 Good morning everyone. I call to order public meeting number 259, one quick agenda item that we will not be dealing with. We will not be having an executive session at the end of this today. And I want to turn to our executive director to give us more about that. Thank you. Sure. So, there we go. I will, and I'm just going to pass this along to General Counsel Blue. We did put that on as a placeholder just in case, but General Counsel Blue can sort of tell us where we are in that process. Good morning commissioners. Good morning. I had asked that an executive session be placed on the agenda in case there was a need to discuss litigation strategy with the commission in executive session. I do not have any litigation strategy updates for the commission, so as Commissioner Cameron noted, there will not be an executive session today. Regarding the Nevada litigation, I can't advise the commission that as requested by the judge in the case, the parties are continuing to work on an order for submission to the judge for her review consistent with the judge's direction. We are still within the time allotted to provide that order to the judge. Finally, as we know, we'll have a new chair joining us shortly. I anticipate that we may need an executive session to further brief her in the commission on litigation strategy. Any executive session after her arrival will be noticed as appropriate with the open meeting law. Yeah. Thank you for that. That makes sense. And we've all, most of us have had a chance to meet the new chair. She will make a tremendous addition to our team and looks forward to delving into these issues. And I would totally agree with you that an executive session with her in presence is certainly a better way to go, more valuable to everybody. So I believe by our next meeting she will be here. Okay. Moving on to this meeting, approval of the minutes. Commissioner Stebbins. Sure, Madam Chair. I move the commission approved the minutes from the January 10th, 2019 meeting subject to correction for any typographical errors or other non-material matters. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Aye. 540. Okay. Moving on to our administrative update back to you, Executive Director Bedrosian. Good morning, commissioners. Good morning. Before my update, I anticipate this actually will be a relatively concise meeting. I won't say brief, but concise. The agenda, as you can see, has a regulation, some votes for racing, and then our mid-year budget review, which we started last meeting. In terms of general update, I think both General Counsel Blue and Interim Chair Cameron have pointed out the appointment of a new chair. And indeed, she's already come over and start to engage in that transition process. We are continuing to work with her in that transition process. She's leaving one important job to another important job, so we're going to facilitate that. Which actually leads me to the second agenda item, which is Regency Discussion. And we had previously talked about bringing this back up in front of the commission in January, which we are. But the interim factor change in circumstances is the appointment of a new chair. And it seems appropriate that we wait until the new chair is in place, so the new commission in total can address this. I would also note that we've recently got an additional public comment from the Aquina Tribe, which we will update our public packet. I don't think the public packet today has it in, but we do have public comments. We will update those public comments and post those. And once the new chair is in place and comfortable with everything else that she has to do, as this will be an appropriate agenda item, we will obviously repost this with the appropriate notice. But there's nothing substantive I would suggest we need to do today. I totally agree that any decision we make should include our new chairwoman and giving her a little time to understand the issues and read all the comments is certainly appropriate. And this last comment has some interesting information, so I look forward to incorporating that in the discussion. Yeah, whether it's the meeting that she's here or another one, I look forward to perhaps having a discussion on some of the comments that we have received. There is at least a couple that I think need merit some clarification as to what they might be commenting on, some at least from a legal standpoint as to whether we have the authority or not to issue another license. I think it's having that discussion again with the new chair might be a really good starting point for these considerations. Sure. So we will keep that on obviously our agenda and figure out when the new chair arrives when the appropriate time is among all the other issues to re-raise that. Great. Thank you. That's all I have, Matt. Great. Okay, moving on to item four, our legal division, General Counsel Blue. Commissioners, you have in your packet today the final draft version of 205 CMR 146. This is the gaming equipment regulation. You have already approved this by emergency. This changed some of the language of certain of the tables where you could have seven chairs instead of saying you had to have seven. You could have up to seven to give some flexibility to our licensees. We did have a public hearing on that regulation this morning. There were no comments. So we have taken it through the process. We just need your approval to finalize the promulgation process today. And the red line version is the one included in the packet, right? These are all the changes. That's right. That we have proposed. Yes. And it is the same as what you approved by emergency last time as well. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Madam chair, I move that the commission approved the amended small business impact statement for 205 CMR 146 gaming equipment that was included in the packet. Second. Further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Not in favor? Okay. Four zero. Moving on to the impact statement. Sure. I further move that the commission approved the version of 205 CMR 146 gaming equipment is included in the packet and authorized the staff to take all steps necessary to finalize the regulation promulgation process. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Not in favor? Okay. Good. I assume we didn't have any further discussion there. Okay. Very good. Thank you. Okay. We're moving right along to the racing division. Dr. Lightbaum. Good morning commissioners. Good morning. This morning we have in front of us the recovery of the 2017 unclaimed tickets for the different tracks. If you remember at our last meeting we asked for approval for the tickets to individual patrons to be paid and they were approved. So the only track that had individual payments of patrons was Suffolk. So on the first one for Suffolk Downs their total was 236,302 31 and you subtract that amount of the unclaimed tickets to patrons the two 1763. So the total that we're asking from Suffolk Downs is 236,084 68. And these do require a vote from the commission and Chad Bork our senior financial analyst and Doug O'Donnell who was our previous one and works in the finance department have both reviewed these figures as well. And find them to be accurate. Okay. Yes. Very good. Thanks. Madam chair I move that the commission approved the payment of 236,084 and 68 cents from sterling Suffolk race course to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for 2017 unclaimed winnings or outs. Second. Further discussion. All in favor. I. For zero. Very good. Thank you. So the next one is Wonderland and their total came to 7,981 23. And again this requires a vote. Do we have a motion and just there was no offset in this case. Correct Suffolk Downs was the only track that had an offset. Okay. Madam chair I move that the commission approved the payment of $7,981 and 23 cents from Wonderland Greyhound Park to the Commonwealth for the 2017 unclaimed winnings or outs. Second. Further discussion. Those in favor. I. For zero. Very good. So the next track we have is Plain Ridge and the amount for them came to 186,705.64 and again a vote for this is required. Madam chair I move that the commission approved the payment of 186,705.64 cents from the Plain Ridge race course to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for the 2017 unclaimed winnings or outs. Second. Further discussion. Hearing none. All in favor. I favor. Again. Approved for zero. And next for Rainham was 150,144.7. Madam chair I move that the commission approved the payment of $150,144 and 70 cents from Rainham Taunton, Massachusetts Greyhound Associations to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for 2017 unclaimed winnings or outs. Second. Further discussion. All in favor. I. For zero. So the tracks will get letters from Mr. Bork stating those amounts obviously they're already aware of it because they've gone over it jointly. But he'll send an official letter out requesting that and the tracks have to turn that money in before April 1st. Once that's in then we cash the checks and then those amounts for the two horse tracks that money goes back out to the purse accounts for each individual track. And for the Greyhound tracks that goes into that Greyhound stabilization fund. Oh that's right. So you'll see us back on this same issue middle of April. Then what has happened to that fund you know. The money still goes into that fund but there's no mechanism right now for the money to come out. Right. It keeps going. It's accumulating little by little. And remind me the outs are for unclaimed winnings from both simulcasting and live racing or simulcasting. Yes both. So if we look forward to our comprehensive bill those issues would be able to be addressed. Absolutely. Correct. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you both. Thank you. Moving ahead to the finance division or CFAO Lennon. Good morning man. Chairwoman and commissioners. Good morning. Good morning. I'm joined by Agnes Bolier our budget and procurement manager. And we hear two weeks after the initial mid-year budget update for the gaming control fund. Before I start I want to point out a mistake in the memorandum and let chart on page two. I deleted the wrong line. The line that says HH game sense 144,418 should have been deleted and replaced with J.J. Public Safety Everett 807,000. The total of 1.17 million is correct and corresponds with the overview summary chart on page one. It's just we deleted the game sense and I haste trying to get the memo done. Took out the wrong line on the chart. Thank you for correcting. You're welcome. Now that's covered as a reminder the Massachusetts Gaming Commission approved a FY19 budget for the gaming control fund of $33.4 million composed of $22.6 in regulatory costs and $10.79 in statutory required costs. Gaming control fund required an initial assessment of $28.32 million on licensees. FY18 revenue exceeded FY18 expenses by $947,000 which resulted in the initial FY19 assessment being reduced. In this revised correspondence staff is recommending that $3.1 million in additional costs be added to the FY19 approved budget. This is revised down from the $3.25 million that we presented last two weeks ago and that's due to the fact that we're not including the additional costs for game sense. To revise this would result in a revised budget of $36.5 million for the gaming control fund. The increased costs are partially offset by $860.9,000 in revenue that has exceeded the initial FY19 projections. The combined effect of budget increases and additional revenue would result in the increase to licensees assessments of $2.24 million. Once again revised down from the $2.39 due to the drop off of the game sense costs. As a reminder, and you'll see it throughout the entire memorandum, our licensees bear the full cost of our budget as we are 100% assessed on the industry. We put our mid-year budget out for public comment. It stayed out for two weeks and we did not receive any formal comment. However, we did have a meeting with licensees on January 17th to discuss the proposal and we received some valuable feedback. The licensees understand that we're ramping up and need to prepare to open another category one facility but want us to not become one of the most expensive regulators in the industry. That's something they've said to us from 14 forward. We do understand and acknowledge their concerns. We share their sentiment. We cannot become one of the most expensive. So we've committed to revising the number of gaming agents in this memorandum. We've dropped off the game sense costs and we've also committed to having ongoing discussions as well as doing look backs with our licensees for regulatory and public safety efficiencies. Another piece of the discussion that was brought up was the assessment allocation. Once again, in our proposal we proposed a very simple method of basing the initial assessment on gaming positions in June and then revisiting that allocation based on game positions at the mid-year and revising the assessment from the mid-year point going forward. One other piece we did discuss. So this assessment piece, I think we have for this initial time period a consensus. Some people reserve their right to go back to beginning and come forward to the commission to request an overall change. But for getting this piece done, they're good with what we have in the memo. One other piece we did discuss is doing similar to what we did last year, putting our budget a couple hundred thousand over what our anticipated revenues were. Licensees deferred to us on that. But based on the fact that we have a lot of questions on some other cost pressures we may face throughout the year, we decided not to do that. So it would be the 2.24 million increase assessment rather than offsetting by maybe six or seven hundred thousand to bring that assessment down. So let me just add, because I could not make the call that Derek had with our licensees. So I had separate conversations with our licensees with what I would suggest are similar themes to obviously what Derek talked about. And we did have discussions about this unique timeframe in the commission sort of ramp up of two category one openings, potentially back to back, which inherently involves an increase in property staff, obviously. But it also gives us a time particularly with our now experience at a facility like Playbridge Park Casino to be able to go back in time and try and do a risk assessment of are we comfortable, the commission comfortable with how we are regulating the facilities and what our risk tolerance is in terms of the number of personnel, what they're looking at, and items correlated to that. So I absolutely committed to doing that at the appropriate time and they were thankful of that. So consistent with what Derek said, that was the feedback I got. I also, I think I told you before MGM was concerned about potentially whether assessments could be retroactive or not. I don't think we need to address that today. That's not an issue. I think there needs to be a little more conversation. And at some point it may be that we need to officially address that. We don't need to address it today. But I and Derek, I know we've talked to Commissioner Zuniga in his capacity as our treasurer, are very aware of cost creep allocations and the sort of ceiling becoming the new floor type thing. So it will be appropriate in a new chair. I think we have a lot of opportunity potentially resolve Encore in one way or the other, figure out where that is. That we would know what our horizon, our new horizon looks like. And I think I've referred to it as steady state. And then when we get to that point, it's fair for us to do a reassessment of our regulatory costs. Yeah, if I can mention a little bit or just expand a little bit on that look back. I, there's a couple of line items here in the summary that I, that we could probably characterize as one time costs. The IT for Everett, the IT immigration and the public safety for MGM, which is really fine tuning some of the overtime needs and what not. There's other that of course are expanding capacity and will have a tendency to become a fixed cost given that we're planning for more activity. And I think the look back is critical in terms of how we're really entering a new phase of the commission after whatever happens with region A, more of that steady state that you mentioned, one in which I really see and hope that we look for across properties efficiencies, for example. And as roles, certain oversight roles change, look at how people, you know, are redefining their roles, for example. And that doesn't necessarily just mean that the properties were also here in central office. There's something that we've talked about in the past as a little bit of a pending. And that's the notion of the steady state audit function that we will have. And one of the things that I'm interested in and looking at is the reality that we, the fact to conduct a lot of oversight already on site. And when we think of the audit function, we take all of that into consideration to make sure that we're not duplicating efforts, for example. Or we're not auditing the work that we already audited. So that's, I think... You're probably referring to the work we either audit manually or digitally. Absolutely. There's great value in having a robust oversight upon opening. But for the reasons we're all understanding, looking for efficiencies across properties, for example. Or the reality of a steady state would allow us to really be in a good position to look at that, look back, if you will, and look at all those costs. I imagine, for example, that during a steady state we might be able to really trend certain categories of costs, for example. And I put IT in that bucket where, you know, saying, you know, whatever the percentage of the total budget we would be comfortable with, it might give us a good way to plan for more than one year at a time. That there's a schedule of replacing equipment, and so on and so forth. Which is often one of the, from a year to the next, without real planning, can become a really big ticket item. And, you know, our overall budget, I think, and I envision, will also have a good opportunity to do trend analysis and comparisons to other regulatory frameworks that we have done before. In a way, that's a lot more insightful. So I mentioned the one-time costs. I also wanted to mention something I mentioned before, which is some of these, is given the nature of the uncertainty in some of these costs. And legal is the obvious example. We might be back before the end of this fiscal year for another review like this. But as usual, this is the staff's best guess as to what we need at the time and why we have the numbers that we have. Along those same lines, one of the things that I've been involved with, you know, both on the racing side and on the investigation side, I know that our IUB did a very thorough job in researching other agencies in order to kind of predict their initial staffing numbers. We've all been kind of involved with that, with the executive director. And one of the things they know that I'm looking for and that they understand the need for it, Detective Lieutenant Connors, Director Wells, is a data-driven analysis so that we really have an understanding of what our staffing numbers should be. This is what everybody else has. This is the way we've always done it, which is an issue in policing in general. But looking at it from really analyzing that data, collecting the right information, analyzing it, and helping us determine appropriate staffing numbers. So along with your theme of look-backs and really analyzing what we have to determine where our risks are. So they understand that we will be doing that when we're in a steady state. As it turns out, that Springfield, you know, already looking at those numbers, they are very, very busy there. We've made some adjustments at Plain Ridge already. Racing, we've done that work already. I was always happy to see that the state police in the off-season from racing work on investigations for the casinos, which is an appropriate use of resources. And, you know, we outsourced that lab right away, which was another way to determine resources that we'd need for racing. So I agree with you, Commissioner, and I think everyone knows the Executive Director is very much cognizant and involved with this that these are things we have to do to make sure our costs are in line. So we're looking for a vote to approve the additional monies to the budget, as well as the revision to the assessment allocation for the second half of the year. So, Madam Chair, I will be happy to move that the Commission approve the additional assessment on licensees of $2,248,797 as discussed and presented here in the packet. Second. Further discussion on the budget? All in favor? Aye. Not in favor? Four-zero. Thank you for your work on this. Thank you for your time. Both of you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. Moving ahead to Commissioner Updates, do we have an update from anyone? You know, that previous discussion just made me think of some of the recent legislative action that has been reported, of course, with the submission of the budget at the state level, and I think sports betting or the prospect of sports betting gets all the attention, but something we've discussed in the past is also the raising bill that we have submitted for consideration and has been postponed or extended one year at a time. I hope that if there's action in this realm in whatever way, shape or form, and I know that we will be there to inform the process as we have tried and attempted and done in the past, my quick review relative to costs, for example, is that depending on how some of these expansion, if any, occurs, that there's always the consideration for regulatory costs on the one hand and of course any expansion also like what the Gaming Act did that there be consideration towards responsible gaming, much in the way that the Gaming Act does. But I do look forward to having more discussions along the way, depending on what the legislative process brings. I think there may be a lot of moving pieces, but I think we're in a good position to inform it. Anyone else? So I just had an update as well along those same lines. You mentioned sports betting. I know that I was involved in a conference call with the planners for a group from Europe. Ayesit's their biggest gaming conference every year in London. Excuse me. And they are coming to Boston in early May and they will be focusing on sports betting and other topics, but we are involved. It was nice that they thought to involve the local regulators here. And so we will be involved. A couple of our folks will be speaking at the conference serving on panels, but it's a good opportunity to bring this group to Boston and all the experts will be coming. Their agenda should be up soon. It's in planning stages right now, but that's early May. And again, we're pleased to be involved in helping them plan this conference and bring in some of our folks that have good expertise in these areas. So that will be happening. Commissioner, you mentioned racing as well. That's another area. I've had some good meetings as well as our general counsel, our director of racing trying to help. There are a couple of credible groups out there that are really looking to build a thoroughbred racetrack in the Commonwealth. And we have just been, as we do with anyone, providing informational information, meaning what does the law say, what are the monies used for? What do you need to do in a community in order to move forward? What would the license entail? All of those kinds of meetings. So we have entertained over the last couple of months at least two groups who are interested in different parts of the state in trying to move ahead with that. One of our responsibilities is to regulate racing. So we take that responsibility seriously and some interesting plans are out there and we will see if they move forward. Okay, anything else? I just have one other very quick update. Separately, we were at MGM observing a lot of the gaming agents' activities. Commissioner Stevens came in a few days after I did. We'll be going to Plain Ridge tomorrow to observe a lot of the activities there really early because the drop starts quite early. But look forward to... 4 a.m.? Yes, well, later than that. There's still drop, but not necessarily at the very beginning. You will be there at 4 a.m.? At 6 a.m. With a large cup of coffee. But this is really an effort that I am trying to understand relative to the duties. And I will report back when it's appropriate. Great. Yeah, I had, as Commissioner Zunegas said, we didn't go at the same time, but it was interesting to kind of see... We saw a lot of the gaming agents' activity kind of in the lead-up to opening or at least I had that opportunity to kind of go back and see what kind of four-month steady state begins to look like and what the gaming agents are undertaking. And again, credit to Angela, the senior supervisor out in Springfield, it was a good opportunity to visit with her and hear how she is kind of moving staff around and how she directs them to take care of certain issues and do some audit follow-up. Not necessarily the numbers, but processes and procedures that are ingrained in our regulations and seeing how our licensee continues to try to comply with those. It was a good opportunity looking forward to the meeting tomorrow as well. Great. I don't believe we have any business that we didn't anticipate. And we have already mentioned that we will not be holding an executive session today. So I will... The only other thing, Commissioner, I'm sorry, you reminded me. We have traditionally been on a two-week tempo. We may shift that in February. That two-week tempo is going to take us into school vacation week. So it may be... It may be that our next public meeting will be three weeks out, which is the second week of February and then the next one after that will be the last week of February. So it would bookend school vacation week. Right. Thank you for that. And I believe we are in the works with setting it up that way. So, okay, great. Thank you for that. Anything else? Move to adjourn. Do we have a motion? Second. And we have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Meeting is adjourned. Thank you all very much.