Good morning everyone. I see all four of us are present. I'm going to do a roll call just to confirm that. Commissioner Cameron. Good morning. I am here. Commissioner Bryan. I am here. Good morning. Commissioner Zeneca. Good morning everyone. I am here. And good morning everyone. Thank you for attending this meeting. As you know we're conducting it virtually given relief that Governor Baker issued pursuant to an executive order that allows public bodies like ours to gather remotely, make our decisions during this pandemic, which we now are, you know, over a year at our last meeting was our one one-year anniversary. Today is March 25th. It's just after 10 a.m. and we are starting public meeting number 340. Before we get started, I know that all of us collectively have in our thoughts the victims of the Atlanta shooting and we remain committed to our values of equity and inclusion and anti-racism. So we keep in mind the victims of that Atlanta shooting and then of course the shooting in Boulder. You know, we are safe in our homes working remotely. Our folks are on the casino floors, the gaming agents, the RGEU. We think of everyone's safety but right now we will think of those two communities and keep them in our thoughts and prayers. With that, again, good morning. Another reminder, much more housekeeping. We have a really busy agenda and I'm not inclined usually to keep track of time. Mary Ann does a great job at lining up an agenda. Today I will ask Karen to assist me in keeping things moving along. And my fellow commissioners, if you need a break, it is a long day for us. Just, you know, chime in and we'll make sure everyone's comfortable. Okay, so we'll get started. Commissioner O'Brien with the minutes on item number two. Thank you, Madam Chair. Steph has been catching us up on these. I appreciate the work that they've put into this. Just as a general comment before we move into the two-day, we had discussed putting timestamps at the beginning of each shift in topic. And they, I would just ask that those be put in on these two dates. They're not in there right now. And then I had a couple comments on December 3rd of 2020 before we move to have them approved. Um, believe at page eight, there's two comments to me having to step out of the meeting. It looks like I stepped out twice and came back once. I think it's a matter. But maybe it's a way to act to make sure which one of those is accurate and then just strike the other one. But other than that, I would move that we approve the meeting minutes from December 3rd, 2020 correction for any other typographical errors or not other corrections for non-material matters. Second. Thank you. Any questions? Other than we know that Commissioner O'Brien stepped back. Okay. Um, Commissioner Cameron. Aye. Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Zunica. Aye. Yes. Of course. Zero. Thank you, Tanya. And then the next set of minutes in the packet is December 17th, 2020. And I had a couple comments before I moved to have those approved. One is on page three of the minutes where it discusses, we're getting the on-site casino updates. And at the end of the opening paragraph, there's a sentence that makes the remark that the share, Commissioner Cameron and myself provided remarks. So I don't know if anything more specific or detailed could be put in there other than that. Because the other comments reference are a little more specific. If you go through. And then the last comment I have is page six of these minutes where we were talking about the M-Vet card request by Suffolk Downs. And I had asked some questions at the end of page six relating to balances on the cards that were never bet and whether those were treated like unplanned tickets or abandoned property. And the discussion is in there. But I think what needs clarifying is that the question that I asked was seeking clarification that unused money was not going to be treated like abandoned property, but was treated like unplanned tickets that ultimately would go into the purse account. And I just would like that fact reflected in the minutes. And so my suggestion would be at the end of that paragraph, which actually goes on to page seven, that it reflect that I, Commissioner O'Brien saw it clarification that any unused money was not going to be treated like abandoned property. And the answer was no, that all the money on those cards, if unclaimed, would ultimately revert to the purse account. So I would just ask that that sentence be put in at the end of that paragraph at the top of page seven. And other than that, I would then move that we approve the minutes from December 17th, 2020, subject to typographical corrections or any other errors for non-material matters. With those modifications, I vote second. Any further modifications on Commissioner O'Brien? Your first point was one I thought I would have brought up. So thank you. Commissioner Cameron, are you all set? Yes. Okay, then I will call vote. Commissioner Camp. Aye. Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Zinica. Aye. And yes, for me, 4 to 0. And thank you. Thank you for the review to Commissioner. Okay. I'll give them right to the administrative update. Karen, Executive Director Wells, please. Good morning, Madam Chair. Good morning, Commission. The first item on the agenda for the administrative update is the on-site casino updates with Director Rilios and Assistant Director Vance. So I will turn it over to them. Thanks, Karen. Good morning, Chair. Good morning, Commissioners. At your last public meeting two weeks ago, you voted on two matters that impact operations at MGM and Encore. You approved the addition of a fourth player position at Black Jack-style tables. You also voted to allow the reintroduction of crabs. Both of those approvals were conditioned on COVID-related safety measures being in place. Our gaming agents team has been monitoring those rollouts and I'd ask Mr. Band to update you on the status. Yes. I'll first start with the occupancy for the casinos. MGM had a high number was 1861 on Saturday the 20th, which is a 23% occupancy. PPC's high number was 1426, which is 24.6%, which is also Saturday, happened to be a PPC cruise promotion. Encore's high number was on the 20th, which is 3,537 or 20.8% occupancy, which was a mystery point promotion as well, all well below the 40% occupancy level. As far as the new seat capacity, MGM's fourth seat, they have in place on 90 tables, which gives them 90 additional seats to play at. That's going very well for them. They have not instituted crabs at this point. Their tables are ready for inspection this afternoon, which our agents are going to be inspecting later today. It took them a little while to get their Plexiglas in order for it would meet with our requirements. Encore had tables ready. As a matter of fact, the afternoon after the meeting, you approved it as well as their fourth seat. That added 183 additional seats for play. That has been received very well by the public, as well as seven crabs tables. That has gone very well. Only thing that we observed at a normal crabs game gets about 130 rolls per hour with the Plexiglas. That's probably cut that down to about 90 rolls per hour. Slowed the game down a little bit, but that's to be expected with players getting used to Plexiglas and things like that. No real additional problems to talk about. The casino has done a pretty good job of keeping people away from kind of gawking at the table like it happens with crabs. Only other thing I have to report is our complaints about not having poker have gone up greatly since two weeks ago. Everybody wants nowhere to do it. I will say Encore has done an excellent job on their website where under their poker section, they address pretty much their whole stance on poker, why they don't have it, what they've done with their bad-beat money and everything. They did an excellent job with that. Who goes to them for doing that? Any questions? Just on the note of poker, are you aware of other jurisdictions that have reintroduced poker? At this time, I'm curious if there's a, quote unquote, safe way. A lot of jurisdictions have done it, but as Encore mentions on their site, that there isn't any way to do it to meet our safe distancing protocols. We require certain spaces between it and that only gets you three to four people at a table, which does not make the game of poker profitable in it. I looked at a table yesterday at Encore. They're the only one that showed me and that had five spaces and that's still not enough to make it a profitable game for them. They're still working on a table there to see if they can figure out a way to get the dividers and make it safe for everybody at the table. That's still in the works, so we'll see what they come up with. I'm willing to work with anybody on that. Other jurisdictions have it without any plexiglass at all that offer it, which in my opinion isn't safe for the dealer or the players at that point. Thank you. You're welcome. Any further questions for Bruce? Okay, thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah, so for the next item, I'm going to turn it back over to Bruce and his team. We're going to do a gaming agent's operation update. We've been trying to highlight some of the work and some of the special projects that have been undertaken by different divisions in across the agency and Bruce has set up for the senior supervising gaming agents to give you a presentation this morning and something they work on. So, I'll turn it over to Bruce to introduce us to you. Yes, this makes Burke and I real proud. I get to highlight my three senior supervisors and I will turn it over to them. They've worked hard on this, so go ahead and three of you. Andrew, Lewis, and Angela. Yeah, for introductions, why don't you make sure to introduce yourselves? We all know who you are, but in case somebody is listening, thanks. It's good to see your faces. Thank you. Thank you. Go ahead. Good morning, Madam Chair. I'm going to share my screen presentation up. I just want to verify that you can see the slide. Yeah, excellent. Okay, Angela. All right. Good morning, Chair. Good morning, commissioners, and welcome to everyone as we present a new day in the life of the Investigations and Enforcement Bureau Gaming Agents Division. My name is Angela Smith, and I am the senior supervisor at MGM. Andrew? Yes. Thank you. All right, thank you. Today, Andrew Lewis and I will present different aspects of the new day in our role as gaming agents. My focus will be a little bit of history, the visual impact of the pandemic, and our agents' commitment to the Massachusetts Gaming Commission's core value of public service and safety. When asked to share thoughts regarding the operational updates affecting the IEB agents, I decided to step back and look at change more broadly. There's not a few things that have curious history and a big impact on the IEB this past year. I just focus on chairs and plexiglass. Before I discuss the two photos in this slide, I would like to share an interesting fact of casino chair history in the use of plexiglass in casinos prior to 2020. Nevada first legalized gaming in 1931. Then in 1976, Atlantic City became another hot spot for gaming. Fast forward to 2020. There are now multiple casinos and multiple jurisdictions throughout the country. In 2020, all casinos nationwide force faced unprecedented challenges due to the pandemic. The photo on the left was taken prior to 1956. I know this because it was that year Binion's casino first offered seating for their players as a way to compete with neighboring casinos. I find that amazing that for the first 25 years slot players traditionally did not sit at the game while claiming. The photo on the right raises a lot of red flags and concerns for regulators because of the absence of game protection. Andrew? Okay, thank you. The relete photo shown on this slide is an example of how plexiglass has been used historically for game protection. Today with the expanded use of plexiglass throughout, it is not only providing game protection, it is now widely used and used to protect people. Next, these two photos sets demonstrate changes in slot configurations from 2015 when the first casino opened in Massachusetts to the carousel style slot banks we are seeing more of today. When looking at the picture on the left, no problem. When looking at the picture on the left you see rows of slot machines placing patron shoulder to shoulder whereas the photos on the right show slot banks with design spacing between the players. I would like to now share a quick overview of our gaming agents responsibilities in maximizing safe slot play. Excuse me. The three photos at the top of this slide show an example of four inspections our agents. This photo demonstrates our commitment to socially distanced seating. The center photo shows a disabled game between two operational slot machines. The game to the right shows an employee sanitizing the slot machine. The center game has a sticker indicating the game is not available to play. Our gaming agents use a combination of the stickers, CMS, our centralized monitoring system and the master slot list to verify the correct games are enabled or disabled. The last photo shows our gaming agents demonstrating the height and the width of the plexiglass between the machines. Casinos are proposed to relocate a slot machine or add a new machine. There are step-by-step regulatory requirements and our gaming agents are required in each and every step. Our gaming agents are involved in each and every step. To put into perspective the value of gaming agent involvement in inspections. January 2020, MGM had 1793 slot machines on the casino floor. All were available for play. July 2020 at the time of the reopening MGM was able to place 869 games out for play following the commission guidelines. March 2021 using plexiglass and floor reconfigurations MGM now has 1173 games available for play. Our gaming agents have adopted a wide variety of new inspections. We monitor occupancy, mass compliance, alcohol service, sanitizing of gaming equipment. We monitor social distancing throughout the property including employee areas and promotional events. This list of inspections is just a small sample of the many inspections created daily by our gaming agents. For me this is the most important slide in my segment of the presentation. It's a snapshot of what our agents do daily to ensure compliance to reopening standards set by the commission. Our agents complete daily inspections diligently thoroughly and without reminder. To summarize our agents have embraced and realized the importance of their new responsibilities. Casinos will continue to evolve with the times as will IEB. The IEB will always be prepared to uphold the core values of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission including public service and safety first. So in closing my segment of the presentation please note the photo on the right. This photo is taken just prior to reopening. In the photo are the chairs removed from the gaming floor in preparation of social distancing. In this one snapshot the photo shows the enormity of the reopening process for which our gaming agents provided an integral role. That concludes my portion of the presentation and I will now turn it over to senior supervisor Andrew Steppen. Thank you, Angela. Good morning, Madam Chair, commissioners. Again, my name is Andrew Steppen. I am the senior supervising agent working primarily out of our office at Flemish Park Casino. As Angela presented how the casinos have adapted I'll be discussing how our gaming agents have also adapted for the past 12 months. Prior to March 14th 2020 the gaming agent staff would routinely spend a majority of their time out of the office observing daily casino operations out on the floor or sometimes at the house. Just to highlight a few, agents would observe everything from table fills, slide emergency drops, card and dice pickup, staff requirements, all live on the casino floor. The agent specifically would spend time in the count room watching the daily counting of poker, table and slot. This all came to a halt one year ago when the casinos closed their doors and the agents began working remotely from the home. This was a drastic change from what we were all used to however the agents quickly adapted and overcame many obstacles to be just as productive. To highlight a few of their remote responsibilities now rather than watching the licensees operational practices, agents begin comparing and dissecting the submitted internal controls with our 205 CMR state regulations in what we call a comprehensive line by line audit. Also with the introduction of HD meeting suite agents were able to quickly adapt to their remote lives by connecting with fellow agents and supervisors to continue trainings and discussions. On the topic of training, this tool was utilized by all through several remote training sessions such as table games training, the inner workings of slot machines, surveillance techniques, how to handle a patron dispute, and what to do with the patron wishes to suspend the credit, again just in a few of the trainings. Agents also attended several webinars, IGT conducted trainings and LinkedIn learning courses helped guide them through the developmental process. What also greatly helped our staff was the IT upgrades to several useful applications. I'd like to give a tremendous thank you to our IT department for the substantial improvements that greatly assist our agency as a whole especially the IEB agents. Over the past year we received access to LinkedIn learning, HD meeting suite, an updated iTrack server, an updated VPN, a new secure file transfer system, Office 365 with cloud access, and access to CMS intelligent right on our laptops. I'm meeting this and others, but all these have been a huge benefit to the IEB staff. None bigger though than HD meetings. This has truly allowed all of our agencies to connect to such an odd time, and I'd like to pause just for a moment here and whether this was at the end of a training session or just to catch up with the colleague, this picture represents agents and supervisors from all three casinos across the state connecting at once. So moving on, as the agents return to their respective casinos they continue to provide 24-7 coverage of all three like these just as we did prior. With all agents continuing to monitor every aspect of the gaming operation, however just as we adapted to the remote setting agents also had to adapt their new preferred scheme upon returning to the casino. No longer could we walk out on the casino floor to interact with staff and observe live-patriot play. We had to revise our investigations techniques mostly through surveillance review and observations. We had to learn how to meet virtually the licensee and to conduct more over-the-phone conversations with partners. As strange as it was with this little in-person contact and less time on the casino floor, we all became stronger investigators and leaders. Related to that note, working primarily out of the surveillance room has allowed us to take a new approach on auditing the casino through intense examinations of their submitted internal controls and their actual practices. A moment ago I briefly mentioned our comprehensive line by line audits and the submitted internal controls. Again a lot of this was done remotely as it primarily involves comparing two documents. However once we return to the casinos we are able to take what we learned to take our findings and compare the language in the internal controls against what the licensees are actually practicing. Any discrepancies or observations are first discussed in-house and then with the licensee compliance department to recommend any changes. To speak on this process in a little more detail I will now turn it over to fellow Senior Supervisor Lewis Lozano. Thank you. Thank you Andrew. Good morning Chair commissioners. Just to introduce myself for some who may not know my name is Lewis Lozano and I'm the Senior Supervising Gaming Agent assigned to Encore Boston Harbor. To follow up what Andrew presented, IEB Gaming Agents provide 24-7 coverage of the casino floor and establishment and their responsibility is to observe and report. Agents are the eyes and ears for the MGC and report all incidents immediately to supervisors and IEB management. Agents monitor all aspects of the casino operations that include table game slots, accounting, security, surveillance and alcohol controls. Agents routinely audit review and investigate the operation and patron disputes and if a violation is observed the appropriate action is taken into documentation that the licensee must acknowledge or potentially receive a monetary fine. I would like to highlight that IEB attempts to build a professional relationship and coordinate with the licensee not just issue violations and fines. After completing an audit or review, IEB may identify deficiency in the internal controls of the casino licensee. IEB will then inform the licensee of the deficiency and attempt to implement a change with our recommendation. The purpose of recommending and implementing changes to the internal controls is to strengthen the operational standards that can prevent future issues and ensure compliance. An example of identifying a deficiency and implementing an appropriate change is the verification of taxable jackpot amounts for slot machine. Initially, Encore only verified jackpots over a certain amount to ensure taxable transactions were in compliance. After extensive periodic reviews, IEB agents determined a common occurrence. Some patrons who activated taxable jackpots would allow another patron to redeem the jackpot and complete tax reporting documentation. A possible reason for this activity was to avoid intercepting money from the department of revenue or the licensee for being a voluntary self-excluded state exclusion or underage slash minor. So, after identifying this specific deficiency, IEB recommended a change that the licensee agreed to significantly lower the threshold of inspected slot jackpot amounts. The licensee also agreed to update their internal controls that would require all internal departments to coordinate and resolve incorrect tax reporting documentation after a taxable jackpot switch was identified by either an IEB agent or the licensee. The implementation of the submission change creates a stronger checks and balances and nearly eliminates the opportunity for a patron to successfully the current chart that you see in front of you demonstrates the importance of verifying taxable slot jackpots. This chart displays the 2020 totals for each licensee, department of revenue intercepts, and the licensee confiscations for voluntary self-exclusions and underage. The department of revenue intercepts jackpots for patrons that owe past due to child support and back taxes. The licensee will attempt to confiscate money, convert into game and chip vouchers, and identify the amount lost by a voluntary self-exclusion and underage. After the confiscation, the licensee will issue a receipt to the individual, and the licensee will deposit the converted gaming currency into the gaming revenue fund. As you can see, approximately $2.3 million was intercepted by the department of revenue. Approximately 143,000 was confiscated for voluntary self-exclusions, and approximately 5,000 was confiscated for underages at all three casinos. An additional area to note in respect to the licensee implementing a change recommended by the IED would be the routine inspection of shufflers. Gaming Lab International is a company contracted by the Massachusetts Gaming Commission to provide an independent testing of all electronic gaming products. As seen in this picture, IED agents regularly inspect table game shufflers and slot machines at each licensee to ensure GLI software certifications are required. As an additional measure, IED recommended the licensee also inspect shuffler software as this could easily be completed during preventive maintenance. So as a combination of the licensee certifying, they comply with GLI standards and agents inspecting gaming equipment in theory will lead to less issues and create a greater public confidence to ensure fair gaming. So as presented, the pandemic has changed the industry. It's changed the way gaming agents operate. The licensees and gaming agents have adapted to the change, but what stays the same is the role of the IED. The IED is a fair but firm regulator. We coordinate with the licensee to implement changes and improve standards. That stays the same. Angela, Andrew, and I would like to thank you for allowing us to provide this operational update. And if you have any questions, we'll be happy to answer. Excellent. Thank you so much. I can see why Bruce and Burke are so proud of this team for this year. They are just incredible. They do such a great job on site at the casino. Karen, Andrew, if you could take down the slide, then we'll be able to see everyone and we can have questions. That was excellent. Excellent. And we have plenty of time. Our next item will be scheduled for 11. So this is an opportunity for us to ask Angela and Andrew and those questions and also for them to brag even further about their teams. Andrew, could you remind everybody that just sorry, Gail, the number of gaming agents under all three of you to be collective? Between all three of us, we had 11 supervisors and 16 gaming agents. Does that sound right? Thank you. Thank you. Okay, Gail, Commissioner Cameron. You know, I don't have questions, but of course I'm so impressed with this presentation. Really gave me an insight into what you're doing differently, how effectively you're able to do it differently, and your commitment to public service and safety. And you led with that, and that is a really important piece. So you led with the public safety and the public service and the safety, and then you ended with the fair but firm regulator. So all of the information was informative. I'm smiling the whole time you're presenting because I'm really proud of the work you're doing and how you were able to transition and actually state that you think it's helped you become better investigators. That's really, really impressive.  Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Azinica, or Commissioner Bryan, maybe I don't know who was leaning in first. Commissioner Azinica. Well, thank you. Just similar feelings. Thanks for the overview. I think you do a lot of great work before and after the pandemic. It's clear that in my mind, there's a keyword that emerges in what you've done, not just in the presentation, and that's flexibility. In an industry that is in a role that you have to be very strict about procedures, this pandemic presented a unique challenge, in my opinion, as to how to adapt. You know, we did the initial work in concept relative to setting guidelines, but I know that there's a lot that goes in the implementation, the details, and the need to work with the operator, as you say, towards managing a public that is a bit of a wild card, if you will, when it comes to setting up guidelines and asking them to follow. So again, congratulations on that and it's great that you are flexible. And I will finish with a question, and that is your impression of the public compliance with this, their own flexibility and adaptability, because that is something that, at least in my mind, is always something that you guys have to deal with. That is not necessarily a regulation of the licensee. I can share. Go ahead, Angela. With the transition from rows and rows of slot machines to the more carousel style slot machines, we've received a lot of feedback from patrons that they really like that setup. The machines, of course, are flashier and bigger and fancier, but I think just the general, you know, moving away from the shoulder to shoulder contact with other slot players provides a different experience with players. And it's been, we've gotten positive feedback from that. Andrew, I'll notice, do you want to chime in on that, different facilities? Yeah, you know, Encore, I think the numbers speak for themselves at Encore. They have less slot machines, but the numbers are very similar to how they previously were prior to closure with the Plexiglas. So less slot machines and almost the same amount of money. And I think that just speaks for itself. I think people almost like that space on playing with the slot machine. So I can see potentially, when everything is all said and done, I can potentially see maybe Plexiglas staying for a very long time, specifically on slot machines. Yeah, maybe not only Plexiglas, but also the social distancing to slot machines for other carousels. I believe that's the way that casinos were headed. Anyways, and this may have just jump-started the carousels instead of the long rows. All three licensees have done a tremendous job utilizing every space on their casino floor. I know at Encore, they changed the poke room into a new slot floor. At PPC, they put slot machines where self-service bed or stations used to be. So every licensee has utilized every square footage of their casino. That's interesting. And I can probably agree with that. I'm probably going to be using a lot more hand sanitizer even after the pandemic. So there's likely going to be some behavioral changes.  Yeah, Andrew, when I visited PPC for the renewal of the license, you pointed out the efficiencies that were achieved. And so that, you know, it shows that our team here really does, they are committed to their core values. As Commissioner Cameron pointed out, they're driven by them, and that's their leadership to lead by their core values. But as they say, they're fair and firm regulators. And the fairness comes in with that partnership. You all have the respect of the properties, and you work in partnership, your teams do. And so you notice how they're creating efficiencies for their business. And that's really important. They feel that support. Commissioner O'Brien. Thank you, Madam Chair. I agree with what Commissioner Cameron and Commissioner Zunika said in terms of liking the presentation. It's really impressive to see and remember how quickly this all got implemented and seamlessly in large measure because of the professionalism of the gaming agents and the cooperation of the licensees. I do want to take this opportunity also to once again say thank you to the gaming agents, the supervisors, and to you three for going in to the casinos every day to make this happen. I have been able to continue my job for the last year in the safety of my home. And I just think you're very repeating that, you know, with all the safety measures in place, it's still a different thing to ask people to go in and do their job, not from their home. And I just want to say thank you to the almost 30 of you in this capacity that have been doing that every day. And then I have a random question as the history major in me, which is why did they shift to putting chairs in, you know, back at that point? Was it to get people to stay longer? Or was there some other weird cultural reason they decided to do it? I'm so happy you asked that question. So back in the day prior to 1956 with Benion's first offered chairs, slot machines were looked at as a side thing for the ladies to play while their husbands did real gaming on the table games. So one of the things that Benion's noticed is that often if a patron needed to step away from the game, they would find a chair and lean it up against a slot machine and, you know, go have lunch or do whatever they needed to do. And that would reserve their slot machine until they came back. So that sparked the idea to Benion's as they were, you know, more in competition as more casinos were opening. But maybe if they just put the chairs at the slot machines, it would just make everything easier for everyone. And interestingly today, walking through the casinos, you will still see chairs leaning against the slot machine. And it's just a tradition that's been carried on. Saving their lucky machine, right? Interesting. Wow. And it's interesting now because our health metrics push us to stand. So I thought that was interesting. The business model encourages sitting in the health metric that encourages us to stand. So maybe it'll evolve into some choices eventually, Angela, so that folks can stand for a long time because of the health metric. But thank you. I follow up to Angela's answer, which I find fascinating.  I want to be careful about these days about women still preparing slot machines generally, or the slot there being mostly a majority women and men on tables. Is that still the case, would you say? Or is that an antiquated aspect? My opinion, I think, is a generational thing. I think older folks tend to stay with what they're comfortable with. And the younger generation, they'll play anything if they're interested in it. So it's evolving. I would agree with Angela. I go on the floor and it's a mix. You don't see just females playing slot machines. It's just as many males as women. Thank you. I will add something historical. I have seen, instead of chairs, a try at a treadmill and a bicycle seat in front of a slot machine, and they have not been very successful. I will add that. But to my point, thank you, Bruce. That's really funny. So the history, we've been really lucky recently. We've been getting a lot of good history on the gaming industry. And thank you, Karen, for your leadership on that to the team and our different townhouse. So this is, I love that you led with the historic images. I also have to say, before we close on questions, the photo of all the chairs, it kind of brought, you know, it brought me back to our decision making and the impact that we knew at the time would have on our three licenses. And as you point out, the agility that was needed for all of you to do your jobs in partnership with them. It was a big ask to reopen so safely. I know that we use the term a sustainable reopening. And, you know, again, it has turned out to be just that. We haven't had to reverse course. We've been able to move forward on the options for gaming. And it's because of all the work that you all did to meet the restrictions and guidelines that we had to put in place for the safety of the employees, for the safety of you, and of course, the safety of the patrons. So that picture really captured the enormity. And, Angela, I know that's exactly why you put it in there. It's a reminder of all the work and also the enormity of the consequences had any, had you not done the job with the excellence that you pursued. So thank you. Wonderful. Bruce, can those slides be shared with us?  Thank you. I think that would be great for the new commissioner that comes on as a part of the briefing packet, you know. Let's put that in the onboarding package absolutely. And they'll act, whoever it is, will be able to meet with Lewis and Andrew and Angela too, of course, and give them the first hand briefing. But thank you. And, of course, to Bruce for your leadership. This was really special. And before we close on this, any other questions? This is a great opportunity. Okay, again, I think Commissioner Bryant said it, perfectly. We know that it was a much different ask of you. We weren't surprised by how you stepped up. So thank you again. I never doubted them. That's exactly right, Bruce. Isn't that the truth? Yes. So I think then we'll move on then to, if there's no other questions, we'll move on to item C. Yes, so I spoke to Commissioner Cameron briefly this morning. She has more information than I do on the IAGR updates. She had some conversations this week. So she has the latest. So I'm going to turn it over to her to just update the team on the IAGR conference, which is scheduled for this fall. So good morning, everyone. And I'll start by saying it's going to be a joint conference, right? And this is the conference that we were supposed to be the host agency for last year in September 2020. And of course, because of the pandemic, it was canceled and pushed to this year. And even this year was somewhat tenuous, right? Because things aren't back to normal yet. But I believe both organizations. And when I say that, we're talking about IAGR and IMGL. And that's the, those of you who don't know the International Association of Gaming Regulators, as well as the International Masters of Gaming Law. So it's a little bit unusual to have a joint conference. It's been done before, but not many years. The last one I believe was in Peru and Lima, Peru. And, but I think there was such a big interest in regulators, again, very international regulators from around the world. And there was a real interest in coming to Boston. It's a city that's in demand for conferences and the work that we're doing, frankly, and new casinos, integrated resort casinos, lots of interesting things. So we will be the host agency for both organizations. And that is in September, the week of the 12th through the 17th. And, you know, our role will be to host, to make sure everything goes well, whether that be IT concerns, the space, just, just all around kind of be part of this as the host agency. One of the things I look forward to is hosting the the golf tournament, which is held by the IAGR crowd on the Sunday. The conference typically starts Monday morning. And those who are golfers come in on that Sunday to play in this a little tournament and a winner from different countries around the world. So it's, it's something that I'll make sure. And please, anyone that's a golfer, you can take part in this. So the name of the IAGR portion, which is the beginning of the week, is disrupting the regulator. And that is really sparking innovation in the regulatory practice. So just kind of a catchy name. And I think the decision has been made to host this this year, although we do expect greatly reduced numbers. But luckily, the teams were able to successfully negotiate, renegotiate with the Marriott Copley because that, that was a bid that went out and they won the bid to host this conference, obviously, more than a year ago now. And but they were very good about reducing dramatically.  So right now, they're guessing there was a survey that went out. IAGR did a survey to all of their members around the world. And there's a lot of maybes. So it's really hard to know what those numbers will be. There was some likely some maybes. And so it's really hard. But just to, I guess, IAGR is thinking, or maybe, maybe a quarter of what they usually get. And if that's somewhere between 300 and 400, you know, you know, IAGR has two issues, right? One is travel is still not even recommended throughout the world. So one of them is the ability to travel. And two are the travel restrictions are rather the travel budgets, right? Because all of the regulators are funded by the industry. And thus, that's a little difficult. IMGL, the advisors in the law, the legal teams may not have those same budgetary issues. So they're actually anticipating about 100 attendees, which is far fewer as well. But like I say, those negotiations have happened. So right now, everybody's going to get together and look at the smaller spaces in Boston. What will that look like? The joint day for both organizations is Wednesday. We're putting together that. That's when maybe we'll have a dignitary at the beginning. And then maybe someone speak to the joint group on Wednesday. Our chair has been very good about reaching out to the governor's office. Hopefully we'll have the governor on board at one time here. So that's what we know. Some of the possible topics. I've been involved with both organizations. So I jump on the conference calls for both. IMGL is talking about Indian gaming. These are all the possible nothing's been finalized yet. What does that mean with the change of administration? Esports and wagering, alternate events for regulators, integrity of those sports betting is going to be there. New jurisdictions, new sports, expansions. What does that mean? That may be of great interest to us. They talked about college teams, private operations, the leagues, sports integrity. So all of those may be of great value to us, if in fact it becomes legal here in the Commonwealth. Another topic may be the new regulator for Ireland because of in the shadow of Brexit. I personally love the international presentations because it really reminds us that we are not in this alone. That we can learn from our partners from around the world and they can learn from us. So those are just a quick update of where we are right now. I know we're fortunate to have Executive Director Wells serve on the IAGR board as a trustee and so she hears at her board meetings about some of these things. But Karen, do you have something to add that I may have missed here? That's very comprehensive and that's consistent with what I've been hearing at the board meetings. It's really looking forward to doing something. I think people are looking for an event. It's been a long haul. So I'm hoping that we'll get a good turnout. It's just challenging to predict right now. It's a trippy time. So we'll go forward and we're trying to be as flexible as possible so that we can do the best job we can. Questions for Commissioner Cameron and Executive Director Wells? I see Commissioner Seneca you're leaning in. Yeah, thanks. Please remind us if you have these at your fingertips whether the request for presenters has been extended or settled or is a date in the future I can think of a couple of our own people who might want to submit a proposal for a presentation on some of the work that we've done here. Several of our people did put in, did offer to present and I think that those final decisions haven't been made yet. But I do know that our folks stepped up in a big way and offered to present. It's just unknown. Director Wells is that so that those final decisions haven't been made yet? That's correct. So the team that's coordinating this will be looking at it going forward. Thank you. Well I want to thank Commissioner Cameron for your leadership on this. It's been an evolving project. I know that in 2019 you were working hard on it and everything obviously shifted and now you've got the good assistance of Karen who serves not only as a trustee but a treasurer. So this is all fluid. We understand that all I know is that when this happens we want to we want to have a great spotlight on our work and a great spotlight on the Commonwealth and Boston and I'm sure that would be accomplished.  So We look forward to that. Yeah, yeah. It's an exciting opportunity as things begin to open up. So we'll stay tuned for continuing updates. Great. I know that we have Professor Bruce is ready to go. I want to give our commissioners a chance for a four minute break. We do have guests who are who plan to start at 11. I promised an 11 start. So if you want to take a four minute break come right probably back to 11. That will be great. And then we'll look forward to Director Van Der Linden's introduction. Thanks so much. So we're very pleased to have ahead two public safety reports. There's a lot of benefit in having some synergy between the two reports presented. So thank you commissioners O'Brien and Cameron for your leadership on this and of course Director Van Der Linden. I understand that today Senator Adam Gomez intends to attend and members of his staff, Danielle Allard, Chief of Staff and General Counsel and Anthony Moore District Director. We also understand Representative Joseph McGonagall will be here to both the Senator and Representative. Thank you for attending and for your interest. From Mayor Sarno's office we welcome City Solicitor Ed Pacula and of course City Development Officer Tim Sheehan. We understand that they will be attending today and thank you. And then from Mayor DeMaria's office Chief of Staff Erin Devaney. So thank you. We have members of the public safety and law enforcement community today attending. I have in my notes but I know I see other folks. Please, Commissioner Cheryl Clapp from the City of Springfield and perhaps that's who I can, I can, we have her. You're a little bit further away but we see you and thank you for attending. Do you wish to introduce your colleague who's sitting with you? Yeah, my executive aide is Captain Jeffrey Martucci is with us today. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. We also have attending Chief of Police Stephen Massey I believe and I see Chief Dunn. Would you like to introduce yourself? Thank you. Yeah, Chief Dunn from the Family Police Department. I'm also President of the Mass Chiefs Police Association. Thank you so much for attending. We appreciate it and this is an opportunity for you to hear from two areas. So this is great. Is there anyone I could have missed? Well, Mark and Jill, thank you. Oh, I know one other person, yes. I don't see her but perhaps she's joining by phone but the Chair of G-PAC, Scrumitorial Appointee Meg Namzer-Cohen plans to attend. So thank you again. We're happy to have her representation for the Gaming Policy Advisory Commission. So thank you. Anyone else, Mark? I'm sorry? No, actually that's who I was going to mention. Yeah, we both have the same name. Thank you. All right, then we should get started. Director Vandalen. Great. Thank you so much, Madam Chair and commissioners. I am joined today by Christopher Bruce, who I see in the screen below me, before we get started just a brief introduction. So Section 71 of Chapter 23K directs the commission to carry out an annual research agenda. Broadly the purpose of this agenda is in furtherance of understanding the social and economic effects that expand the gaming in the Commonwealth. Included in this section is a specific requirement to assess the relationship between gambling and levels of crime. It makes sense because crime would straddle both the social and economic impacts. Concerns about this connection are not new and date back decades, if not further, and it certainly has a connection back in the early days of Las Vegas in 1930s. We were speaking earlier about some of the history of gambling. There was a book that chronicles this relationship, as well as just the overall history of gambling. It's called Roll the Bones and it was written by David Schwartz, a fantastic and easy read. What isn't well understood is the link between crime and casinos today in this era. Academic literature is split with as many studies showing that there is an increase of crime due to gambling, as those that show have no impact between levels of crime and gambling. We're really fortunate today we have two reports that chip away at that question and add to that body of evidence. The first is an analysis of changes in police data following 18 months of activity at MGM, plus an additional three months looking at COVID related closures. The second is an analysis of the influence of Encore Boston Harbor on its coast and surrounding communities, covering the first eight months of operations, three months of closure, and then three months following reopening. These reports build upon 10 other public safety reports that have been done since 2015, including baseline studies in each of the host and surrounding communities where we currently have casinos. All of this body of research has been led by Christopher Bruce. We've been fortunate to have Christopher Bruce as a consultant to the commission and principal investigators on each one of these reports. Christopher is a professor of criminal justice at Hussin University in Bangor, Maine. He also has been a crime analyst with the Cambridge Police Department and Danbridge Police Department. He served as the president of the Massachusetts Association of Crime Analysts, as well as president of the International Association of Crime Analysts. He has extensive experience and probably way too broad to dive into, but he's taught as well as consulted across the country. He joined us actually in 2014 to kick this study off. So I will turn it over to Mr. Bruce now to kick off the presentation. Thank you very much, Mark. And this is a very well attended version of, I'm sorry, I'm trying to share my screen while I'm talking. I shouldn't do that. One thing at a time. Okay, there we are. I didn't expect so much attendance here, and I kind of feel bad for any people who are hearing this for the first time for a couple of reasons. First of all, the data that I'm covering here, unfortunately, is quite a bit old. I started the Springfield Report in the summertime, and I just, for various reasons, they were delayed. So we're really covering fairly old findings here, except for the COVID part. Second of all, I just want to make clear for anybody who hasn't seen me present on this material before that it's a little bit too early to answer sort of macro level questions on whether casinos cause or influence or increase crime in the surrounding areas. To draw conclusions like that, we would want multiple years of data, especially from comparison areas, which tend to lag a bit behind the casino communities themselves in terms of data availability. And therefore, this, these reports, and most of the interim reports, the analyses that I do, are just mechanisms to try to identify what did increase in the immediate area after the introduction of the casinos so that law enforcement agencies can respond effectively to those increases and look for any evidence that maybe there was a casino cause to some of those patterns, but it's very rare that we actually have the smoking gun, the concrete link between the casino and a crime pattern. So as we're going to see in some of the things that I demonstrate today, there are some patterns that, there's some crimes that increase, there are some patterns that became evidence after the casino opened. Some of them have a logical connection to gambling, some of them have a spatial connection to the casino, but very rarely do we have something like a known offender who we can say for sure was in the area because of the casino, if that makes sense. So today, as Mark said, we're going to take a look at the final findings pre-COVID findings for MGM and Encore. So I presented on Encore already for a six-month period after they opened, hovering through the end of 2019, and this basically just tax on two additional months to it to cover the period through the point at which the casinos closed for a few months. I have some statistics on the closure period and then some statistics on what happened during the limited reopening. But as we're going to talk about, COVID really throws a major wrench into this entire project, and so we'll have to talk a little bit about the overall future of the project. But let's begin with the Springfield Area, where these 11 communities have all participated since the beginning in the collection of data. And it's been a great experience because although this region has the most agencies participating of any of the three regions, they've also been the most consistent in providing the necessary data in a timely manner. And I really appreciate all the agencies that are on the call today who are a part of this region. The general trends that I want to talk about that we saw in the 18 months after MGM opened in this region are as follows. First of all, shoplifting showed increases in several stores in Chicopee and Holyoke in particular. And whenever you see the numbers in brackets like that, the number in brackets is the number. So there were 874 incidents in the 18th month period versus a predicted window of 746 to 814. The predicted window being a mathematical conclusion that based on past data. So what was the trend looking like before MGM opened and therefore what would be a normal volume if MGM had not opened in this area during that period? If the number that actually happened is well outside of that window, it could be a sign of an MGM influence. It could be a sign of a number of other things that could be happening in these communities. This is what I try to then investigate further. Now in this particular case, the agency is largely reported to us that they believe that these shoplifting increases, which are particularly heavy at home improvement warehouses, are caused by out of state organized shoplifters who don't have any connection to MGM or using MGM that they know about. Shoplifting, I should point out, is a notoriously difficult crime to measure. It's heavily influenced by store reporting practices. We only really know about shoplifting incidents when we catch somebody. So the statistics don't reflect the cases that when people aren't caught, basically, the quality of the security department, security staffing, etc. tends to drive the numbers up and down from year to year anyway. So that one, it's worth noting, it's worth continuing to monitor, but I don't think we found any kind of MGM connection there. Drunk driving arrests increased significantly in the region, and there's evidence from the agency's reporting that that's largely because they were doing more enforcement for drunk driving. So we had a predicted window of 133 to 254, and there were 312 arrests during this period. Again, this isn't necessarily a reflection of actual drunk driving because it's heavily dependent on how much the agencies are out there looking for drunk drivers and doing enforcement. But I have a whole drunk driving section later on where you're looking additional evidence for that crime specifically. Liquor laws also increased, liquor law violations, but they seem to be related to the same issue where the agencies are making more traffic stops, and therefore finding more people with open containers during those stops. Fraud and identity theft are the two crimes that are particularly high throughout the area. Very consistently across multiple agencies. And these are types of crimes that have a sort of logical relation to a cash business, and it would make sense for them to go up maybe in a casino area, except the evidence seems to be that they're increasing all over Massachusetts. And so I don't have comparative data. It's only just becoming available now for for 2019 and 2020. So in a couple of months, we should have more data from the entire state and be able to tell how much those crimes increased statewide versus the casino areas. But right now I think it's just a statewide increase in those particular crimes. Several communities have had repeat patterns of purse snatching, and we don't know who the offender is for most of them. And so it's it's impossible to say whether or not that person might have been in the area for casino purposes. But it's definitely something interesting. These are agencies that have not in the past had a lot of patterns of this particular crime, and then we're going to see several of them on the maps that I'll show in just a minute. Immediately adjacent to the casino, there have been a couple of businesses to see increases in crime, which we'll take a closer look at in just a second. Traffic complaints on state roads have gone up. Traffic complaints can be anything from people calling. In a municipal agency, it can include parking complaints on highways. Obviously, that doesn't really happen. But they can be complaints of erratic drivers, potentially drunk drivers, somebody speeding. They're people calling to complain about other drivers, basically. And those have increased a lot on the highways directly around MGM. There were a few things that I reported after a year that didn't continue into the subsequent six month period. Traffic collisions were one of them. They had increased mildly in the surrounding area, right around the casino, and on some of the feeder roads going to the bridges crossing the river to the casino from West Springfield and Aguam. And those didn't continue into the six month period after the first year. That was a winter, a fall winter period, and it was very mild. It was a very mild winter. So the total number of traffic collisions went down statewide, really, because of the weather conditions. It's hard to really control for that. What this really sort of demonstrates, and we saw mild increases in traffic collisions around Plainville, too. And it makes sense that you'd see an increase in traffic collisions with extra traffic coming to the areas. But what I think this shows is that the extra collisions have been, the increase has been small enough that other factors easily wipe them out, basically, and make them undetectable. And we'll definitely see that with COVID. We saw an increase in domestic violence for the first year, but that didn't continue into the next six months. West Springfield had had some problems with lots of panhandling, suspicious activity, disorderly conduct near the bridge leading over to the two bridges leading to Springfield. And some shopping centers immediately adjacent to those bridges. That didn't continue into the next six months. And Springfield, Longmeadow and East Longmeadow had seen a problem with thefts from houses and thefts from cars in residential driveways. And when I say thefts from houses, I'm not talking about burglaries. That's a separate crime. I'm talking about just, I actually don't know for sure, because the data I get doesn't really give me the situational variables. But I'm guessing just from what I do have that it's largely thefts from yards, maybe open garages, things left in the curtailage around the house, and also from cars in the driveways. There were patterns of those throughout Springfield and East Longmeadow and Longmeadow in the first year. There was still some of that, but they weren't higher than normal for the six months after the first year. So some examples here. Slides are refusing to advance. What is happening? My apologies for a second. We see the next slide. Nope, same slide. I can't get the, there we go. There you go. Clicking the next arrow and it's not advancing. So those purse snatching patterns I talked about during the first six months after MGM opened, we saw five of them along this Riverdale Street here in West Springfield. And they weren't all the same scenario, but it's still an just a weird concentration for an agency that didn't typically report any of them. And then Springfield had this pattern, geographic pattern during the first year after MGM opened. You can see MGM here and then several around it and in the surrounding neighborhood. That kind of went away after September 2019. Holyoke had a pattern downtown during the same year post opening. And then it sort of changed. And here's Holyoke in the six months after this pattern. So it spread out a little bit towards this end of the downtown area. But it's, so these repeated patterns of purse snatching just keep popping up. And these are not agencies that have typically reported a lot of that in the past. Again, we don't really have suspects in a lot of these cases. We don't have offenders in a lot of these cases. So there's no direct connection to be tied. But it's something definitely to keep investigating and monitoring. In addition to the macro statistics that I worked with for each agency, which you can see in the report, I didn't want to cover all of that during this presentation. So I'll leave you to read the report just to see what the actual numbers are. I'm just sort of covering the highlights here. But in addition to the each agency, I also broke down a spring field by geography. And we took a look at the statistics right in the the MGM block here. And then in the metro center surrounding MGM and then in the wider neighborhood surrounding that. So the MGM block has, you know, the casino and the adjacent businesses, the metro center is mostly commercial. And then this area has a lot of residential neighborhoods as well, the wider area. And throughout all three areas crime mostly just held steady. There were some, you know, some increases, some decreases, but that would have been true no matter what. And any neighborhoods always going to show a few crimes up a few crimes down for any period that you look at. But there wasn't very much that I thought was tied to MGM. And that might sound, you know, just sort of like a neutral news, basically, that crime held steady in the area. But we have to keep in mind that there's been about, you know, a few million extra people coming through that area during this period. So by a rate alone, that should have increased crime, but it really didn't. And that really, I think it provides evidence of sort of a hypothesis that a lot of criminologists would have had that I had about the area, which is that any additional crime that would have been caused by just all of the extra people are kind of neutralized by the fact that all those extra people are serving as natural guardians for each other in an area that has historically had a sort of a higher than average crime rate. So basically, you know, streets that might normally have been semi deserted and would have been good places for robberies and other types of crime have now lots of people, you know, walking around on them or did at least, you know, in the in the pre COVID time frames. And those people serve as sort of natural protectors for each other. So basically, they've canceled each other out. And crime has remained fairly steady in this area. The exceptions are just in a couple of businesses. And one is the CVS that opened on Main Street. And it only increased in the sense that it didn't exist before. So the CVS I had in the report, I don't I forgot to take a note about exactly what day it opened, but I think it was somewhere in in 2019. And that location has been the site of 15 incidents of shops lifting to robberies and the purse snatching since it opened. No, I don't know for sure. But my guess is the opening of that CVS, you know, is tied economically, at least to the extra traffic occasioned by the casino. So in an indirect way, we can say that that's sort of a cause of the extra activity there. It's happening. The CVS isn't open 24 hours, it's only open till 10pm. And incidents are really happening sort of all throughout the day. I don't know that I don't think that they're necessarily involving casino patrons or anything. They could be local residents being involved there. But again, the business itself didn't exist before the casino opened. The other business is this pride gas station across the Columbus Street. And that's open 24 hours. It's the only gas station in the immediate area, I believe that's open 24 hours. And they've had a lot of activity about four to three to four times their normal volume of activity since MGM opened about half of it in the hours between 11pm and 6am. And those include a couple simple assaults, an aggravated assault, four shopliftings, three thefts, vandalism, disorderly conduct. A fair number of the people involved being from outside the immediate Springfield area, suggesting they're coming, you know, from a distance for some reason. There's a logical connection to the casino, but I don't know for sure that they were using the casino. Those two businesses in the immediate block have seen those increases. As I said, state police complaints of traffic issues have increased on the local highways. You can see on this chart, it's mostly concentrated on 91 and 90. Other things can affect that too. It seems to me that the numbers are too high to be explained by the casino solely, by the extra traffic caused by the casino solely. So there are probably other issues happening on those roads at the same time. When it comes to drunk driving, yes, first of all, many communities are seeing increases in arrests. When we look at, so it's really tough to get a bead on crashes caused by drunk driving, which is really the metric you want to use if you want to know if drunk driving itself has increased versus just police enforcement of drunk driving. We want to look at crashes with an alcohol cause. The problem is we don't track that very well in Massachusetts. Although the records management system used by all of these agencies has a field for that. I did offer those statistics in the report. I don't think the field is being used as often as there are, in fact, alcohol causes of many of the collisions. One way that I've looked at the data is to just basically look at which incidents started off as a collision and included later on a charge for drunk driving. That kind of controls for police agency enforcement because if it started as a crash, it means they weren't out there doing extra enforcement that caused the increase. It's actual crashes that are increasing related to alcohol. And those are slightly high, a little bit above average for the area, not as significantly as they are in the Everett area, which we'll talk about. Also, MGM appears seven times amid court adjudications where they've asked the convicted drunk driver where were you last drinking during a one-year period after MGM opened. So it's not a lot, you know, once every couple of months. Of course, many of the arrests during that period haven't been adjudicated yet. So we'll have better data on that particular thing as we continue going forward. What I want to do next is, we'll talk more about that in the upcoming section, but what I want to do next is look at those last drink locations during arrests themselves. So what did they report to the police when they were arrested? The overall conclusion I would draw from this is that the casino has probably caused a slight increase in drunk driving. I think probably certainly comparable to other facilities that serve alcohol in the actual volume of drivers. And I don't want to seem like I'm suggesting that there's a particular problem there. Any place that you serve alcohol, you're going to have a number of people who leave when they shouldn't be driving. And it's really tough to control for them all. But in answer to the question, you know, what crimes were caused by the casino, I think there's this slight increase at least in drunk driving in the area. And the others, I thought I explained well enough that I didn't need additional visuals on, but are there any questions about these trends before I move on to Everett? Professor Bruce, would you mind just, could you just minimize the slides so that we could see everyone so I could follow on people please? Thank you. So I do know your slideshow goes right into the Everett area. And I know that there's interrelated analysis. So thank you. At this time, our guests, if you also have questions, I want you to chime in. My fellow commissioners too. So it will be trickier to have guests chime in. So I'm going to pause in sort of a unnatural way. Commissioners, if we can allow our guests to ask their questions first. Anyone want to wish to start? Okay. Then why don't we go over the commissioners questions, and that might actually ask for some follow-up questions from guests. Commissioner Cameron, would you like to chime in? Yes, I would. Thank you. As you all know, I always, this project is really important. I find it really important. It's important for a number of reasons. Professor Bruce, or rather, Director Vanderlanden started by saying, you know, we know the history. We know all about the Lenox City and Nevada, Las Vegas, what the issues around crime were. But we really don't know much about what's happening right now because studies like this really haven't occurred. So that's one of the reasons this is really, and Springfield in particular, I don't know how many public meetings when we were deciding who would get the license, we heard from the public about the safety. Will it be safe in downtown Springfield? That was a constant comment that we heard. And I just look at this as a very good news report for many reasons. One, first of all, I'm just very grateful for the executives that are here, the commissioner and staff and other chiefs just taking the interest. And they've done this from day one. Christopher pointed out that this is the region that everybody participates, that they get their data in, they all, there are no exceptions, all the surrounding communities. And I think they have provided invaluable just feedback. It would be much harder for Professor Bruce to come to any kind of real conclusions without the chiefs in the room saying, hey, no, no, no, let me tell you what that was all about. Because you can't always tell from the numbers, right? So those meetings are critical to making sure this project is as accurate as possible. And I know it's much too early to draw conclusions about crime. Has it gone up? Has it gone down? But the trends are really strong. And I do attribute a lot of that to the work of the state and local surrounding communities, Springfield PD, they have worked not only to keep it safe, but they have really looked at this as a responsibility they take seriously. And this project is just one example of how hard they work to keep it safe for their community. So I, once again, this is promising. And the other thing I wanted to point out, although it's dated this report, Christopher Bruce does work closely with the crime analysts and the members of the PDs. And so if he sees something early on, he'll be in touch. So they know well before this report what's happening and they know what's happening in their communities to begin with, but they know that he will be there. He reaches out, he works with the other crime analysts to look at trends or anything going on in pretty much real time, maybe a little behind real time. So I just want to thank all the PDs and just the show from the top here really makes a difference that this project is important. Just want to thank everyone for being here and how hard you work to keep the community safe. Commissioner O'Brien. Thank you, Madam Chair. I agree with everything Commissioner Cameron said, in particular, the ongoing commitment and cooperation of all the communities that surround MGM. It is in the meetings that we gather to go over the report so that Christopher Bruce can determine whether there's any other information that he needs or affects what he's doing. I've been impressed consistently how the communities in and around Springfield participate. I think it does bode well for the ongoing project in terms of, you know, it's only as good as the data that you get in the cooperation that you get. And so I just think that bears repeating in terms of thanking their participation. And I think it's a worthwhile study too as we go forward and are able to get more data and do deeper dives in various offenses or areas, whether there's other things to be learned from this study as we go forward. So I think it's a great project. Commissioner O'Brien, before we turn to our guests again. Yeah, thank you. Great summary, Christopher, and also agree with the comments from Commissioner Cameron and O'Brien. I want to just pick up on one thing, Christopher, that you mentioned early in your presentation, and that is the ability to respond in real time as much as we can, given the analysis that you helped us compile. And I wonder if, in your opinion, the incidents that you highlight relative to the CVS and the gas station merit something, a particular focus, or frankly, has that already been identified to the chiefs and other stakeholders like the GEU to merit some additional surveillance or procedures? One of the things I would say is that the numbers at the, first of all, the crime at the CVS is only notable for the fact that it simply didn't exist before. The statistics that actually are happening there are not, in my opinion, terribly high for a CVS. I'd have to collect data from multiple communities, but I've worked in communities that had CVSs before, and they're very popular businesses, and they have a certain amount of criminal activity inevitably. I don't think the one across from MGM is notably high, and the same with the gas station. It's only really notable in that it went a lot higher than it used to be. The Springfield Police Department would have to comment on anything being done in particular at those locations, but if I wasn't looking at them before and after since, I wouldn't think that the numbers coming from those two places are particularly high objectively, just in comparison to what they were before. Thank you. So I just have a couple of observations. I thought it's really interesting. First, I have to agree with all of my fellow commissioners that Commissioner Cameron, I think the report suggests this is all very good news, right? Of course, right now we are, this covers the last three months, or three months of COVID, that of course means a different analysis. But what I thought was a big takeaway is the very positive way that you frame it, Christopher, by saying that with all the additional gas to Springfield, all the additional foot traffic to Springfield, with that comes activity and we know it comes economic driving benefits, of course, but with it comes perhaps an unexpected benefit of the natural guardians. I also agree with, I think, what both Commissioner O'Brien and Commissioner Cameron are saying is that we also know it does come with the benefit of vigilance from the law enforcement community. And so I just wondered, Captain Connors, I see you're here. I know that we have the other guests who might be able to quantify, it must be hard to know how much is that natural guardian versus how much is, as you've already noted, more enforcement, more vigilance because of the expectation of more people. If my question isn't clear, the natural guardian and plus, is there a way to quantify the additional amount of law enforcement that has been added pre-COVID perhaps, that shows the benefit of additional law enforcement? It might be possible to construct a model that would account for those variables, but it would be very difficult, I think. Personally, if I were to try to divide, if I was trying to divide the credit between those two factors, I would need to know things like exactly where officers were patrolling in the areas and for how many hours. And so I think the police themselves would be more equipped to take a sort of a basic guess at the question. I don't know exactly how I would do it mathematically with the available data that I have. Well, what is fascinating is the takeaway that it is law enforcement plus this other, where there's community, where there's foot traffic, where there are people, it's not necessarily quite with an increase in crime, that there's this notion of natural guardianship. I had one back question that I might have missed in your narrative. I think it was near your last slide on the last drink. You indicated for the adjudication seven times the defendant noted last drink. Do you happen to know the number of adjudication so we can put some context to that? Great question. I don't. And so everything I titled in the sections of these, of both reports, I titled this section on drinking preliminary analysis, because what I'm going to ask the ABCC for is basically just their entire dataset. So I can actually calculate the numbers adjudicated in which they mentioned the casinos as a ratio of the total number of adjudications. I also want to simply compare it to other top locations. What are the actual top locations in Massachusetts? Where do the casinos rank in that list and things like that? I don't have that totality of data yet, so I can't offer that yet. But we're doing a special report on the issue of drunk driving and that will definitely be included there. I think that'll be really helpful. Thanks. I agree. The raw number by itself isn't that useful. So for our guests, before we move on to the to Encore and the effort in surrounding communities, do you have any questions for Christopher at this time? Or do you have any comments or observations you want to share? Commissioner Zuniga. I'm just identifying there seems to be one. I just wanted to make sure you saw that. Oh yes, I'm sorry, I thought you were turning in. Yes, I see from from Springfield. Thank you. Yes, I see you. Yeah, a new Zoom, we're kind of far away. But on behalf of the Springfield Police Department, thank you for having us and inviting us tonight. My comment would be that we are certainly committed in Springfield to MGM. We have maintained a metro unit division of police officers that's specifically patrol within the half mile area of the casino. And despite COVID and despite the police department having its issues and manpower issues, we've been able to maintain that. We're proud of that. And we thought it was important, even when the casino was not operating in full capacity or even half capacity, we made sure that no property damage and people still felt safe in the area that was important to us. And the CVS Professor Bruce is right, it's brand new. So it was tough for us to adapt to that. But I think we have now and we do pay special attention to it. And the pride COVID brought another problem and it was a rise in drug abuse and people out and about because they could no longer go to clinics, they were no longer getting support, they're no longer getting counseling. So a lot more people were around on the street and some places closed down and that pride happened to stay open. So it may be one of the very few places that are open 24 hours. So it attracted a little bit more of a component than what it normally would have. But we are attuned to that problem also. And again, I thank you for having us. We thank you for coming. And that's a really important observation that you shared with respect to the rise in the issues around drug abuse and lack really of the supports because of the unfortunate impact of COVID. So thank you for sharing that. And any other comments before, and of course you could chime in too if you stay on for the next part of Christopher's report. You could chime in, of course, at the, again. So we'll move on then I guess. I'm not missing anyone. Excellent. Thank you. You'll need to share your slides again. Professor, thank you. Okay. So in the Everett area, we've had a few more, we've had problems getting some of the data that didn't exist in the Springfield area. A couple of agencies including Medford and Cambridge just declined to participate in the study. And I can understand. I asked for a level of detail of the data that some of the agencies are uncomfortable contributing. Medford I don't think is a lost cause necessarily, but they might need to have some more reassurances. Maldon is participating, but we just couldn't get the data from them for this particular round of the study because the personnel that would have needed to help me obtain it were working from home because of COVID and didn't have access to it. The good news is that I brought Saugus on board. And so they joined the study. They were an obvious hole here in the map. And I apologize. I forgot to replace this map. This is from the previous presentation, but so Maldon should be colored as not being present, but Saugus is. And so during this period, I saw very, very few significant increases in the surrounding area, much, much fewer than in the Springfield area. And some of the things that we did see, thefts from vehicles were higher than expected in Boston and Everett and Boston, I mean specifically in Charlestown because that's the only neighborhood that I'm getting data for. Both patterns continued though into the COVID period even when the casino was closed. And in neither case where the statistics really high, it's just that the trend had been decreasing so fast in those communities that the number in this period outperformed where the mathematics expected the trend to go, given how fast it was decreasing. So it's more probable to me, I think, that they just hit sort of a natural floor in the number of incidents that were reported and the trend is sort of smoothing out than Encore caused anything specifically in that. A couple of crimes that we don't normally, I normally wouldn't have even measured, except that it doesn't take any extra effort to measure them. So statutory rape was oddly high in Chelsea, Somerville and Lynn. Again, no logical connection to Encore. If it was happening at hotels, immediately in the area, I might think, okay, maybe some miners are being lured to hotels or something, but they were all residences and seemed to involve other miners in many cases and no casino nexus at all. And the same with prostitution. That's something that you obviously want to watch for in a casino area, but in this case, the increase for the region was concentrated solely in Lynn and in one particular intersection of Lynn. And I think that based on my discussions with the Lynn police, it just had to do with extra enforcement of that intersection by the Lynn police itself. Liquor laws increased in Lynn and Everett, but the similar reasons for Springfield, they just seem to be making more traffic stops in which they're finding open containers. And Melrose, I didn't hear back from them on this issue. So I have to leave it open for the next report, but they saw an increase in, when I say increase, we're not talking about big numbers to begin with, but in a few assaults and findings of drugs and even a couple of fraud incidents, which are kind of interesting, at the hospital they have. I know the hospital is one of the potential destinations for anybody who has an ambulance at the casino. So I left it to Melrose to look at those reports and offer if any of the, they could identify that any of those people had come from the casino and they haven't reported back on that yet. So that's a possible. Right around the casino, the immediate area, there's some evidence of a general increase in calls for service for things like disorder and noise. I have the specific numbers coming up in just a bit. They could have a relationship, but it's worth pointing out that Encore isn't quite like MGM. I mean, they're both in sort of a busy-ish downtown, or not, I wouldn't call that part of every downtown exactly. They're in a busy-ish urban area, but MGM is right there on the street. People walk to it. It's part of the businesses that surround it, whereas Encore is a little bit much more set back from the road. I don't think you're getting anywhere near as much foot traffic to the casino. It's not really part of a business establishment within the area. And for that reason, it seems to me less likely that people would be spilling out of Encore and doing anything in the surrounding area other than getting in their cars and driving home. Ever it's on the line, maybe they can comment on that particular dynamic, but we'll look at the statistics in just a bit. Everything else, crimes, calls, collisions have been completely normal in this particular area. Here's a map of the thefts of vehicles in Charlestown. They're having a lot more in what are—I mean, no part of this part of Boston is really entirely residential, but they're basically residential streets where people live, not so much concentrated in, say, commercial parking lots. But once again, these are not particularly high numbers. They're just higher than the trend would have indicated. Here are the statistics in Melrose Wakefield Hospital. So you see 2020 was the highest in an eight-year period with 18 crimes reported there. So again, not huge numbers. But above the norm, and if they can—if Melrose can show that they're getting more patients coming from Encore, then that would—and I'm sorry, these years are the years ending February—the end of February for those years. So this—when it says 2019, that means March 1, 2018 through the end of February 2019, and the same with 2020 and beyond. And as far as the surrounding area, I had divided it up into three analysis areas. I expected there would be some increases in things at this shopping center just to the west of Encore, because it's just the closest concentration of restaurants and stores and, you know, other types of facilities that visitors might want to patronize. I thought they'd see an increase in visitors, and therefore, an inevitable increase in crime, but literally nothing has gone up in that area. It's not easy to get to from Encore, even though they're right next door. There isn't like an official path that takes you over there, so you'd have to go back up to Route 16 and over. That might explain why they're not experiencing much of anything. This sort of mixed residential commercial area to the east of the casino has seen an issue with some assaults on the street, drunk driving, which we'll cover in a bit, a lot of calls for suspicious activity, and just a general increase in calls for service. There was a particular issue with traffic parking complaints there during the first six months, but it didn't continue in the subsequent two months. And this northern area here also saw an increase in the types of crimes that you see, the specific numbers are offered in the report. It's possible some of those increases are related to the casino. Again, it's not like the Springfield area, though. It's hard to see people walking out of the casino and making their way into this neighborhood, but I might be wrong, and Everett might want to comment on that. While there is a logical connection to some of these call for service types and the extra traffic that a casino would bring, I'm more skeptical than I am of some of the other trends that we see in my reports. I also looked at a few other geographies within the report itself, the travel routes along Route 1 and Main Street through Everett and Maldon and Melrose coming in to the casino area and didn't really see much of anything along those routes, and the travel routes are something that particularly interests me, because I expect as more people visit these casinos, they're going to be stopping at restaurants and convenience stores and gas stations and so forth along the major travel routes, but so far I have not found any increase in any of the casino areas on those particular travel routes. The drunk driving part of this is interesting, because there's a lot more evidence on the surface of an increase in this area. Everett's arrests for drunk driving were up more than 100% during the first eight months that Encore was open, and then they went down 50% from the norm during the COVID closure period. When you come to the incidents that were reported as crashes, they increased from virtually none at all to 17% during the casino period and then went down 15-75% during the closure period. There's a particular geographic concentration of incidents on Broadway, which I have here, so you can see the casino, and these again are just crashes that turned out to be caused by a drunk driver, and you can see that line right along Broadway here. Encore was listed as the last drink location by like MGM, seven drunk drivers adjudicated during this period. Now, those drunk drivers could have been arrested anywhere. I don't know where they were arrested. They could have been arrested in Boston or South Shore or any place. However, there's a lot of smoke coming out of this area when it comes to drunk driving, but Everett police themselves have gone through these drunk driving arrests reported as crashes and found that none of the drunk drivers have reported Encore as their last drink location when they reported something at all. It's one of those things, like I say, a lot of smoke. Every time I talk to the Everett police, they say, no, there's no fire, but I have to keep checking because the statistics are so stark for this area. Again, this is something that I'll look at in more detail in the drunk driving report where I get a total data set from ABCC and ideally last drink locations from all of the surrounding communities. We can put all the evidence together. I would say there's reasons to be a little bit concerned, but based on Everett's own analysis, the increase doesn't seem to be casino specific despite the geographic proximity. Let's move into the COVID closures. I have a broader section of this in the report. I didn't think it was worth spending a lot of time talking about it today, but basically during the three months, the four months that Encore was closed, I'm sorry, that all the casinos were closed, in the MGM area, violent crime went down 28%. Encore Boston Harbor area, 16%. Property crime went down 9% in the MGM area, but and this is based on the predicted number that I thought they would have had normally and crashes incredible decrease, 51% in the MGM area and 43% in the Encore area. Of course, I am not suggesting and nobody should take from this that it was the closure of the casinos that caused these decreases specifically. Everything was closed during this period. People are working from home, get schools closed, bars closed, restaurants, everything, and the fundamental routine activities of society changed significantly and that really is what's to credit for the decrease. We're seeing the same types of statistics nationally and some places across the country have reported an increase in domestic violence during this period, but I didn't see any evidence of this in these two regions. So this created a fundamental shift in the way people interact with their environment and interact with each other that didn't entirely go away when the casinos reopened. Now, as I said, I started the MGM analysis in the summer. The casinos really had not been open that long then and I don't have statistics for the full reopening period. I do for Encore. Violent crime is still very low since the casinos reopened. Thefts from vehicles are still high. They were high throughout the period. In this case, it's Revere in Boston, not Everton Boston where they're high and we see increases in various types of theft, fraud, credit card fraud and identity theft, but again, many of those crimes seem to be having a statewide increase as well. Collisions are still way down and it's too early to get comparative data from other agencies for this period, for both periods, both the closing and the reopening period and I think I'm going to really need that comparative data to model what to expect going forward because even though the casinos have reopened, they've reopened as we all know here in a limited capacity and not only that, a lot of other places haven't reopened. So those routine activities of society that I talked about are still heavily restricted across the, you know, around the world. This is going to be a major issue for police departments worldwide going forward. How do you compare your statistics when these restrictions are finally lifted to what happened before? I think a lot of them are simply going to have to ignore 2020 and 2021 in their trend lines and their crime statistics because things change so much on a global scale and it'll be nice to think that 2022 is back to normal for all of us. I think it might be too early to make that type of proclamation. So basically, this throws the whole future of the project into doubt a little bit because this is one of those situations where what's happening at the casinos isn't, or the increase in crime in the surrounding the casinos isn't high enough that it's going to stand out against the decreases that are being occasioned by these major changes in society. And in order to detect a casino influence on the surrounding areas going forward, I'm going to have to create very different models and there isn't really a research consensus on how best to do that. So it's still it's still a work in progress, I suppose, is the best way to say it. And I don't know the full answer, but hopefully I will by the next time I have to report to you all. So for the next steps, I want to try to get Maldon and Medford back in, get their data and see if anything changes. Boston has had some limited data availability since they changed to a new records management system. And so I'm going to try to get more data from them. And you'll see some limitations in the report about the Boston data specifically. We're going to be talking coming up about incident at the casinos themselves, which I've left out of these reports because of concerns with the data. And Director Vandalin has convened a meeting with the stakeholders to talk about that and to work through some of the issues. But the most important thing is to create a model to figure out how to analyze this data during the period in which COVID is still basically affecting what happens everywhere in our communities, not just at the casino. And my next major report should be a multi-area drunk driving analysis that covers all three casino areas since the beginning. Going back to the opening even of Plain Ridge Park to summarize all of the evidence that we have or don't have on drunk driving and to the extent to which that has increased in the casino period. And that is my report. See everybody's faces again. Are there any questions for me? Looks like Kathy, Kathy might be speaking, but you're... Oh, no, I wasn't. Oh, okay. Just joking. I think that perhaps some of our guests are either not on video or not, but I do want to give them the opportunity to chime in. We'll have a sort of a natural pause right now. See if anybody chimes in before the commissioners. While they're collecting their thoughts, I'm sorry, just give me less than 20 seconds. Okay. On page two, I don't see any faces. So here we are. The business of home continues. I'm back, sorry. Oh, no, no problem. Thank you so much. Commissioner O'Brien, would you like to go first this time with comments or are you want to... No, certainly. I mean, I think the earlier comments about the importance of it, whole true for this one as well. Unfortunately, we can't say we have the sort of universal participation that I would love to be able to say we had like we do out in Springfield. It's something that we continue to work on. I know we've spoken about how to try to get greater participation and it is something that I'd like to continue to get more involved in in terms of it would really be great to see Cambridge in particular participate, work out the issues that Boston has with their stats because there is a... We are so right on the line with Boston. I do think that's a critical part of this as well that I think Christopher is going to want a need going forward to make this continue to be relevant. Great. Thank you. Commissioner Cameron or Commissioner Zuniga? Yeah, I would just like to say that again, I think this is a report that trends in the right direction, meaning we don't see huge levels of increase in crime. I know when we first heard about the drunk driving on Broadway, it looked like it could be problematic, but then after listening to the very thorough analysis done by Everett P.D., really thorough about each one and asking those questions about where were you. It didn't seem at all to be related to the casino. Again, I think that information from the departments is invaluable to this report and I just again want to thank everyone involved, State Police, Everett P.D. and all the surrounding areas. I do agree with Commissioner O'Brien. It would be nice to get everybody involved if we could, but a big thanks to everybody. Thank you, Commissioner Zuniga. Just to reiterate the same point, I know why there's different concerns and some logistical issues relative to participation, including working from home in the case of Malden, but I joined my voice to the chorus of trying to persuade and address community concerns to the extent they can be addressed without compromising the entirety of the project, of course, for the benefit of everybody. But thank you for the presentation, Christopher, for your work. Thank you so much, again, echoing the broader thanks to the communities that support the work that Christopher presented. I think I see that Chief Dennis at least still here and he may be listening, but I think Commissioner O'Brien, as you lead up this work with Commissioner Cameron, that perhaps we want to keep him, it's part of our stakeholders, if he hasn't been already informed because, you know, I'm hearing from Christopher that there are the statewide trends that we need to look at and given his role with the Statewide Association, that might be really helpful to keep him updated with our work. You know, particularly I guess you're focusing on the identity fraud and credit card fraud and the fraudulent practice that might be just all sort of trending across the state in the same fashion. Again, excellent report. I think it continues to be good news and in many ways it's a factor of all the efforts from the law enforcement community as well as from, you know, the patrons who attend and the folks who are doing the work on the floor, including our own game enforcement unit and game agents. So thank you. Captain counters, did you want to chime in? I don't want to put you on the spot, but I want to make sure if you have anything you'd like to add. No, thank you for the time. No, this time we'll continue to work with Christopher and getting the information for the future reports, especially as they relate to the facilities themselves and what we're seeing there, but yeah we'll continue to get that in a place that we want to make sure that these numbers we've reflect accurately what we're seeing within the within the facilities and making sure that the numbers either with the local our local partners that Plainville Everton Springfield are accurately reflective and not duplicating them so we take care as to what's going on within the facility. Great. Yes, we look forward to that. That good work ahead. Okay. I want to make sure for any guests that they don't have any questions or comments that I think, you know, to Christopher, Professor Bruce, thank you for your presentation. Director Vandalinden, we have a busy day. Do you have any concluding remarks? No, I think he's covered it well. And other than that, I sincere thank you to everybody that's been involved, both within the MGC, but most particularly our law enforcement partners in this. This is this is when we think about who is this research for is our target audience. You're our target audience. And so your investment contributing to it and benefiting from it is is our priority. Yeah, thank you. And again, thank you to the elected state officials who may have attended or sent representatives. We will continue to keep you in the loop and apprised of these developments in these reports, as well as to the two mayors offices. You know, you certainly know how to reach Director Vandalinden and my fellow commissioners and me. So we look forward to keeping you fully apprised on these. So thank you. I think then we'll move on to our next item on the agenda. I'm bringing up right now. So that now we're at item number five and Joe Delaney, our community affairs division chief, we're going to be exploring the workforce employment policy questions that were raised in earlier commission meetings. So thank you for the follow-up, Joe. Thank you, Madam Chair and commissioners. So of course, the subject we have before you today involves our licensees, policies and procedures with respect to recalling those workers that had been furloughed or laid off due to the pandemic. This issue first came up back in February, when we were doing our licensees quarterly reports. And at that time, the discussion revolved primarily around women participation in the workforce and whether or not there were ways to expedite the return of some of these folks to the workplace without the loss of seniority status. So this issue has become particularly important in light of the fact that Massachusetts schools are going back to full-time in-person learning, which may free up some of those folks who may not have been able to go back to work due to children being at home. And also, the return of craps and the recent approval of additional seats at the table games is expected to result in the need for additional dealers and cocktail servers, which will of course necessitate some hiring by our licensees. So here with us today to address these issues, we have Seth Stratton from MGM and Jackie Crum from Encore. And while the table games don't really affect PPC directly, I did ask North Groundsell to be here to answer any questions if you should have them of PPC. And at this point, I'd like to just turn it back to the chair to see if there's anything that you want to add in, if I missed any of the salient points before we hear from our licensees. Absolutely. Great summary. I do see that we have Kathy Lucas here too. I want to acknowledge Hi, Kathy. Nice to see you. You know, I think that I'd like to turn it over to Commissioner O'Brien who has led this conversation. I will add that it is probably a conversation that is followed closely and aligned with Commissioner Karen and me. We are, I think, thinking about our female counterparts who want to be at work and have faced obstacles that we haven't had to necessarily face. They are facing. So we monitor workforce issues with three properties. And so we are looking forward to this update. But Commissioner O'Brien, if you want to frame out the question again for those who may not be as familiar with your initial inquiry. Certainly. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you to Joe and to the licensees for this discussion today. I think it's particularly timely when I realized that yesterday was women's equal payday, which is, you know, took this far into 2021 for most women across the states to basically make what a male had made last year. And one of the things that I think struck all of us when this first came up at the quarterlies was the drop in female participation. You looked at the diversity numbers and COVID has disproportionately impacted women and there's a lot of concern about their ability to get back into the workforce. And so I wanted to deeper dive into what some of those reasons were at the licensees. And I understand from a quick briefing and I'm sure they'll get into more today that there are, you know, certain factors in terms of their collective bargaining agreements. There are things like that that play into seniority and how people are called back. But I do, A, want to hear about what those are and B, talk about having an ongoing conversation about this, because as the economy gets back up and running and as they look for employees, I do want us to continue the focus that we have in the commitment to all diversity in terms of getting people back to work and doing what we can do in conjunction with the licensees to make sure that we don't leave anyone left behind if it's at all possible. So with that, I would, unless anyone else has comments, I would love to hear from them in terms of what their practices are, what they're seeing and maybe ideas for what we can do to make sure people don't get lost. Jack, I'm happy to jump in with our team first, as I know this has been a discussion that started with the MGM Springfield team, if you'd like. Sure. Thank you, Seth. Go right ahead. Thank you. And I'm going to introduce and largely turn it over to our team, because this is a, we as a company are committed, of course, to equity across all of our employees and our female employees. This is an issue that has a number of factors and is situational, depending on the particular circumstance. But we took the inquiry seriously, seriously, did a deep dive and looped in several of our corporate partners who look at these issues across the enterprise. And we've invited them here today to participate in particular, Wendy Nutt from our corporate team, Labor Relations and Rick Joost from Corporate HR. I'd ask Wendy and Rick, if you could just briefly introduce yourselves and give a little more detail on your role. And then I'll turn it over to both of you to address the issue generally. And then our team is here to answer any questions, if that makes sense. Thank you. So Rick and Wendy, go ahead. Sure. Good morning. I'm Wendy Nutt. I am Senior Vice President of Labor Strategy and my role is to really drive the overall labor relations strategy for the organization. My team and I do all of our labor negotiations across the United States. I have a team member who leads the Massachusetts negotiations for me. But obviously, all of that rolls up to me for approvals and to ensure that our labor relations negotiations are consistent with our overall approach on labor. I obviously work very closely with our HR teams on things like the shutdown and the resumption of operations as that to our unionized workforce. So Rick, who is also here today, Rick Joost is somebody I work with very closely. I will let him introduce himself. Thank you, Andy. So I'm Rick Joost. I'm a Vice President of Human Resources. I've been with him, Chairman Joost, for 14 years. Most of the time in my career, I've been closely aligned with the resorts and the properties that we operate and providing human resources support. More recently, though, for the last 14 months, I've specifically been involved, as Wendy indicated, in looking at policies related to the pandemic, the shutdown, the reopening, and just making sure that our policies are consistent across the eight states that we operate in, over 100 collective bargaining agreements that Wendy and her team manage, making sure that we were being thoughtful about the ways that our policies needed to adapt because of the environment that we were in, and caring for employees along the way to ensure that we're doing everything we could to support them. I want to make sure, is it am I frozen? I'm getting a lot of feedback. There's an echo, Kathy. That's strange. Yeah, I did mute somebody, and I wonder if that is a factor. I'll try that. Maybe that was it. I don't know where it's coming from. Okay, there we go. So, Seth, if you want to take the conversation forward, please. I'm sorry, Chair. Can everybody hear me now? Yep. I think we had, we had one person, Mary Pauldering, who hadn't muted, and I muted her. I don't know if she could mute herself. You might be hearing to her. There we go. Does that help? Okay. Anyway, we'll continue now. So, Seth, you've introduced, I think the question would be quite practical. What are the, what will we expect on reports next quarterly in terms of bringing in women? What are the challenges? I'm hearing that there's probably a union issue for you. I'm sorry about that. Yeah, and if we could try, Wendy, it might be yours. Could you try muting yourself, Wendy, that might be yours. Try that, Kathy. Yeah, that helps. Yeah, that helps. I don't know who to figure it out. I'll give Derek the credit for that. Good. Thank you, Derek. Always observing. So I'm glad it's not me, because that would have been a long day. However, I'm going to mute myself when Wendy speaks, and hopefully that will help. We didn't have an echo in Wendy's vote. So, Seth, I think you could take the conversation forward. Thank you. Sure. Sir, I think to, and I'll turn it back over to Rick just to give a high-level overview of our process. But moving forward, I think you're going to see the number continue to fluctuate. You will see hopefully as we reopen our hotel, which has been closed and open on a limited basis for a period of time, you will see that a lot of those physicians related to the hotel have a higher pro-rata percentage of female employees. So you'll see some increase there. We also, however, factor in the numbers with respect to the Mass Mutual Center operations. And luckily as we move into phase four and you see that operation ramp up, you'll see folks come back there. And the percentage of employees happens to be higher male. So those might even out. So I'm not sure exactly where the numbers will go going forward. But we are hopeful that our recall process doesn't disproportionately impact any category of employee. And I guess, Rick, if you could just give a very, we've been on several conversations and you could take three hours to walk through our process. If you could just give a high-level overview of the process that we employ and how that works so that we can understand that there, what we do there and our focus on ensuring that folks who want to come back are able to come back. Absolutely. Thank you. So in this builds off of, I think, the conversation in the last meeting that Jason had started to explain of, we do have clear policies in place, whether it's returning employees who may just be in a furlough status, for example, people who were impacted by the curfew in Q4 of 2020, as well as a policy and a process for employees who were unfortunately separated on August 31st and are being reinstated. And so what I think is really important to understand in both of those processes, the employees, if they return on their first offer, they retain all of their seniority, that whether it's benefits 401k, time off benefits, it all is restored back to their original corporate seniority with our organization. And Wendy can speak to if there's any intricacies for those that are covered by an agreement, a union agreement about any differences there, but that first offer people automatically get all of that seniority back. I understand from the February meeting part of the conversation was around if they've declined once, and then later come back to join us, do they in effect lose their seniority. So I did want to clarify, most of everything I just described would still be available to them if they come back to join MGM Resorts Springfield or any MGM Resorts entity for that matter prior to the end of 2021. So between now and December 31st, 2021, whether an employee is recalled, or if they are rehired into the organization, they would keep their corporate seniority, which for most of our employees is the triggering factor for the benefits, the health benefits, the 401k and the time off benefits. The only thing that someone might lose if they had declined the offer previously, as Jason had described, and so we had continued offering down the list, and then later they were rehired. The only seniority that would be impacted would be their position seniority, because there is a break in service at that point that they declined work when others accepted it. So our policies do make a distinction there. And again, I don't want to get too far into the weeds on that, because I think Wendy can speak to where the different seniority dates might affect the employees that are represented by a collective bargaining agreement. But I did want to make sure that we're clear that it's in our best interest to get those employees rehired as business rebounds, and we have the roles available to them, because they're already licensed and trained. But even if someone had originally declined, they are still going to receive most of their seniority back in what I believe would be the seniority that's probably most impactful for their benefits. Yeah, just a quick question to make sure I didn't miss a date, you said, Mr. Jones. So you have that policy in place for all of 2021, until December of this year, in other words? That's correct. Okay, thank you. If I could, this is Commissioner O'Brien. Mr. Jones, if the break in service, can you be a little more specific about what the loss of seniority in terms of their position seniority would be? You're telling me it's not necessarily going to be related to benefits. What are some of the ramifications if you lose that due to the break in service? Absolutely. So what I'd suggest is I'll answer it for an employee that's not represented by a union, and then I'll allow Wendy to weigh in on the difference there. So for an employee that's not represented, what position seniority would most often be used for would be bidding on shifts. So an employee who comes back and has a new position seniority date, the next time that the ships go up for bid and that people are able to apply for different schedules, they would have a different seniority than they would have had previously because they've essentially reset to the bottom of that list when bidding on any available shifts. Wendy, do you want to speak to what the bargaining agreements would say? The collective bargaining agreements are pretty consistent with what Rick said around those that aren't represented. The agreements have various things that are driven by seniority throughout the contracts, but primarily what you see around a classification seniority date is bidding on shifts and schedules that it would include like days off, etc. So if we bid a whole schedule, if you are in an on-call rule, it will drive the order in which you are offered available work, for example, and it may drive promotional opportunities to a certain extent. And we look at oftentimes as promotional opportunities just including moving from equal classification across the bargaining unit so somebody wants to move from a guest room attended into a food server position, for example, we would refer to that as a type of promotional bargain or promotional opportunity. So that sort of seniority is going to drive the classification or position seniority is going to drive those things, as Rick said, for benefits eligibility purposes that is generally your corporate hire date, which we are having people retain when they come back into the workforce. So it is really more the day-to-day that gets impacted than the big ticket items around your benefits when you are working for us. So can I ask the decision to harken back to the initial hire date is the seniority date? Is that a change due to COVID or is that a long-standing practice? So our general policy or existing policy was that you need to be rehired into the company within six months of leaving the company to retain that. That is the cutoff that we have used for many years. And so that is a specific example of a policy that we amended in August 2020, when we understood the number of terminations that were going to take place. And so we modified that policy to create a longer runway, if you will, to give employees the opportunity to come back and retain that seniority as business rebounds. It does impact sort of... One minute. Thank you, Wendy. Yes. There could be a disproportionate impact beyond sort of the day-to-day nuisance in terms of you're talking about shift choices or promotional choices. It's a little disheartening to hear that that is not also under consideration in terms of if the recall happens within this COVID period, because that does have a real impact on people's work experience, promotional experience. So just my comment on that part of it. And I can speak to that a little bit. I mean, the challenge for us under a labor agreement is that those people below them also have seniority rights. And as we follow other contracts, and to be clear so that you all understand, we did negotiate memorandums of agreement with each of the unions around what happens, because our contracts simply weren't designed to deal with a pandemic of this magnitude. So we have extended recall rights under those contracts. We allowed people to pass for some period of time when we didn't need everyone. But once we've got somebody who has passed and someone else comes into the organization, they then have seniority rights. So we are very challenged by then bringing somebody back who has exited the organization and bumping someone back out of where they now sit from a seniority position. So again, we talk with the union about those things as we go through this and try to... Bumping gets very... There's a lot of room for error when you start bumping and changing seniority dates. So I think from at least on the union side, that's some of the challenge around letting somebody come back who's been out for 10 additional months and slotting them back in on a classification or a position seniority. Right. Now, and I acknowledge this CBA is going to put you in a very different position than I will, employees. I hope that, again, given that it was in all likelihood a COVID that extended the separation, that maybe there may be ways to strategize how to address those... I don't want to call them secondary seniority benefits, but the non-benefits related seniority questions. Commissioner Cameron, do you have a question or comment? I do. Commissioner O'Brien asked the question I had, which was, was that a long-standing policy or was that something that was modified due to the pandemic? My additional question was just Vice President Joe, you mentioned at the beginning that you've looked at kind of all your policies to see what modifications you could possibly make in light of this. I just wondered if there were any other policies that you have modified due to this pandemic? Absolutely. Probably the one that comes to mind as most relevant is our attendance policy. So, again, all of our operating divisions have policies on a no-fault attendance policy and how many days someone could take before there would be coaching and counseling associated with it. We recognized, obviously, very early a year ago that we needed to make modifications because we didn't want people coming to work sick because they were worried about potential consequences. We wanted them to understand if you have symptoms, it's best for all of us if you stay home. So, we had initially modified that policy and then over the last 12 months, we've modified it multiple times as the environment has changed. Most recently, we've made modifications as employees returning to school or, excuse me, employees, children that were returning to school and understood that may create different challenges for them. They might have arrangements that change quickly if the child care center or the school where they're going has to close down and that employee is going to be in a position that they need to take time off they weren't expecting. So, that's another example of a policy that has had addendums a few times over the last 12 months just to continue to understand the situation our employees are facing and find the best way to adapt to the environment. Thank you. That's helpful. Okay. Any other further questions? I think it will be fascinating to see what the numbers look like. I am hearing the restraints and the reactions to the CBA and the negotiations. Thank you for that background. I'm sure too that you will continue as you have been to be a committed employer to enhancing opportunities for women in their promotions and giving the kind of outreach and training so that they can compete. I also know too that I had been concerned that there could be a disproportionate effect on the minority employees and I know that you will continue to make sure that you address any of those outcomes best that you can. These are difficult times. I think it's good for us to have these frank discussions and to keep it really an intentional conversation as we go forward and everybody keep their innovative thinking going because there will be unfortunate consequences here that will take a little bit of time for folks to catch up. It sounds like and that's unfortunate but I'm hearing that it will be there will be at least some and I'm hoping that the numbers aren't as as large as we might imagine given the impact on women at home with their children in this time. Thank you chair and I will I will say sorry I will say almost that yes thank you. Your request the commission's request to address this issue look into this has caused the both productive and collaborative conversations internally where we've been you know focused on the issue and strategizing and so that in and of itself was I think beneficial so I think to your point an iterative process and being focused on it has great benefit so we're happy to continue to have that dialogue and and I personally saw that there was some benefit of us even looking at and discussing it in response to this dialogue so thank you. Thank you and I know that on our side we are making sure that we don't inadvertently create any barriers to life and assure that our licensing process doesn't impact your ability to bring people on quickly and swiftly and without you know extra burden so thank you. I know we have Jackie here and North I see you as well Jackie would you like to chime in? Good afternoon. You know possibly due to the differences in the way that MGM and our property reopened we haven't seen the same drop in numbers in fact our numbers have remained almost exactly identical our number of managers women managers sorry supervisors and above has actually gone up and we're now over the 50 mark. Anecdotally when we first recalled employees in July we had a lot of employees that asked for a couple of weeks to rearrange their schedules to try to figure out how to deal with whether they were living out of state whether they were living with family whether they had child care issues and so we did provide that time to allow them to adjust their schedules before returning. We haven't had anyone recently who has said that declined to come back due to child care issues. We do have a handful two handfuls I'd say of employees who have asked if they can delay their return because they live with people who are in vulnerable situations and so for those employees we have granted them a leave of absence which we extend sort of every 90 days as to allow them to do that. Again we've we've tried to where we can modify schedules accordingly to allow people to work at different times if that's what's required and of course work from home policy which we didn't have before has allowed I think some people to remain employed who otherwise might not have been able to do so. Thank you thank you for prefacing I do know you have a different structure so I appreciate Jackie you noting that right up front so that's all good news thank you. Questions Commissioner O'Brien or Commissioner Cameron would you like to go first? This is Commissioner O'Brien Jackie just can you address sort of the way MGM did in terms of their collateral consequences to the person going on leave where do they get to retain sort of their seniority status and anything else as if they were recall they came back the first offer to recall. Sure so for the people on leave those people come back with the same seniority if there's people who have been terminated because and we have some departments where frankly we we need the people to come back we're short people we can't we can't operate the way we need to without people returning so if we in those situations where we did have to terminate people because they couldn't come back and weren't able to provide a reason that we could assist with those people would lose their seniority if they later came back later reapplied and and did come back the same as MGM not in terms of benefits but in terms of bidding yeah okay and then when you say because they couldn't provide a reason that was it was there some sort of vetting process in terms of the reason for for inability to come back oh yes we asked we definitely asked the reason so I people won't come back frankly most of them have left the state their housing situations have changed so that seemed to be the primary reason why people weren't coming back again anecdotally we didn't see a lot we didn't see any anyone who said they they couldn't come back because of child care okay or other COVID related responsibilities the only ones that the the COVID related responsibilities were those people who were living with a vulnerable family member and so for those eight individuals we did put them on a leave of absence okay great thank you could I just ask a real quick question I didn't ask before staff is the child care facility in Springfield has that been going or functioning during that COVID is that able to reopen you may not know the answer I don't want to put you on the spot um I don't know for sure but I believe that it is probably with the restrictions of maybe some reductions in occupancy and then Jackie did you um your child care provisions we are open finally so they were able to open in the middle of COVID I shouldn't say in the middle in in the last six months and we rolled it out first to our employees and unfortunately their total capacity is 64 but they're only able to enroll 18 students oh sorry 18 8 infants and 10 toddlers at this time Commissioner Ryan how did we fail to ask about the child care facility that's usually the first question we would ask Jackie am I quarterly report yeah yeah that's right I was saving that for my my last question I like oh okay thank you uh Commissioner Cameron do you have a question for Jackie and and and Christian Ryan I don't know if you were if you were all finished are you all set commissioner Cameron I don't have a question but I I thank Jackie for the report and commissioner Zanicka same here thank you Jackie okay and now North nice to see you yeah I didn't ask North to have anything uh really prepared so I just had him here for questions but of course North if you do have uh some words to say would be happy to hear them well we don't want to put you on the spot but uh if you want if you have if you'd like to report we're we're welcome to we're all ears I I think I would just say you know Kathy is here to be able to answer some of the specific questions we may have we haven't made any structural changes to our workforce since my time in joining I will say that when this issue came up when a couple meetings ago obviously you know I could tell that it was a concern of commission and so I immediately walked down to Kathy's office we had a discussion about our employment practices making sure that you know we have fair employment practices that we are making efforts to recall team members who had left us for for whatever reason who were employed with us prior to the pandemic starting and that we weren't placing any undue burdens on team members as they potentially sought to come back and we were kind of continuing that conversation with them because people's lives change circumstances change all those types of things it's a very fluid time and I walked away very satisfied with with where we were we're happy to answer any questions that you may have but I don't I do not have concerns about this issue right now and I would just add that it's it's almost been a year now when we initially furloughed our team members and we worked hand in hand with the unions to ensure that we could put you know MOAs in place that would protect members that were being furloughed at the time and since laid off and terminated extending you know their ability for recall and for retaining their status for a period that was outside the original agreements I think you know I think Wendy shared earlier this was you know the the current contracts or the past contracts didn't have any provisions in there for that so we did a we made sure that we put that into place I think the other thing that that we've done over the last six to seven months when when we we called the positions that we were able to open up you know because the the restrictions allowed us to um we we brought back everyone and offered and we did also offer team members who were either uncomfortable at the time returning for their own personal reasons or family reasons the opportunity to pass