. First, I was thinking if a cutter had to be registered, you know, a person that's in the cutting garden had to be registered through the state, they'd be able to do a number. When they don't have to sell the law to a buyer, that number would have to be on the slip, that the scale slip or the sales slip. Did you talk about anything like that? We did. And was that bad or? It was, there were so many different options, call out a tracking trace or a ticket, many of the mills I bring into, I will go to a box, all of truckers. I truck my own word, generally, fill it out, landowner species, my name, trucker's name is the same. And that trip ticket number will follow the scale slip all down. Getting consensus on the various options of how to keep tracks so fraud cannot occur was a longer and hotly contested debate. It takes a lot of stakeholders, but that's why I keep going back to this, this of operation and the Attorney General report on timber trust enforcement, it implores them or requires them to look at any and all, including enforcement systems that have been in use in other budding states and other parts of the Northeast and report back. Are there any other, you mentioned one other state that main that has like a timber trust back? They do, but state of Maine has, they're called state forest, they state forest service and they require licenses and these foresters, you know, our harry fire arms have arrest authority and way another level of enforcement. There's not one or two to cover the state. They're everywhere. It's a big industry. We financially or just the structure of FPR is not, we are so far not there. We've got a lot of bureaucracy and we're not, there's a lot of pressure on state lands, how they're managed, to what interest groups, benefits, et cetera, et cetera, and they are working hard and operating the numerous state parks and state forests and in them to, so they're not equipped at this time in history to move into that level of enforcement. Just, that's the reality of a lot of responsibilities. Well, I think we've got quite a lot of lifting to do with, to get this ready for fun times. Are there some loggers we've got? We've got some. Later, we wanted to get you folks in, you know, early on that. Well, if I could, you know, you are a witness list or tell you about it, but there was an orange county, a lot of earth on timber harvesting testified. Yeah, we got anchors coming. You know, that's something that I had thought of though. I mean, if you're a lending agency and you take a mortgage, somebody needs a bunch of money, so they mortgage a land and, you know, it's worth so much because of timber on it, then a hijacker gets a timber and you're still using that land to support your mortgage and who moves that? Well, you have quite a witness list here. I'm familiar with virtually everyone on that list. No, together. All various professionals. I would keep, and you've got victims, you've got foresters, you've got bankers, you've got a great launch. You've got commissioners. I would leave you with a simple idea that it's important, I think, for our industry and our forest that this does not die without any action. There are provisions and I think you'll get testimony from these of all the stakeholders that are going to be on that committee. Yeah, it can make this a more perfect deal. Of course, certainly better, but do nothing is the hope to God. It would be very sad to meet Michael Chin in moving forward. Thank you, chairman, if there are other questions. Thank you for getting that over to us and you also seven to five of others out there would have been just as well if I stayed with you. I rest my days. That's why I'm here. Thank you, chairman. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Jack.