of Springfield for two and the town of West Springfield discussed today. I don't know if that needs to be incorporated into the motion but for the record those are the outstanding municipalities. Okay, any further clarifiers? Mary's shaking her head. Did I get that right, Mary? We've got, yeah. Okay, any other clarifications or edits? All right, thank you, Commissioner Skinner. We've got our second and Commissioner O'Brien. Hi. Commissioner Hill. Hi. Commissioner Skinner. Hi. And I vote yes for Sarah. Thank you very much. So, well done to the community mitigation team. Thank you, Mary. Thank you, Lily. And thank you, Joe. So well prepared. I'm just looking at our agenda now. We are a little bit behind on our timing which Crystal does an amazing job on because we are only 10 minutes behind. Not bad. So, oh no, I'm wrong. We're half an hour behind. We're half an hour behind. Sorry about that. So, you did a great job. In terms of our lunch break then, it's now one o'clock, 1.30. Does that work for everyone? Top an hour? Commissioner Skinner, you're going to be off set with that team? Karen? Okay. Thank you very, very much, everyone, all the team members that stayed on throughout the meeting and throughout the preparation. And particularly for the community mitigation, that's always very exciting. So, we convene in a half an hour. Thanks so much. Dave, I think we're all set. Okay, back to normal. Thank you. Thank you. So, I'll do a virtual roll call. Commissioner Bryan? I am here. Commissioner Hill? Present. And Commissioner Skinner? I'm here. Okay, great. We'll get started. Again, thank you to Crystal for organizing us. Our apologies for getting off schedule, but excellent morning session. We're going to now turn to our legal division. And Todd, I know you've got your team ready for today's presentation and our required votes. Yeah, let's go. Good afternoon, everybody. We'll go right over to Carrie Currici, who will be presenting both of the, well, the first two, I should say, issues under the legal department agenda. Thanks, Todd. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and commissioners. So, first up, we have for you a small change to the approved table game rules for the game of pie card flush. Just a reminder on the table game rules that these aren't promulgated as regulations. 205 CMR 147 is the regulation that governs how the table game rules are authorized for use. So once they're approved by the commission, they're posted on the website, and they go into effect immediately. So there's just one small change, and I can just share that here. So we're all looking at the same thing. And this, can everyone see that? This is on page 52 of your packet as well. So this is just an updated pay table. So just because of the way they're inserted, I couldn't do a red line and delete it. But this bottom pay table will be deleted, and this top pay table will be inserted in place of that one. Scroll is here and available if you have specific questions about why that change is being made. I will note also that the licensees aren't currently offering this game at the properties, but it has been previously authorized for use. So the rules are approved and posted on our website. So they could theoretically start using it at any time. So we just want to make sure that we have the most current version approved and posted for use. So if you have any specific questions about the change, I think Sturrell could answer those for you. So I'll turn it over to Almy for any questions. And if not, we would just be looking for a vote to approve. Does anybody want to ask Sturrell what this all means? Not that I'm going to necessarily understand a quick explanation, but yeah, if you could give it a shot, Sturrell, that'd be great. Sure. So we were contacted by Psygames that the bottom row where you see in the pink, where it says four card flush, it says one, two, two, two, one, one. So the data entry in this chart, probably my fault, was incorrect. See how it goes one, two, two, two. Down here it goes one, one, two, two, two. So the numeric value is just off by one as the bottom row. So we just fixed the bottom row. And that's it. That's the reason? That's the only thing. Yeah, we just want to make sure we try to go through everything. And this actually was the vendor actually reaching out to us saying your table is a little bit off. So we want to make sure this will probably not be offered. In the commonwealth, but we want to make sure if it is, we're correct. Okay, great. Thank you. I actually understood that. That was good. Very, very well done, Sturrell. And just to be clear, the Psygnos don't have to actually ask in advance to introduce a game like this, or would they? They would tell us we want to put high card flush in. Now, there's the difference. So in the compliance report that you receive, we have the new game section, right? Those have to go through a test period, a lot of pre-authorization. Like right now, there's a test game going on at Encore. But they have to go through certain steps. These that are already in our rules are pre-approved games. Craps is everywhere. Blackjack is everywhere. They don't have to tell us they're going to put the game of Blackjack or add a game of Blackjack. They have it, right? So we know what the rules are in Blackjack. So high card flush is just one of those novelty games that they can offer, but nobody does right now. I see. That's helpful. Commissioner Hill, you all set? Okay. Commissioner Skinner all set? Okay. But we do need a motion. Madam Chair, I move that the commission approve and authorize for use the version of the table game rules for high card flush as included in the commissioner's packet. Second. Second. Thank you, Commissioner Skinner. Okay. Any questions? Pretty straightforward. Thank you. Commissioner O'Brien? Hi. Commissioner Hill? Hi. Commissioner Skinner? Hi. And I vote yes for zero. And thank you, Carrie. And thank you, Sterl. Appreciate it. All right. Thank you. So next, thank you, Sterl. Next up, you have three documents in your packet related to our public records law policies and procedures. You have a public records policy, legal department procedures, and a flow chart related to process. So we've seen a bit of an uptick recently in records requests, and specifically this sort of large-scale records request. So we just want to make sure that all of our procedures are at the policy and procedures to make sure that we're being as efficient as possible, while of course still operating within the confines of the public records law. So I just want to note before we get started that there was going to be a technology piece of this discussion today related to these really complex electronic searches and the potential of using a vendor, but Katrina is unavailable today. So we'd like to put that part of the conversation on hold. If that's all right with everyone, as her knowledge and expertise on the technology side is really important and valuable for that discussion. So as we go through the policy, I think I've drafted it in a way that you could still vote on it today if you want to, or we can delay the vote to another meeting if we want to finalize that issue first. So in terms of process, I don't know if I'm prepared to sort of run through the policy red line first, if that's the way you'd like to do it. And then it can kind of walk you through the flowchart and you can ask questions as we go if you have any, but I think I'll share the policy red line first if that makes sense. Carrie, can I just ask a clarifier? So we have the red line and the second document is the clean version of the red line. Is that right? Or is it a different document? It's a different document. The second one is more just legal department procedures, more of just an internal document that we use in responding to requests. So that one's not a red line. It has existed in the past, but it's not something that requires a vote or is there real formal documents, more of a living document. So I included that in the packet so you could see a really detailed description of all of our procedures. But I think if we walk through the flowchart, that sort of references back to certain points in the procedures. So I thought we could run through the flowchart and then if that raises any specific questions, we can talk about those as well. But I don't necessarily think we need to walk completely through the procedures unless somebody wants to do that. Okay. But they are different. All right. So let me. Do you want us to ask questions along the way? What's best for you? Yeah, that sounds great. And they come up. All right.  All right. So everyone can see that, right? Yes. Okay. Perfect. And is the size okay? Glue it up a bit. All right. So we do have an existing public records policy that's part of the Human Resources Manual, which is this document minus the red lines, of course. So we've gone through and made some small changes. All of these are, of course, open for discussion. If you have other suggestions, it's happy to make any other changes or remove any of these, particularly if things seem like they might be too specific or more appropriate just for the procedures document. But so just getting started here at the top, these first couple of changes are really just cleanup clarification changes. It started, you know, just referencing the MTC. So I've just inserted the gaming commission here. And then throughout there are a few times where it says General Counsel, and I've just changed that to Legal Department, because that's really more accurate in terms of how these are handled. This one here, talking about sensitive, oops, sensitive information about applicants or recipients. Recipients just seemed like an odd word choice. I wasn't entirely sure what that meant, but it seemed to mean licensees or registrants. So just changed the language there. This line as determined by the General Counsel. I don't think that's incorrect, but I did delete it because it might not always be the case. There might be more people involved in making these types of decisions to determine that there is a specific legal requirement to disclose or not disclose a certain document. So it seemed a little specific for the policy and more procedural type language who's going to be making those types of determinations. And then I added the sentence at the end, commissioners, directors, and staff should presume that all materials are public records. Just to reinforce, you know, the fact that everything is presumed to be a public record. And then that's the first step. And then if an exemption applies, or it's covered by attorney client privilege, excuse me, it might be exempt from disclosure, but the presumption is that it's a public record. So scrolling down here, there's this paragraph that existed in the policy already discussing exemptions. And there was one sentence here, one such exemption is for sort of an internal personnel records. It didn't seem necessary to call out just one exemption. There are many exemptions. And of course, they're in the public records law. And we've also outlined in our procedures, the ones that we tend to deal with the most. So I did delete that. But I added the attorney client privilege language that comes from case law that privilege documents are exempt from disclosure under the public records law. So I did put that into the policy here. And that's also in the procedures. This next section deals with how requests are actually received and processed. So we are in the process of working on making this more uniform uniform in terms of how we actually receive requests to try to make it a bit easier for our tracking and record keeping purposes, and also to ensure that we don't miss any requests that might not come directly to us. So we do currently have an MGC public record mailbox that we encourage requesters to use. And we are also working with the communications team to create a portal that will be on our public records page on the website that essentially will be a fillable form for people to enter their contact info and their request. And then that info would automatically be sent to the public records mailbox. So moving forward, we'd really like staff to encourage requesters to submit via the portal or the email address rather than just forwarding to us. But in the interim, and this is a point where I don't know if we need this in the policy or not, but I do want to make sure that if a request is coming into staff and they're sort of saying to their requester, please submit via the portal or the email address that while we're sort of moving into this new process that that staff member also forwards the request that they received to us. And I say that only because we have a lot of requests or sort of, you know, regular requesters and this would be a new process. And I just want to make sure we don't lose any requests while we're sort of transitioning to a new way of receiving them. So it may be that this is something we won't always need to do. We might not need to do in the future, but it seemed like it would make sense in the interim as we're getting used to the portal and that process. So I think you can see I've just written Shell Direct to the requester to submit via our public records email address or via the portal. The portal does not exist yet. So I've included that or so if you were to vote on this now before the portal exists, of course, they can submit via the email address and then once the portal is live, they could submit that way. Can I interject here? So the statute does set up, presumes what we call the records access officer and that carries position officially to the gaming commission if I'm right. Whether you want it or not, right, Carrie? Currently, Carrie is the official records access officer. So the law presumes that public records requesters go to a single recipient. And the reason why that's so important is because it triggers a timeframe that we need to be responsive. And so if we don't really discipline requesters, there could be a lot of confusion because if something goes to various folks across the commission, the requester is going to think they've made a timely request and it really should not start until it gets to the records access officer. I've spoken to Carrie about this. And it's because many of us, particularly who have been lawyers and state government have dealt with this and it's really hard to be in that role. This is probably the, for me, the most important initial step to take for us so that you have that protection, Carrie, knowing what's coming in front of you, how you're going to delegate may not mean that you always handle them, but you get it and then the time starts ticking. So I am so appreciative of Mills helping to set that portal up. And if we do it in a kind way, you know, Karen on our website, very, very clearly, requesters want to do it, they want to get it right, and they just want clear guidance. And that would also be pretty much for sometimes it's those requests for information, that's not really a public record, but you would still handle those. But it's only for the clear. That's why this is an important, these are important red lines. It's not just make work. It's really to help you. So thank you for the conversation that we had and I'm hoping that you're going to find that helps you or whoever in legal gets assigned that role. And again, that doesn't mean you process them all, but it triggers that time. So thanks. Yep. Okay, so just any more questions on that piece? Sorry. Yes. No, how do you feel about, you know, sort of minor requests being fulfilled by, you know, by staff? So for instance, I'm going to use crystal in the annual report as an example, because that's what's on my desk right now. So let's say, you know, someone that crystal is very familiar with working asks her for a copy of the commission's annual report for FY 20. And she has it available because that's kind of been her role. So she has a PDF and a file and she just says, okay, sure, I'll send it to you. Are we okay with that? Or are you really looking for folks to route every single request for any document through to the legal division? Yeah, that's a great question. And I would say the latter, we really would like people to send us any requests that they receive for documents, or even for information, if it seems that we would be giving them a document that contains that information. And the reason is that at the end of the year, we are required to submit to the secretary's office information on every records request that we have received. Well, there are two reasons. This is one, we're required to submit information for every records request that we've received. So we want to make sure that we are, you know, properly tracking all of the requests that we've received. And if they don't come to us, then we don't know that we've gotten them. The second piece is that every records response, even if we're providing documents is required to include appeal language. There's specific language related to their right to appeal that needs to be included in the response. So I wouldn't expect, you know, staff members to know what that language is. So we want to make sure that if the requests are coming to us and we're getting that language out in the response. Thank you. Yeah. Anything else? All right. So a few more changes. You'll see a few times throughout, I just replaced these pronouns Hishi with they, this is something we've also been doing as part of the reg review to just remove any gender specific pronouns for inclusion purposes. So I've just, whenever I find an opportunity to make those changes in anything in anything that I'm working on, I do make those changes. This language, if received through a medium other than email, just want to be clear that if someone happens to mail us something or hand deliver something, they can do that. That's still a valid records request. And we just want to make sure that it's dated when it comes in. So we know when the clock has started ticking on our required response time. Number six here relates to requests from the media. So there is more detail on this in the procedures in the flowchart as well. But any request from media, we do promptly forward to our communications. And we work together on any responses to those requests. Section eight here, I just deleted this. It says that the legal department shall set an outlook task to respond with a compliance reminder for 10 business days after the request was received. I think we all do this. It just seemed very specific for a policy. It is in the procedures, but it seemed perhaps too specific for policy language. So I did delete that here though, of course, if anyone is so inclined to keep it, we can. This section 11 is really just duplicative of this earlier section, just determining that documents are public records. And then this reg site, I'm not sure what this might have been to at one time, but it doesn't currently exist. So I did delete that section. Section 11 is new and relates to searches. And this is the piece. I did write it in either or language. So you could vote on this policy today if you want to, but we certainly don't have to if we haven't finalized this issue. But the issue is the way I've written it, where the requested records are not easily identifiable. So if someone's asking for specific documents, we can just go grab those documents and produce them. Those are easily identifiable. But if they're looking for something that would require various searches as the way I've written it right now is the legal department shall work with the IT department or contracted third party vendor to run an electronic search of the agency's data storage system to locate responsive records. So again, this is the part of the discussion that we'd like to just put on hold until we have Katrina available for input on it. Friendly amendment. This is the time I've used it today. Next week or two weeks, maybe from now, I'll say unfriendly amendment. Maybe like, I don't know if it's commission approved, contract third party vendor unapproved. Does that give you that maybe the green light? We have this discussion later. Do you have the LSAT? Commission approved instead of contracted? Approved contracted third party vendor. Gotcha. Yep. Yeah. That sounds good. That just means we'll give the green light to either do the process or actually want to know who. All right. This next section 12. We are, public records law requires us to respond to our requests within 10 business days. So this section just deals with, and there, I'll get to this a little more in the flow chart, and there's a lot more in this new procedures as well, but deals with situations where we've received really voluminous requests and don't feel that we can produce all of the records that they're seeking within 10 business days. So in those situations, we do reach out to the requester to see if they'll agree to a production date or timeframe. And if they don't, I've added this language at the end as well. We can petition the supervisor of records for an extension of time within which to respond. And that needs to be submitted just within 20 business days of receiving the request. So it gives you a little buffer time to figure out what you might need to do. We haven't had to use this petition option to date. We typically are able to come to an agreement with the requesters, but it is an option if necessary. This section 13 is, oh, sorry, question. No. I heard something. So this section 13 is new, but with some of these larger requests we've received lately, we talked about wanting to set a threshold number of hours where we might consider assessing a fee. We typically do not assess fees unless the requests are so voluminous that they will take months to complete. So we're suggesting that threshold be 100 hours. If you think about generally a request, you might spend one day a week on a particular request. So that would end up 10 weeks or something like that. Over that amount we would consider assessing a fee. Open to any thoughts or opinions on that, that's just what the legal department had suggested. Can you give a little bit of guidance on what the statute provides on that in terms of charging? I think the first 10 hours are non-chargeable or that sort of thing. Yeah. So you can only charge a fee for search and segregation time where the search and segregation is required by law, which typically is when you're using the statutory exemption, and required by law has also been deemed to include things that are subject to the attorney client privilege. So that's sort of the first step in us determining how long something might take and what the fee might look like. And yes, Commissioner O'Brien's point, you can't assess a fee for the first four hours of that search and segregation time. So there is a provision. Eileen, did you want to speak over to happy? It's more in general in terms of the number of hours. I actually think it's pretty generous in terms of we don't have an enormous general counsel group. So if you're saying that you as a group felt like that was the appropriate threshold, that's fine. I actually think it's actually had that number be lower because going over 10 weeks for a production, that's a lot. That would seem to be a lot of commitment on the part of the attorney. I think I'll clarify a bit that I think this is what we have sort of been doing without setting a specific amount. These are somewhat routine and we can handle them within a couple months or wow, these are going to take a really long time. So we didn't really want to come out now just with an initial thing and say, well, what if we put it at 20 hours? I think what we've been doing is this is really if it's a very large number of hours. But as we're setting this in policy for the first time, it can certainly be lower if that's what we'd like to do moving forward. So for those who don't know that Ms. Eileen and Kerry point out, it's only expected to first four hours for the state to give away its time. There is some language and I can't really remember Kerry, but it is there's some effort for agencies to think about the public benefit or the public purpose. And I think that's why generally often agencies give journalists free service and don't charge because of the public interest. But I can't remember if that's language that would be helpful. And then there's also some language that if the I can't remember the details, but if the requester just makes two of the luminous other requests, you can seek some some relief from the secretary of the Commonwealth if they don't reduce themselves. I think I'm with Eileen, I think 100 hours even for us today, you know, knowing it's too much. And it may be a factor of needing more tools to be more efficient, right, Kerry? So putting out of the parking lot today, right? I think that's too much of your time to give. I don't know. I don't know what the solution is. I'll tell you that, Brad and Mckisha, I don't know if you have some thoughts. No, I agree with you both. 100 hours seems very generous, you know, and it seems kind of arbitrary. 99 is a lot, 98, 97 hours. So, you know, that is that is a lot of work. So I wonder if it would make more sense to just, you know, use some just add some discretionary language there that that suggests that, you know, the commission will make efforts to accommodate requests without assessing a fee. But then to make the point that assessing the fee is entirely discretionary, rather than even putting a specific number in the in the policy. Maybe even referencing the language in the statute about whatever that public policy is. And yeah, that is discretionary. I mean, you could say, however, you could say we, however, we reserve the right to assess a fee within the limits of the public records law if the request is so is, you know, so voluminous that it will be, and then whatever the statutory language is in terms of, you know, overly cumbersome, overly burdensome, require excessive out some sort of language in there that indicates because I was the one that wanted some sort of nod to this because I didn't want it to be arbitrary that sometimes we charge and sometimes we didn't. But I do think the hundred is a heavy load for you as a group. So I think I was sorry. No, I'll say I think the statue also has a cap on how much they would expect the state agency to spend on a matter like this each week. I think it's 7.5 hours a week. So one day, if, yeah, so one day, it might have said eight, but it's, you know, generally one day a week on an individual request. And of course, that is even not always possible, depending on how many, you know, if we have six different requests that are all voluminous, of course, can't spend one day a week on each one. Right. Okay, so I can play with this language a little bit and remove a specific reference to number of hours if that's sort of the consensus. You'll see, and you know, we don't have a discussion again, but you'll see in the book, the reference as well. I can play with the language there also, although that again, like I said, is a little bit more of a living document that's just for our own internal use. Right. And then it may actually be even more apparent to you that the statute works when you've got the right electronic tools. All right, good. Carrie. Yes. While you're considering amendments, perhaps, you can consider one that speaks to the point I made earlier about having all of the requests to be routed through legal no matter what. I don't know if what you've referenced earlier is strong enough to address that. It might be. Yeah, I think you say encourage and I think we're moving towards bust, right? Okay, yep, I can do that too. Oh, but that's with respect to staff. Yeah, I think Nekisha's point is good. We probably end up getting a lot of them forwarded anyway, but this one will just be clear. Yeah, I did. I do wonder, and maybe it will make sense to remove this sentence from the policy and only keep this in the procedure because at some point I don't think this will be necessary. I was just was concerned about in like a transition phase where requesters have been, you know, sending us things for years and then suddenly we asked them to do something different. I just want to make sure we don't lose anything in the process where then someone comes back and says I sent a request to this person three weeks ago and I haven't heard anything just to try to make sure we're being as efficient as possible. So perhaps that sentence isn't necessary in the policy and is a little less formal in the procedures. And as we're talking to staff about how to handle anything that they might receive, I'm just going to highlight that here while we're on here just so I want to come back. Okay, so I will make some stronger language there as well. And then just see where we, I think that is it for the changes. Just some cleanup things down here as well. And that's it in the policy. So are there any other questions on that? Brad, I can't see Brad. No, the only comment the only comment I had is when you were looking at the hours when I first thought of 100, I thought 40 because it's a week's worth of work. So I thought 40 would be a good number. But if you want to put something that's a little more gives you the opportunity to pick and choose, I would go with that as well. It's funny, we all saw that one. Yes, I appreciate that. All right, so if you'd like to hold on a vote for this, we can bring it back when we'll have Katrina available as well. And I can make these changes and we can look at it again if that makes sense. Is the only piece that, oh, I see I mean shaking your head because the only piece would be on, unless we want to add maybe some more language about electronic searches, we can hold, right? Either way is fine. Yeah. Commissioners, I think you said the poll was good.  So that gives Kerry a chance to just tweak the few things and we need to do it all at once. Okay, we have a consensus. Yes. Okay, sounds good. Thank you. Thanks, Kerry. Excellent work. Okay, so I'll take this one down and then next I will pull up the flow chart. Just give me one second here. All right, and thank you very much to Crystal for her help with this. I like to joke that I made a kindergarten taped together version of this and she made it beautiful. So thanks to Crystal for her help here. Just sort of at the outset here, you'll see there are basically two sides to this flow chart with the initial question being is this a request from the media? After that point, the sides are essentially the same. The only difference is that when we have a request from the media, all of the communications with that requester are done through our communications department and not through the legal department. So I think what I'll do is I'll walk down the left side here when they're not media requests and as we go, the same thing would be happening with respect to a media request. But when it says legal sends a letter, it would be that legal drafts a letter and gives it to the communications director to produce or the communications director speaks with the requester instead of the legal department speaking with the requester. Sorry, one second. Okay, so is there a request from the media? Carrie, do you need to get some water? I think I'm okay. Thank you. I've just cut a tickle. You know, brush over and give it to you. I made that same reaction last night when I saw the Celtics in the last seconds of it. It was that look, wasn't it Brad? As it was. Okay, so the first thing we do is we confirm receipt with the requester and in the procedures I've written out that we do this within three business days. That's not a requirement, but it is something that we try to make sure that we do just so that requesters aren't sort of left out hanging, wonder if it's been received, if we're working on it, that sort of thing. So we typically just email them once we get it and say, we've received your request, we'll be following up shortly with a more formal response. So after that, legal interprets the scope of the request and estimates cost of search, I'm sorry, that's supposed to say estimates the time of search for search and production, not cost, that's my mistake. So at this step, what we would do is we would take the request and first, if there are, if it's for any sort of identifiable documents, we would reach out to the appropriate people who might have them and see if they can either let us know what the volume looks like, or actually get the documents to us quickly so we can see ourselves what the volume looks like that would require review. So we would do that and then if it requires a search, we would also run the search at this stage or the multiple searches so we could get a sense again of what the volume of potentially responsive documents looks like so that we could figure out approximately how much time we think it's going to take to actually go through them. So at this point, we hit this next question, do we think that it will take more than 10 business days to produce responsive records? So I'll run down the no side first because of course that's the easier side. If we think, you know, we can get through these documents relatively quickly, we gather them, we review them for any applicable exemptions or attorney-client privilege. At that point, we make determinations as to whether anything is going to be withheld or redacted and if not, pretty simple, draft a cover letter, get the documents out within the 10 business days and the responses. If there are going to be documents that are withheld or redacted, I'll just pop that up to the question here. Same thing, we draft a letter to release with the documents, but within the letter, we identify any documents that have been withheld or redacted on the basis of privilege or exemption and if we're withholding anything or redacting anything pursuant to be a attorney-client privilege, we also produce or require to produce a log of those emails or documents. So I'll come back up now to the will it take more than 10 business days to produce responsive records? If we think that it will, this is where we then begin asking the question of if we were going to assess a fee or not. Before we get to that exact question, we would reach out to the requester to see if the scope could be narrowed. If we could narrow it to a point that we no longer think we need to assess a fee or if it gets us under that 10 business days timeframe, then we could go back up in the flow chart and we wouldn't need to continue on with this part. If we can't get it narrowed enough, then we would reach this question of are we going to assess a fee? Of course I have this 100 hours language here again, which I will either just delete or play around with, but I'll come down to the no sign here first. So if we can't produce within 10 business days, but we don't think that we need to assess a fee, you know, say it's 15 business days, we think we can get it out. We don't think we need to assess a fee for that. We would send a letter to the requester proposing this production date or timeframe that's outside of the 10 business days and wait to receive confirmation from them on that. If they do not agree to the proposed production date or timeframe and we can't produce the records within 15 business days of receipt or request, this comes right from the statute. The response letter needs to go out within 10 business days, but the 10 business day response letter could say we received your request. We're working on it, you know, it has a few things it needs to include, which are all laid out in our written procedures. We will get these documents to you by X date, which would be the 15th business day. If you can get the records to them within 15 business days, they don't need to agree to that production date or timeframe that's still allowed under the statute. So if they don't agree to the production date or timeframe and the records can't be produced within 15 business days, we also have the option to submit a petition for an extension of time to the supervisor's office and we can do that within 20 business days of receipt of the request. So some of this doesn't fit perfectly in a flow chart, but of course this would just depend now on whether the requester had agreed or we had had to submit a petition and it had been awarded or not, but sort of just depending on what happens here. We know same thing that happens above, we gather the records and review them for any exemption or privilege material. We release them with a cover letter. The cover letter includes information on anything we've redacted or withheld and then if the requester has agreed to a rolling production, which we do occasionally with these billy voluminous requests, we would repeat this step as necessary. So we do sometimes work with requesters to set rolling productions where we'll say something like we'll get you the initial production by this date and then every four weeks or six weeks, whatever it is after that on a rolling basis until all have been produced. So we've had a request to things like that before. So I'll come back up here to this initial question. Will we be assessing a fee? So if we would like to assess a fee, we are still required to send this 10 business day letter to the requester. There are again certain things that need to be included in that letter, one of which specifically here is what the estimate for the fee would be. You can only charge a fee if you get that estimate out within 10 business days. So if we missed the 10 business days and we wanted to assess a fee, we would have missed our opportunity to do so. So we would get that letter out and then the same process happens. We wait to see if the requester agrees to the production date, timeframe, also to the fee. And then upon receipt of payment, we would begin gathering the documents and reviewing for exemptions or privilege and, excuse me, same thing, continuing to do so on a rolling basis if necessary. So are there any... In your big block where you're dividing between yes and no, I think you've got the 100 hour reference. That's just a little... Up here? Yeah. Yep. I'll take that out. I don't have to figure that out. Any other questions on the flow chart? I have a comment. Sure. What I think should come through in this exercise is that Carrie, again, her official role as Records Access Officer, doesn't have to do this process in a loan or in a vacuum that it really takes... To borrow the term, takes a village where often our communications director will be completely involved and then the possessor, whoever is most relevant in figuring out the document production itself. The ones who own the most or possess the most responsive records will work with legal to sort out and then to really digest all the exceptions. And then, I mean, the whole analysis around legal privilege is always complicated. So it probably requires lots of lawyers, your whole team sitting around and thinking about it. It's a big effort, but it's such a fundamental function of government that taking the time to do this is so important. And I'm hoping it was a helpful exercise for you, Carrie, to kind of as painful as it was. No, that it actually will be. When you pass this job along, whoever becomes... When you get to be not the Records Access Officer, you'll have a great roadmap to give them. Yeah. And I think it also has reminded me that it's helpful to remind staff of sort of what we look for and what the expectations are because, of course, there's no way for people to know if no one has mentioned it to them. So to your point, I think one of the most important things is that when we do reach out to someone and say we've received a records request for these type of documents, can you let me know what you have or can you get it to me if they can respond to us as quickly as possible? It really helps us to prepare that letter that's required to be sent out within 10 businesses. It helps us to assess how long it's going to take us to respond to the request and then in turn, if we think there should be a fee assessed or not. Yeah. And it sometimes may take legal a little bit like pulling teeth a little bit. Oh, you know, to say, do you have anything actually that's not electronic? Do you have it in hard copy? Anything that we're missing? That exercise and then people get better and better educated. One final observation, I think it was Nikisha's excellent question about, you know, whether the team can just go ahead if they have something that seems pretty standard and put it in the mail almost like courtesy. I loved your answer that, you know what? No, let's go through so that when you get credit on your metrics. The other thing that I thought about after that discussion is we on the team may not know that there's something in the document that really can't go public. I mean, the annual report is probably not a good example of that because it's our document and we are circulating it publicly. But there may be another document that contains something that's protected that a member of the team may not recognize but legal would. Sure. I think, can I add to that? Oh, yeah. I think the other issue to look out for too in that is one division might not be aware that there are other documents that are responsive to that request. So they're providing documents in their wheelhouse, not really fully understanding the nature of the request and that there might be other documents available. So that was my pet peeve when I was GC. So I'm raising it just as a consideration. Yeah, that's a great point. Legal has to really be thinking broadly at the beginning. Yeah, narrow. But again, you know, it can it should be a collaborative process and a supportive process for you. It's excellent. Everybody has to share on this. Thanks. Yeah, it's excellent job. Any other questions? I didn't share the procedures. They're quite long. But if you have any questions on those, I'm happy to answer those as well. Karen, I'm going to turn to you. Do you have any questions? You worked with the team on this, but also, you know, as sort of kind of those who possess the responsive documents. Is there any guidance or anything you want to add here? Well, I think two things. One, as I put a note in my to-do list, we should probably address this at a town hall just so we can familiarize the team members about some of these issues. And I'll give an example is, you know, we may, you know, know that attorney client privilege documents are examined or notes are examined or something personal notes are examined. But the legal department needs to get all the documents anyway, and then they do an evaluation because they have to let the requester know what we're withholding. So those kind of communications are really important. And going through this process was certainly helpful to me because I do not come in here as an expert in the public records process. So I've been very grateful to all the help to get into the legal department of the new county on this. And yeah, it's just, it can be complicated, but having the system in place is critical. So communicating that to everyone at the agency, I think it's going to be very important. I would just make one small clarification on what Karen just said. If I do, if we reach out to staff members and ask, again, we can address this at a town hall, but just want to make sure it's clear. If we do ask for, if you have any notes, if you have personal notes, those do not send them to us because once you've sent them to us, they're no longer your personal. Just tell us that you have. Thank you. Good cash, Karen. It's a good cash. All right. Any other questions? Great work, Todd. Thank you to your entire team, Judy, and Carrie. Excellent work. And Crystal, she's not showing video right now, but a nice document. So thank you. Very helpful. Thank you. I'm up and down and up and down, so, but actually Carrie did most of the work. I did just make it pretty. I didn't know how to do it, so. But you learned the process too. I absolutely learned. I mean, I asked an awful lot of questions, so good process for me too, because as Crystal pointed out, I do get a lot of questions about sending documents. A lot of times they're right. And I have sent them to Carrie and Todd. Yeah. And when they're easy, you get a quick metric pick, but it is important for us to keep track of what we're sending out. So great presentation. Thank you. Anything else, commissioners? All right. Thank you. You're all set then, right? Carrie and now we're moving on to Todd and Joe. Thanks. Good afternoon. Joe, you're on mute. Todd, we're not hearing you. I would have put some problems. I apologize in advance for any background noise here, but I'll try to move as quickly as I can. So you have before you a draft memo relative to the decision that was reached at the March 10th public meeting of the commission as far as the project proposed across the street from the Encore Boston Harbor. And this memorandum is designed to capture the findings that the commission made on that day and go through the legal analysis that the commission went through as part of that discussion. So I'd be happy to walk through that with you just to point out some of the highlights. It was the commission's desire at the time to commemorate the decision in this format. So that's why it appears before you as it does. And you'll recall that the conclusion, of course, was that with the inclusion of certain conditions, which are laid out at the very end of this memo, that the commission felt like the project and all of the amenities and elements of it would not be included as part of the existing gaming establishment of Encore Boston Harbor. So that's the ultimate conclusion, and you can see that that is reflected at the end of the introductory paragraph. At that point, we skip we move into in the overview section of the commission's broad authority, which I think is always important to include in any memos or decisions issued by the commission. We cite to section one paragraph 10, which talks about the broad authority of the commission and then into section four of chapter 23 K, which talks about the commission's powers to carry out and effectuate its purposes and just hammer home the idea that the commission does have very broad discretion to make these sorts of decisions. At the top of the second page of the memo, we then lay out the four part test that the commission employed to make this decision. And of course, that four part test was initially developed is as part of the 2014 review of the boundaries of the gaming establishments for this wind property as well as Mohegan Sun property. And the four part test is fairly familiar at this point, of course, it looks at whether each part of the proposed area is a non gaming structure, whether it's related to the gaming area, whether it is under common ownership and control of the gaming licensee. And then fourth, if each of the three aforementioned elements are satisfied, the commission looks at whether it has a regulatory interest in including any part of the new area as part of the gaming establishment. And the commission has applied this test, if you will, on a number of occasions, of course, when it set the actual boundaries of all the gaming establishments. And then there have been a couple of instances over the years in 2018 and 2021 when it's applied this test to include certain other elements included in a gaming licensee's operation as part of the gaming establishment as well. And of course, with then we note that courts, a couple of courts have looked at the application of this test and essentially found that it is a valid test consistent with the law. So all of that is noted in the first two pages of this memorandum. And if there aren't any questions or comments up to that point, the next couple of pages run through the analysis that was applied for each of those four elements. So I'd be happy to walk through that if that would be helpful at this point. And of course, pausing along the way, if there are any edits or comments that any of the commissioners would like to see made to the document as we go. And Joe, I include you, of course, in that. So the first is the non-gaming structure piece. And the commission has essentially just looked at whether it is essentially a traditional structure. The commission also, of course, looked at each component of the project individually. In this case, there was specific discussion about the pedestrian bridge as there was some suggestion that it was not a structure in the traditional sense. And ultimately, the commission concluded that all of the components of the proposed project are non-gaming structures in the traditional sense, including the elevated footbridge. So that first element of the test was deemed satisfied by the commission. I should add, and we noted this in the introductory parts of the decision, that each element of the test is rooted in chapter 23K and based upon different provisions in there. And that's where the four part test came from. In part, it's rooted in the definition of the term gaming establishment, which talks about non-gaming structures and their relation to the gaming area. And then there are other provisions of chapter 23K that, for example, talk about the registrant and licensure of employees of the gaming establishment that are considered the element of control over the operations and other similar considerations that are embedded in chapter 23K. So that's where the test was born out of. So the second element, and now I'm on basically the middle of the third page of the memo, talks about the relation to the gaming area. And again, this comes from the definition of gaming establishment. And the commission in its 2014 decision identified that when reviewing this particular element, it was looking at whether the particular component or the project as a whole was intended, at least in part, to support the gaming area by making the entire facility a more attractive destination. And we note that right here in this memo. And then we, in this memo, look at historically some of the components of gaming establishments that have been included as being part of the gaming establishment in that they did support the gaming area by making it a more attractive destination. And then we also noted a couple of instances where the commission found that an element of a proposal was not related to the gaming area. And one of those examples that's identified here is the race track at Suffolk Downs that was part of the Mohegan Sun proposal. And the commission noted in that 2014 decision that it was excluded, at least in part, due to the lack of proximity between the entrance to the track and the entrance to what would have been the gaming area, that there was no infrastructure connecting the structures and a lack of ownership of the toll. And so that's important here, of course, because all of those issues are relevant to the commission's determination in the present situation. So we included that in the memo. And then we, of course, go through the analysis where the commission ultimately concluded that each component of the proposed project across Broadway from the Encore Boston Harbor are likely to draw more visitors to the gaming establishment and enhance the overall destination. And accordingly, the commission ultimately found that this second element, the relation to the gaming area, was satisfied. So that brought us through the first two elements of the four part test you found that each was met. Moving on to page four in the third element was the common ownership and control of the gaming element applicant. And you'll recall, of course, that the land itself and the proposed operator was an entity other than WinMass LLC, which is the actual gaming licensee. But the commission ultimately found that the property was under the common control of the parent company to both WinMass LLC and the holders of interest in the proposed project. And that WinMass and Widen Resorts as a qualifier and the parent was subject to the commission's regulatory control. And in part, the commission based that decision on a series of cases, one of which we cited here, that go through certain zoning related provisions of the law and in a practice that was referred to by the courts as checkerboarding, in which the ownership of parcels of land is placed in the ownership of different individuals for zoning related purposes. And the court ultimately looked at in those cases, whether the landowner had within their power, meaning the legal control to use that parcel of land so as to avoid or reduce the nonconformity with the zoning laws. So the commission based in part anyway, its decision to find that there was common ownership and control over the project on this body of case law that courts have applied in the zoning context, as there are direct parallels between what was going on in those cases and then what's going on in this particular situation. And ultimately concluded that by virtue of the parent subsidiary relationship between all of the entities here that Win Resorts limited as the qualifier, ultimately does control the land and ultimately will have control over the operation, which would give the commission the ability to assert its regulatory jurisdiction over the project if it so chose. And that was the ultimate finding on this third element of the test. So that said, up to this point, the commission found that each of the first three elements of the four part test were satisfied. And because of that, the commission moved on to the fourth part of the test, which is whether it has a regulatory interest in including the project or components of the project within the boundary of the gaming establishment. And of course, as you'll recall, ultimately the commission expressed the number of concerns, regulatory concern with the project and the impact and implications of it. And those were certainly discussed at length. The ultimate conclusion, though, was that in lieu of including the project and each of its components within the boundary of the gaming establishment, the commission could satisfy its concerns and ensure proper oversight of the gaming establishment and the principles that are embedded in Chapter 23K by just including some conditions on the gaming licensee relative to this project without including the project itself within the boundary of the gaming establishment. And of course, as described in this memo, the commission has engaged in that analysis in the past. And we give one, a couple of examples, actually, here of instances in which the commission decided that it was not going to include certain elements of other properties within the boundary of the gaming establishment. One of the notable examples is the racetrack at Plain Ridge Park Casino, which the commission has regulatory control over through a different body of law, Chapter 128A. And accordingly, it's not considered part of the gaming establishment under Chapter 23K. Another example that we offer here in the commission considered in making its decision is the boat dock at the Encore, Boston Harbor property, which is also not considered part of the gaming establishment at Encore, in part because it's subject to government oversight and other respects. So there are other examples, there are parcels and parts of properties that are related in some way to the gaming establishment that are not considered part of the actual legal boundary of the gaming establishment. And again, the commission ultimately concluded here that the development across the street fell into that category, that it need not be included within the boundary of the gaming establishment, because there are a series of conditions that would be able, that we would be able to satisfy the commission's concerns by imposing. So those are the four elements that were described here. That's the main body of the memo. And then of course, the last two pages of the memo are what we referred to as exhibit A, which are incorporated into the memo and outline all of the conditions which the commission has seen before. And I believe you actually formally approved all of these conditions and the actual language that was contained in here, but they are included here once again, because they're part of this decision. So the only last thing we should talk about before I just pause is there's a part of exhibit A. It's provision number seven, which talks about the submission of a plan relative to the proposed pedestrian bridge within 90 days of execution of this decision. So we should just clarify whether that refers to 90 days from today or 90 days from the March date when these conditions were implemented. But otherwise, I think everything is all in alignment. Well, let's just go through that again. So on number seven, the licensee shall submit a plan. My memory was supposed to be from 90 days from the date we voted. And this was just memorializing the decision. That's right. That's my memory. I think, Todd, if I'm not mistaken, this happened at a regularly scheduled meeting on the 10th, but I think we have a special meeting on the Monday afterwards where we actually voted the conditions we routed drafts around. So I don't know if it's really the 10th or the 14th. Can I just ask a question about the form of this document? It's entitled memorandum at the top. So who's the, is this a decision or a memorandum? And or is there a difference? Are they one in the same? I'm not sure how to take this document. Where is it going? Are we issuing it to the licensee? This was memorializing the rationale that was underlying the basis of the vote that then provided the legal analysis for exhibit A. So it's not a decision per se. Commissioner Skinner, I don't think in the past there were always memorialized in writing somewhere. It's like, right, I think you kind of asked how do you memorialize it. It's a very good question. I do think it memorializes the decision, right? So I suppose maybe the word decision might be better. I do think our decision, I think we all decided it would be really helpful for Todd and team to memorialize it this way because it would serve to help future commission decisions that are similar, rather than having to go back to the tape. Is that fair? I think we, I feel like we had a little bit of a discussion on this. Yeah. And I just said, I just, I was just, you know, looking for that. That's very fair. And we also knew that Commissioner Cameron was leaving. And so we had this timing conundrum of you could draft the decision to and not have her signature on it. But it was more, we were all very clear on the rationale verbally. And so in this one, it was executing in the vote because we had talked about delay and memorializing it and then voting on this after it was memorialized. And we elected to vote to put the issue to bed and then write something after the fact. It could, in theory, have been a memorandum of decision and order. But I think we'd all agree to just do a memo in this instance. That's right. That's right. Thank you. That's a clarifier. Thank you. So she wouldn't be signing off, but in other words, I don't think it's, it's not necessarily essential, but it's probably a good practice to memorialize it in this way. But we were having a question as to the timing of the 90 days. I feel like it was intended to be 90 days from the decision, right? Yeah. So to Joe's point, whatever the date of the vote was, whether it was the 10th or the 14th. Crystal, maybe she can find that for us when she gets a chance. But I think it was that we came back and we had, we had our decision. And then it was to attach conditions. And if I remember, Joe was really eager to do it that moment. And I said, we're going to do it a different way. So the conditions were done on that following Monday. And so that would be the, that's when we would have talked about the 90 days. I was kind of with you at the moment though, Joe. So I think that whatever that second date was. Right. The 14th. Yeah, I believe it was the 14th. Yeah. The 14th. Yeah. We'll add that into, thank you for refreshing my memory on that point. We'll add that into, if there's no objection, the first paragraph as well that it considered it on March 4th, you consider it on March 14th. And then we'll add it into the conditions. Just clarifying number seven. Can we, do you think it would be helpful just because people may not scroll all the way down to remind in your first paragraph that conditions did attach as well?  Okay. Well, we can cite exhibit a right in there. Okay. I'll just read over it. Sorry. Sometimes you need to read it out loud. We're good. And then to commissioner Skinner's question, I guess the next part would be once the commission is comfortable with the language, obviously we'll change the date up top. And then it may make sense to circulate this to the licensee so they're aware of the final decision. And then it'll just be a record of the proceedings, essentially. Do we have a consensus on that? I mean, they know what the conditions are, but I do think memorializing it like this and doing it just another under separate cover just to keep the record clear. So we do need a vote though, right? No, I don't think we do. Right. I mean, I don't believe it's marked up for a vote either. It's No, it wasn't only because I think the commission already made the decision. This was really just We don't have to worry that this up. We don't need I think we have a consensus that this accurate reflects the decision. Right. Yep. Yep. I would also be remiss if I didn't recognize Judy Young is the chief drafter of this decision, even though I got to present it. So thank you, Judy, for nicely done. Thank you, Judy. I feel ready. Judy, is it what he said or would you like to do any clarifying? He referred completely. Excellent. Very well done. So congratulations on that, Judy, and nicely presented, Todd. We didn't work that for the vote. So now if everyone's all set on that discussion, commissioners all set, and we'll move to Greg review unless we need a little bit of a break. I must say, I'm finding the length of our meeting today a little bit. So are we all good? Anybody want to freshen up their waters or anything? Maybe after this, maybe after the next one, we'll do that. Okay, great. So we'll move right on to Greg review the whole team and an important exercise. So, Karen, turn it to you and there's a question. Yep. So just want to thank everyone who's been working on this because this really is an agency wide effort. And then particularly the legal department has a heavy lift on this, and thanks to Crystal for coordinating the effort and tracking all the developments because those metrics are important in keeping the process moving forward. As you may recall, back in December, I think it was of 2021, we directed the commission directed the agency to do a red review. There were one, two, three, five different criteria for the red review. One was ensuring regulations are clear, well written and understandable. Two, eliminating duplicative or contradictory requirements. Three was eliminating unnecessary and minimize overly burdensome requirements. Four was ensure reporting requirements are necessary and provided information is used by the regulatory agency. And the fifth one was eliminate barriers to equity and inclusion. So we have been going through the process. Each division has been starting to look at their rates, and then they bring those forward through the electronic system that Crystal has created. And that system does produce information. And she's got a slideshow for you today. So I'll turn it over to Crystal to give you some of the updates. Thank you, Karen. I'm going to share my screen, literally. Good. So as Karen said, we do start the process we have developed an online form. And from that form, we get all of the information about what needs to happen with the evaluated reg. So far, we have received, I think it's either 12 or 13. This might show 13, and one of them was more of a test. So you see that heavily we're getting them in from IEP right now. We've had a few from racing, one from research which you guys just saw last week come through. So we actually get some of the metrics to track as well. And which this is actually the criteria that Karen was mentioning. And so they actually queue that for us when they're submitting the reg so that we have a little bit of an idea of where and what to look at. The general process is once the form is submitted, we are taking a look at it and adding it to a queue. I'll actually show you what that tracker is looking like in a few slides. But we, someone usually I take a quick peek at the submission and contact legal and try to get some of their feedback as well. And then we have a formal meeting where we're looking at the reg and discussing what needs to be happening with the submit whoever submitted that actual reg. We are continuously updating the process tracker. And we also have regular updates through email going out so that we're not constantly meeting just for status. And I'm actually going to turn it over to Kerry to talk through the rest of the legal process as they're reviewing. All right. Hello again. So at this point, legal drafts any revisions to the regulations. And as you know, we bring them to the commission at a regular commission meeting to get approval from the commission to move forward and begin the promulgation process. And we'll get into a lot of detail here, but the promulgation process generally takes about two to three months. At the outset, we prepare a schedule of all the required filing and notice states. So we know exactly when the public hearing is going to be, and we can get that scheduled. Just for the examples, we're required to file a notice with the local government advisory committee. That needs to be done 14 days before we can file the notice that's appearing. We need to file a notice appearing and small business impact statement with the secretary of state. And that needs to be published in the register seven days before the public hearing. For anyone who's done this before, you know that the register runs on a two week schedule. So the date of filing and the date of publication is all sort of dependent on where you fall within that two week schedule. And then it also needs, the notice also needs to be published in a local newspaper and on the website 21 days before the public hearing. So these dates are all why it generally takes about two to three months to get the whole promulgation process done. So then at the end, we would have the public hearing. We typically do that on the day of a commission meeting, as you know, just before the meeting. And then we would bring the regulation to the commission for final approval at that meeting. After that vote is taken, we file an amended small business impact statement that day. And then the following day, we can file the final regulations with the secretary of state's office. And then again, they're published in the register on that two week schedule. So the final effective date depends on where within the schedule that filing falls. That's generally the process. Someone's in it. Go ahead. Can I ask a question or would you rather we save them to carry just on the process? Do we, does the commission hold public hearings on each of the regulatory amendments? Yes. Rather than, so why was that forced? I guess, how was that decided? How was it decided to hold the public hearing as opposed to just putting them out for public comment for a period of time? I think maybe 30 days, I think is what, what I'm, it's required agency, a public hearing is required. And is that by commission regulation? No, I'm not sure. Todd might remember exactly where the requirement comes from. But there's a required, that's where the notices of public hearing that are required to be filed with the secretary's office and the local government advisory committee. Those are all the notices of that hearing on the reg that we hold the day of the commission meeting. No, my question isn't about the notice itself. It's just about the decision to hold a public hearing as opposed to just publishing the, the amendments on the website, let's say for public comment. Commissioner Skinner, I can jump in on that one. It's all required under chapter 30a section two. It talks about what's required and then it gets into section five where it lays out how you go about adopting a regulation. And our regulations require public hearings of the sort that we conduct. So it is a statutory requirement that we're following and that's why we do it the way we do. Yeah, yeah. And it's, it's the nature of the, of our business, of our work at the, at the commission that requires the public hearing as opposed to just public comment period. That's, that's right. Sometimes, by the way, we've done kind of both. The commission has opened certain proposals up for public comment, even in advance of moving through the formal process, if, if you feel like that would be beneficial. So that is an option that's not required, but sometimes the commission has elected to hear from the public before even deciding to move forward with the proposal. So that's always something you can do as well. Yeah. So no issue. Just in my experience is a bit different in past jobs. So I just wanted to clarify. Mr. Skinner, if I could just add in to and, and Carrie and Crystal, you run this process, but when we do have, when we get to that stage where there's a public hearing requirement, what happens, and you may not have seen this yet, we have a revolving schedule and a commissioner is asked to sit in for the public hearing, I think alongside a member of the legal team, and they actually preside over that hearing on their own. We, we could hold a full public hearing. And I suppose we might do that for a particular regulation, but typically it's with a single commissioner presiding, and that's by, by statute that we're allowed, allowed to, to assign that, but rather than one person doing it, we do a revolving. I think that's worked out pretty well. That was a new development over the last few months, right, Carrie? Yeah, yeah, I think the last couple have been the revolving commissioners, which has been great. Last couple of hearings, I should say. So you may, your name may come up and you'll know. Well, Carrie's already tapped me. I'm up next. I'm gonna say she's up next. I'm very excited about it. Of course, the, the practice is if you have a conflict, just somebody else will go. The idea was that it would be both sharing the burden, but also having the experience of, of being part of this process. Although often, I think our process is so transparent publicly that we don't necessarily get a lot of action with these public hearings, but we have, right? Carrie, certainly people have shown up. Yep. Okay. Thank you. So this is just a snapshot of the way that we are tracking these and the process we're looking at. So each time a regulation comes in, I'm entering it into this database. We then tag for after the, so you'll see a column that's looking like, yeah, we have two complete. So that's the starting point for us to see exactly where we are aligned in that process on that particular regulation and what's the comes. So the review that you're seeing, that's actually our very next meeting. But we are also looking at different levels of it, the, the estimated length of change required for the document, whether there's some policy, if it's something that's been identified as an immediate change, or something that's also very complicated and likely to take longer. This helps us not to just have a color coded picture here, but it helps us to figure out how to move these through and where we're at. The actual update, to date, we've received 11 regs. The regulations I put out every, I think I'm doing this about biweekly, but each time I let everybody on the team know if anything new came in, so that we're aware that that's the next piece in the process. Now we have two that have been complete on that last public hearing that you all then voted those, the ones on the keys.  We have not received any at this point that have no change necessary. We've mostly looked through and everything has required review. So we're working on getting some of those no changes in so that we can up that and make sure we're moving through the regulation process on those pieces too. We do have nine remaining. Three are in various places for the in-progress piece. You will see a few coming on the next couple of meetings. We do have three that we've taken a look at, two that are on hold, and the only one right now that we haven't had a chance to see yet. And just as a brief overview, like I said, the two that are come to be 138.26 and the calls on wagers regulations of 147, we are moving towards the public hearing which Carrie has scheduled and Commissioner Skinner will be sitting on. And that's for those revisions to the volunteer or voluntary self-exclusion list. And I think 116.03, is this, I think this is Judy. We had taken a look at this and realized, or is this Carrie? Sorry, I should have put the names down here. They're on the tracker back here. But we are moving forward on these two particularly. And then there's another one actually in process that we had just identified that we will be able to close out soon. And we have a couple in review. These you will be seeing come your way for the meetings. I think that's all I have for you. I didn't know, Karen, if you would want to add anything in there. Yes, I was just going to say, Kathy, as Crystal noted in that, I think at the beginning there has been sort of a influx of ones that team members have been thinking about, oh, this needs to get the right review. The next step and what my next phase I want to work on giving some parameters to the individual division heads to check certain ones because I expect a lot of them are going to require no changes. We do have very good, very comprehensive regulations. So putting those through the queue, there's no right, no update required. That'll clear the decks a little and then we can focus on the changes that we need to make. So that'll be the next phase and I'll be working on that. Mary Ann's going to help me with, she's actually working on something with me now on sort of getting a spreadsheet of all the regulations we have. I think it'll save a lot of time and energy to not put those through the forum just to say that they don't need a review, but we still want to make sure we're tracking them on our back. So we developed a sort of new alternative process. But that is the update on the reg review unless anyone else has anything to add. Great, great job. And Karen, I'm sure now that you've kind of reset the approach where it's coming directly from the reg owners, it feels more natural, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's an important exercise. I think at some point the commission maybe give guidance or Karen will make a recommendation as to how frequent this exercise should be done. I do know other jurisdictions are constantly, you know, upping their regulations because I see them sharing them like with the AGA. So I think this is an important exercise and I think this is a great structure. And I think the factors, the criteria are solid. Commissioners, any questions?  Any questions? Okay. All right, thanks for the update. And thank you to the team for engaging in it. It's, again, it seems like additional work, but in the end of the day, we are a regulatory agency. So we've got to make sure our wrecks are respond on. So thank you. Thanks, Crystal, to devising the system. I think a lot of us would not have that skill set. So thank you very, very much. Okay. Commissioners, before we get to commissioners updates, do we want to take a break? I like it when I see absolutely no reaction. Like just I suggest we move forward, Madam Chair. Okay. Do we all agreement? I'm trying. I like how that was done with authority, Brad. I'm trying, Brad. There we go. Okay. So then we're moving on to commission updates. And for those who are familiar with our agenda, often that's the last item. But today we are anticipating an executive session relating to the lease. But at this point in time, we'll turn to our commission updates. So we, I'm going to turn first to Commissioner O'Brien, because it was an important suggestion that we consider the procedural aspect of our statutory requirements under Chapter 23 case section three to that address the two statutory positions of Secretary and Treasurer and in the process for election. But I'll turn it to you, Commissioner O'Brien. Certainly. Thank you, Madam Chair. I had brought this up back when Commissioner Stebbins left. As you pointed out, there's a statutory requirement that annually we elect the Secretary and the Treasurer. And when I first got here, there had been a practice of the same people cycling through the same seats. And the other two commissioners not taking any of those elected positions, which was not best practice. And so part of why I wanted to bring it up is I'd like us to be doing best practice. The other issue that came up is sort of the timing of it. We've been doing it kind of ad hoc. Sometimes it was based on someone leaving, coming in, that sort of thing. I do think the better practice is that we pick a time, and the way we're doing it, even with agenda setting, of having something recurring annually, every quarter, whatever it is, I do think we need to put this on and pick a time and ideally pick a time that doesn't coincide with any of our scheduled ends of term. And I know they're all a little bit different. I think there's a handful of us that have April 1st of any given year. Some have, I think Commissioner Skinner's got an end of March, but not March 30th date. So being mindful and chair, I don't know when yours is. My memory is it's around mid-March, end of March as well. So my recommendation is better than mine. I have no idea. So I guess, so I think we should check those before we sort of say that we want to do a particular date, but based on my memory of it, I would say that probably having rotations that start on March 1st and then run for a year and maybe you put it on for the vote a couple weeks prior is the better way to go. I also think there's been confusion about who's going to take what when someone leaves. And because hopefully our intention is to keep cycling these, I do think we should have a default order of succession that you come in and the expectation is everyone cycles through in this order, you know, secretary then treasurer then off. But in doing that, I did also want to bring up something else that we do. It's not statutory and we don't elect this person. But I do think this dovetails with these two positions, particularly with treasurer, which is I've been on the compliance internal audit and compliance group since shortly after I got here. Commissioner Zuniga was also on that. We both had compliance backgrounds, which is why we did it, we were getting it up and running, making decisions about whether to do as an independent compliance group, that sort of thing. That group, it does a lot of work, it's incredibly important. But I mentioned this to Director Wells, it is large. And I think that when looking at compliance, the better approach is to keep with that group. But I also think we need a smaller compliance committee that is much more narrowly drawn from that group that addresses internal compliance. And my experience has been when you look at segregation of duties, we want to make sure that someone is different from any other sort of compliance responsibilities. And to some extent, Secretary and particularly Treasurer are those very obvious compliance responsibilities. And so I would also suggest that we not have whoever is in the other two positions also be on that. Now there's no statutory prohibition against it. And I know there might be times like when there were only three of us on the commission, we may not have a choice. There was a time when I was Secretary and I was also the only person on compliance that we just didn't have a choice, we didn't have enough bodies. But it would be good, I think, going forward to make sure that those roles are all separated out. We have to address the designation of the internal control officer. I know right now Derek Lennon has been fulfilling that, but better practice would be that the CFO not be part of that very small compliance committee for the segregation of duties, conflict of interest, that sort of thing. So given the discussion that we had about the confusion that has led to the last couple of, not Gail, but both Bruce and Enrique leaving before their terms were up, how someone was going to be tapped to be interim, who that would be, how long that was going to last, and the succession as we go through. I thought this was a good forum as we move forward on voting on that today to really have a discussion about best practices in that regard and making sure again we have not only the succession cycle to deal with departures that happened before the end of a term, making sure the elections are timed to not coincide with the natural end and departure of anyone, and then also to make sure that there's this sort of segregation of duties as we go forward to make sure that each of us as commissioners have some sort of role in terms of compliance for the commission that is that is a segregation of duties. The rub is really going to be, there is hopefully very shortly another commissioner and the question is what if anything that commissioner could do, and we do, I mean there is the broader audit and compliance group that has an in and out looking face and an inward looking face, and whether that person could sit with the commissioner who's designated for the compliance committee but not be part of the compliance committee might also be the better practice so that you have sort of the depth of bench in terms of who is getting to know what function in the office. So that was my recommendation in terms of process that I wanted to bring forward for discussion before we then dive into sort of moving and voting on the actual two statutory officers that we have to do tonight. So thank you for that. I want to make sure I want to first speak about the the ancillary role of secretary and treasurer. I do feel that the rotation of those roles would be to ensure that the commission gets a benefit of each commissioner's unique skill sets and unique talents and that we recognize the statute does say annual annual election. Did we lose? I don't know. My battery is dying. I'm going to have to switch. Okay. I just talked to Brad about this earlier. My iPad only has so much of a life. I think it's a lesson to all of us on how long our meetings are. If my iPad starts dying, we've gone too long. So I can still hear you and I'll join on the other device. Well, I can see you now though. But I just want to, I thought I had to assess who would like us that the rotational annual basis probably makes a good deal sense. I have to say in our instance, we're really lucky because people are interested in committing and contributing and wanting to play an important role to make that an impact. We're so fortunate on that. Quite frankly, there's a lot of these positions that you'd have to twist arms to do and we don't have that situation. But I do think the fact that it says annual work before it really was the same individuals who had the role. I do think there is a check and balance that's that is put in place if we if we make these an annual election and perhaps rotational. We may not always have that luxury. But to the extent we have that luxury, that would be what I would think is the best practice as to setting up a a compliance committee. You know, that's a that's a new concept, Commissioner Bryan, and one that I truly appreciate. I have never really been part of the working group on internal compliance and audit. And it felt odd to me that I didn't understand that work except to the extent it informs the internal control plan in that I sign off on in my position. So I've had awareness, but I know that Karen has agreed to give routine updates to the commission as a whole on that work and that you've informed that work along the way. Commissioner O'Brien, my sense of that work. And again, without being part of it has been that it's been really the risk assessment group to help us be able to make, you know, the team make good judgments as to policies and procedures through an assessment of risk and then for us to be able to to test that through our internal control plan. I think what you're talking about a compliance committee is is a different a different work and service. And I'd like to give that some more thought. I want to think about how that assignment goes and who would be on that committee. But I what I think I don't want to put words in your mouth when I'm hearing you and it's kind of when I said checking balances. Derek has been quite transparent about this. He wants to make sure that he's got protection and that his work is being tested, audited if you will, separate and apart from him and his team. So is that what you're thinking? So there's two, right? There's an audit function. Derek and I have had these conversations. There's the audit function. There's a compliance function. People's definitions of those shift because of my IG background. My concept of compliance is broader than audit.  And we as regulators, I think, have a responsibility to look at ourselves internally structurally. Do we have what's sufficient if people want to bring up issues, not only looking at sort of internal finances and controls, but just broader functioning of the office and expenditure funds, etc. And set up with in such a way that if someone has something they want to bring up, making sure they can reach ears, if they don't think something will get quashed up through staff level, but then also in terms of commissioners, how you want to make sure that the Constitution of that committee is such that people have the ability to go up and make sure it's getting to a body that will hear it objectively and adjudicate it. So it's not something that, clearly, I'm not suggesting that someone, we create a position today and say there it is, it's going to require thought in terms of how big who's what's the Constitution, the cycle of it, that sort of thing. I brought it up with Karen, you know, very briefly, conceptually, and I don't want to speak for you, Karen, I know, but it's while that the depth of the experience that goes into that risk matrix in the broader group is great. I think the smaller question of compliance and maybe what to test from a pure compliance perspective shouldn't be necessarily broadcast in a bigger group, not necessarily up to vote of the broader group, so much as a smaller who, you know, cycles through what they're testing. So that's, that's my, that's been my gut on auditing compliance for a while. And I think this is, that's why I brought it up, because I do think it dovetails with the positions that we have to settle today. Okay, so I'm seeing kind of two issues there in terms of the issue around rotating these ancillary positions. I'm thinking of it in a couple of ways. One, it really does give opportunity for us to benefit from lots of perspectives and different talents within our commission. And then second, and probably most importantly, that provide that checks and balance. It's a checks and balance not only on the treasure, with respect to the treasury. It's also with respect to the secretary of role. And Eileen, you can attest to that better than anyone because you've had it. Maybe you want to elaborate on that because you did a little. And I'm sure Todd's face will fall when I say this, but even for even handing that baton off at this point, you know, we still have, Todd, you probably know the actual number eight or nine in the log backlog that I'm still going to be working with general counsel's group to get out and up to vote for us. But the idea being and then whoever a secretary will then, you know, be prospective in terms of looking at that. But it's a lot of work. It might seem mundane, but it is the memorialization of what we are doing. And it is transparency, best practice again. So it is an ease of access. And so, you know, that's part of the reason we hyperlinked with the timestamps on it, that sort of stuff. So Commissioner Hill, Commissioner Skinner, Commissioner Hill. Well, I'm all for rotating these positions. I was brought up in the political world back in 1989 or 1991, when I got put on the Hamilton zoning board of appeals, where all the members were going to get an opportunity to be able to either be a chair at some point, be a vice chair or a secretary in the case. And then when I was elected to the board of selectsmen in Ipswich, it was the same process that we followed that everybody was going to have an opportunity to be put into different positions, even though we may all have had different skill sets in different things. And I thought that that was very important at the local level. And then I moved up to the state level. And we followed the same exact procedure, where, you know, a newbie state representative got put on committees that were maybe lesser known to the public. I remember one of the first committees I got put on was banks and banking. Had no clue about banks and banking. I learned more about ATM fees than I ever wanted to learn in my first year there. And I might remind everybody, I was a staffer at the state house before I became a legislator. And I thought, well, I'm going to get, you know, because of my experience, I'll get on some good committees. Well, guess what? I got put on some committees that again weren't as known to others as some others. And then my second term, I got moved off that committee and put on ways and means, you know, a term later. Taking turns, you know, we did, I didn't stay on the same committee for 23 straight years. I had a rotation of different committees that I was put on, as were my colleagues. It's just something that's been embedded in me that this is rotation is a good thing. And that everybody should have an opportunity to do something if there's an opportunity. So we have two positions before us that are elected. And all five, if we ever have five again, all five should have that opportunity to do that, you know, in different years, as they get more experience in the field of gaming. So I always thought that those positions were something that changed yearly. I was a little taken aback when I found out that in the past that some people have those positions for 10 years. We all together, we all vote on every single issue in front of the gaming, we don't vote on different things because of specialities. So I am absolutely for rotating these positions yearly. And I hope that that we as a commission would support that. I certainly do. I want to learn as much as I possibly can about the gaming commission. The only way to do that is to be put in these different positions in my opinion, as I have seen both locally and you know, my other world and my other life, you know, you get to rotate through different things and you'll learn a lot by doing that. So I'm all for rotating. And I hope that as a commission that that we can agree that that's what we should do moving forward. Again, as I've said in the past, we're a new commission. And we do may want to do things a little different than the past commission. That's okay. It's nothing wrong with that. And I think this is one of those changes that we should make is everybody gets an opportunity to get in these positions. And certainly those who have been here for a long time and have the experience should get those opportunities, especially if there's a possibility that their term may be coming up sooner rather than later. Yeah, I don't have too much more to add. I do agree that the rotation in these in these roles is important. I think, you know, once we have a couple of cycles under our belts, Commissioner Hill and I will be pros at making motions, right? Just as speedy and articulate as Commissioner O'Brien. You know, I do wonder though, because I seem to hear this suggestion that, you know, there, there, there should be sort of a nod to more senior commissioners for certain positions. I do not agree with that. There's no seniority here. While I do certainly respect the years of service on this body that, you know, each rings, I do not agree that there is a, there's this concept of seniority. We are all equal. We are all peers. And I would like to see the rotation happen without regard to how long a commissioner has been serving on this body, because we all do bring unique experiences. We have different backgrounds that are all very relevant to the work that we do in each of the areas. And I see no reason to penalize anyone, you know, simply to deny anyone, you know, role as either treasurer or secretary just by virtue of the fact that, you know, they're new. I think that, you know, that's a slippery slope because if that's the case, the new commissioner wouldn't be doing any work and the expectation would be that, you know, that's more, more senior quote unquote commissioners are making all the decisions. That's not something that I can agree to. Well, I'll clarify this and that I think right now we're only talking about two ancillary statutory positions and that it certainly is my goal that all commissioners have the opportunity to contribute in a, in a substantive fashion, ideally in areas that they're, they're interested in. And sometimes it may be that, you know, we share those obligations where we can do up to two without violating the open meeting law and sometimes it'll be where we, where we actually serve on a working group with, with Karen and team. It's as full time commissioners, it is a challenge to make sure that we are all making, making the best and biggest impact that we can and that are putting officials imagined for us. So we, you know, right now, I think if I understand correctly, we were thinking about these two positions, rotating them or on an annual basis, then I guess we would have to think about the next steps of electing them because our CFAL does need a treasurer in order to move forward. If I could just stop for one second, there was, there's another, so there's a wholly apart from, you know, seniority, that sort of thing. A lot of organizations have what's just a succession in terms of there's just an order to the cycle. And so even if this year's going to be out of what we might consider as in what we want to see or adopt as a cycle, I do think we need to have a conversation about it so that going forward, there's sort of a natural process where, especially if someone leaves early, we know how people are going to be cycling up and through. I used to, for planning purposes, for the planning purposes on what I hope will be a compliance committee. Even if we don't decide that today, I would ask that we have another discussion about the cycle and the timing of it because I do think that is part of having a better practice when you look at interacting with some of these sort of non-statutory roles. So when I hear you saying succession, are you saying that you would like to have, of course, I wish we had our fifth commissioner, right? Right. It would be ideal. We don't have that right now. But you're actually imagining, okay, this is how these roles would play out and who would be slotted in during the course of 10 years. Is there a cycle of, to Commissioner Skinner's point, do you have the new commissioner come in and not take a role while they're learning the organization the first year? Or do they become secretary? Or do they become treasurer? And traditionally, you would see secretary, vice chair, vice president, president, and you would cycle up that way and then out. So we have two statutory positions, five year terms. But I myself have identified one position while not statutory that dovetails with those. So I think at some point in the near future, if not today, we need to talk about that and how do we want to cycle it so that we don't run into a conflict with, okay, we've now happened into treasurer and that same person being, say, Compliance Committee, the small group. That's not a best practice. So is there a way to cycle these so that you know they don't sync up at the same time? And I wish, and I wish, and I wish there were a fifth, you know, where we could be like everybody's cycling through this way, so that we know there's no overlap in terms of best practice. But I really only identify three possibly fourth is being attending the other broader meetings. And six, just to be clear on the succession, it is, it is not unusual to have these kinds of succession plans and organizations. I certainly just was that a board meeting on something that's private to me over the weekend. And, you know, I preside over that and no new member can serve on a committee for one year. I mean, so these are not unusual concepts. I know that I, but everybody is equal on the board, but it's just that that's been a policy. So I sort of hearing that there's an idea that we either decide that's not important or we decide that there's some succession, but it's certainly not unusual. But, you know, these concepts are not unusual to organizations. With that said, I agree with Commissioner Skinner we're all equal. Absolutely. It's just that we happen to have for today, we're talking about these two particular statutory functions. And one is one, I'm quite aware of the fact that Commissioner O'Brien, you know, accepted the position with and, you know, recognizing that you didn't want it to be a like appointment as it had been in the past. And we accepted that. And that's how you voted in. It was not a given that we were going to be in that room forever. Actually, it turned out that you've been longer, and you've done an extraordinary job bringing us up to date. And for that, I just want to, again, I said it before, I want to say thank you. And then we have a position of treasure. What I'm hearing you say, Commissioner O'Brien, I may not have this right, because I'm trying to figure out how I've sequenced that with the need today to elect a treasure in the idea that at some point, and maybe this is what we say, at some point, maybe we decide to have a compliance committee. And if it turns out that the person who's elected treasure should be the person on the compliance committee, then we will just have to reelect somebody new on the treasure. And, you know, as that may be a perfectly okay process. But what I really am hearing you say is that you're addressing those checks and balances that we haven't had in place. Because really, we have a treasure and a CFAL to work together for almost 10 years. Right. And they were aware of that. They, too, were aware of this need. That's why- No, this is not something that has not come up in conversations prior to this time. So it is- It's a matter of best practices you've repeated, yeah. Right. And I, because of my background, too, I am very interested in moving forward with the idea of the much smaller targeted compliance committee. I do think it's a best practice for this commission. So we have the Commissioner Bryan, to honor your earlier request, are you in a position now where you would be ready to step down from Secretary, and so that we would need to elect the Secretary? I want to honor that because you- Yeah, no, definitely. I've been in about a year and a half. So, like I said, I want to clean slate. So the nine, eight that are left, I will continue to work with the general counsel's group to try to get that. I want those done before we get too far into the summer. I want to make sure we're up to- We're going to have great cadence right now when we look at the agenda-setting meetings, and I want to get in that cadence going forward, which I think, you know, whoever the Secretary is going forward, they can do prospectively from today out with a clean slate. Okay, so that's a piece of work that we need to address. We also need to address the election of a treasure. Do we have a consensus that these two positions could be annual and that they would be a rotation? I guess I should say we all agree it has to be an annual election that's the law. We've got our counselor there nodding his head for us. That's a gift. Are we in agreement that it's a rotation? Do we have a consensus on that? I'd like to see that moving forward. Yeah, and Commissioner Skinner? Yeah, I would just ask us to define a rotational just a little bit more clearly. I mean, what does that mean exactly? My recommendation is it's an annual, the annual election by its nature signifies the rotation and that we pick a date that makes sense to not ideally conflict with what is the natural end dates for some of us, for some of the terms. So it would mean that everybody does, and I actually have to ask, I am, I'm talking, I am assuming that the chair, and this is not about me, but let's just divorce it from Kathy Judstine. Is the chair not in this mix? You know, it doesn't say, and I defer to Todd, it doesn't say specifically, but I would think particularly when it came to the treasurer appointment, that would not be best practice to have the chair run through that at all. I agree. I also feel that because it's a custom in this particular organization that the chair doesn't move, I would probably not want to be moving on minutes. I can tell you with all truth, I have been secretary in many organizations, and often that's becomes a very key role and actually leads to roles above secretary. So it has nothing to do for me personally about the role of secretary. I take it as Todd, he knows how serious I take that position. So I, when I say everybody, I'm going to say that the chair is removed if we're in agreement with that, because I just don't see how that works for a future chair. I really don't. So does that mean that when you say revolving, are you saying that everybody would serve each role? Ideally, yes. That's what you're thinking? That's what I would envision. But that's, so they're imagining rotational meaning probably setting up, I know in organizations they'll have, you can tell the vice vice president is coming up and moving it to become president. You've seen it in our organizations, I'm sure. But in this case, it would be involving that if Brad Hill is secretary at some point, his time will come up to become treasurer. And it would be some kind of a flow chart of sorts with this succession where we have to integrate new commissioners. But then does that create a situation where you cannot have a commissioner serving in any one capacity, two years in a row, for instance? Yes. Ideally, you wouldn't do two years in a row unless there was either a compelling substantive reason or personnel reason. Like we found ourselves like we did last year with only three of us, right? And so there was no choice. But that Gail and I each had to take on one of those roles. You might find that circumstance again. But the preference would be everybody cycles through so that you wouldn't be seeing that again for at least a couple of years before you'd cycle back through. But it wouldn't be a preference, it would be a requirement, right? So it would be a practice that we have as the better practice, yes, that we would do. So what you're saying is, I would, for instance, serve as or be elected secretary, even though I might not have any interest in doing so. You're saying it's required. Correct. That's what that's rotational. That's what's being described.  So I'm going to put a fly in that ointment. There may be someone who doesn't want that position. I mean, not just for secretary, there could be someone who doesn't want the treasurer role either. I mean, and we're going to force that individual to take on that responsibility against their discussion. That's where we're talking about it. I think it's the better practice. And no one dives in and says, I want to be secretary, but it is a key functional role. There are a lot of people that may say, I don't want to be treasurer. It's a key functional role. And when we're looking at best practice and we're looking at what has turned into what might be a banal discussion into this in-depth conversation, looking at best practices, I really think the best practice way and the equitable way of doing it is everyone cycles through. Now, I'm dovetailing with what I would like to see as a compliance committee slot in terms of conflict of interest. There's two slots. So you'd be talking about rotating those in. And in a five-year term, you would have them possibly twice with a down year. Might be more than that if we don't even have five or if people leave before they rotate in. So it's hard to say for sure. One thing I absolutely don't want to see is five years of the same person being in there. And certain people just not having that role at all, because they do think that it is critical for all of us to participate in as much of the running of the commission as possible. But if someone didn't want it, they could not accept it as well. They could. Just putting it out there. I do like the idea of rotational. It is a statutorily required. There are no skills required to it. But it is statutorily required. In other words, there's no in the statute. There's no guidance for us. There's no guidance. But it does mean that our organization requires someone to do that. And we're trying to develop a policy that is fair. Fundamentally fair, maybe. And also, as I said, also gives everybody a chance to participate. That wasn't the case necessarily before. And then it came down to people didn't have a choice, right? Because of our numbers. So it gives everybody a chance to participate. We see different perspectives. The commissioner Skinner brings to a certain position versus what commissioner Hill brings to a certain position will be very different. All really critically important to the overall health of the organization. And to the team, because you're going to be working with the team. So they get to work with different commissioners. And that's really an important part of the experience. I know that when Todd works with you, Nakesha, and works with Eileen, and works with me, he hears all different things and probably it's confusing. But it's up to Todd to figure out how he's going to do his best work. But he gets the advantage of full time commissioners. And then when Brad goes in, that's when he really listens. But, you know, we bring all different perspectives. And that's why we are an organization of five with different appointing officials. In terms of the policy that we're trying to create, I think maybe maybe the circumstances we have here had highlighted that it might be nice to have to be rotational, just to be there and get the best from everybody. And then in the back of my mind always, particularly with respect to treasurer, but you know, I'm convinced by even Eileen mentioning it, that secretary too, it is a check and balance on our part. And I think, you know, Derek is here, but probably not listening. Derek would say that that's something that he was acutely aware. So another way to deal with it now. He's not only here, he's here. So I do want to say, I do want to say that while the treasurer is an important check and balance, we have multiple checks and balances. So I don't want there to be any discussion about time period as treasurer for 10 years, because the whole commit, the whole budget goes in front of the commission. There are quarterly updates. We post all of our financials to the website. We've been through two state audits where we've had zero financial findings. So there are multiple checks and balances in place that I do look at it as, it's interesting to see so much, so much desire because we have had annual elections and it's just no one has actually wanted the position. So it is nice to see everyone wanting the positions moving forward. But you know, there are a lot of checks and balances in place outside of the rotation of the commission, including the biweekly finance meeting with the executive director of the chair and the treasurer. So there are a lot of checks and balances in place. There are. And this would be an additional one. And I did want to talk about that before. It really was only one individual. So we're permitted to speak about that. That's fine. But even Enrique said, and, you know, we said, you know, there's room for additional checks and balances on that. Derek, we are always working to make sure that the best practices are in place and you are a leader of that. So that is not intended. But that certainly came up during the discussions, even with Enrique and me. So in terms of going forward, and I think you probably gathered from what I'm saying, but I, you know, I'm not impugning any of the work that was done in the past. But my background does come from compliance. And Derek and I do have a slightly different definition of what that is as well. And to me, having the same individuals in the same position repeatedly is just not a good idea. I would really love to see the compliance committee take shape, have a really intense discussion about it, et cetera. If I do want to do that, then I would not want to be treasurer because I don't think I should be that person and then also be treasurer.  And I, I lean on and I appreciate that today, the compliance committee and I see that you'd like to be on it. And I'd love to understand what that's going to be and who's going to be part of it. I would love for you to be part of that. That's what you want. I'm not sure it would be, you know, just even working with Karen. You know, I might decide that I would like to be part of that as well. The compliance committee is something. I think it has to, it has to be a broad discussion and it has to be set up by all of us. So that we know that we have a balanced representation. So what I'm saying is, if we as a body want to move in that direction, then I would really want to keep myself open to being able to do that. Right. So let me make myself clear. I am turning over the baton to Secretary today, no matter what. But I do want to make clear sort of what I see in terms of trying to get the body to move forward with the business in hand. Right. And I stepped into that because I really, when I hear compliance committee and what that function is, it means something in a way of significance to me that we really want to understand the charter of that and what it means to our team. So, and I appreciate you saying, and I appreciate one, you bringing it up. I think that's really a critical and a very innovative piece of work. I know that Karen has kind of struggled with, we've talked a lot about compliance and how we can do good testing and ensuring compliance. You and I've worked closely with, of course, the independent monitor. We think about compliance all the time with respect to our licensees, all of us. So when I say that, I'm saying, I'm not sure I need to be part of it, but I certainly would want to make sure that whatever this is that the commission really thinks very carefully about its charter and what it is intended to be. Right. And I would envision a process where we're voting on that at some point in terms of what do we want it to look like? And what's the constitution of it? Yeah, I am. Is it safe to say, though, that we wouldn't be having that vote for a few months? I don't see that happening. Yeah, no, yeah. That's accurate. So in terms of secretary, we do need to have a back to rotational. The commissioner Skinner, I think I had kind of a consensus on, and I'm pointing to this side of the room with Commissioner Hill and Commissioner Bryan thinking they're comfortable with rotational. I heard you're not necessarily so comfortable, but when you heard a little bit more, what do you think? Yeah, I still have to give that a little bit of thought before I can get on board with it. I'm just not sure. Particularly around this notion that you can't serve in the Secretary of Treasury or capacity unless you've been a commissioner for a year. I don't think anybody said that. I think that was raised as a possible approach. No, we talked about the order of succession. You're going to have down years. We could decide as a body we wanted to do that. That was me throwing out these other ways you could do succession. But no one is suggesting it. And to be blunt, we don't have the bodies sometimes to even have that luxury. So it is really talking about knowing what is coming. If people are leaving, how is this going to move through and how is this going to cycle through in a manner that's best practice? Yeah. And I think I could get on board with rotational as long as it doesn't depend on seniority in terms of who can serve and who can't because with all due respect, we've gained our professional experience many, many years before we were appointed commissioners. So I don't think that our prior qualification should be completely discounted based simply on the order that we've arrived to this body. So if we can get, you know, sort of separate the rotational from this notion of seniority, then I can get on board. Yeah. I think it's more happenstance of where's the, it's like a wheel. It's like, where's the rotation when you happen to come through going forward? So you slot in wherever it happens to be rotating in that moment. That's the way I would see it going forward. So I think as for today, you know, obviously we can take the official votes and the consensus, but I think just getting forward with the business at hand, if Secretary, if Commissioner Hill is going to be secretary and Commissioner Skinner is going to continue this term as treasurer, then we can keep, you know, keep going forward as long as I have an understanding that the work and the compliance committee is something that we as a body are going to pursue in the near future. I just want to clarify just so that everyone's clear. This is an election and so we've got to go in the right order, but I appreciate what you're doing. Commissioner O'Brien, you're helping out here. We have Commissioner O'Brien is secretary right now and she is stepping down I think and we all want to be very appreciative of that. And so thank you. In that that creates a vacancy and I know it's the last meeting, the last meeting Commissioner Hill expressed an interest and I don't believe anybody else expressed an interest in Secretary, am I right? So it would be a one-year election, Commissioner Hill by statute under section three. And so if you are interested, then think I would want a motion if somebody could support his interest. Will the legal team be able to put up with me? That's the question. Is there anybody who wishes to move to elect Commissioner? Madam Chair, I would move that the Commission elect Commissioner Hill to take over the responsibilities of Secretary. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you. Is there any discussion besides a huge thank you to both Commissioner O'Brien and Commissioner Hill? Commissioner O'Brien? Commissioner Hill? Commissioner Skinner? And I vote yes. So thank you Commissioner Hill. Now you also have indicated Commissioner O'Brien before that you were interested in treasurer. Now in light of the idea of the compliance committee, I'm hearing you say that if you were to be treasurer, that would be a direct conflict. We had Commissioner Skinner also expressed an interest from the start. I expressed an interest in recommending her at the time. Then I got the update that we had two commissioners interested. It sounds as though Commissioner O'Brien is willing to step aside with that. But right now we do not, it's not a continuing role. So I just want to make sure that that's clear because we want to make sure if we have Commissioner Skinner become our treasurer, it is an election. That's the proper process. Okay. So Commissioner O'Brien, are you saying that you are less interested in being treasurer now? I'm not less interested. I just think that for the work of this body going forward, I would rather put my efforts into that. And I don't see how I do that and treasurer at the same time. So I think the best thing to do is move forward with Commissioner Skinner finishing out a term as treasurer. And if I'm here next year, I'd probably take a different view on what I want to do next year. It remains to be seen whether I'm here in the spring. And this is a one-year election again. You may understand that I'm hearing today we are not going to adopt a rotational policy, although that's still on the table. But right now, Commissioner Skinner, you are still interested in treasurer. I am. She is. So with that said, and the understanding Commissioner O'Brien has stepped aside, do I have a motion? Before I make that motion, I just want to be very clear that we will be working as diligently and expedite the request from Commissioner O'Brien that we set up this other committee as soon as we possibly can. And I'm in agreement with that Commissioner O'Brien is spot on and that's been a whole. And I express, I just want to make sure that, and I think I don't even know what I'm getting at, we want to make sure it's exactly right. Yep. Okay. I appreciate that. Yeah. And we'll make sure that we come back to the commission and maybe we'll have five. But yes, and I'm very fair point. I think we can work expeditiously because I also know Commissioner O'Brien, you've made a decision today on behalf of the commission, which I appreciate very, very much. And in terms of Commissioner Skinner, do we have a motion for her to be treasurer? I would move that commissioner that the commission that you like Commissioner Skinner to serve as treasurer of the commission in accordance with chapter 20 to be K section three F. Thanks. Okay. Any further discussion? Okay. Commissioner O'Brien. I Commissioner Hill. I Commissioner Skinner. Same place. And I vote yes. So three and one abstention. And of course, the good news in our society, you get to vote for yourself and you can also abstain. So there we go. We have our two elections. I will revisit the policy because I do think we might have a majority that may support a rotational. I want to honor Commissioner Skinner, because she's giving it some additional thought. We may come up with some more to inform us on that. And then Madam Chair, point of order in terms of when these when these appointments will be up again. I do think we need to pick a time to do this on a regular cadence because sometimes they get forgotten about. Well, maybe that can be brought up in sort of the rotational discussion, but I do think we need to pick a recurring time of the year for these. I have to ask our general counsel to help us on keeping that timely, please. Okay. I think I think the end of the third quarter would be the time that we would we would revoke one or one year when it's today is whatever that we're not going over one year. Yeah, my only like I said, you have to be mindful of when people's terms ends and when you're going to have gaps. And historically, we have now had gaps where when someone leaves either early or even at the end of their term, you have a gap. And so I think it would be better to have the term be before the March, April turnover so that you've got someone seated who's going to be here taking over so that you know you have continuity. Well, for today, I'm going to stick with the fact that the statute says annual election. And so they each have one year term in their position in terms of the rotational and the succession. I think that that discussion is still being one that we need to put back on the agenda for process. I think Commissioner Skinner's get some more thought. Maybe we all get some more thought. Maybe we come up with a framework I mean that might be helpful for us to visualize how it's going to play out. And that might give everybody a level of comfort. All I know is that I am not as chair, I'm not part of this discussion. And I can just say how appreciative I am of all of you expressing an interest and a willingness to serve in each and every capacity. I mean, I know that you're willing to serve as both secretary and treasurer for that and forever grateful. And now we have something more to look at that's really a critical component. Appreciate that tension for conflict very much. Commissioner Skinner, I appreciate your excitement and interest in this current position. Commissioner Hilt, thank you for stepping in on this. We didn't ask you right when you came on, because there was a lot of backlog into that and Commissioner O'Brien has done such a superb job. So thank you because really she served over her commitment. So thank you so much. Okay, we're going to move on if that's okay, everyone. All right, that was a yes from everyone. We have the Mills has been on with us all day and he is going to with along with Commissioner Hilt and in Crystal, the two of them keep us well informed on legislative updates. Mills provides that in also unique and qualified because he also worked at the state legislature.  As we were thinking about the outstanding piece of legislation, I did ask Mills and I think Karen was in the office whether we should come to the commission to see if folks were interested in the letter or the ask that Mills will tee up for us. That's the first question. And if so, should we submit the letter and he drafted something for us to work from? Is that fair, Mills? Yeah, I think that's correct chair. And I know it's been a long day, so I don't want to take up too much time. But I know I think everybody has had a chance to take a look at what I drafted. I know that Commissioner Skinner was able to offer a couple of helpful comments to me, which are not included just yet, but I have them and I will include them. They're small, grammatical changes. So would you like me to share my screen? So we're all looking at the same letter or I think so. Okay. Thank you. You bet. So, you know, just to tee this up very quickly, you know, for the last two years, like everyone, the Game Commission has conducted our business with the benefit of a virtual connection just as we are today. We're able to do so while complying with the open meeting law due to provisions in the governor's March 2020 executive order, which suspended certain aspects of the open meeting law. Those remote meeting provisions were also extended earlier this year in a new session law, but are set to expire on July 15th, which is just about two months away from today. So thought it might be a good opportunity to discuss if the commissioners would be interested in sending a letter to legislative leadership, requesting that these changes be made permanent or at least extended. Keep friends. I think he froze. I'm sorry, Chair. I was pausing just for your reaction. I'm happy to read the letter as it's written, if you folks would like, but, you know, that's just me teeing it up, you know, how we got to where we got. Could you make it just a bit bigger just? Of course. I'm familiar with it. I just want to make sure everybody is comfortable with one the topic. That actually made it worse. Let's do this. Page 78 of our packet, if that helps. Oh yeah, I've got it in mind. Is it the same letter that's in the packet? It is. Okay. So let's just talk about the topic to begin with. Do we agree with the position that's presented that right now it would expire by July 15th? At the very least we would sort of recommend to the legislature that they extend it, but even perhaps make it a permanent change. And then we can discuss the tosses and minuses. I think it might be helpful to be on the record about our experiences to when we think it works well and when we, if we find there are challenges. Maybe we can take it down then so we can see each other now. Thanks. I don't think everybody's had a chance to read it. Commissioner Hill. I think it's absolutely appropriate that we send something to the leadership. I think the technology has worked and benefited us very well. Certainly in the time that I've been here, I can't speak to the time before that. If I'm not mistaken, I think the legislature actually is extending their remote stuff past July 15th. So there should be no reason why we shouldn't be able to get that same that same thing happening for us. So no, I would, I'm okay with the letter and I'm okay with sending it out. Very well written letter actually. Yeah, Tom showed this to me earlier. I gave him just one small comment. I think we should send it out. Commissioner Skinner. And I agree. I think it's very well written. And it's absolutely something we should support as a commission. Yeah, I think it's important for us to emphasize that as a statewide agency. We benefit by being able to reach all corners of the Commonwealth, particularly with respect to the subcommittees as Mills points out in the letter. We have not faced the corner issues that all of the subcommittee chairs used to really have to deal with. And so the legislature's vision has been accomplished much more clearly. And also in terms of just being able to have diverse voices from across the Commonwealth. Now, if you're here in Williamstown, it's a long haul or if you're in British Columbia, we used to use just phones. Now we get the benefit of the virtual platform where we have the benefit of international voices. So if we can go ahead and then if everybody's in agreement, Crystal would arrange, right? And Crystal, you've been able to also work with Mills on the letter as well. I think that you were the one who reminded them of the G-PAC success. It's been really, really, but I think Joe Delaney would and Mary Thurnault would say it's like night and day in terms of what they dealt with before in terms of getting the G-PAC together. Madam Chair, the only suggestion I would make, and of course it's up to the Commission if you agree or not, I would actually put in a couple of examples of people who would, for example, we've been able to get our updates from MGM without having them come all the way from Springfield for an hour discussion. We have had meetings with people who are in Vegas. We've had meetings with people who are from Kentucky who this platform has been very helpful in getting us the information that we've needed. So I'm just wondering if maybe you might want to just put a couple of examples of where this has been beneficial to us. I know we kind of put in a generic sentence or two here, but I think if you put in some examples that might go a long way. All right. I suppose that's a good idea that one that stands out in my mind that because it was when we instituted virtual technology for holding our meetings because the governor issued that executive order stating the state of emergency and legislature allowed for the virtual. We had our round tables. Well, first off, we had the immediate Mar