 part of we are holding this meeting virtually. So I do need to take a roll call. Good morning, Commissioner Brown. Good morning, I'm here. Good morning, Commissioner Hill. How are you feeling? Good morning. Still the same. And I am here. Thank you. Very sorry, Brad. Very sorry. Good morning. Good morning, Commissioner Skinner. Good morning, I'm here. Good morning, Commissioner Maynard. Good morning, I'm here. Hey, so we're going to get started. Call this meeting to order. It's December 15th, Thursday, and it is public meeting number 413. I know that it looks like typically we go to our minutes first. So I'll just skip to number three, and then we'll go back to the administrative update. Thank you, Commissioner Hill. Commissioner Hill, did you want to go forward? Did you want to skip the minutes? That's what it sounded like. I do want to skip the minutes. I wanted to. Right now it's number three on the agenda. I want to skip two, OK? Sorry, Madam Chair. It sounded like you wanted to skip them for a moment. And I thought that was because we, some of us, some of you, maybe didn't get the minutes until early this morning because I made a boo boo sending them to everybody. So I wanted to make sure everybody had an opportunity to read them. Before I would make a motion. Just the last second came a little bit later. No big, no big issue. But everybody, we could choose to, we can always choose not to move on any matter. So if you could present them, that would be great. Madam Chair, just to make things easier, at least the September 22nd minutes, I have not had an opportunity to review. So my request is that we push those to the following meeting. OK, Mr. Hill, we did have the 13th and the 19th. Yeah, so I'm just putting down 922 for next week. Thank you. OK, so just give me one moment as I'm writing that down. I appreciate your patience. I then would move, Madam Chair, that the Commission approve the minutes from the September 13, 2022 and September 19, 2022 public session meetings that are included in the Commissioner's packet subject to any necessary corrections for typographical errors or other non-material matters. So I have a second. I have a second and then just one edit, I think. OK. On the 13th, just sort of minister more than anything, but the call to order is not really a vote. And it's sort of laid out like a vote in the 13th, as opposed to just a roll call. We can fix that. That was it. Sorry. I've got I can I get something on the 22nd, but I can circle back to you offline. OK. With that, I think I had a second from Commissioner Skinner and then an edit from Commissioner O'Brien with that edit on accordance with the motion for the discussion. OK, Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Mr. Hill. Aye. Mr. Skinner. Aye. Mr. Maynard. Aye. And I vote yes. Five zero. Thank you. Thanks, legal. And thank you, Commissioner Hill. Then we'll just back up to item number two, the administrative update. I think Karen is I know she has a quick matter to tend to through some band. If you plan on presenting today, I don't see him there. We'll go right ahead and go to item number four. And when Karen comes back, we'll see. Yes, it's a short presentation. Oh, yeah. Thank you. OK. MGM's sports weight training kiosks are on site and are being installed. They continue with their toy drive and MGM plans on shutting down their ice rink after the holidays. PPC has hired their short sports weight training manager, Ryan Blake. And Encore has started a funnel event in the Picasso room this week where they're providing meals for the surrounding communities. I believe their goal is to pack 400,000 meals. It was on the news. Yeah. Any questions? Commissioner O'Brien has one. Why are they closing down the rink? I'm not 100% sure at that. I will find out for you. OK. Yeah. That's too bad. It's a nice amenity of the community. So we will be interested in hearing about that. I got that information late in the day yesterday. And I didn't get a chance to follow up. OK, thanks, Bruce. All right. Yeah, the Encore's packing of the meals was, at least on the channel that I was watching first thing this morning, very, very uplifting. Yes. OK. Excellent. We'll move right on to item number four. Good morning, legal team. And I see Mina and Caitlin and Todd. Good morning. Good morning. So this morning, we have for you the internal control regulations. And I am going to pass these off to Mina in just a moment. But I just want to acknowledge that these were a really wonderful team effort between GLI, A&K, IEB, IT, Responsible Gaming. Everyone has had input into these regs. And we really appreciate everyone's input. So with that, I will turn these over to Mina. Good morning. Morning, Madam Chair. And good morning all. And so to segue from what Caitlin just said, part of the reason that this was an all hands on deck effort is I've been thinking of these as sort of the super regs in a sense. These are the regs that put into place the requirement, sort of implement a lot of the other requirements you put into place. And actually some ones that are going to be coming up in the coming weeks as well. And make sure that the operators have a plan to do everything they're supposed to do to run their operations in accordance with your suite of regulations in chapter 23N. And in the case of operators who are also gaming licensees maintaining controls that they need under 23K. As you probably saw, these regs start on page 29 with 205CMR138 and go on for a while. Unlike past regs, with your indulges, I will not go section by section. I think eyes will glaze over very quickly if I try to do that. But what I will try to do is kind of give you the overall layout of how these regs interrelate with each other. The first thing to note, and I'll talk about 138 and 238 together to some degree, but then we can take them apart, obviously, and address questions on them. 138, of course, is the existing internal controls for gaming licensees. So the reason to update 138 is with respect to, again, those gaming licensees that will have sports wagering areas, which is a term we've used for sports wagering that happens within a gaming establishment in the gaming area of a gaming establishment. That's clear of these regs. And there needs to be some adjustment to account for that. I'll mention a few places. So the 138 regs are presented to you in a sort of red-lined form, starting on page 29. The first sort of key provision that then connects it to 238, which are the ones that have to do, which are the regs for all sports wagering licensees, whether or not they are an existing gaming licensee, is that at, I'll just give you the page citation in one second, at page 37 of your packet, you'll see new language that is added to the provisions of 138. Those provisions are intended to do two things. One, it references that to the extent of third party provides any of the internal controls. The gaming licensees controls have to also document what the third party is doing. That part is intended to account for involvement of a potential contracted tethered sports wagering licensee, or any vendors in the sports wagering context, but also actually was a good addition by GLI in general. That to the extent anything is being done by a vendor for a gaming licensee, it's prudent to also have that. The real key to what we're talking about today is the next provision, 11, which provides that if you're a gaming licensee, you have to comply with both 138 and 238. To the extent there's a conflict, you may take Bruce's report that he just mentioned. With respect to the kiosks, for instance, let's say something does conflict. We've made every effort to make sure they don't, but let's say there's in the details of your internal controls, you can't meet both requirements. You would apply 238 to the sports wagering equipment. 138 to, say, the slot machines. So that is a way to make sure that you're always covered under both. And you have to describe any conflicts like that within your internal controls. The same language or similar language appears in 238 kind of in reverse. Important point, and this was actually one of the tricky parts in drafting this that we spent a lot of time on. This is for gaming licensees. This part, this language right here, is not what applies the sort of physical internal controls like security, cage management, all of that stuff, to category two sports wagering licensees, which are not also gaming licensees. So a race track. So that will come later. That's all in 238. We'll explain where that is when we get there. But when you look at 138, think of the three existing gaming licensees and sports wagering that happens there. So that's the lay of the land for 138 for the measure. I can go through a couple of the other big changes in 138 as we talk and then turn to 238. But that is effectively the sort of the big picture. Within the rest of both regs, you'll see that both 138 and 238 capture everything from security of accounts, how money is handled physically or online, the staffing protocols, the supervision, et cetera. And certainly, Sterl or Bruce, or members from the GLI team, can answer some technical questions. But again, I want to just again, just give you the lay of the land as we go through. The rest of 138, as you'll see, just scrolling through the other red lines, predominantly are simple updates. For instance, looking at page 41 of the packet, there are updates. Is it actually, Madam Chair, would it be helpful if I share that portion of my screen or would you rather I just describe it? I think do we all have the packet in front of us so that we can rather see that. I think we're scrolling along, right? Commissioner, to the extent it's comfortable for you, Meena, we can continue. Unless somebody doesn't, I want to make sure does everybody have access to OK. So maybe the highlights, Meena, and then commissioners can ask any individual questions they might have. Sure. And if I could, I'll give you the highlights of both, because I think I anticipate some questions will be. Well, maybe that it might be helpful. Do you want to do a point of comparison and have 238 up while we have 138 up? That probably wouldn't be too, too helpful because you know, but I think we can, because there are enough differences because of the online nature of sports wagering or a lot of sports wagering. So I don't want to over confuse it, but I'll pause at the end of 138, see if there's questions. And if we're going down a path that seems to be answered by 238, I'll just let you know. And we'll do that. So I'm on page 41 now. It's just an illustrative example of one place where you might see very simple updates. One of the things that happens in under the 138 internal control rights, and has happened, are controls on who can be in different parts of the facility and limitations. For instance, that the folks who are have to be licensed as key gaming employees or in particular cases, gaming employees. As a reminder, when you pass 235, the equivalent or the nearest equivalent in sports wagering are occupational licensees. I know this question came up as we were reviewing with the internal staff team. It's important to keep in mind that occupational licensees are limited under 23N to those with a director supervisory role. So when you see an occupational licensee, it effectively is someone who would be at least at the level of a key gaming employee. It's not necessary. So they have that licensure process. Most of the utter, I am not sure why. And by the way, just in case anybody else catches it, page 42, top of the first edit there, that seems like an incorrect red line. It should say information, not informed, but it's a small typographical thing. We'll note it and correct it later. So other than that, I'm going to keep going all the way to page 44. This is the reference to gaming establishments with a sports wagering area. This is in addition to what has to be shown on the floor plants is what this provision is. And so this again adds for gaming establishments that have sports wagering, how they're going to incorporate that into their floor plants. Bottom of that page, again, sort of an exemplar that appears throughout the document. You'll see the word casino is struck before security department in a bunch of places. And that's again, in recognition of the fact that the security department is now presumably if all the gaming licensees end up having sports wagering areas, no longer just a casino security department. And I am just, again, bottom of page 47. This is just another example of if you're both a sports wagering licensee and a gaming licensee, you might have to provide more reporting under both schemes. And you'll see that after that, there's probably not a whole lot that changes other than in line with what I've already mentioned until all the way down to. This document continues to baffle me at how long it is every single time I look at it. So I keep thinking we're closer to the end than we are. Sorry. We are all the way down to a. Meena, while we're scrolling just to Bruce and team, including legal, this is an opportunity as you went through here to think about, you know, because I don't think this got scrubbed for our internal review. But with respect to reporting, you didn't find that any over-reporting that we're requiring, any burdensome reporting, right? Are you all set on that, Bruce? Yes, we're fine. Thank you. Yeah. The next thing I want to make sure we just touch on briefly is 138.43. This is on page 78 of your packet. Oh, wait a second. Yeah. You're a little bit faster. OK, 78. Yeah. So on page 78 and then there is just a one line edit here, but I think it's an important one to call out and I think for members of the public or press watching just another reminder, the internal controls will be required to include a prohibition on the issuance of credit to patrons of sports wagering. So that's a small thing. It's fairly obvious, but I just want to make sure that was called out. Commissioner O'Brien's got a question. Yeah, so we're going to be addressing the specifics of what that means in the RGA Marketing Center. So I assume that's clear from this, right? There's a couple spots in here where we reference, even in 238 promo, things like that. Just to be clear, that doesn't mean that's the be all and end all on what we're going to say about it. Exactly. This is one of these. That's one of the provisions that has that sort of super reg quality to it that you must make sure, as a licensee, that you meet our requirements, some of which will be here, some of which will be in forthcoming regs, including ones I believe you're going to see next week, I think so, yeah, 247 and 248, which have to do with account management in more detail for patron accounts, as well as a teaser, a nice pre-Christmas gift is all the intricacies of the rules for what you can bet on and or wager on and sort of the details of tournaments and so on. So that will come next week. All right, similar note though, page 90. So now skipping another 12 pages or so ahead. The there was a request, I think, at some point to add in. Again, there's already a provision that ATMs cannot be located closer than 15 feet to a gaming area. And so that is now also to include sports wagering areas in a gaming establishment or sports wagering facility. So this, again, keeps the same and make sure that if for whatever reason, the gaming area has the sports book on the outside or a kiosk right on the outside of it, you're measuring from that distance. Does that also apply to the CAT2 or is CAT2 going to be? So both, actually, because this firms sports wagering facility, which would capture CAT2. But we've tried to also make sure that it was captured in both places. And I'll get to the CAT2 piece. There's sort of one catch all that incorporates a lot of these physical requirements. We are then I want to go all the way down here to this one. I think this is 138.60 on page 102. This is just to your point, Madam Chair, as we were going through, there was a couple of updates suggested by IAB or GLI that are not necessarily just related to sports wagering. This is the top of page 102 of the packet. This has to do with slot machines that accept coins. And so this is a somewhat technical provision, but an update that goes a little bit beyond sports wagering. So I want to mention it. All right, one of the biggest items in the amount of text wise is in 103, at the bottom of 103 and going on all the way to 105 is a suggested set of rags on personally identifiable information security. First one sort of logistical note. This will actually, right now, it was slotted in as 138.65. We apologize for this because we learned after that you wanted to save that for cashless wagering systems. So this will actually end up being 138.73. So it'll be at the end. So that's just a numerical thing to make sure you can continue to reserve that section for cashless wagering. But the real key here is this was at the suggestion of GLI from looking at other jurisdictions a way to make sure that internal controls, especially as you expand into accounts that may be more online, have adequate measures to protect personal identifiable information. You'll see that they sort of hearken directly to the Commonwealth's two provisions, 93H and 201CMR-17, for protecting personal information which we know to be some of the strongest around. So that's good. That's already sort of setting a very high bar and then provide a bunch of details on how that's done, including both disclosure requirements on privacy policies and how to request information about how your information is stored, as well as making sure that there is a provision. I will say that as business entities doing business in Massachusetts, the operators would have been subject to a lot of these provisions anyway. But this gives the commission an ability to assist a patron or to sort of make this part of your enforcement if you need to. Yeah, I had a question on that in terms of the state and also the federal notification data breach. I assume, does this go above and beyond that or is that simply consistent with better? It goes above and beyond in a sense that provides some additional details that are consistent with what other regulators and other states have required and sort of best practices in the gaming and sports wagering industries. However, it wouldn't necessarily be additional reporting if there is a data breach. That would probably fall under the 93H-201CMR protocols and the federal red flags rule. So and forgive me for not knowing this, but is there a separate notification requirement in this to us in addition to that? Since we aren't necessarily an agency that would be in Devine? Commissioner O'Brien, I didn't get your last point because we're not. Under state and federal law, according to that CMR reference, we're not necessarily the agency that's going to get the data breach notification. So is there something in here that would also require them to notify MTC? I don't believe that's in 138. Sterling, Bruce, or Mike Robbins, I don't know if you have a different recollection. There is a very broad statement, the procedures that they have to include their total. Excuse me, I'm sorry. I apologize. I see it now. I forgot the procedures to be used, the procedures in internal control somewhere have to include procedures for required notifications to the commission. But my question is, but is it required? Like the data breach, because that would be to other agencies. Do we need to add any language to make clear we want that to be one of the required notifications? Right. No, it's including required notification to the to the commission of a data breach. That's one of the things that has total controls. OK, got it. Thanks. All right, so I'm going to keep going to. I'm glad that that's in there from GLI. So thank you to GLI, thanks. And then those are referenced again in 238 as incorporated by reference in that. So that's really it for 138. Again, I know we just went through almost 100 pages and in a very short time. So we can stop our questions on 138 if folks in their review noted something or wanted to ask questions about it. But again, most of the changes are somewhat minimal because the idea is to just simply make clear that the sports wagering area within a gaming establishment ought to be regulated to the same extent or covered in an operator's internal control to the same extent. So commissioners, we have a lot of questions for Mina. One question I have technically is the process. Should we vote on these one at a time, perhaps? Since 138 and 238 interplay so much, I'm thinking it's better to go through 238 first just to see and make sure there's nothing else. We'd want to tweak in 138 and then go back. Yeah, that seems fair to me. Everybody OK with that? OK, let's move on to 238 unless then then if you have questions about 138 because of the information coming out of 238, we'll refer back. Thank you. Sounds good. The one comment I have before we go into 238 is that Mina, you may want to share your screen for 238 with the version that had a couple adjustments. I know commissioners, you got that relatively late. So I don't believe that it appears in the packet. So just so that we're all on the same page, I'm looking at the same thing that might be helpful. And those are mostly type of graphical. So thank you for that reminder. But let me just pull that up. And sorry, I'm just making sure or I share a screen that I'm not speaking of data security. I'm not sharing anything else here. Or is my fear of this giving one second? In a public meeting, I know. I know. We keep a close eye on that. Our biggest helpful I can also share and then scroll for you, whatever works for you. I got it. I'm sorry, taking a little bit of time to do that. Most interesting things that get shared are usually cat's tails that go from this. Right, right. All right, are you seeing 205 CMR 230? But we'll need to make it bigger, Mina. OK, I will do that. Is that better? Excellent. OK. So as I mentioned, this is now the sports wagering specific internal control ranks. You'll see that they include a lot of the same things. Actually, a look at the table of contents first is probably helpful. These are the topics are often the same as 138. It's everything from the employees and proper licensing and registration, information security responsibilities, accounting records, how personnel are assigned. Then your taxation and bank secrecy, anti-money laundering, all of that. A lot of that's taken from 238 and of course, from a lot of a lot of help from GLI to find sort of the best examples from different jurisdictions to also incorporate here. So this is a nice amalgamation of those things. It's again, a fairly long regulation. So I won't go through everything, but a couple of pieces. Let me just make sure there's no annoying pop-ups. Oh, okay, I won't do that. Sorry. No, that's fine. Nobody saw anything. Yeah. So first, there's a set of definitions particular to this. This is not what we've done in most other regs, but with the internal controls regs in 138, you do have a sort of independent set of definitions really used there that don't tend to show up elsewhere or some, and to the extent they will, we can always add them to 202. But some of the key ones to talk about here are sports wagering counters and ticket rider stations, which are effectively, again, physical locations in a sports wagering facility, whether it's at a category one or two, now we're covering one and two facilities where tickets are rich. So going through this, again, there is the basic set of internal controls that have to be submitted. Because we didn't cover this in 138, I just wanna go through some of the key parts of what is included. This is starting at page four of this. Onward, there are a set of, actually, sorry, let me just back up really quickly because I realized Caitlin, you mentioned red lines and I skipped over one. The definition of ticket rider is slightly different than what you have in your packet. In our sort of final prep conversation, it was a very good point made that the person who is assigned a responsibility for operating a ticket rider station may or may not necessarily be someone who is at a sort of higher level of responsibility for sports wagering. And so we didn't want to confuse things by suggesting a supervisor would be the person necessarily doing the clerical job. A very important job, but the clerical job of handing tickets and processing tickets. So that's the only reason for that change. Going back down to what's in the internal controls for sports wagering. Again, they mirror a lot of 138. I wanna call a few of them out in particular. There's administrative controls, procedures for basically everything, accounting controls, reporting controls. This is another one that carcans to 239, which I know is still in development, but that's the sort of what has to be reported to the commission and to the bureau. D over here is sort of that crosswalk reg that I mentioned before for category one or two sports wagering operator. So this is now capturing the racing facilities. Internal controls required for the gaming establishment, the sort of physical controls have to be included as well in the sports wagering internal controls. And this was our way of capturing all of those things about physical controls, security of cages, security of money, who's let in in terms of identification checks, all of that stuff. That gets captured here in D. That has to go into internal controls because of D, I should say. And again, this includes the caveat that if you can't meet both requirements, meet them for the applicable part of your facility, meet the right one for the applicable part of your facility. So I think if nothing else, this is probably the most important part, I would say of the right. Then you have, again, other internal controls that mirror 138, infrastructure and data security, plans to ensure compliance with tax remins and reporting, and then this is where you start seeing sort of a recitation of... I'd like to jump in here real quick. Mike, go ahead, yeah. If you can scroll up a little. Good morning, Mike. Good morning. No, no, no, no, not too fast. Go back now. Just tell me where, Mike. Slowly, slowly, you're almost there. One more, stop. Okay, so in F and H, there are two references here for 243.01, which is the adopted previously, the GLI 33 standards. And we make this reference here in to tie back to those two GLI 33 because there's technical security controls described in GLI 33 that would pertain to a sports wagering system. That's also known as the GLI 33 Appendix B. And then 243.01 also ties into GLI 33 for the aspect of the procedures and practices covered within Appendix A of GLI 33. So the idea here is that policies and procedures, so that your data security plan needs to incorporate the security controls within these internal controls, of course, but also ties back into GLI 33 Appendix B. And then when talking about your internal controls, it ties into the procedures and practices within GLI 33 Appendix A, in addition to any internal controls by 238 and also 138 as called forth in section B. So I just wanted to clear that. I just want to make that clear. Yeah, yeah, so it's, sorry, Madam Chair, go ahead. Thanks, Mr. Chair, I'll enter related. And I'm assuming to the standard change, we don't have to worry about that just automatically. It's updated to the standard change, great. Okay, and so, and Mike, thank you for that point. So not only are the 138 pieces and some of the other ones, you also have the GLI standards in here. Want to also call your attention to K, which is now, this is where the house rules provision also gets tied in or one of the places where the house rules provision gets tied in next week, you'll see additional details on that in 247 and eight. And to 48, but that's another part of the internal controls. The process for, the process for asking for changes to internal controls or updates to internal controls is essentially the same as 138. So this is something that staff and GLI have experienced with or comfortable with as I understand it and how you get to, updates due to technology because obviously things will change over time. The number 10 here is sort of the enforcement of internal controls. It's a reminder that this is again, not the only place where you have enforcement authority, but it's one reminder that the internal controls themselves set up obligations for the operators that are enforceable within the RECs. You have your inspection authority, sports waging operators to maintain records of their tire of controls, et cetera. So this is again, the beginning 238.02 is sort of the bulk of the categories of internal controls. I won't spend as much time on the rest, but as we go through a couple of notes 238.04, this kind of gets into the, it's on page seven that of this, sorry, of this document. So where you have the different departments that are set up, again, if you are also a gaming licensee, you'll have to have all of the departments and all of the staffing required by 138. This identifies additional ones that might be necessary for sports wagering. I have a question, Jess, the chief sports wagering executive, that's the defined term at the top, and that one is different, because I think she uses a different term. I'm not sure if she uses department either, she uses division, department, but I guess that's all okay. So real quick, using terminology such as sports wagering executive and department, it's parroting what's already existence for the casino side of things, so accounting department. So it's not talking about the division within the gaming commission, this is talking about the department within the, okay. Oh, that's how I know. Within the operating, yes, yeah, yeah. All for them. My apologies, I'm glad that last night late. So now I'm seeing it's all, yep, that makes sense. So that all mirrors theirs. Exactly, yeah. These are, yeah, this is their internal orders. Oh, yep, I got it now. Yep, thank you. Yeah, thank you, Mike. That was helpful. Very helpful. And again, the rest of this particular section really gets at that. Yep. Starting in 238.05, 06, these are all mirroring things that exist in the 138. 238.07 is really assessed to do with information security. This is not yet the provision that, cross-references the personal identifying information, but this is information security systems. Obviously a key concern here, given that this applies not only to the physical operators, but to the mobile and sports region platforms. So that's all the same accounting records. Again, these really reference other sections this is one that is not much in here, because they reference all of the other accounting records that you're going to require elsewhere. Similar with retention storage. I'm sorry, if I'm going too fast, feel free to stop. The only thing I wanted to just pause on a little bit. Yeah. Systems for business dealings with sports wagering vendors. Yeah, so this mirrors the setup in 138. Essentially, the system of internal controls has to provide for compliance with 234 and the licensing and sort of reporting and notification to the bureau of who's doing business. So everything you decide in 234, they have to then sort of be able to account for in their internal controls as well, including clear record keeping on agreements and records. Okay, we're just as we scroll through, I just wanted to make sure there are no questions on that one. Sure. Thanks. All right, I am going to just keep going through again, personnel assigned to the operation, conduct of sports wagering. This, again, part of the idea of internal controls is that they get to decide how to comply, but that there are performance standards that are required. There are particulars here in three to sports wagering areas and facilities. Again, the physical part of this, about what the, and actually as I'm looking at this, we will, I would suggest that just an edit to 3A to make it match the definition above because I think this one did not get flagged for revision. So this will read, ticket writers shall be the persons assigned the responsibility for the operation of a ticket writer station is what it should say. It's really just a comparison definition. So that is, again, the reserve requirement. Again, we'll get to details on it, but this has to do with having sufficient funds to pay wagers and to be able to run the operation in accordance with these controls and with the regs. Here is commissioner Brian, you asked, I think about complimentary services and promotional gaming. So this has sort of two pieces to it. They have to provide you all of the same information that they do that the casinos currently provide for complimentary distribution programs and gaming credits also have to be provided for sports wagering. So it's a very simple reg because it goes back to 130. Again, that's not- And any further regulation in that area is going to be dealt with. Exactly. More RG, right? Exactly, yeah. This is the money part, making sure taxation requirements are met, Bank Secrecy Act, anti-money laundering. I'm going through this quickly, not because there's not more input because they repeat 130, excuse me, 130. There's no difference. No, and I think to the extent there is, and Mike, you can- So basically, just real quick, kind of call in these sections into play. So the idea here of 238 is to point to 138 when it's necessary for like, instead of repeating entire sections and the like. And the idea here too is from a general standpoint, 238 would apply to all categories of sports wagering for the most part, with the exception of sections where it's fairly obvious, where it's talking about sports wagering counter or sports wagering area or sports wagering facility. Obviously, those would only apply to the cat ones and cat twos. And then with regards to things like the Bank Secrecy Compliance, anti-money laundering and things of that nature, they basically are more specific. They provide more of a heavier spotlight on the sports wagering operators because unlike in a casino where every all aspects of the operation are directly in that facility, presumably sports wagering, there are many different components. So you're gonna have your sports book, for instance, when when bets tie into the win sports book at Encore. And there might be a slight, there might be one department that handles anti-money laundering for both the win bet application, as well as the sports wagering at Encore through the win sports book. So that's kind of why we wanna kind of point this out here, just to shine a light on that. Right, yeah. So there's definitely, Madam Chair, there's definitely some similarity and repetition of 138, but as Mike said, this is another area that is just much more profoundly affected with the online piece. So we want to call it out. We get more direction 23K on these matters than we do on 23N, am I right? Well, you do in the statute, that's right. Yeah, 23N has a little more sparse on it. But we're not overextending our. No, and especially when you consider these are federal laws, they're gonna apply what they do. So, you certainly have the authority to require your operators to comply with all other applicable laws. And these are certainly important ones. It just shines a light on it a bit. Yeah, thank you. The 238.18 is integrity, modern suspicious behavior. This provides essentially that the operators need to have a way to catch or sort of flag suspicious behavior. Some of this actually is in 23N. For instance, information regarding regularities, this one is covered in 23N, 12A1, but others are again, you have sort of parallel, they're not identical, but parallel provisions, I believe in within the gaming world. This provision has to do with the confidentiality for purpose of investigating or preventing conduct described in the prior section. So I know we're gonna talk a bit more about confidentiality of documents and so on, but this would fit under the investigatory exemption anyway, but just from the vendor standpoint, excuse me, the operator standpoint, not the vendor, they have to maintain confidentiality when a sports governing body, not just the commission is investigating, unless there's consent disclosure to disclosure. This is almost identical, I believe to 138. I'm sorry, could it be identical to 138? It's identical to what's in your statutory provisions. Sorry about that. All right. Responsible gaming and problem gaming plan, again, part of the, starting at 238.19, you really have the responsible gaming and protection of minors and underage youth. These are ones that do reference back to the well-thought-out regs that you've already promulgated or about to do that. Patron protection information, the, again, prominent display of the information as set forth in the GLI 33 standards and incorporated there. A complaint process, again, we tried to track as much as possible what's already happening, so it's not too cumbersome and it's not unusual. 238.23 is part of the physical facilities, sports wager encounters and security there. This was a small one that I think everybody on the internal side thought was helpful is what just a very quick definition of a gaming day for accounting purposes within this context. So the internal controls have to tell you what a gaming day is since that flows into how payments are made, et cetera. Accounting controls, again, makes the best practices from other jurisdictions and things that have worked in 138, all of this has been reviewed by Bruce and Sterl and the GLI team who give us the initial draft as well. And these get specific into everything from where the money goes from how it's handled, how it's counted and any inconsistencies accounted for. This one is one of the other red lines, 238.26 is procedures for acceptance of tips or gratuities from patrons. There are equivalent one regs in the gaming context. The question, and this is sort of different, there's actually apparently only one state, I believe, Mike and correct me if I'm wrong, Colorado that expressly calls us out as a center. Offhand, Colorado explicitly calls us out. Other states, they might have used more generalized wording or very general controls and related to that route. However, noticing that Massachusetts in 138 was explicit regarding accepting of tips, we felt that it would be good to build in likewise within 238. And so that's consistent. The one addition from the draft that's in your packet is a clarification under the gaming side, key gaming employees and Bruce or Sterl and correct me if I'm wrong, cannot accept tips or gratuities. So the equivalent here is that occupational licensees cannot and so that shows up in two places, one at the outset and then a sort of, in case you didn't get it, you can't accept tips or gratuities. Could I just read the language? Yeah. The other, so it says an employee of a sports featuring operator, or may, other than occupational license. Yeah, an occupational licensee may not, other employees can't. Because of the depth and because it's heightened, yep. Yeah, exactly. Right there. And this of course is not in lieu of any of the other requirements. For instance, one that was brought up in our conversation yesterday, the, an employee cannot tell you, you should bet on X or anything like that, right? You sort of, there's other protections, but this is simply for tips. Excellent, good. All right. As we go through, this is another one, rather referenced to house rules, just small. This is a typographical change that those are, it's a defined term, but the procedures for how you accept sports wages, and again, we're going to talk about this more in 247 and 248, have to match your house rules among many other things. The 238-32 gets to restricted patrons, which is fairly broad. It sort of covers the waterfront of folks who may be, you know, not permitted to wager. That should. Yep, prohibited persons, sort of similar. Again, this one captures a lot of the other categories to folks prohibited from itself, excluded folks, subject to limitations on sports wagering and other sections. So just to jump in here, the reason why it's split out the term restricted patron versus prohibited persons is because restricted basically would enable someone to place a wager, but there's restrictions in place. So for instance, one could be, you know, Tom Brady could have an account with Wynn and place wagers on Major League Soccer, but he wouldn't be able to place a wager on a game he's playing in. So it's restrictions. And so a prohibited person is someone who can be acting in violation of restrictions, such as a restricted patron wagering in their violation, someone who's wagering and not located in the commonwealth, someone who's attempting to wager while on a self-exclusion or involuntary exclusion list. So that's why there's that separation in place. Yeah. Thank you. Gotta reference Mac Jones. Apologies, Adam. Here, we'll get Mike up to speed on that. In our updates to regs, we'll try to have a provision for a quarterback, current quarterback of the New England Patriots. Yeah, exactly. The 34, 35 again, get into some of the details canceled or postponed events. We'll talk more about that again next week, but there are some details that fit here. We are all the way down, and I know I'm scrolling through a whole lot of stuff, but none of this has changed from your packet. Sorry. I'm assuming that you are either holding your questions or asking if you have them. Just wishers, I know that Nina's scrolling fast, but anybody would, I mean, I know that you've asked some questions along the way, but Christian Kellogg, Christian Maynard, Christian Skinner. Okay, Nina, you're good. All right. 238.36 are the account of controls for kiosks and how they operate. Again, it sort of makes sure that kiosks aren't misused to get around any of the other rules, which is essentially the key part of this. Sports wager equipment that kind of again, ties back to the GLI standards. That's another one that's important. 238.39, sports wagering accounts is a fairly brief provision, but this one does directly tie to 248, where you'll see a lot more detail about how accounts are set up, what information is collected for accounts, how you can access your account, it's a, well, what must be required for access, et cetera. So this- To go back up to change management. That section comes- So this section ties back into what we previously discussed in 244.03, but during internal review, there was a mention that they felt it would be also advantageous to create that crossover here as well. So we work to get this at reference added in. Yep, 238.40 governs test accounts that the operator might use to make sure everything's working properly. Also just as a note, and also for the commission to have test accounts, which I know is sort of one of the due diligence and certainly before getting the operations certificate is required. Again, now accounting requirements, data, where you'll start seeing a lot more of 243 tying back other references here. Commission access to sports wagering data, this is not requiring reporting, it's requiring just simply access at the same timeframe five years that I think is in 138 as well. 238.44, just to go into that is data and network security and additional requirements for that. I will gladly take questions and then gladly defer them to folks who understand some of the more, the intricacies of these, but suffice to say, this has come from a variety of states where and sort of best practices with help from Mike's team. Previously, we had discussed in the 243.01, the adoption of GLI 33B, appendix B, as well as talking about the changes which added in a requirement for assessment, the security assessments both within 90 days of launch as well as annually thereafter. However, what is established here is an additional vulnerability scan that needs to be run quarterly. Now, these vulnerability scans can be opted to be run by an external company or it can be done internally. And what's happening here is essentially it's laying out the framework for this quarterly vulnerability scan. This doesn't supersede the annual security assessment which would include an internal, external vulnerability and penetration testing, but this does add additional security measures. And this is because the sport in sports wagering, these are systems that are connected to the outside world. It's not a closed system like one would see bank of machines communicating with one another on a gaming floor. There is considerable more risk here because of the factors of the internet and its unpredictability. Thank you. 238.45 is the right that I've mentioned would connect to the personally identifiable information provision and the other one. That's so that will be 73. Now that's the only piece there. And these are sort of confidentiality requirements of that this is the kind of information that has to be kept private. So that if Mac Jones or Tom Brady walk into walk in and place a wager on a game they are willing, they are supposed to or allowed to bet on, I should say, the world doesn't find out that that happened. But also if Jane Doe does the same thing that that's kept private. The last couple of things really have to do. Not everyone wants to be mattress Mac. That's right. This was just the last red line. You'll see there was, this was just an accidental misplacement of a provision that for payout procedures, sports waging operators internal controls need to have a procedure for how tickets are paid out, including addressing whether or not a ticket can be redeemed by mail. So if you buy a ticket at a facility or gaming, excuse me, a sports waging area, the gaming establishment, you go home and watch the rest of the game and you win, can you pay by, can you ask for your money by mail or not? That's sort of the set up for the question of that addresses. And I believe this is sort of the last piece entertainment and filming, by the way, I believe it's similar to what you have in the sports, excuse me, in the gaming piece. There are sort of two conversations we've had on the advertised side. There's obviously some, you're an appointment, it's a public space, but it's not a public forum. And so you can't put limitations on filming or photography and entertainment. So that's especially to avoid interference. And the last one is carrying over the policies and procedures for ensuring workplaces free from unlawful discrimination. Again, although folks would be subject to 138 anyway, we certainly wanted to re-emphasize it given the importance of it. So that is it for all of these. I appreciate the patience with a lot of stuff this morning. And I am gonna just close out of screen sharing if I could, unless Madam Chair, you'd like me to keep up to 238 just for a few more minutes, see if there's questions. I think we have edits from quite straightforward. So I was using this bucket anyway. So I think everybody in terms of that, we can figure it out. Okay. I will do that as soon as I am able to remember how to. So here it is. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Commissioner's questions. I don't have any questions. Mina and Caitlin, thank you for your work on these. I didn't spend as much time on these as I would have liked just given the aggressive application review schedule. But I am comfortable moving forward for purposes of today since I know that Commissioner O'Brien has had her eyes on these. But I do reserve the right to propose edits during the public comment process. And before we vote to promulgate these as final. Does anybody else have any questions? I did have one. Okay, Commissioner O'Brien. And despite my involvement, I never asked this until I was looking through it this morning, which is the references to the document retention and having to give notice and basically gaming unit over in AG's office being able to tell them maybe to keep the documents, et cetera. I am assuming that we ran all of this by AG in terms of timing, et cetera. I'm not sure if anyone on the internal side did, but the reason we wouldn't have, Commissioner, is because this was identical to 1.30. 1.30, right? Actually the only change here was to make clearer that if any entity says, which is I think the actual practice at the commission that if any of the entities identified say, don't destroy that yet, please retain it, you should. And so that's just a little more explicit. Yeah, the only thing that we should do is, and I can certainly do this as well, is just alert them to the fact that it's gonna be there as well. I doubt they're gonna want changes, but just in case they want it even more, it's up somewhere that we should let them know. So just to remind everybody, we're standing up in an industry that's new to Commonwealth. And we have had the benefit of GLI's council looking at how it's standing up across the nation and the various issues that can arise. But we also have our own sensibilities. Should we find that this is inputly passed as it is today, we can revisit. Any regulation that we ever promulgate, correct for an amendment and a correction. We're doing that as part of our reg review process. And there's no particular time limit. We could do that immediately. Sorry if there were a mistake or something that could be improved upon. And so I wanna make sure you understand, Commissioner Skinner, that you reserve that right. No, not just after this period, going forward and I suspect that there'll be tweaks. But I felt that given the amount of input mean and I really appreciated Caitlin pointing that out, that we've got the benefit of GLI's eyes as well as all of you. And I wanna just thank you for the comprehensive work. And I know that we had strong regs to work from on the internal control structure and the wisdom of goose band and teams. Anybody else have any questions or comments? Madam Chair, I don't have a question, but just a comment. This was a very well put together presentation, Mina. And you explained it very, very well for us, non-legal people. So I wanna say thank you for that. It was very, very well done today. Thank you, Commissioner. Yeah, for such a long document, right Commissioner Hill? Yeah. Madam Chair, I also appreciated the presentation. Any questions I have really that I had jotted down are related to, they're secondary to this, right? So what I mean by that is, what are the policies and procedures going to be, right? When they're submitted and when, so it's really not the framework that I have any issues with. It's a lot of questions going forward, but not related to the framework. So that's where I'm standing. Yeah. So some of the things that we know we've got some work to do in the future. And Karen, this indicates you and your role as executive director. So I'm assuming you've been being brought up today. Yes, and I was just sending an email to Kevin Mulally, the next step, given the promulgation of these, I'll be notifying the licensees or the applicants or the operators and how do you want to refer to them of a due date that we would like the internal control submitted to give GLI sufficient time to review them to keep on our schedule. So in terms of moving forward, could we turn back to 138 at this juncture for a vote? I would recommend it because if we're going to move to 254, quite different. Burke, I like that background. Was that real life? The other one you had on? Oh, that's for our little IAB meetings to when we have a good time trying to do our multiple meetings during the day. I liked it. Thank you. Thank you. You went back to your plane background. Commissioner O'Brien? I'm happy to move on these if we're ready for that. Yeah, I want to make sure everybody's had their questions answered. And again, I think we do note Commissioner Skinner's, I think the real point, Commissioner Skinner's that we're inviting the public to comment too, right? You're looking for that. So that's good. I did note that these are already posted. So thank you, whoever's responsible for that. Great, thank you. Okay, I'll take a motion. Certainly. I moved that the commission approved the small business impact statement and the draft of 205, CMR 138 as included in the commissioners packet and further discussed here today. Second. Any further questions or comments? Oops, sorry. I lost everybody for a second. No further questions or edits. All right, Commissioner O'Brien. Hi. Commissioner Hill. Hi. Commissioner Skinner. Hi. Commissioner O'Brien. Oh. Good night, RCA. Commissioner Maynard. Hello. Hi. And I vote yes. That was completely me looking at boxes. So sorry. I vote yes. So five, zero. Commissioner O'Brien. And before I move on in terms of emergency or not, even though this is an existing reg, I'm assuming the request to go emergency or the recommendation by staff is so that we're consistent 138 to 38 at this juncture. Yes. Okay. So I move that the staff be authorized to take the steps necessary to file the required documentation with the secretary of the Commonwealth by emergency and thereafter to begin the regulation promulgation process and further that staff be authorized to modify chapter or section numbers or titles to file additional reg sections as reserved or make any other administrative changes necessary to execute the regulation promulgation process. Second. Any further questions or edits? Commissioner O'Brien. Hi. Commissioner Hill. Hi. Commissioner Skinner. Hi. Commissioner O'Brien. I vote yes. Thank you. Five, zero. And as to 238, I move the commission approved the small business impact statement as well as the draft 205CMR 238 as included in the commissioner's packet and it's discussed here today. Second. Any further questions or edits? Okay, Commissioner O'Brien. Hi. Commissioner Hill. Hi. Commissioner Skinner. Hi. Commissioner Maynard. Hi. And I vote yes. And again, as to the emergency recommendation or request potentially by staff for 238 if someone could just speak to sort of the timeline that we're on and how putting these in emergency feeds into that before I move on that. Absolutely. So the timeline that we're on is in order to get the internal control regs up in order for the planned go live at the end of January for the CAT ones and then the go lives in March. If we went through the regular process it would take two to three months to get these put into place. But by using an emergency, they'll be in place as soon as they're filed with the secretary of state. We will then take in the public comment, adjust them as necessary and continue them in effect so that they're in effect and the licensees can abide by them moving forward. I think Karen, if you could maybe clarify, we discussed this a little bit yesterday I think in terms of internal controls. If I recall correctly what you're referring to, the internal controls are critical to the operation certificate. So we would not want the commission voting on an operation certificate without a thorough review of the internal controls and anything else the commission gains appropriate in order to give an operation certificate before the go live launch. Great, thank you. I didn't know if anybody else had any questions before I further moved on this. Thank you. Okay, then I moved that staff be authorized to take the steps necessary to file the required documentation. The secretary of the Commonwealth related to 205CMR238 by emergency and thereafter to begin the regulation promulgation process and further that staff be authorized to modify chapter section numbers of titles and file additional regulation sections as reserved or to make any other administrative changes necessary to execute the regulation promulgation process. Second. Any further questions or edits? Okay, Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Commissioner Skinner. Aye. Commissioner Maynard. Aye. And I vote yes. Well, thank you. We have completed that item. Those two items. So Caitlin or Todd or Mina, I'm not sure who is guiding the next discussion. Oh, there's Carrie and Annie. So maybe we've got a new team coming in. Thank you, Caitlin. And thank you, Mina and Mike and GLI. We thank everyone. And Bruce, thank you for, we know that your whole team was behind us with Burke and Sterl, thank you, Sterl. So I appreciate that it was a big piece of work. Good news is that the current system seems to be running seamlessly, a lot of confidence and continuity. So thank you. Now we're turning to what the new subject matter, so. Yes, good morning Madam Chair and commissioners. Good morning. You have in your packet a draft of 205 CMR 254 temporary prohibition from sports wagering. This regulation creates a cooling off option for sports wagering. This option is intended to offer individuals an alternative means to exclude themselves from sports wagering where they haven't yet concluded that they'd like to place themselves on the self exclusion list in accordance with 205 CMR 233. You have a brief memo summarizing this regulation in your packet. And I'm going to turn it over to Annie Lee from Anderson and Krieger to walk through the regulation for us. We do have a couple of changes that we've just made this morning. So if it's all right, I'm going to share my screen so we can point those out to you. And I do just want to also note that director Vanderlinden who has been really instrumental in getting this regulation together is also here and available for questions as we walk through. So let me just get this up. All right, that size okay? Just a little bit bigger please. Sure. All right. And Annie, feel free to take it away. All right. Good morning, Madam Chair and commissioners. And thank you, Carrie, for that introduction. And so I want to first start at a high level sort of discussing and describing the cooling off regulations. And so something that you might sort of see as we get deeper into these cooling off regulations is that in substance, they are inspired by 233-133, the voluntary exclusion list. And so some parts of that might look substantively similar to VSE. On sort of implementation and administrative side, they might seem a little bit closer to play my way as it currently operates in gaming establishments. And so it's a little bit of a combination of, you know, things that work from sort of both of those programs and regulations in this specific one. Another thing that I want to note sort of at a high level is that unlike or it differs from VSE in that cooling off is done on an operator-by-operator basis. So whereas VSE, you could sign up with the commission and the commission will distribute that information that you're excluded from sports wagering across all operators in the Commonwealth. This is something that an individual does with a sports wagering operator. So if I go to sports wagering operator A and say I want to engage in cooling off, that information doesn't get transmitted to sports wagering operator B or any of the rest of them. So if I'm engaged in cooling off the sports wagering operator A, I could theoretically still engage with sports wagering with operator B. But the idea of doing it operator-by-operator is to again afford consumers the highest amount of choice possible and also recognizing that most consumers don't engage with all sports wagering operators and only engage with one or two. So cooling off may have the greatest effects even when it's done on an operator-by-operator level. And so going through these specifically, as I mentioned, the substance of cooling off is very similar to VSE in that when you sign up for cooling off, you're only going to be prohibited from accessing your sports wagering account with that sports wagering operator. So it's similar to VSE. It's just once you sign up, you can't engage in sports wagering whatsoever with that operator. And another thing that I'll mention is that cooling off only applies to the platform. So it only applies to the category three licensees. The cooling off option is something that we envision that's mostly sort of applicable to the apps and websites and not to the retail locations. And so when you say that you want to be cooling off, you're not going to be able to engage in sports wagering with that operator's mobile app or websites. And I just pause, commissioners, that's not prescribed by law, Annie, right? That is a policy decision. Yes, yes. So cooling off itself is not something that is prescribed by law. This is something that we understand happens in the industry as a response. More precisely, I understand the cooling off, Annie, I wanted to just remind that folks that there's a policy decision here where, if I understand correctly, I may decide to cool myself off on platform ABC and then have second thoughts and cool off from there. I can now open up another account with another operator, XYZ and continue to wager. Is that what I'm understanding? Or is it online sports wagering cooling off all together on online operators? I know that there's a policy decision that I think we've made that an individual can still place wagers at the casino, even though they're excluded themselves from online. I know that some operators exclude all together, and I think that overrides our policy. But is that what you're saying is that this cooling off only applies to the single app for the single platform? That's correct, Madam Chair. And so that's, yeah. So I know Director Vandalinen, I know that the roundtables talked about choice, but I just wanted to remind everybody that that is a policy decision just to pause to make sure everyone's comfortable with that. And maybe we go back to Director Vandalinen. Madam Chair, if I may just wait a second. I think Annie did a great job of kind of laying it out. But one piece I think is an important technical consideration is that it's different from our statewide voluntary self-exclusion where the NGC is sort of the hub and of that list. We are the central holder of that list. And there may be a delay between the time in which somebody enrolls when it becomes active on the list and they would be prohibited. A priority for us is that we want this to take effect immediately. And so to do so when you sign up for cooling off with an operator, you click that button it immediately takes effect. And I think that that should be, that is a high priority. Okay, and so then just to play it out because I appreciate that person now five days later it says rats, what? They would still be, there is no going back on the cooling off period with the operator for which you signed up for that. And so the period it's over, right? Until the, that's correct, Commissioner. Until the designated period has expired. And consistent with what Director Vandalinen was sort of saying about consumer choice as we'll discuss further in the regulations there are options for the duration of the temporary prohibition period. So an individual can select from 72 hours to four weeks. So yeah, so I appreciate the choice. I just want to make sure that the commissioners know that this is a policy decision. Director Vandalinen, we heard on the round table the idea of preserving choice. And what I might be hearing because of the nature of online sports wagering there's no way to have a central hub to know of all the individuals who have chosen to cool off like we have with the BSE list. So we wouldn't ever know that landscape anyway. But I want to just point out that while we're making a choice to reserve choice our one of our licensees doesn't adopt that. And that's PPC, correct? They say, if you're on the BSE list where sports wagering you're at the casino I mean sports wagering online or retail you're also banned from casino play. But we've taken a choice that doesn't reflect that. And I just want to make sure the commissioners all know that somehow that that was a decision we've made. Am I wrong framing that? I think it's happened by default. So I don't know that we actively made that decision. That's why I'm pausing Commissioner O'Brien to just make sure we've reflected on that. It may be with the respect to what Annie was just describing because Mark said, it's hard to know the landscape but there has been a decision here that's been, this is a policy, an underlying policy decision here. So I just wanted to pause. I'm not sure if I feel differently with it. I'm just, and I'm not really, in other words, I feel like we may have not been at this to know, I think other than at that round table. So Mark. Well, we haven't, we also have not asked in terms of the technology and the apps whether they have for the, for the cat threes, whether they have the technology to take the VSE and implement it on the app. So I mean, obviously PPC does because that's their corporate policy. And so PPC has a mechanism for doing that. I didn't mean to completely disrupt Annie's presentation. It might make sense to continue through it but just with that, that's sort of that overriding policy decision in the back of mind because it does inform this regulation. And, and then maybe we'll flush out either the policy in our minds or any technical requirements that we might think about. But I just wanted to pause on that. And I don't mean to hijack Annie's presentation either, but one additional piece that the commission has a responsible gaming framework and there was a white paper put out over a year ago now. On sports wager and considerations of the Massachusetts responsible gaming framework and cooling off was, was a priority identified within that revised framework within that white paper. I don't want you to think we're not adopting cooling off. I don't know. I know, I just wanted to just provide some additional context where it would be coming. All right. My question on the reg itself too is I didn't read this necessarily as us making that choice today as to the three who are brick and mortar doing retail that it seemed to me we could in the RG section say that's how we want them handled. We don't necessarily have jurisdiction, you know, Caesars that has brick and water in here wouldn't be able to say to Caesar, I don't actually, this is a jurisdictional question whether we could say the same to them and request implementation because they're brick and mortar outside the Commonwealth. But to me that was also something we would dive into when we got to the RG regs that are coming up. Whether we want everyone to do pens, you're on one, you're on all in terms of cooling off or a temporary suspension. Thanks. I just thought it would be helpful to remind folks of this underlying policy and it may be that we've sort of already resolved in our minds, but thank you, Annie. And now I'll try not to disturb you again. Thank you so much. So before we just go back, I think it reiterates one of the things I made early on about the regs we just passed which is there are references hypothetically to how we're going to treat those doesn't, but we haven't reached how we're going to treat those with specificity. And I think the same applies here to your point, Madam Chair, that we may say something more pointed when we get to the RG regs. And I think that was Commissioner Maynard's point. Like, you know, the framework that worked for us and I thought it was so well done to anticipate we're going to have policy discussions down the road. So here we are on cooling off and actually very appropriately as we consider the online sports operators now. So thank you. All right, this is just turning back to the regs and I welcome sort of any questions and any sort of points of discussion. So no hijacking was done at all. So just returning back to sort of the substance of the regs. Carrie, would you mind sharing your screen again? Thank you. So similar to the VSC, a lot of sort of the same acknowledgments that you're not going to be able to access your account, that you can't collect any winnings or recover any losses, that your sort of bets may be rejected. Those sort of same acknowledgments that are in the VSC regs are also translated to these cooling off regulations as well as sort of the carve out that if you're an employee of a sports wagering operator, you can engage in sports wagering solely for the purposes of performing your job function. Carrie, if we could scroll down, or scroll down just a little bit more to 03 please. And then so I'll also hear note that the sign up for cooling off is modeled on sort of the sign up for play my way is that when you first access the app, you're going to be prompted to say whether or not you want to engage in cooling off, you can of course reject that prompt and say that you want to engage in sports wagering. If you reject that prompt, that is of course not your last opportunity to sign up for cooling off. These regs require sports wagering operators to always maintain a link that's prominently placed on their platform through which individuals can designate themselves as temporarily prohibited. And so this is something that I ask Carrie to share because this is something that differs from the regulation that is in your packet. So the draft regulation that is in your packet at page 159 specifically the changes have been made or the most changes have been made to 2503 on the duration of the temporary prohibition period. We understand that after the presentations from Caesars and Winn-Bett that there needed to be a little bit more flexibility in the temporary prohibition period. So the version that appears in your packet previously just instituted a 30 day temporary prohibition period. So a 30 day cooling off period. From those presentations we understood that greater choice and flexibility was required. So here as I previously alluded to, individuals will have the ability to choose from a range of 72 hours to four weeks as sort of laid out in this regulation for the temporary prohibition period for cooling off. However, just because they select a cooling off period doesn't mean that that is necessarily the end of it. Individuals can always choose to renew the cooling off period at any point during this cooling off period. So if you start your 72 hour cooling off period and five hours and you realize that you should have requested more time you can always choose to renew the temporary prohibition period. And sort of in line with making sure that this is protecting consumers as much as possible. There are no limitations regarding the number of times someone can renew cooling off. And so you can renew for three weeks periods infinitely if that's something that you want to do. And so something that we also sort of changed from what the version that is in your packet is that previously when it was a three day period we required a reminder seven days prior to the expiration of cooling off that it was about to expire that way an individual can tell the operator I want to renew this or I want to put myself on the ESC. And so in line with the fact that we're giving consumers more options and you can be cooling off for a short of 72 hours this reminder will now appear 24 hours prior to the expiration of your cooling off. And so this reminder that you're gonna be cooling off just tells you that this is when you're cooling off ends here's how to renew it if you'd like and here's how to apply to be placed on the ESC. And so something that we... Sorry, I had a question on that. So I was wondering about after the presentations that we've heard in terms of lesson 30 if you're on for a month I feel like maybe 24 hours is too short of a lead time is there a way and maybe this is too complicated but if it's less than a month you've got the 24 hour but should it go back to the 72 if it's a month or whatever it used to be it feels like 24 might be too short. That's just good for thought for everybody. I think Commissioner O'Brien I think that's a good question when we changed it 24 because the shortest was 72 hours 24 hours in advance makes it I think that maybe there is a technology and what's feasible a question about what's feasible but we can explore that with GLI or some of the... Or the potential needs. Okay. Madam Chair. I had the same question. So if we can look into that a little further I think that would be helpful to us. If there are no further questions on sort of the renewal I'm happy to sort of go into the sort of the logistics of finishing the cooling off. Can we, for purposes of moving forward today is there a way, is there an option or just this table of that discussion? What if we put a, what if we put it like some kind of a 24 hours to 78 hours what would you say Commissioner O'Brien? Is it three days? And what I'm hearing is that we're wondering what the best practice is or what's... What's best practice in the first instance in terms of the 30 days giving them a little more heads up but then also what's practical from a technology standpoint? Technology, right. I don't know, maybe this is something we come back and finalize in January if we can get the answers. Yeah, on the technology the one good thing is what I kept on hearing yesterday is we get to have what we want. So that's comforting but maybe I'm missing something. So in terms of them going back is there any, so you just open ended question, right? In terms of what you would imagine would be sufficient. Yeah, I'm sort of looking for a little bit of feedback maybe from Mark and you guys about from an RG perspective. Should they be getting, I know there's obviously you're not gonna get 72 hours or 48 hours on the 72 hour cooling off. No, but later. But in terms of the other ones that are a week, two, three, four weeks maybe you get a little more of a heads up than the day before. Out of sight, out of mind, you miss the alert and all of a sudden you're active again when maybe if you'd had a couple more days noticed you said, you know what I'm not done I need another cooling off. So let's both find out and we may wanna build that in. So on the one that we come back for final that would work, that works technically too. Yeah, I would be glad to explore what is feasible. I was just thinking about what it's obviously for four weeks three and four weeks could be different than Yes. than 70 to one in two weeks. Right. Right. And in terms of, you know what is the best practice site? That's a really good question and evaluation on this type of feature is as far as I would expect. So, Carrie, that works, right? To get that. Yeah, I was just looking at the timeline and I think, you know if the commission were inclined to vote on the version today you could do that. And I think this would come back in February for final vote. So we could make changes then or of course you could defer today and we could come back with more input in January. I'd almost rather vote in January so that when we go live it's already in place and we don't forget about it because I just my vision of end of January to end of February is gonna be pretty insane. So if there's a way to sort of conceptually agree that this is the only thing and then we vote final early January. What if we did the reverse and put what you would like in and then Yeah, and then you can drop it if it's not practical, I guess. Yeah. So that's why I was getting to your solve because it's a fair question, right? And in terms of the point I don't feel like from a technical point of view it's gonna be troublesome because any of our RG issues are gonna get addressed if they wanted to business here in Massachusetts, right? And if it turns out it really is technically impossible then we can address it. So So is the language that 13 days or two weeks or less it's a 24 hour alert? Anything greater than that? 15 or greater is what a 72 hour alert? I was thinking 72 hours in one week would be 24 hours but 72 hours for two weeks, three weeks, four weeks. Okay, that makes sense. Everybody commissioners, do you feel comfortable with that? I'm not hearing any of the questions. So manager, just to clarify so that will go into the draft rank and then we would receive feedback from parties interested in providing feedback on this, including the technical feasibility of this, right? We would vote on this recommendation today. Okay. And then if it turns out that it's complete off then we've had a more conservative adopting a more conservative approach that gets rectified if we're too conservative. Commissioner Hill, how do you feel about that? Or did you have a different point? Just wanted a clarification. So 72 hours, two weeks or more, 24 hours under a week. Is that what I heard? Yes, that's what I recommended. How do you feel about that, Commissioner Hill? I feel fine with that. Commissioners, I mean it makes practical sense, right? Less than, 13 days or less is the... 13 days or less. I feel like there's a gap between days eight and 13. Can you just read it again to say it again to me, Mark? My recommendation was 24 hours notice if it's the 72 hours or one week. And it would be a 72 hour notice if it was two weeks, three weeks or four weeks. So I think we need to say eight days and up because once you, days eight through 13 are missing in that, there's no alert baked into it. I think there's, aren't you saying 24 hours for those who choose up to... Up to a week. Correct. One of their choices, one week... And then two weeks would be the 72 hours. So days eight through 13 are missing in that unless we say... That's right. A week or less is 24 hours. Date eight to 30 days would be a 72 hour notice. Right? 31. There you go. If I may, commissioner O'Reilly, I think the way that we have drafted these regulations is your options are discreetly 72 hours, one week, two week, three or four week. We haven't drafted in a way though, as you just say, nine days or 12 days if the commission wants to provide consumers just the ability to set their own cooling off period rather than choosing from this pre-selected list. Okay. Because that would be cool. But I defer to Mark on that. And I defer to everybody else who's been on these. I thought even Ceasar's yesterday was very particularized in terms of how much time you could choose and you could fall within what we're saying. And I'm fine if we're sticking with that or if I misheard that, but. Can I make a suggestion? If I'm a better and I bet two weeks, could we say that I get a 24 hour notice? But if I bet, if I put in three or four weeks, I get a 72 hour notice, isn't that, is that what you're getting at, Annie? Is that the, I think the way that their options are gonna be, they're gonna say cooling off for one week, I'm cooling off for two weeks. Correct, correct, they have to choose from those five options. So I'd get a 24 hour notice for if I chose two weeks. Now, if we wanna give 72 hour notice for two weeks, then we could say that I defer to Mark as a specialist. And Commissioner Maynard. And I defer to Mark on this. My concern and something I'm thinking about and kind of the point of my question, what I was asking is at some point you disincentivize, right? Signing up for this. And I don't know at what point that is. Honestly, I'm not an expert on this, but I am worried about that, right? And so, allowing someone to have some consumer choice is important to me because I think they'll actually use the program. I think simplicity is important. And every responsible gaming, if you look at Play My Way, the process from invitation to enroll in being involved is we tried to make as few clicks as possible to set a budget. And I appreciate wanting to give people as much flexibility as possible. And I think allowing five options here makes a lot of sense. If we allow, basically say, give us any number of days up to four weeks, I worry that people are doing this in a state of mind where they're really wanting to just, they're looking to solve the problem or they're looking to prevent a problem and keeping it as simple as possible for them in BSE and cooling off and Play My Way Limit setting, I think is an important feature. And that may create a back end issue but the operator, if there's so many clicks, I mean, that does start to present some technological challenge. But I didn't think that you were necessarily adding to the choices, Commissioner O'Brien, you just wanted to give notice of when that choice is going to come up. You wanted it a little bit more time. Right, and I was thinking about the presentations that we've heard where it seemed like they were giving a lot, you could be very precise with how long you wanted to cool off with them. But it sounds like what Mark is saying is maybe for us at our purposes right now, we just have tranches so that we make the choice simpler. And then we tie our notifications into whatever those tranches are. Yeah. That is my recommendation, correct? Okay, that's fine. So then if we say, as Sandy points out, we really need to tie the amount of notice of the expert pending exploration to the one week, two week, three week, four week. One week, are we in agreement 24 hours? Two weeks, what are we thinking? We're doing the 72 at that point, for there and up, or 48. Mark? I was going to say 72 hours for two weeks and up. Okay, two weeks, three weeks, and four weeks. Okay. Is that helpful? But anything under two weeks is 24 hours. Correct. Okay, 22 hours or one week would be a 24 hour notice. Yeah, so I see what Commissioner O'Brien is saying. If I put down one week, that means actually more than one week, right? Well, no, but now that it's clear to me, the options are not going to be nine days, 10 days, right? We're basically saying to the operators, you know, you can do, yeah, hear your tranches basically, and then hear the notification requirements that attach to those, as opposed to when I was hearing the presentations the other day, it seemed like the operators could give you anywhere from one to 30, 31 days, but we're going to sort of minimize the choices to maybe make the act a little simpler, you know, so no one gets analysis paralysis when they're trying to click the button. Commissioner O'Brien, my recollection is that those preset time frames were baked into the platform. So the one week, two weeks, three weeks, five weeks. And I think the- I thought I could just say you could get on and just keep kind of personalizing it, but you know, maybe I overheard it, maybe I misheard it. I think you could extend it or go for another cooling off period. But what I remember, four weeks was the maximum. And so that's why if you wanted another four weeks or another week, you could make the request. That's my memory too. Commissioner Maynard, you were nodding your head. Yeah, I think that's, and I remember Commissioner Maynard asking a question that really caught something in my head, which was, it was really easy, and then kudos to the operators. It was really easy to make it more restrictive on yourself. It was really hard to go the other way. And so that's what I learned in that question. Yeah, can let's just get asked the right question. But I do think, because of technology would get really complicated on the back end that there's so many, many choices. All right, should we continue? With that added, so that we would keep in mind, okay? Annie? Thank you everyone. And so this is also just related to the conversation we were having. So upon conclusion of your cooling off, so say I've signed up for two weeks, the two weeks is over, I haven't renewed in the meantime, I can now log back into my sports wagering account, but that doesn't mean that I can start sports wagering right away. So these regulations at 250303 subsection four, yes, thank you, Carrie. That says that section requires an operator to provide an individual notification that cooling off has expired. And in order to engage in sports wagering, an individual has to acknowledge that notification. So you can't just sort of, you have to affirmatively say cooling off has ended, I'm going to engage in sports wagering again. And that same notification that lets you know that cooling off has ended also will say, if you miss the notification, so to Commissioner O'Brien's point, if you miss that 24 hour notification, it's sort of essentially another notification that allows you to either renew cooling off, to apply for inclusion in VSC, or to say I'm done cooling off, I want to start sports betting again. And so that's another sort of guardrail that has been placed in to make sure that, just because folks miss a notification, doesn't mean that all of a sudden they can sort of sports wager when, that might not be the right option for them. And so does that impact our last conversation? No, if I miss, if I'm in that 24 hours and I miss it, I get something affirmative again. I have to do something affirmative to re-engage. Is that what that says? In the meeting I misunderstood. No, that's correct, Madam Chair. In order to engage in sports betting after you've elected for cooling off, you have to affirmatively acknowledge that you're done cooling off in order to do it again. But Annie, is that at the notification you received in number three above? Or is it just when you log back on after your cooling off period has expired, there's a notification where you need to acknowledge? I think that I was under the impression that once it has expired, you need to affirmatively acknowledge that it has ended with an invitation to either re-enroll or information about the VSE, which I think is an important piece of informed player choice. Yes, that's correct, Mark. So the affirmative I want to sports wager again, that only happens when the cooling off is done. So the notification you get prior to the expiration of cooling off just says cooling off is about to end. Would you like to renew or enroll in VSE? The notification that you get after cooling off has that added question of, do you want to engage in sports wagering again? So in order to engage in sports wagering, the notification can say you can renew or you can apply for VSE. But also if you say neither of those things are applicable to me, we're requiring sports wagering operators to essentially make the individual affirmatively say, neither of those apply to me and I want to sports wagering again. May I just explain the rationale a little bit further? Of course. So this is informed player choice or voluntary self-exclusion. There's a requirement of a reinstatement session that would be completed with a game sense advisor and cooling off is different than that. So we don't require sort of that type of one-on-one conversation, but this is the equivalent of that and a cooling off period where there is this moment where you can make a decision to continue it or to enroll in the voluntary self-exclusion program. I would venture to guess that individuals who sign up for cooling off would be considered at high risk of gambling related harm or a problem gambling. And so we want to provide them with information at the end of this cooling off period. That's what I wanted to say about that. Some questions. Well, I think as written, I see that there's a, with our addition, there's a double additional layer. Yes, Mike. My question, Mark, for you is, is there any language based on that comment that you think would be worth inserting here in this reg? You feel like this covers what you said? I think it covers what I said, yeah. Okay. All right, Andy, thank you. Great. Thank you. I love this cooling off reg. So responsibilities of a sports wagering operator at 2.5404, sanctions at 2.5405, as well as collection of debts at 2.5406. These mirror the responsibilities, sanctions, and debt collection as they do in VSE. So these should all be very familiar. The sports wagering operator has the same responsibilities to individuals who are cooling off as it does to individuals who are on the VSE, that those include things like submitting a policy, a written policy for the commission's approval for compliance with this program, as well as allowing individuals to sort of dispute an amount that they might have wagered, sort of in violation of the cooling off. Sanctions are also available against a sports wagering operator for any violations of 23N, or their written policy for compliance with the cooling off program. And in the same respect, nothing in cooling off will prevent a sports wagering operator from seeking payment of a debt from someone who does engage in sports wagering, even in violation of the cooling off. Any questions on that last section? They're a little bit more disruptive, Annie, but I think probably real-time feedback was important on this one. I don't know, policy discussion. Thanks, Mark, for your participation. Other questions for A&K? Carrie, with those edits in mind, I guess it's limited to that, just that section. Do we want to take action this afternoon on this one? Commissioners? I'm okay dealing with it today. It's, I don't know how everybody else feels. I feel fine moving forward with the changes that we talked about in regards to the changes in the notification. And I trust our legal folks have already changed the language, so you should be able to move forward. Is that a yes? I mean, in real time, would you like to see the language changed, Commissioner? If I could just maybe read it for us so that we're all clear before anybody makes a motion. Is that doable for you guys? I have not made any edits yet. I'm guessing Annie hasn't, as she was speaking, but we could. Can we reference the respective sections? It's section one has been taken, subsection one's been taken out already. So, 2-5-4-0-3. It would be in 2-5-4-0-3-3. I'll pop it up again. So, sub one was edited to insert. Yep. Yep. And so really what we're doing is, sub three is inserting the language to say that if an individual elected either 72 hours or one week, then 24 hours prior, they have to notify about the expiration. If the individual selected two weeks or greater than 72 hours prior to that period, they have to notify the individual. Is that what we agreed on? Madam Chair, I can read the, I drafted something out while we were talking. I could just read it if that, if that. Thanks, Dave. Thanks. So I think I've got this right. So we would amend three to say something like 24 hours prior to the expiration of the 72 hour or one week, temporary prohibition period. And 72 hours prior to the expiration of a two week, three week, or four week temporary prohibition period. The sports wagering operator shall notify. That works. Yep. Everybody comfortable with their language? Dave had the advantage of being able to be the active listener. So thank you Dave, not having to be the active presenter. I wanted to make some contribution here. So if we take down that, now I'm going to turn to the real expert, Annie, you feel comfortable with that? I would say Mark is the real expert here. I'm staying the real expert on the legal. You just did, of course I know that I'm just asking, are you okay with what Dave said? Yes, absolutely. And I actually sent that over to Carrie. I know that it's sort of a flood on it once. It might just be easier to have Dave read it out. Thank you. Well, you're all coordinated. Just wanted to make sure we're all on the same page. So with that edit, do you want to hear it again, Commissures, are you all set? All set? So do I have a motion? This is 254, correct? This is 254, yeah? Yeah, okay. I moved that the commission approved the small business impact statement and the draft of 205 CMR 254 as included in the commissioners packet and is discussed here today. And in particular, in regards to the edits discussed and agreed upon pertaining to 254.03. Subsection three? Sub, well the entire three because we've amended. Yeah. Second. Any further edits or discussion? Sorry, I was out of order there, Commissioner. All right. Can I ask Commissioner Bryant? Pardon me, just one comment. There is also a small red line in 254.02 that I don't know if you wanted to reference in your motion. We didn't really, let me just show it to you real quick but we didn't get into a lot of detail but it was just to reference the below changes as well. Okay, certainly. So I would amend the motion to include the edits specifically discussed in 25.254.02 and 254.03. Second. Okay, any further discussion? Is that amended? All right, Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Commissioner Skinner. Aye. Commissioner Maynard. Aye. And I vote yes, five zero. And before we move on to whether to do by emergency again, just for the record, if someone maybe Mark or somebody can talk to the technology about needing to have this implemented as quickly as possible before we launch. Yes, I can follow up with that. Okay. Karen, two, yep. If anybody wants to just make a statement on the record. Get down with Mark that this could be a technological shift for operators. I'm trying to get my mute button. I'm in Nileen's office right now. The lefty. And I'm trying to... I'm actually not a lefty, but my right hand was bothering so much. I had to move it around. Oh, okay. About pre-COVID, but yeah. I think that what you're looking for Commissioner O'Brien is that we certainly wouldn't want the launch of particularly mobile sports way during in these apps without these kinds of protections in place for vulnerable citizens of Massachusetts. Right, right. Okay, thank you. And given that I moved that staff be authorized to take the steps necessary to file the required documentation with the Secretary of the Commonwealth by emergency and thereafter to begin the regulation promulgation process. And further that staff be authorized to modify chapter or section numbers or titles to file additional regulation sections as reserved to make any other administrative changes necessary to execute the regulation promulgation process. Second. And for the discussion. Okay, Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Commissioner Skinner. Aye. Commissioner Maynard. Aye. I vote yes. Zero. Excellent work. Gary. Thank you. And that's it for me. God. That's it for item number four on the agenda. All set. So returning to item number five, Commissioner Updates, do we have anything? Thanks, Dave. Thanks, Annie. Hey. Thanks, guys. Thank you all. Bye-bye. Thank you so much. And thank you to the A&K team for the earlier presentation. It's excellent. Dave, thanks so much. Okay. Thank you. And any Commissioner Updates? All right. Do I have a motion? To adjourn. Move to adjourn. Okay. Thank you. Discussion? Betts? Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Commissioner Skinner. Aye. Commissioner Maynard. Aye. I vote yes. Thanks so much. Five, zero. Or adjourned.