 even though it's today's world it's still virtual but thank you for participating all right uh i'm just going to go down my list eric dimmiss present ask a little kennedy present john cronin is going to be a little late bruce stephens i am here john robertson ron hogan i am here and jennifer bun figlio doesn't look like yet okay and we've got hosie okay delgado is joining us yeah okay gm okay all right so three four how many how many folks were we expecting mary uh canya canya has been in charge of this hi so hi so according to my attendance list all members are showing up today except for mr cronin who's going to be half an hour late okay so we should have one two three four five six yeah six members um and then and a couple other um will who we invite um yeah the licensees representative hosie delgado right okay all right well what i would like to do to start off first of all i know we have a number of our mgc team members joining us but we're also lucky to be uh being joined by our chair um kathy jud stein and i know she probably would like to welcome everybody and make a few opening remarks before we dive into the agenda so kathy if i can turn it over to you well thank you bruce thank you for chairing this subcommittee i just wanted to introduce myself and to thank you for your service the work that you do um you are well aware serves as the foundation for uh important um and significant monetary awards to communities across the common law to mitigate the impact of the casinos and we're really lucky as commissioners to really benefit from the good work that you do the process is so thorough it's um in my year and half a tenure i'm impressed continuously by the details that come out of your work and from our team i want to thank particularly the leadership of joe delaney mary thorough and um tanya peres new to the team now so um just a hello and a thank you express the gratitude on behalf of all of the commissioners um we respect the care and thoughtfulness of this process so much and i know that the communities that are the recipients of the awards are are so appreciative and um in many ways they respect so much the process because of the exact work you do so thank you and i'm sorry that i'm missing shon crone and i i worked with him in the past but sounds like he's coming on board and wish him a hello for me i'm going to pop off because i'm at another meeting but again just thank you so much it's nice to see your faces even though it's virtual someday soon we'd love to meet you in person thanks for covering us on that why don't we jump over Todd to the update on ethics and compliance i know a lot of the other things further down the agenda reflect some updates in review of the 2021 community mitigation fund policy questions uh but uh why don't we get into some other items uh until mr croning can join us so um Todd do you want to step in on the update of ethics course and compliance sure i'd be happy to do that if that's what the group would like oh there's someone who just joined i think that was i think Derek joined us oh i also have somebody dialing in remotely from four zero seven three i think if you hit star six you can unmute yourself anybody john robertson you see somebody dialing in with the last four digits four zero seven three if tanya i don't know who sent out the invite tanya's the host of the meeting she can unmute too okay hi this is uh john robertson there we go oh hey john welcome made it thank you for your patience it took me a while oh thank you for your participation we greatly appreciate it so now we actually have a quorum um we can uh move forward i'm happy to god i don't think we have a quorum yet though oh we don't um because we only have one two three there's only six members here oh i thought there were seven let me go i see ron eric casco bruce jennifer and john right right john crone and should be with us shortly oh as mr delgado is not he is not a member no just invited to to attend gotcha okay in that case so well i know uh a number of you could probably deliver the ethics training yourselves um i'm happy to do it i know ron just heard it about 10 seconds ago so um i'll turn it over to ron and a couple of instances where he can fill in some of the blanks but i'm happy to to go through this i do think it's important to talk about ethics you can never get too much uh ethics training no such thing as that um and i think you've all you all have actually heard me talk about these issues before so um for purposes of this subcommittee we just picked out some of the highlights of the ethics laws that i'll go through and as always please feel free to interject and ask any questions or what have you and of course as always as well please feel free to reach out to me give me a call shoot me an email or what have you after if you have any specific questions um and i also would encourage you to reach out to um council um in your full-time day job positions if you have specific questions about any of these materials and further the state ethics commission is always available to answer any real complicated ethics questions um as well and they have as you all know by now an attorney of the day who offers uh free and confidential advice as to the application of the conflict of interest law um to everyone so i'll go ahead and if i may um just share this screen so you can all see what i'm talking about um and we start with everybody's status and this committee's status and i i take it you can all see that screen um as uh a member of this body this body itself is considered a state agency and members of the committee are considered state employees for purposes of the conflict of interest law a municipal employee or gaming license representative appointed uh to this committee is considered a special state employee as you're not full-time employees the gaming commission you don't get compensated as far as i'm aware and uh you serve under a minimum number of hours which makes most of you special uh state employees you are required to complete the online state conflict of interest law training every two years if you're a municipal employee and you've done it in that capacity you still have to do the state one um so uh perhaps the you've seen the link to be able to do that and we would just ask that uh you ensure that you send your certificate of completion over to Tanya Perez who has joined us on this call as well she's working with uh Joe and Mary to organize the affairs of this particular subcommittee and all of our subcommittees and there's a link right there which you won't be able to click on here but uh if you go on to the state ethics commission website you can find the online training program as a general matter you'll all recall there are essentially two kinds of conflicts of interest there are financial conflicts and then there are so-called appearance conflicts the each are equally as important but they're slightly different in application the financial conflict conflicts provide that as a special state employee you may not participate in any particular matter that may affect your financial interest or that of an immediate family member or a business organization that you're affiliated with so the first thing to look at is the particular matter it has to be an actual um item or issue that's being worked on that is uh before this committee it it can't be just remote or speculative it has to be an actual situation it can be an application it can be a specific issue it could be a hearing it could be a contract anything along those lines would be considered a particular matter the state ethics commission has essentially a bind that the review of the disbursement of community mitigation funds falls into the general category of particular matter so to the extent which this committee will be doing you that you're talking about the disbursement of such funds or how they should be dispersed and that recommendation is made to the commission or to your colleagues and other subcommittees that is generally likely to be considered a particular matter and so if anything you're talking about here would affect the financial interest of either you personally or a family member an immediate family member or the business organization it could be either the city or town or your employer then you may be in conflict of interest law territory and should review the situation before you proceed uh with any uh issue that you're discussing here as part of this subcommittee those are financial conflicts of interest the second kind are generally referred to as appearance conflicts um in the word appearance of course doesn't actually appear in the state conflict of interest law but that's what it's known as and that rule provides that you may not act in any manner that a reasonable person might conclude would cause you to act with bias in your job the principle being that the citizens are entitled to expect of all of us and you as special state employees that you will perform your duties here in an unbiased and even manner regardless of any personal interest or outside influences that you may have in your life and to the extent there's something that may cause someone from the outside looking in to think that you might not be able to do that even if it's not true you are required to disclose that particular issue to your appointing authority in the case of this committee you're appointing authority depends on who you are employed by or the entity that sent you here and then you're required to disclose that to those folks i'd also suggest if you do find yourself in that position you just let us know as well so we can help you navigate through those situations so those are the two types of conflicts your financial and your appearances a couple of other areas just to touch on really quickly are the gifts provisions of the conflict of interest law as i'm sure you're aware the conflict of interest law provides that you may not accept gifts or in gratuities of substantial value which are given for or because of official acts performed or to be performed because of your official position the state ethics commission has defined substantial value to be $50 or more as you may know the gaming commission has adopted an enhanced code of ethics that applies to all of its employees it does not apply to subcommittee members but it applies to all of the gaming commission employees and in there the gift provisions prevent or prohibit acceptance of any gifts regardless of their value and the commission is of the general position that that's the better approach for us and so the message is just to be very careful if you find yourself in a position where someone has offered you a gift of any value because and that weaves into the second piece which is the unwarranted privilege you're not allowed to use or attempt your official use your official position to secure for yourself or others unwarranted privileges or exemptions which are not available to members of the general public so an example of that would be the acceptance of a gift if someone is offering you something even if it's worth less than $50 and they're giving it to you because of work you have done for them or that you didn't or an action you didn't take that could be in addition to the gift provisions be considered an unwarranted privilege so you need to be very careful about accepting anything like that you also need to be careful of attempting to use the position to gain favor or carry some advantage for yourself or others that other members of the public wouldn't for example calling up Mary and saying hey Mary you know an application came in late would you mind just looking at it for my friend anyway because he's really sorry that is something that would likely be considered unwarranted privilege because a general member of the public couldn't really make such a request with the same type of influence that you might be able to because you serve on this committee so you just need to be very careful about using your position here to any kind of private advantage the most complicated part of the state conflict of interest law that applies to subcommittee members is this section four which is referred to as the divided the loyalty section and there are essentially two pieces to it it's section a and c of section four the first as you'll see and I won't read it verbatim but essentially says that you can't directly or indirectly receive a request compensation from anyone other than the Commonwealth or a state agency in relation to a particular matter in which the Commonwealth or state agency is a party or has a direct and substantial interest which means in the context of these community mitigation fund discussions assuming that the disbursement of such funds is a particular matter that you can't be paid by a municipality or private interest or anyone other than the Commonwealth to handle any such matter so in the context of your municipal work or your private work you can't work on community mitigation fund applications if that's part of your job or offer advice or things like that along those lines that could run afoul of this divided loyalties provision and the second part is similar but it says that you can't other than in the discharge of your duties here act as an agent or attorney for anyone other than the Commonwealth in connection in connection with a particular matter that this agency has a direct and substantial interest so the commission in the state have a direct and substantial interest in the disbursement of community mitigation funds and how those funds are distributed so you can't act as an attorney if you're an attorney or an agent for your city or town or for your private business interest in relation to the disbursement of community mitigation funds so that most commonly could apply in the context of filling out an application that will be submitted to the commission for an award of funds or for calling or appearing before the commission once an application has been submitted to explain the city or town's position as to why it's deserving of funds you can't do things like that because that would be considered acting as an agent for the community or the entity in a matter that the gaming commission has an interest so that is essentially considered sitting on both sides of the table and you are not allowed to do that under the conflict of interest law this is very complicated though so if any of these issues arise and if you're concerned that you may find yourself in the situation i definitely suggest you give me a call or your council or the state ethics commission and again we can help you navigate your way through this in practical terms the ethics commission has spelled it out for us in this fashion they've said that if you're a paid municipal employee you may not do any paid work for the municipality relating to matters that are before the subcommittees you made if you're an unpaid municipal employee you may do unpaid work for your municipality relating to municipal to a subcommittee matters however so if you are an uncompensated board member you can actually do some work on community mitigation related matters because you're not receiving compensation from someone other than the commonwealth for that work thirdly though whether you're paid or unpaid you can't act as an agent for that municipality meaning you can't communicate with the commission on behalf of the municipality with the particular subcommittee or with the staff in relation to community mitigation funds or the disbursement of such funds and you can't act as an attorney in relation to those matters for either your private business enterprise or for your your community they have advised though that a municipal employee whose responsibilities in their full-time positions don't relate to the impact of gaming on the community or unlikely actually to face any issues under section four by serving on this particular committee so if you don't find yourself in that position you probably don't have a lot to be concerned about a few examples and this is the next to last slide here just really quickly a subcommittee member may not work as a paid municipal employee to prepare an application that is requesting funds for work or work on municipal activities that are actually funded by an award from the community mitigation fund you would be considered either receiving compensation or acting as an agent in that particular context a committee member may work as an unpaid municipal employee to prepare an application or on activities funded by an award but you can't sign the application and you can't communicate that meaning you can't serve as an agent on behalf of the municipality with the subcommittee or with any other state agencies about the work of this subcommittee a subcommittee member may not offer legal advice to a municipality in relation to any application or award whether you're paid or unpaid and finally there's section 17 of the conflict of interest law chapter 268a essentially provides that subcommittee members can't act as an agent of the subcommittee in communicating with the municipality either but there are exceptions in the law relative to municipal employees if the municipality designates you as a special municipal employee so that's something to consider if you find yourself in that particular area and again just to reiterate the aim of this presentation is not to make anyone an expert in the conflict of interest laws but really just to give you some background in the types of things that this conflict of interest law covers and the types of pitfalls that people may face themselves with so again I recommend or an offer and invite you to give me a call or any member of the legal staff if you have any questions or even give the state ethics commission a call so I'm happy to take any questions if there are any otherwise best wishes and it will be in touch are there any questions for Todd I know a number of you have been through this already but certainly open the floor if anybody has any particular questions for Todd while we have them okay all right Todd thanks very much for your help I'm going to move around a little bit on the agenda and I know Mr. Cronin is hopefully going to be joining us shortly but if we can move down Joe to item number six which is the update on the 2020 awards before we start jumping into some of the new business do you want to go ahead and and give everybody an overall update on the 2020 awards and the 2020 process that we just went through sure thanks Bruce so 2020 proved to be pretty challenging for us with the COVID-19 and all so you know when we got our applications at the beginning of February and started reviewing them obviously the middle of March things shut down and we started to having to work remotely we had to do all of our meetings with our applicants remotely and and we also had to rethink some of the assumptions that we made when the guidelines were developed on you know into the effects of COVID-19 and what that would have effect would have on our applications so you know the just going into the the basic numbers you recall our target for last year was 11 and a half million dollars in grants we had six million dollars for the east five million dollars for the west and five hundred thousand dollars for the category two facility the Plain Ridge Park in the area of Plain Ridge Park what ended up happening there was that in total we only awarded about six point seven million dollars in grants with about three point nine million going to region a two and a half million going to region b and 283,000 going towards the tribal category two facilities so there are there are a bunch of reasons why that number came in law partly it was due to COVID so for example in our workforce grants we had two workforce grants that totaled your application originally were eight hundred thousand dollars uh but as we got into it what we found especially with COVID that a lot of this work was being done in the area of culinary and hospitality where essentially all those folks had been laid off at the casinos and and also in the broader community um there were there were you know huge number of layouts in the restaurant business hotel business and things of that nature so what we ended up doing is you know if these grants have to be the result of an impact from the casino and if the you know our licensees were sort of indicating to us that certainly for at least this year they they didn't see those jobs coming back as strongly as you know as as we had hoped and that resulted in us um needing to you know not give out grants for those for that kind of work so you know in those workforce grants we wound up um giving them the grants for the work for the uh basic adult education adult basic education you know um high school diplomas and so on uh which all casino employees require so those those dollar values were significantly reduced and in addition to that there were a couple of areas like the the first year of our construction project grants we received we uh targeted three million dollars statewide for that and we received applications of about six point seven million dollars so in that case we ended up having to sort of trying to keep with that guideline we had to eliminate some of those projects and also we did have a number of projects that just came in that didn't really meet our standards where they had to demonstrate a connection to the casino so in the end uh you know we decided that you know with COVID and all that we would be uh pretty conservative on how we were how we were putting out money and uh so that's basically excuse me that's basically why we went from that sort of 11 and a half million down to the uh six point seven million now if you recall the way that we uh divvied up the money we did it by region and the money in each region that wasn't spent will roll over into 2021 so we will have that money available for 2021 plus the new money that is generated as part of the um you know just from our general uh our gaming revenues so um with that that's essentially a little summary of where we are um you know we got some really good projects for this year we got a bunch of those new construction projects which was great we continued doing transportation planning and non-transportation planning and you know our specific impacts so um we think we got a lot of good projects but also we had you know quite a quite a number of challenges to overcome and I guess with that I'll open that up to any questions that anybody might have anybody have any questions on the the kind of 2020 awards that were made all right seeing none um I'll just check in here and see if Mr Cronin has joined us I don't believe yes I just I can't get it online so I dialed in uh thank you Sean greatly appreciate it happy to have you join us by phone thank you so much for uh for dialing in it gives us the opportunity to have a quorum and obviously have some good discussion on some of the policy issues which I know we're on the agenda uh I am going to hold off uh Sean you missed uh our our chair happened to join us real quickly and and give some welcoming and thank yous we're also joined on this call by uh our executive director Karen Wells our new executive director Karen Wells as well as our new general counsel um Todd Grossman and a new member of the community mitigation fund team Tanya Perez who's come on board uh with us to assist Mary and Joe uh obviously as we all recognize the the program is getting a little bit bigger we have a number of grants that uh not only we awarded this year but in previous years that we continue to track uh so we certainly I'll certainly thought that some extra bodies on the team to uh help us make sure that the grants continue to be in compliance and being spent uh effectively and according to our guidelines was helpful um I'll come back to the approval of the minutes in just a second but um Sean we also did a quick update on ethics course and compliance certainly uh we won't go back over that uh you're certainly familiar with them because we've gone through the uh an overview of those before but obviously if you have any questions feel free to reach out to uh Todd to Todd Grossman and the MGC legal team if you have any questions um okay Joe can we move on to uh discussion around the 2021 mitigation fund policy questions sure let me I'm gonna share my screen I think this was all sent out this was sent out to all of you as well but um just so we have it up on the screen so you know for this year again due to the challenges that we had last year and um you know the fact that we went uh almost four months I think without revenues from our licensees we've really we're really not recommending a whole lot of wholesale changes to the program for this year um we're we're saying let's sort of keep status quo but a few things did arise during the course of this last year that um we uh put in some questions regarding that that would like everybody to think about now you'll see in this in this document a lot of these questions are questions that we ask every year and I'm not going to dwell on these for very long because I think some of them are almost uh they can't really answer themselves um I will try to focus mostly on those new items that that have come up uh and in the last year during our review of applications and so on but I will walk through each of these items quickly so the first question is should the commission place an overall limit on grants for 2021 well we've always placed a limit on grants and and we certainly are fiscally constrained by how much money we have so I think you know the answer to that is you know we have to put some kind of a limit on on the grants and then should the commission continue to place a per grant limit for 2021 CMF awards again we've always limited the amount of grants to sort of a maximum um just so we're not getting these really crazy requests uh initially um you can see here what all of those numbers are um and and where we're we're falling out with them and I think maybe with the exception of the transportation construction projects um I think we want to keep them the same as they are and I'll talk about transportation construction a little bit later um should the commission continue to place a limit on grants in each gaming region based on the projected tax revenues generated uh for the CMF by the facility in that region you know as we've done the last couple years we've split up uh the funds by region by the by the dollar generated within that region um and while this year and as I just said so we had some money that we didn't spend from last year so that will roll over into this year in accordance with our guidelines and then there's the then there's the dollars that are generated during calendar year 2020 so right now we're still uh doing kind of a guesstimate for um the october november december revenues uh and september revenues we haven't seen those yet um but my early estimate shows that we will we will have about eight million dollars available for region a and five million dollars available for region b and then for category two um we're again proposing a sort of a five hundred thousand dollar cap for those impacts in that area typically in the past we haven't seen that kind of uh activity down with the category two facility but we do certainly want to keep a certain amount set aside for that um and then this is kind of this is the 2020 results this is directly out of our guidelines from last year and explains exactly how we uh we split up the money and how it rolls over for you know the the money will roll over for a period of three years within each region and if it's if it's not used in that region then it will sort of roll it would roll over into a fund that could be used by either region um and we're not proposing any changes to that um number four this uh this reflects back this is one of the new items that we really want you to think about um and talking about this is the workforce grants and uh should we continue to be uh doing those in the east and west areas and if so at what level and then also should the scope of these grants be limited due to the effects of COVID-19 on the hospitality industry you know I think um again the the issuance of these grants has to be in response to an impact of the casinos and the way that we sort of got at hospitality and culinary was saying that the need was so big between MGM and Encore that uh they were taking not only were they hiring a lot of people but they were taking a lot of people from other restaurants and other hotels and things of that nature to come to work at that facility and they're providing grants to help people train in those areas is um made a whole lot of sense and and fell within sort of the purview of of the community mitigation fund grants but I think um you know what we're saying is that under with COVID-19 that it has had a dramatic effect on the food and beverage and hotel industries I mean you see now a bunch of hotels are being used by colleges uh you know for dorm rooms instead of instead of hotels uh I heard a report that maybe a third of the restaurants in massachusetts have closed that might never open again so uh the notion that we need to be training hospitality and culinary workers is um certainly some are questionable so I get I would ask all of you to think about that and whether or not we should be doing that and or where we should be focusing grants in relation to casino impacts um number five should we continue to allow funding be a portion of construction costs of transportation projects so last year was our first year of transportation projects and it was very successful I think we established a three million dollar statewide target um we received over six million dollars in applications and we funded actually more than our three million dollar target we funded 3.2 million because we wanted to make sure that we got at all of the really good applications um so I think you know we I think we certainly want to continue this program it shows that there's a certain need there um and uh the question is do we want to um do we want to do anything with the statewide target or with the dollar value target um my initial thoughts on this are maybe the statewide target could go up a little bit since we have more money in the east particularly you know last year we programmed six million and we're suggesting there's probably about eight million available for the east and you know these transportation construction projects are pretty expensive um in 2020 we did get one application for more than a million dollars it was for a million and a half and we did end up awarding it because it was really only a fairly small percentage of the project and it was a really well conceived and funded project um where we only wound up funding I think with something less than 20 percent of the total project cost um even at a million and a half dollars so um we would really like you to think about that on those targets um and item six this one came up again during the uh with the transportation construction projects should we cap the construction costs that the community mitigation fund will fund so the way the guidelines were written last year it said the commission anticipates that any cmf assistance will only be for a percentage of the cost of any such project and the significant of the federal state local private or other funding will be available to pay for the costs of any such project I think last year I had mentioned the possibility of putting a hard cap on that um on the percent that the community mitigation fund would provide and it was decided to not do that at that time and what we found is that as the projects came in they sort of ran the gamut we had uh two projects come in that proposed zero percent match local match that it was 100 percent gaming commission funds um and then we had everything in between um so you know we had a difficult time you know all these projects there's certainly a local benefit in addition to addressing the casino impact um and on a lot of these I think the argument could be made and and should be made that the local benefit is well in excess of the mitigation of the casino impact um so what we ended up doing is we didn't fund the two projects that had a zero percent uh local match in fact these those two projects were actually pretty far afield from the casino and you know they didn't really make a great demonstration that that these projects were really um addressing a particular impact of the casino so we had more than just uh the issue with zero percent local funding um so what we wound up with is the maximum funding that we provided was about one third of the project cost and even that was sort of we were a little bit on the fence on whether that was maybe too high for the for the for the benefit um of addressing the casino impact so that's one of the questions that we really have is should we put a maximum on that should it be maybe 25 percent or 33 percent or something of that nature Hey Joe can we just check in with everybody is there anybody who has any comments or questions about the the six guideline questions that Joe's reviewed so far any thoughts or comments Hi Commissioner this is uh Jose Delgado I'm not one of your uh team members of this committee but I did have a question in in response to um particularly something like the transportation funds is it the understanding that when the commission grants these award is it is it 100 to understanding that these grants are being given out because there is an impact or because I know Joe kind of went over it really quickly and so that was one of the things I'm curious about just on my end um because when we when we write support letters we obviously want these funds uh to stay in western mass I was one of the original reasons that the the committees have fought for these funds to stay in western mass so they don't get consumed by the eastern part of state and that they don't go end up in the general fund I guess I just would like some clarification it's if these grants are granted is it 100 that there is an impact yeah you know Jose the like just let's use an example of the you know we we issued a grant to west springfield for a million dollars to do some complete streets work that they did now we gave them a grant before that to do a transportation uh study and you know they have to demonstrate that there's a casino impact associated with that now we fully understand that you know when you do a project like this like a complete streets project it's protecting more than just the impact of the casino now what they demonstrated was that it was just through the initially through the um the environmental impact report process um and this was on oh I'm forgetting the it's um park street when you come over the north the north end bridge is it yeah yeah into west springfield you know the the EIR was showing that about five percent of the traffic would go that way from the casino and during peak hours you're saying okay so that there's a real impact on those streets but the other thing is this this complete streets thing is improving pedestrian access and vehicle access to the people of west springfield not just to the casino so this was one of the projects I think it was about a third of the project cost is coming from the community mitigation fund of two thirds coming from other sources the community or the state um so you know yes they have to demonstrate an impact of the casino but in the case of these transportation projects we're saying that that ancillary benefit to the community is probably more than just addressing the casino. Okay thanks for clarifying that. Anyone else before we move down into some of the additional questions okay hearing none Joe you want to keep going number seven? Yeah number seven this is sort of a repeat from last year um we had talked about trying to look at what some of the larger multi-year projects might be in the areas and then you know COVID hit and you know frankly we didn't really get around to doing that this year we may try to look at that again for next year. And number eight this is this is brand new so should the commission consider the creation of an emergency reserve within the community mitigation fund for unknown impacts that arise after February 1st 2021? So in the past we have at least certainly internally and I'm I can't remember if we have discussed it with this group or the local community mitigation advisory committees otherwise but there was a talk of you know what happens we have this February 1st deadline for applications what happens if something you know an impact is discovered or happens newly begins after that date that would sort of leave people completely out in the lurch for maybe a year or more while sort of waiting to file an application so the notion here was if if we could put a reserve of a fairly nominal amount of money and I'm throwing out the number of $200,000 here as being you know substantial enough to help address an impact but not so substantial as it would really affect the capacity of the mitigation fund and the idea here is in a previous program that I worked in we had an emergency reserve I used to work with the program where we funded water and sewer projects for cities and towns and we had an emergency reserve and you know if something really catastrophic happened that had a huge public health impact they could come to us and and get money immediately rather than having to go through a sort of a whole whole long process so I think here you know we're saying that I think I think we'd like to do something like this you know it truly has to be something that was not it that didn't exist before that February 1st deadline it truly has to be something new it can't just be something like oh I missed the deadline I want to throw in an application to try to get the money it has to be truly a new impact and it has to be directly related to the casino again this can't be something that you know that has an ancillary connection to the casino but it certainly has to be something that's it's sort of brand new that nobody knew that it that it was happening or at least first discovered after that and I think the notion of this you know this isn't to be used for like cost overruns on a project or anything of that nature it has to be truly a new impact and you know the idea here is that it would allow us you know to be more nimble in in trying to help the communities now I can't say even I don't have any idea what this what kind of an emergency could arise but then again I didn't really have any idea that a pandemic was going to arise either so you know and we're certainly not here to mitigate COVID impacts but you know you just never know what could arise and I think the likelihood of a fund like this being used is probably pretty small but having it there in sort of a nominal sum it seems like it's it's prudent to do that and you know we're working around the the issues of you know our our statute says applications have to be in before February 1st well how do you deal with that from a legal standpoint and we have Todd who's working on that with his staff to try to figure that out but I guess the question for this group is do you think it's a good idea do you think it's something we should try to do or do you think it's something that's just harebrained and we want to throw aside are there anybody's welcome anybody's thoughts obviously as Joe pointed out this is somewhat of a a new guideline something that we've been thinking about but something that would certainly be different than the makeup for the use of the community mitigation fund in the past is there anybody out there it's got any thoughts or ideas or suggestions as to how we might proceed Joe have you had any experience over the past few years where anybody has reached out to you after the deadline and come up with anything that was you know unforeseen no not really you know I guess well I shouldn't say that you know the Everett police department you know they they came to us initially saying hey we've got these you know the with a late night drink service the two to four a.m. service that wasn't anticipated and they were wondering if they could get money for that and you know we told them yeah you probably can I mean it's an eligible cost public safety costs are eligible but you'd have to wait until the regular process and they did follow the regular process so it wasn't you know I guess you that you could possibly consider an emergency but I guess it really wasn't an emergency per se unexpected so I guess that makes sense but no not really I mean obviously many people have called me up asking how do I get this money and they've called me up in March and I say well you got to wait until next year but they weren't truly looking at emergency type things but again I think the likelihood of this on being used is probably pretty small but I I do like the notion of it being there now in the program that I used to run I mean obviously underground infrastructure is more prone to catastrophic failures I'll just give you an example in the town of Plymouth the main trunk line of their sewer that brings all of their wastewater to their wastewater treatment plant first and they needed money fast and we were able to get them that money quickly and not have them have to wait until you know again we had a program that was annual and basis and you know it would have taken them sort of like a year and a half to get the money or we get them the money in three or four months so it cut down on the process now do I have anything in my back pocket that I think could happen here I really don't and again I think the likelihood is pretty small but but I don't think it's a bad idea especially because it's a small amount that you're talking about you know in the event something does arise yeah and you know and on the amount of money too by by sort of you're putting aside a small amount of money the commission under all of their categories can increase that amount and and they would be you know if somebody came in I don't know and needed half a million dollars to address an unknown impact the commission could waive that $200,000 requirement and go up to $500 assuming there's money available in the fund to do so you know in fact every category is always waivable by the commission but again I think just putting that aside and look if it doesn't get used in a year it would just expire and we'd re-up it next the next year if we decided that we wanted to do that and it just you know really wouldn't have much of an impact on the positive part. I guess that was my other question was would that roll over like the rest of the funds or would that expire and it would just be that flat rate each year? Yeah it would expire the example that we use is and if we have money that we've earmarked for the region C for that for the for the I should say for the tribal facility that for we every year for the last three I think we put aside $200,000 for the SERPED the Southeast Region Planning Authority to help out those communities around Taunton should the casino move ahead and every year it's been oh nothing's happening on the casino so that money just goes away and we re-up at the next year we re-up at the next year and we did the same thing this year so I look at it as being very similar to that we would just put this money up it wouldn't be earmarked in that money obviously it's earmarked to an agency this wouldn't be earmarked to anyone in particular it would be available to anyone you know should a true emergency arise. Thanks Jennifer for your thoughts anyone else? I think the other issue hanging in the back of our mind is you know 2020 is probably going to wreak some havoc on some local and municipal budgets again it's an expectation but another reason for us to have this conversation around some type of emergency set aside Eric did you want to weigh in? I did Mr. Chair I actually support this I think it's a it's a great idea it's a great start and laying foundation if the past six eight months haven't hasn't proven anything to us it's certainly proven that there are a lot of unknown unknowns and I think this would provide some reasonable flexibility in guidance knowing that we cannot control our future and we should always have policies in place that would make it easier for us to adapt to situations outside of our control. Okay thank you anyone else? All right I appreciate everybody's input Joe you want to keep going with yeah number nine or number eight? Where was it so that was oh yes the number nine public safety operational costs we allowed those for the first time in 2020 and I think we're proposing not to make really any changes to that we had a maximum of $200,000 just by way of last year we did have four applications for public safety operational funding we approved two we approved one with a reduced level of funding and one of them was denied the one that was denied was was actually out in Springfield with the fire department where it was quite clear that these costs should have been covered under their with their host community agreement so we so we did not approve that application on number 10 how should we use the information from the annual look back studies in determining mitigation requests so just in this past year you know we we've got some traffic studies that are being done by the licensees and some look back studies of various sorts as well as our own research agenda and wherever that information is available we are utilizing it we did run into some difficulty last year out in the western part of the state where some of the look back studies for the first year had not been completed partially due to covid and other reasons and it would have been really valuable information to have and make an assessment on a couple of the applications but so we had to do that I won't say blind but but maybe with one hand tied behind our back um Regency in fact I just mentioned this about the money that we've been putting aside uh for the tribal casino uh we don't really expect anything to be happening within Regency at least uh during the point where we're getting applications Bruce did we have any update from the commission at all on I know we went out and asked for comment on Regency any is there any idea of when we're going to consider that we went out before covid hit and put out a request for expressions of interest to a number of questions that we have around the prospects for Regency and whether the market could bear another category one casino at this point we did get some responses to that request for expressions of interest unfortunately we got them right back right around the time right around the time that everything had shut down because of covid so right now that's just hanging out there right now okay so item 12 should the commission require a dollar for dollar match for its CMF grants um we have not required dollar for dollar matches uh on our grants we do ask folks to provide in-kind services things of that nature you know under the non-transportation and transportation planning grants we we do allow personnel costs to be included for instance under a transportation planning grant if you were doing a you know a large study uh sometimes they want to hire either a consultant or actual municipal employee to work on that effort last year we changed our rules saying the community mitigation fund will not pay the full cost of any municipal employee and we did have some requests for that where uh where community said well we want you to pay for the whole salary and we'll play we'll pay for the benefits and so on and similar to the transportation construction projects that the review team was having a little tough time with some of these applications where again there was an impact of the casino being addressed but it was really a large community benefit that was also associated with it and when someone was proposing like you know a personnel to work 100% on this you know the community has to certify that 100% of their time is spent on casino related projects and so on you know so we've had some sort of internal discussion saying hey if we require a match on these things we may get some more thoughtful applications uh on some of these things and that also you know saying hey if they're providing a good match saying you know there's a local benefit and we know then part of its casino related and that you know that's a little better distribution of course if you require a match there will probably be a reduced level of applications the more the more money you require communities to put up the less likely they're to apply for the funds and we certainly want our funds to be well utilized so I don't think we really have a recommendation there I guess just would like you to think about that and if you have ideas on that we would love to hear them okay now this here should the commission place a time limit for the use of previously authorized reserves for the 2021 community mitigation fund program so back in 2015 and 16 we gave all the surrounding communities a hundred thousand dollar grant really the notion was to prepare for the openings of the casinos but we have a number of these communities who have not used this money yet and it's you know it's tying up some capacity in the program and you know frankly we can't just have money sitting out there forever so I think the thought here was is that we probably should put the communities on notice that they have some but a time certain to spend this money or lose it you know my thought is that if we gave them till the end of 2021 calendar year 2021 you know at least get the money programmed for a study or something so that would still give them plenty of time to be thinking about this we do need to reach out to all these communities there could very well be some communities that have no idea that they have these funds available you know you have turnover you have you know many of these communities you know the town planner turns over the you know that there's a new there's a new mayor there's you know a whole new administration so there are communities that may very well not even know that they have this money so our our plan is this fall is you know to be reaching out to all of the communities just to meet with them and go over the grants that they have and and the reserves that they have available that kind of thing but I guess you know we would ask you to think about whether or not or what a good time frame might be to give them you know to get that those grant funds you utilized is there is are there any particular comments or questions about that question obviously it's a somewhat change in our in our program but I don't know if there was any direct feedback than any of you might have on that I think it's a it makes a lot of sense it's a good approach I think most most grants people receive their timeline timelines associated with it and I think you made a good point that there's a lot of turnover between elected officials and municipal staff and some may not know that they haven't expended the funds so I think first reaching out to them makes a lot of sense and then following up maybe with a with a deadline to use them great thank you go ahead Joe okay should the commission continue authorized funding for non-transportation related planning for those communities that have expended their reserves we have had some really good non-transportation planning projects and I think we're not really proposing any change in this area I think the limit seems to be fine and you know we're getting some good application this year we did get some not so good applications in this category where the connection to the casino casino I will say charitably was tenuous you know some of these seem like communities saying yeah let's give it a shot if we get it great if we don't you know no harm no foul I think so we did have to deny I think I think there are at least three of these applications that we denied this year due to that fact where there really was not a good connection to the casino sure and the last advisory committee meeting we were at there was some mention about provide providing workshops for the surrounding communities is that something that's being considered because I mean it it seems foolish for these communities to there I think they're just throwing a dart at a dartboard and hoping maybe it'll stick but I think a workshop would be good so that they understand there has to be an excess between their application and an actual impact it may some you know reviewing unnecessary applications yeah what I'm planning on doing is probably in early January get the holidays out of the way maybe you know that first or second week of January a couple weeks two or three weeks before applications are due have and you know the fact now that we can do this stuff remotely actually makes it I think a whole lot easier I mean before it would have meant you know doing you know setting up a location and a meeting in the east and the west and and down by the category two and you know with this this way I can set up a couple of different times for workshops and you know and do it remotely and explain you know what's a good connection to the casino and what's not a good connection to the casino and you know how you know sort of how our thought process works on some of these things I mean that that connection to the you know with the single most difficult question to answer in all of these applications I mean we see these applications and most of them yeah a few of them are pretty out there but most of them are really right on the money and we really like them but there's no connection to the casino and if there isn't we simply can't give the money out you know we look at these things going hey that's a great project but sorry it just doesn't meet the guidelines so so yeah that's on my plans for early January is to get notifications you know our guidelines will come out at the beginning of December and we'll be notifying you know half the world to that they're out there and and letting them know and they I think at that point in that announcement that we make I'll want to at the same time make an announcement of what the workshops will bring okay well administrative costs right now we don't allow administrative costs in community mitigation fund applications except with the workforce due to that nature of that program they are eligible we're not really proposing any changes to that private parties we've had we sort of tightened up those guidelines last year on who's eligible for funding and we're not proposing any changes to that joint applications we we have always always encouraged them we actually have an incentive for communities to work together I think this is one of the things I want to stress in the workshops is that some of these things you know we've had communities individual communities come in you know looking for say money to do like a tourist plan and wouldn't it be great if three or four communities got together and did a more regional kind of tourist plan than each community sort of trying to do their own and then number 18 should communities be limited to only one specific impact grant we're not really proposing any changes to that this this one number 19 back in 2016 the commission gave the hand in county sheriff's office a grant for two million dollars their their western mass correctional alcohol center was located in the footprint of mgm and they needed to move and they of course they went to a new facility and their their cost of lease assistance went way up so we agreed to fund five years at four hundred thousand dollars per year a total of two million dollars and last year of course was the last year of that and they have asked us to consider extending this lease assistance you know as as an entity they're eligible to apply for a grant regardless of whether we I mean I suppose the commission said specifically we're not going to give them any more money it would be you know somewhat a waste of time for them to apply but as I mean they're an eligible entity so they can apply for the money but and you know out in the western region so far we've had more money available than we've had for applications not that that's necessarily a consideration but you know that that's sort of where it is and we're just putting it out there as to whether or not we should consider extending that number 20 this is we have some older grants that have not expended their money we've got three or four or five of them where they were given a grant and they've just in the communities have just never moved ahead with it and similar to the just the the hundred thousand dollar monies that we gave to all the communities you know this this money either needs to be spent or we need to rescind it and again I think we want to reach out to all these communities and say hey do you really have plans to spend this money or not um you know there's maybe some possibilities of repurposing it if it's you know pretty closely associated with what they wanted to do with it but we have a couple of grants that we gave you know like to Everett and Somerville to design a head house the head house that connects into the Sullivan the assembly square stationed head house when it looks like you know Encore is not going to be building the bridge right now so we obviously don't want to be spending money on something that's not going to happen so I think that's just another thing to opiate on whether or not we should be taking that money back or giving them this time frame to use it and this this number 21 this year we had a community apply in two different categories of grant for the same project which we never really envisioned that happening um but there was nothing in the guidelines that prohibited it from happening um and in fact we actually did end up awarding both of those grants those sort of the city of Chelsea on their Williams and Beecham Street corridor um you know they could have asked for a waiver on one of the categories or put it all in there but it was a really good project and we really did it but I think we didn't envision people coming in on two categories um and I think we would like to sort of tighten that up and say look apply you can apply to one category and if your project is worthwhile and you want to go over the dollar values make your argument and we can waive that if we think that it's um worthwhile and then items these last items here um these are just the you know the what we use to evaluate the grant applications and these have been the same for a number of years and we're not really proposing to change those and I think with that that's those are all the questions that we have so I would welcome you know we went through this pretty quickly and all and so I would welcome you know you guys to think about this a little bit and if you have uh if you just want to email me or mark up the document or whatever um you know if you could send comments to to Mary and Tanya that'd be great and we can try to incorporate all of the the comments so that when this all goes to the commission they have sort of all the information available any questions before we move on okay um seeing none Joe if you'll take that down I think back to the agenda the next item we had on the agenda is the question of uh using use of the community mitigation fund for administrative purposes of the fund uh and before I hand it over to Joe um we're also joined by our CFA of Derek Linen uh Derek has a very lengthy career experience working in other state agencies uh so we invited him to also help us have this conversation with all of you about using community mitigation funds for again administration and staff resources etc to manage the fund you know I was thinking today if you look back into the gaming statute one of the uh one of the agencies that receives direct support from percentage of the gaming revenue taxes is the mass cultural council and the statute in assigning them money specifically allowed them to use I think it was up to 15% of the grant funds to administer their own grant so that's a question we certainly would like to to hear from all of you get your feedback on but I will uh I'll turn it over to Derek if he's still with us if he wanted to join us and offer any comments or thoughts there he is Derek thank you um good afternoon everyone so if I start breaking up just let me know someone wave and I'll have to go off camera my internet has been a little um wonky today so I'll just go off camera and that's kind of helped to allow me to continue talking but um in the FY 21 budget um proposal that I've brought forward to the commission I had put in close to 200,000 in administrative cost of the community mitigation fund and I was looking to charge off a piece of Joe Delaney and a piece of Mary Thurlow um I have a lot of experience dealing with grant funding in the past at um housing and as uh housing and economic development we worked on the mass works programs I was at public safety when the office of grants and research was actually turned into the programs division and all the money for homeland security federal money for that the burn grant balance against women um juvenile justice programs all consolidated under there so you know I think it's it's pretty consistent for administrative funds of monitoring the grant or paid for by the grant we haven't done that here just because casino revenues hadn't been coming in and we're working mainly off of the licensing fees now the casino revenues are coming in we'd like to go through this process um our legal department has recommended that we draft regs that allow up to a certain percentage of the um community mitigation fund be allowed to be utilized for mainly protecting the grant funds because it is it is somewhat of a liability you know you've got a grant portfolio that's upwards of 10 million dollars annually and we have part time Mary Thurlow and part time Joe Delaney administering it um we would love to do a lot more work on going out and reviewing some of the programs making sure they're doing exactly as said um not saying that in a bad way but that's the comptrol as guidelines for efficient sub recipient monitoring um right now we're doing it mainly through paperwork we're hoping that can alleviate some of the burden on the details that Mary's asking for through paperwork the back and forth calls the back and forth emails if we could just have someone dedicated to this and that's part of pulling Tanya over right now but the gaming rev and the gaming licensees are paying for all of this right now once through the taxes that are being charged off and then two through our annual assessment for everything that um we pay for that isn't racing related so a lot of this would be to make sure that dedicated resources are put towards this program it's not someone's part-time responsibilities and then working you know one thing we're asking all of these groups to think about is what's the right way about going forward with it right we came up with one of the one of the regional meetings that just setting a percentage cap doesn't always make for efficient use of it so would would we want the commission to approve the annual budget um is a question that came up in one of the in the regional meetings and I think that's a pretty good idea because it gets the same transparency as our budget process does um to make sure that the costs are truly appropriate and it gives a public comment period for anyone that wants to I don't think that these costs should be borne by that program or um if we're putting a certain priority forward I know that Joe and Mary would love to see a database being able to have a public process on that what's the cost of the database versus just piecing off a percentage of it would make sense um and you know anything else that you could think of regarding how to make this program good because um we want ultimately the best use of these resources um we want ultimately the best use of this fund so that we don't have a negative audit ever come back and say hey look at this is what happened because I can destroy all the good work that's done with the program so that's that's mainly what we're proposing that's mainly the concept that we're looking at and we really look at the collaborative side I know that um Commissioner Stevens has said he would love to see a equitable distribution between Region A and Region B on how much administrative funds are captured from each area of the grant program so that one region doesn't absorb all the costs just because they don't give out as many grants each year um you know you figure out what the total cost is and then take that from Region A or Region B based on what their allocation to the grant funding is so you know these are the types of things that we'd love to have hashed out we can get those into regs so that they live they're not just from year to year um and then it takes a rather deliberative process to change any of those those things going into the future thanks Derek Joe anything you want to anything you want to add no I think I think um Derek captured that pretty well I think it's you know going forward as this program gets larger and especially now that we're doing some construction projects you know we need to be out there in the field more um working with our communities and things like that and that's certainly going to take more time um to do that and um you know and I think Derek mentioned the database and some other things we definitely have some needs that as this program gets larger um it becomes a little bit more unwieldy to manage okay um it's is Derek mentioned we are in the process Todd and the legal team of pulling some regs together so as is Derek pointed out this would be kind of ingrained in how we do business and certainly all of you would be welcome to offer your comments um and feedback in the regulatory process as well but um open it up to see if anybody had any initial reaction or initial thoughts with respect to Derek's comments at this time this is this is Sean hi Sean go ahead hi I I would just say that I think there's nothing wrong with doing that you know my local government experience you know I was trying to charge you overhead to certain funds and certain grants and those types of things so you know conceptually I don't think there's anything wrong with it all I just think that there does need to be a real formal and rigid approach to how you do it I mean you maintain consistency with that approach but overall I personally don't see anything wrong with that okay thank you Sean anybody else Ron or Jennifer or Derek I agree I think I think it's um it's a good move and especially if you want to provide the oversight that you've talked about um I think it's I think it's necessary Bruce obviously what I said in the priority which is it certainly is completely fair it's logical and as I mentioned Derek before I always like it done based upon sort of actual expenses to be reimbursed and not just some arbitrary percentage right so agreed that certain people at certain percentages and certain other expenses are paid for out of the fund and I think that it will be high for anybody to argue it's anything but prudent okay thanks Ron yeah I actually I agree as well thank you Mr. Chair I agree as well it seems reasonable it's consistent with how we treat our other federal state grants as well as other local resources I just wanted to offer I certainly would like to be part of the regulatory review as being a federal former federal auditor I dig this stuff so I'd be more than happy to take a review and offer any comments as well I'm making you note of that because we're going to take you up on that please do anybody else Bruce I think just want to mention I think the intent was to send this out to all the members of the LCMACs and the GPACs and you know the subcommittees and so on just when the regs are out absolutely absolutely all right okay we're moving through the agenda I do need to go just back up to the top of the agenda now that we have a quorum again included in your meeting minute your meeting packet was the minutes from the November 26 2019 meeting I'd love to have those approved if somebody would be willing to offer that motion I'll make the motion that we approve those do I have a second second any comments questions edits changes okay seeing none all those in favor I I have to abstain I I Commissioner Stevens if I may once again we need a roll call vote for things in this format oh yes okay sorry about that all right we'll quickly I'll quickly go across the top of the screen uh Ron Hogan yes Haskell Kennedy yes okay Sean Cronin yes John Robertson John's still with us I think he's muted Tanya can you unmute hang on John we're gonna want to be there you are good thank you I'm a yes okay uh Eric yes okay and Jennifer I think you said you had to abstain is that correct correct okay and the chair votes aye thank you um Joe let's move on to uh item number seven on the agenda which is next steps okay um so we're gonna actually Mary can you um can you give us a rundown of what the what the schedule looks like I can all right so the next uh subcommittee is on October 27th 130 to 3 and then the next meeting after that will be November 23rd again 130 to 3 o'clock and Mary then what are the topics that you have on for those meetings uh the guideline discussion is one of them so the draft guidelines on the October and then the final in November yes okay data breach and so now what's happening is people are just they're they're using this data which will apply for unemployment insurance because and hoping that they could set up the different email accounts and the likes on it okay so I think that's that's pretty much it okay it's all just flipping through on the news yeah that's why I went on the website and um can we just mute John I think he's having another conversation okay there we go all right thanks John sorry um any other business anybody who haven't as anything they would like to raise with this committee at this point nope all right okay none all right um if there's no other business I'll entertain a motion to adjourn so moved okay second motion made by Ron seconded by Haskell I got to do another quick roll call Ron yes Haskell yes Eric yes Sean yes Jennifer yes all right we'll go back to John and time yeah okay great thanks everybody for your time and participation we greatly appreciate it uh hope everybody stays well it's nice to see everybody even in a little box but uh one of these days will be uh all back together but thanks for your time and and service on the committee as the chair said earlier should be uh we all greatly appreciate it so thanks very much for your time thank you take care everyone all right stay safe bye everyone bye bye