So I'll just start with a reminder to all who are attending that this meeting is being recorded. I'll just confirm that we have a quorum. Commissioner Cameron, good morning. Good morning. I'm here. Thank you, Commissioner O'Brien. I'm here. Good morning, Commissioner Zinica. Good morning everyone here. Great, thank you. As we've stated at the beginning of all of our public meetings, we are able to do this during this period remotely because of relief granted by Governor Baker in an executive order to public bodies like ours and we've been using the remote technology since March 14th and again thanks to our IT team that turned things over so smoothly and we'll be hearing from Katrina a little bit later today. We'll get started. Today is January 28th. It did January go and it is about just 1001 public meeting number 334 and we're going to start with the approval of the minutes this with Commissioner O'Brien for September 30th please. Certainly. Madam Chair, I would move that the Commission approve the minutes in the packet from September 30th 2020 subject to any necessary corrections for typographical or non-material matters. Second. Great. So everybody's had a chance to review them. Any suggested edits? You're all set, Enrique? Excellent. Then on vote. Commissioner Cameron? Aye. Commissioner O'Brien? Aye. Commissioner Zunica? Aye. And I vote yes for zero. Thank you and I am sorry. I think maybe perhaps Vivian is recording minutes. I see Vivian there. Everyone good morning Vivian. We haven't seen you for a bit. It's nice to see you and thank you for helping today. Commissioners. It's nice to see Vivian, right? It's excellent. She looks great. You do. You do. We miss you. Alrighty. I'm moving on then. Commissioner O'Brien? Yes. There's another set of packets minutes in the packet October 1st 2020. I would move that the Commission approve the minutes of October 1st 2020 subject to any typographical or non-material corrections as necessary. Second. Great. Does anybody have any edits or suggestions or I have a real simple one and this may have occurred in other minutes and I didn't pick it up on I think it's on page three up four. Commissioner O'Brien just at 1138 it says that the chair suggested that we go into the executive session and I think you know that sounds a little casual. That is of course how we don't go into executive session. It's very highly regulated by the open meeting law. So perhaps on on that we might see something like the chair next stated that the Commission anticipated going into executive session and then of course we're required to vote on that and usually our general counsel will will come to the to me to say what there might be a need for an executive session and we discuss it and then Karen helps to to relay that message so that all of us are prepped for it but we do make that decision in according to the law during this during our public session and then we move into the executive session. So thank you. So with that edit any other edits. All righty. Thanks. I'll take a roll call about Commissioner Cameron. Hi. Commissioner O'Brien. Hi. Commissioner Zuniga. Hi. I vote. Yes. So four zero. Thank you.  I just have to fix my view here so I can see everybody there and I can see everyone a little bit better and I can see Karen Wells better. We just want we have a little moment to have some fun and to celebrate some news. Karen Wells our executive director is highlighted in this month's issue of global gaming business magazine. We know it is GBGGB magazine as one of the top 25 people to watch in 2021 and it is with great pleasure that we we join in and we get to watch you on an everyday basis but it's really wonderful to know actually internationally that you are being recognized for your leadership here in Massachusetts. You know this is the beginning of your first full year of being executive director. You've been executive director for years in the interim. It feels like years. But now yeah you know cumulative you know really it's been over years as interim and now this is your launching of your first of your first full year in the full position and we can't really think of a better way for you to be celebrated. So congratulations. Exciting and truly deserving and I should note that Bill Horne Buckle CEO and president of MGM Resource International is in Karen's good company. So congratulations to him as well. Commissioners. Oh yeah I know how much I know how much director Wells loves this coming from her public safety background. I know that you always dread when you're when you're in some way in the spotlight because you never know if it's going to be good or bad but this is well deserved and enjoy it Karen. Don't be don't read it. Enjoy it. And it is really well deserved. Thank you. I really care. Yeah same here. It's it's well deserved. I would argue that she was a person to watch much much earlier than than today for this this month from all the trajectory that you are good to chair not just as an executive director for the better part of more than a year I think. Yes. Not as interim but in a prior role as an interim executive director and very well performance great performance as the director of the IED for the better part of the life of this commission. I would just mention that there is a very interesting coincidence if you will that I will be evaluating Karen in the next meeting. And I didn't go there. Yeah. This will be one of the aspects of the accomplishments and I just say that jokingly of course but congratulations Thank you. Yes well do we know this Eileen. No congratulations Karen. I do yeah point out that of course I find out about this Karen herself from Brian Connors because true form Karen's not going to boast about it but I agree it's overdue. I mean I've known Karen for a long time. I'm not at all surprised that she steps into this other role. People are taking notice of it. There's a reason we put her at the helm for in a permanent role. Congratulations. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you all. So that's a fun way to start a pretty rigorous agenda. So we'll continue on Karen for your administrative update and again congratulations. Thank you very much. Yes. So for item three a the administrative update and you're continuing with our update for the commissioners and the public on what's going on on site at the casinos given the covid pandemic and the enhanced security and safety protocols that the mission has implemented to make sure that people are safe at the casinos and while they're still operating they can do so successfully. So I'm going to turn that over to our director of the IEB deputy and deputy director Bruce Vand to give you an update on what's going on there. Thank you. I'll turn it over to Loretta first. Hi thanks Karen. Good morning chair. Good morning commissioners. So last Thursday January 21st the governor issued covid 19 order 62 which went into effect at 5 a.m. on Monday of this week and for us the order means repeal of the mandatory nightly 9 30 p.m. closing time of the three casino properties in their amenities that had been in effect. The order keeps in place the 25% capacity limits at each of the three properties until at least 5 a.m. on February 8th. All other covid 19 related health and safety measures remain in place including for example the mass requirements no food on the gaming floor beverages only while seated in gaming the distancing measures the use of the plexiglass as previously approved by the commission the heightened cleaning and sanitization protocols. And so now all three properties are authorized to return to 24 seven operations and they've been working hard to get their plans in place to do so it has meant the ability for them to call some folks back from furlough with some retraining involved as well. So the Bruce band and his team have been working with each property to ensure that all of the areas are appropriately staffed as the hours are increased. Bruce and Burke Kane and Lewis Lozano at Encore Angela Smith at MGM and Andrew Steffen at PPC and their teams have been you know continuing to show great adaptability in all of this. So I would like to ask Bruce to jump in and report to you on each of the properties in turn and the the details that that he has been reviewing. So Bruce if you mind coming in. Good morning Bruce. Good morning all. First I'd like to tell you that as far as the 25 percent MGM had a high of 18 percent since the last time I spoke to you Encore had a high of 17 percent and PPC a high of 18.5 percent well below the 25 percent rule. PPC went 24 hours that yesterday they started with that. They're going to be operating continuously as of yesterday. They're operating a few restaurants all their food court slacks and the racing operations as well. They brought back a few people to fill some of the vacancies that they had that everything seems to be going pretty smoothly with their operations so far. Encore started their 24 operations yesterday as well. They actually brought 500 people back from furlough. They're going to be operating eight restaurants which include like rare red eight mystique and so on. They'll be reopening their salon and opening up the spa as well on weekends. Encore is also done taking an additional step in their service bars where they've added plexiglass splits between for added protection for the cocktail services. The service dispensers were a little close so they added this added precaution for protection for their employees in their MGM. They start their 24 operations on Friday. They're remaining to keep open the south end food market there. They're not opening any additional restaurants at this time but they said that they will as they go further along. Does anybody have any questions about that at this point of the venture? Very thorough Bruce. Any questions commissioners? I'm just curious. It's perhaps too early to tell Bruce but do you anticipate perhaps more visitation as a result of the 24 hour operation or maybe perhaps some of the same total number of people spread throughout? I think definitely because five hours in this industry are really nine to the midnight somewhere in there and with closing it by 9 30. I think it's probably prevented a lot of people from visiting the casino. So I would expect to see especially starting this weekend. I think you'll see the numbers up quite a bit. Right? Commissioner O'Brien, do you have any questions for Bruce? Or Loretta? I don't. No. Thank you. Loretta, just a little. I did have a chair. I did want to address the simulcasting side at Suffolk Downs and Rainham as well. Of course, Dr. Loudbound has been in touch with both of those operators and they are aware of the updated order and they have submitted their hours to us at some extension of ours. Not a 24-7 situation. Suffolk Downs is operating five days a week closing at six on Wednesday, Thursdays and Sundays and seven on Fridays and Saturdays and Rainham is operating six days a week closed on Tuesdays, open until five on Mondays, 9 30 on Wednesdays and Thursdays, open until 11 on Fridays and Saturdays and closing at eight on Sundays. So they are up to date on the latest orders and remain aware of all of the compliance measures. Questions? Commissioner Cameron? I'll set. Okay. I'll set. No questions. Thank you. Good report. Thank you. One just quick edit because in the event that someone reviews the agenda in the future, under 3A, we want to strike the word interim for Loretta's title. Very observant. I have to say I was, I hadn't noticed. So thank you for having my back. Yeah. Well, I'm sorry because that was my job before it got posted and so I was observing a little late in the game. So thank you. But we just want to make sure the record is clear that you are in fact director. Thank you. So thank you. Thank you for the thorough report. Consistent, right? Commissioner's with what we've expected. And I know this is very welcome relief for our licensees. So we also the news today, I just saw perhaps you also article in the New York Times that suggesting that there's just a very steep decline in cases and doesn't mean we can in any way be anything short of vigilant. But let's just hope that this is this is trending in the right direction for our licensees and for all of us right. So thanks. And Bruce, thank you for your thorough report. We'll move on then to some other compliance news. Karen, do you want to introduce some Katrina and team, please? Yes. So I'm going to turn it over to our CIO of our Information Technology Services Division, Katrina Jigaro, who is going to introduce her team. They're going to do a presentation on the gaming technical compliance side of the house and some of the things that they're working on right now. So I'll turn it over to Katrina. Good morning, Katrina. Good morning. Thank you, Executive Director Wells. Good morning, Chair and commissioners. So as part of the department overview series that we started last year, I can't believe it's been, as you said earlier, Chair, we're already in January. Where has the time gone? The Information Technology Services Division presented in February of last year a high level overview of the ITS division and its team. So today we are truly excited to share a more in-depth look at the inner workings of one of our specific units within the ITS division gaming technical compliance. So presenting today will be Scott Helwig, our gaming technical compliance manager and Priya Gandotra, our gaming technical compliance engineer. Scott? Thank you, Katrina. Hello, Chair and fellow commissioners. Nice to see you, Scott. Nice to see you as well. I know we don't get to see each other as much because we're I know. So it's very nice to be able to show everybody my my face. So we miss you. We miss you. Well, thank you to be the feelings mutual. So it's good to see all the colleagues here today. So today we will be presenting an overview of the gaming technical compliance division. We will begin by highlighting a few of our regulations which outline the MGC gaming technical standards to be followed by our licensees. We the gaming technical compliance team or GTC team may not need to know all sub paragraphs within each regulation listed. Although a general understanding will help us better serve our MGC colleagues. The GTC also assists in the creation and revisioning of gaming technical regulations as necessary. As we did with our regulations, we will again highlight some of the gaming standards MGC has adopted from gaming laboratories international that are known as GLI. GLI is a certified independent testing lab and we will discuss them a little later. But for this moment, we would like to mention these standards are used by majority of gaming regulators across the US. When a new version of the standard is released, the GTC will assist with the revisioning and of our regulations as necessary. The GTC operates the MGC gaming technical compliance lab located in the Boston office. We use the lab to complete additional testing for electronic gaming devices, better known as EGDs and EGD systems as deemed necessary. We also assist with other MGC initiative testing, for example, the play my way application currently in use at Plain Ridge Park and Cena. We review the reports sent from our certified independent testing labs on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. And we'll send notifications regarding revocated software or decommission software to our licensees as necessary. Currently, the MGC has approved GLI and BMM test labs for EGD software testing. The GTC also reserves the right through regulation to audit our certified independent testing labs on a yearly basis. Another task completed by the GTC is to work alongside our Network Operations Center team or NOC team. And we will speak more about this in a few minutes. Right now, we would like to speak about the partnerships we have with some of our MGC colleagues. For instance, we provide monthly reports to our Investigation and Enforcement Bureau agents, along with EGD manufacturers, specific documentation, as well as other requests for information is needed. At times, the finance team will request assistance with meter investigations, or the review of technical requirements for an accounting report. As mentioned earlier, we also assist the research and responsible gaming team with programs that contain technical components like Play My Way. Lastly, and this year especially, we were able to provide COVID specific reports to assist with social distancing measures in place at our licensees. As mentioned earlier, the MGC has a dedicated NOC team, which maintains and operates the Massachusetts Gaming Commission Central Monitoring System, better known as the MGC CMS. The GTC meets with the NOC on a daily basis to ensure technical compliance through the use of features available from the MGC CMS. We would like to expand on these features of the MGC CMS. With 24-7 communication monitoring, it allows for automated and on-demand software validations. It also collects accounting data that is available for review in real time and can be presented in many ways using the built-in reporting feature. Lastly, we assist with the configuration of the security features available from the MGC CMS. At this time, I'd like to hand it over to our Gaming Technical Compliance Engineer, Preya Bandacha. Preya? Thank you, Scott. The last tool we would like to speak about today is our data warehouse. This allows the GTC and the finance team the ability to review data without affecting the performance of MGC CMS. The data warehouse is updated daily to ensure accurate reports can be generated for immediate use. That's our other member of the team, Lucy Bandacha, that she decided to. She was letting everybody know that thank you for your time. And if you have any questions or comments, we would greatly appreciate that. I have a quick question for Preya. Yes. I'm trying to understand the last slide where you have a picture of containers. So that refers to the data architecture. Normally, when you get data in, you have to put them in containers. Also known as tables or database. Basically, yeah, it's just database. No, I thought it was something like that, but I wanted you to explain. It was a cute slide. So Madam Chair, I did have a comment, you know, just, you know, going through this. First of all, I'm very impressed. So congratulations to Katrina and her team and just all the work that they do.  The Massachusetts Game 8 Commission is a new agency and they are really at the forefront of a lot of technical things. Very impressive. I remember when we were starting out and teams went to visit some other gaming jurisdictions just to get information, figure out how we were going to set up this organization. I remember being in New Jersey and being educated on just how critical the IT, the gaming technical compliance and how important that is to our regulatory mission. So seeing this and seeing how far we've come in these accomplishments is really impressive. So congratulations to Katrina and her whole team. Thank you. Yeah, I agree. Really impressive presentation. It is amazing how many things we do. And it's a nice reminder and I know that we're always keeping up with best practices. So congratulations as well to the whole team. And Katrina, congratulations on your appointment to the Commission on Women and Girls in Essex County. That is impressive and really important work. Thank you. Likewise. Likewise. Congratulations. I actually had a small question for Scott. No, yes, please. Scott, you mentioned that we have the two largest independent test labs are authorized to conduct testing, as per our regulations, VMM and GLI. I know GLI has a big share of the market in the industry and that the decision to get tested is mostly by the manufacturer. But can you expound a little bit as to whether that split is how much testing is VMM doing? What kind of testing? I'm just thinking in terms of having the ability of both being good for the industry and for us. Right. Yeah, it does give our manufacturers a choice of where they want to go with their testing. I don't really know the numbers off the top of my head of the bulk. Let me, I guess the better way to put it, is getting the bulk of the request for testing. VMM does receive some. It's not that they're not getting any. So when they test, they will actually use our regulations, which as you know, have adopted the GLI standards well, and they'll go through the same rigorous testings that GLI does. So that answer your question. Yes, thank you. Great. So to add to Scott's answer on that, we in our jurisdiction, we have about 90% that's done by GLI and only 10% by VMM. There you go. Thank you. Brian. Any questions for Scott or pre or Katrina? No, I don't. Thank you. It's very succinct. Something I can wrap my head around just something to be said for explaining IT to someone like that. And congratulations, Katrina. Also, that's great. Yeah. Thank you, Scott, for making that really accessible. I just, I may not, I may not have appreciated this. But I think that you noted that we were able to use technology and to help on the issues around social distancing. Did I hear that correctly? Could you just explain that a little bit to me? I don't think I appreciated that. Sure. So when we were starting to open up the casinos again, when during the pandemic, I think it was about July or so, we had worked with our IB division to create a report, which what we did in the MGC CMS is we use the feature that we can basically put a marker on a machine, if you want it for lack of a better term. And then we know if that machine is either active for service or out of service on the casino floor. And then we can actually, we were actually able to help the casino see if these games were being disabled properly. And that was the report that we were using in the beginning there and stuff. So yeah. And we continue to look at it and let the casinos know like, hey, we noticed this game that's supposed to be out of service has some play on it. And then maybe they were they were just testing it because they changed the software or something put it back out of service, or they moved it somewhere where they could put it in service. And then we have our knock team adjust those those markers so that it doesn't come up in our report. And in addition to that, we did work with the properties when they reopened on the when the restriction on the times was invoked to be 930. We worked in concert through Bruce and his team, along with the properties to automatically disable all the EGDs on the floor to assist the properties to be in compliance with vacating the premises of all patrons. And that was a feature that that our licensees didn't even fully appreciate that we provide had that capacity. And it really was an assistance back in July, are they reopening correct? Yes. And now and now again this. So I like not only the report on the excellent testing and the compliance, but just really how our IT team works as a partner for the licensees to ensure their compliance and to be helpful and not just a tester of them. And that that's a critical function. And really Karen reflects, you know, how this MGC team works with its licensees. So thank you. And it was really helpful to think about the social distancing. I don't think I fully appreciate that. So thanks so much. Any other questions? Thanks, Scott. It's so great to see you and in Pia. I'm I don't know if I completely heard Scott, but I'm thinking that that was a small voice in the background from your home. You might make an appearance here. Say hi. Hi. Lucy is a future coder and developer in the working. Asmos is alone, correct? There we go. Thanks. Thanks, Katrina. Karen, are you all set? Yeah, I'm also item three, so we can move on to item four now, Chair. Okay, thank you. Now we're going on to Research and Responsible Gaming and Director Mark Van Der Linden. Good morning, Mark. And to research. Commissioners, I'm joined with Theresa Fiori, our program manager for Research and Responsible Gaming, Marlene Warner with the Mass Council on Gaming and Health. And okay, there we go. We have Dr. Richard Wood and Nasim Tabri Carlton University and Gamres to talk about an important initiative. As we continue to advance the Game Sense program. And just in general, the responsible gaming initiatives in Massachusetts, I'm going to actually turn it over to Theresa to do a little bit more of an introduction. So, Theresa, do you want to take it over? Sure. Good morning, everyone. Good morning, Theresa. Hi. So in 2019, we, when I say we, I mean, Mark, myself, along with the Mass Council on Gaming and Health, critically examined the Game Sense program and launched new initiatives as part of Game Sense 2.0 to ensure that the program remains relevant and that we are evolving with the players in Massachusetts. One such initiative that was identified was the Positive Play Scale. So up until this point, as some of you may remember, the majority of studies examining player behavior have primarily focused on problem behaviors. The Positive Play Scale takes a different approach by measuring responsible gambling behaviors. Or in other words, play that does not suggest a movement towards at-risk or problem behavior categories. So for this study, I would also like to thank the Game Sense advisors who are instrumental in gathering data to inform the final survey design. So, you know, introducing the Positive Play Scale a bit further, the initiative examines the full spectrum of players' responsible gaming beliefs and behaviors, including personal responsibility, gambling literacy, honesty and control and pre-commitment. And based on the exploration of these four areas, the team delivered actionable recommendations that will be used to drive responsible gaming communications, campaigns and outreach initiatives. It's more jurisdiction throughout the U.S. and Canada carry out similar studies where we're pleased to contribute our findings to this growing body of evidence. And we'll advance the field as a whole and allow us to benefit from these shared insights. Leading this particular initiative and here with us today, as Mark mentioned, is Dr. Richard Wood of Carleton University. Dr. Wood is a psychologist specializing in the study of gambling behavior and a member of Gamron, a Canadian consultancy which designs, implements and evaluates responsible gaming strategies. Also joining us is Dr. Naseem Tabri, who along with Dr. Wood was part of the team responsible for developing the positive play scale. So with that, I'm going to turn the spotlight over to them so that they may share their findings of this important initiative. So Dr. Wood, I don't know if you would like to share your screen in the report. Otherwise, I'm happy to do so. Great. Thank you very much. And good morning commissioners and everybody. And thank you very much for inviting me here today to talk to you a little bit about the study that we conducted with the positive play scale. So I'm going to share my screen. And you can all see that. There we go. OK, so. Yeah, so the positive play study that we conducted in Massachusetts was really about understanding how responsible players are in Massachusetts and discovering which areas that they do well in, which areas they could perhaps be supported further in. And this information should then be useful, particularly for game sense advisors to give them a little bit more insight and focus moving forwards. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about what the positive play scale is and what it does and then what that tells us about positive play in in Massachusetts. So there's a bit of background to the positive play scale. Really, it's about evaluating responsible gambling strategy so that we have a better understanding of how they work. And there are really three key questions that we need to ask about a responsible gambling strategy in order to understand it. The first is how do we know that it works? Assuming that some of it works. How do we know that? And the second part is which parts of it work best because it's likely that some elements are doing relatively well and some elements could do with a little bit more support. And then finally, what works best for different players? Now, I think typically in the field, there's been a kind of one size fits all approach, but I think we're starting to learn now that that segmentation can help us to support players in it differently in different players in better ways. And so the way that these questions were typically answered in the past was by focusing on these players. These are the players that have gambling problems. Now, the problem with focusing on these players to understand responsible gambling is that we're looking at a very small number of players here. In the population it tends to be sort of one to possibly 3%. And so these players often will have a gambling problem for a long period of time. And so it's difficult to see how a responsible gambling strategy can assist those players except perhaps in terms of referring them onto treatment services. And because the numbers of these players are small, it's very difficult to perform an analysis and to look at sort of different types of players within that group. Often these players don't want to take part in research, particularly if it's over the phone and they have to talk in front of their family and friends. And also focusing on people with gambling problems is quite a reactive response. And that's where things have already gone wrong. And I guess most importantly for us in this project, it doesn't tell us very much about the vast majority of players and how well they're doing. And so the reason that we developed the positive play scale was to look at all of the players. The vast majority of which of course never have any sort of minor problems. And so these players we call the positive players. And one of the real advantages of looking at these players is that now we're looking at the 98 and 99% of players. And so we have a lot more data and we can see much more nuanced differences. We can look at different player segments and look at the different needs that different players have and so on. And so we developed the positive play scale. Now the positive play scale itself, so it was developed by myself, Dr. Nassim Tabri, Dr. Wal and Michael Wall and Dr. Khalil Filander. And it was the first scale to provide an objective and standardised measure of responsible gambling. So before other than looking at it, it wasn't really an objective way to measure what responsible gambling is. And as I just noted, it provides insight into the whole player base and not just those with gambling problems. And because it's standardised and objective, it means that we can develop benchmarks for responsible gambling. So we can see how well a particular jurisdiction is going into time, and then we can see whether that improves over time or whether it gets worse. And it also means that we can start to measure the impact of changes to the gambling climate. So for example, if a new casino was to open, you could use the positive play scale with players before the casino opened and then after the casino opened and see if it impacts their overall levels of positive or responsible play. Or if a new responsible gambling initiative is introduced, you could do the same thing. So it's a way to measure change over time. And so in doing this, we can then start to optimise the responsible gambling strategy by finding out what works well and what doesn't work. And so we can find out where better to employ resources more effectively. And then finally, it allows us to segment the strategy, move away from this kind of one-size-fits-all approach to look at different players and the different needs that those players might have. So that the positive play scale itself then is actually composed of four sub-scales or four elements. So there are two belief elements. The first one focuses on personal responsibility. And this is the extent to which the individual player believes that it's their responsibility to only play within the means, only play with what they can afford. The second belief element looks at gambling literacy. So this is their understanding of the nature of gambling, whether they understand randomness, whether they have any misperceptions about the games that they play and so on. And then there are two behaviour elements. Honest in control, and this is the extent to which players are feeling control of their gambling behaviour and are honest with themselves and others about the games that they play. And then finally, pre-commitment. And this is refers to the extent to which players consider how much time and money they want to and can afford to spend on a game before they start playing. So it can include using things like limit setting tools, but really it's more about the sort of thinking about what they can afford to spend before they actually start playing. And then depending on how players score on the positive play scale, how they answer the 14 items that represent those attitudinal and behaviour elements, players can then be placed into one of three categories. So this then tells us what percentage of players in Massachusetts are scoring high, so they're clearly a positive player with no issues. They're scoring medium, so they're mostly a positive player, but there are some areas where they could improve on or whether they're scoring low so they're not generally a positive player, but they may have some positive play tendencies. So by looking at the percentage of players that fall into each of those categories, we get a snapshot of how responsible players are in Massachusetts. Right, so that's a bit of background. I'm now going to talk about the actual study and the findings from it. So the study was conducted last between September and October last year. It was a sample of 1,512 Massachusetts players. It was a convenient sample that was recruited by a third-party survey company. 100% of the sample had played at least one game in the last 12 months, because we're really interested in looking at people that play, because those are the people that are more exposed to responsible gambling initiatives and more likely to met with game-sense advisors. And 50% had gambled at a Massachusetts casino in the last 12 months. And there was an equal number of males and females. And the sample was representative by age groups. It was an online survey that they conducted. And it contained the 14-item positive play scale, as well as the problem gambling severity index, the PGSI, so measure levels of problem gambling. And then there were general demographic questions and we also asked about frequency of gambling before and during after the time when the casinos were closed in Massachusetts. And we also asked about various attitudes towards responsible gambling and responsible gambling initiatives in general. And so the overall purpose was to identify the overall level of positive play, so how responsible are Massachusetts players, and to identify specific areas that could be further developed in the future, and find out which player segments are most and least responsible. And then another element was to try and develop a better understanding of how players play during a pandemic and how they might be better supported in the future. Right, so now I'm going to present some of the data to you. There's quite a lot of charts, but really I'm just going to show you the patterns and what that says about positive play in Massachusetts. And so across the bottom here we have the belief subscales and the behavior subscales. And so if we look at the first one, which was personal responsibility, now how this works is the green part of the bar represents those at a scoring high, the yellowy-orangey bar represents the medium scorers and the sort of dark orange represents the low scorers. So really the greater the green bar, the more responsible they are overall. And so you can see straight away with personal responsibility that the vast majority of players were scoring high. And in general, this is what we expect from most of the, that most players will score high because most players are fairly responsible and don't have any issues. However, when we then turn to gambling literacy, their understanding of the games that they play, you can see it's actually quite a bit lower. So now it's just over a third at a scoring high. And so that's an area where players could perhaps receive a little bit more support in helping them to understand the nature of gambling and the games that they play. Then we look at honesty and control. Again, it's fairly high. The majority is scoring high there. And pre-commitments a little lower, but just over half a scoring high. So straight away we can see that gambling literacy and pre-commitments are certainly areas that would benefit from a little bit more focus going forward. So how does this compare to other jurisdictions? So we've conducted the positive play scale in a number of areas now, including all across Canada and with four other states. So I'm just going to give you a little bit of a comparison here.  And now we have Massachusetts four other states where we conducted research and Canada. And so for personal responsibility there's the Massachusetts scores for the other four states, you can see it's actually very similar in terms of personal responsibility. And Canada is scoring quite a bit higher there. If we then turn to gambling literacy it's a little bit lower for Massachusetts. But again quite similar to the four other states. And Canada's scoring higher, but lower than it did for personal responsibility. And then for honesty and control it's a very similar pattern. So very similar to the other states. Canada's scoring a bit higher. And then finally pre-commitment similar profile again. So I suppose the question here is why did Canada score quite a bit higher. And I think really when I think about Canada in terms of responsible gaming I would say that Canada and sort of Scandinavia are really kind of the leaders in terms of responsible gambling. They put a lot of resources into responsible gambling initiatives. All of the gaming is provincially regulated. And there's a lot of sharing of best practice. And so although this is correlational data I think there's some suggestion here that the amount of resources has an impact upon levels of positive play overall. So basically the Massachusetts data we then looked at scores by gender. So in terms of personal responsibility high scores there was 72.3% of males and females scored slightly higher 81.4%. So it was slightly more responsible there. In terms of gambling literacy it was kind of the other way around. So males scored slightly higher and females scored slightly lower in terms of honesty and control. Females scored higher than males again and in terms of pre-commitment females were scoring higher than males. So overall women were a little more responsible than men except in relations gambling literacy. Although I should say that the differences here were fairly small and not that meaningful. Okay now let's look at some positive play scores by age. So again we have the four elements of positive play across the bottom and now we have the age groups as well. And so if we look at personal responsibility and what we see is as players get older they get more responsible in terms of personal responsibility that's scoring higher. Let's look at gambling literacy. Now when we look at the 21 to 24 age group here you can see that it's actually less than a quarter of scoring high in gambling literacy and the same pattern occurs. So as they get older that increases. So when we get to 65 plus it's almost two thirds of the scoring high in terms of gambling literacy and we see very much the same pattern for honesty and control and also pre-commitment. So and this is a finding that we've seen in jurisdictions around the world. So it seems very clear that younger players are less responsible and over time they're becoming more responsible. Now we don't entirely know why that might be the case but we can speculate that as players gamble over time they get more experience they learn more about the games they're more exposed to responsible gambling initiatives and of course being young is more a time for in general for risk taking. But I think it shows us that having a focus on younger players and using media that would appeal to those players could be a useful way to focus responsible gambling strategy going forward. Okay so now we looked at positive play by PGSI categories. So how does positive play relate to problem gambling? So again we've got the four positive play elements across the bottom but now we have different levels of gambling risk. So we've got first of all no problems and then low risk moderate risk and problem gambling. And so as you might expect as their gambling problems become more severe their scores on the positive play scale go down and if we look at gambling literacy it's even more pronounced so in fact problem gamblers on gambling literacy only 3.7% are scoring high and very much the same profile for the other sub scales. So it's perhaps not surprising but what I would say is that although there's a correlation between positive play and problem gambling it's not a perfect correlation otherwise it would be measuring the same thing. And what we tend to find is that people that score high on the positive play scale people who are responsible tend to score low in terms of problem gambling because you can't really be a responsible player and have gambling problems but the opposite is not necessarily true. So somebody that scores low on the positive play scale will not necessarily score high on the PGSI and this may be due to the fact that they may have gambling misperceptions they may not pre-commit but perhaps they just don't gamble very often if you only gamble once or twice a year it would be difficult for you to have a gambling problem or maybe they've just started gambling and they're on a trajectory towards problem gambling but there just hasn't been enough time. So there's a correlation it's they're measuring very different things. Okay so the next thing we looked at was the types of games that players played and how that relates to their positive play scores. Now there's a little bit of an issue here because when you try to judge the types of games that people play what we find is that frequently people play lots of different types of games. So somebody might play the lotto and they may also play bingo and maybe they play poker as well and so teasing out which games are having an impact can be problematic and so to deal with this issue we conducted a cluster analysis where we looked at whether there were patterns amongst players in terms of the types of games that they played and the frequency of how often they played those games and what we found doing this analysis was that there were two clear groups of players and the first group of players we turned the higher frequency multi-game players because they were playing at a higher frequency than the second group which I'm going to show in a minute and they played lots of different games. So on this chart if you look across the X axis going across the bottom you can see that there are lots of different games listed so instant tickets, lottery and so on including some online games and then if you look at the Y axis going up this is the average frequency that they played these games at and then also we looked at how often they played these games before the casino is closed which is going to be the blue bar during the casino closures and when the casino is opened again post closure. So if we look at the first bar here this is looking at instant tickets from a retailer and so this is pre closure so on average these players were playing a few times a month and then when the casino is closed that dropped down a little bit after the casino is opened again it dropped down a little bit more and if we look at lottery play we see the same profile so they're playing less as time goes on raffle tickets the same and it's pretty much the same across the board until we get to lottery games online and then this goes up slightly during the casino closures which perhaps makes sense because they perhaps wanted to stay at home but they wanted to go out during the pandemic but then it drops down again when the casino is open Richard could I just interrupt I hate to do that but this is such an important analysis just to clarify for anyone who might be listening outside and for my own good when you speak about online lottery play that would be the illegal market correct? Yeah it's whatever they could access because in almost all of I can't in the United States you must be seated in the jurisdiction of the state in order to play legally so I just want to make sure that as we're thinking about this that the online play would have to be the the black market which again wouldn't necessarily have all the consumer protections that would maybe inform things like the pre-commitment I just want to make sure that as we go through this that I'm right there isn't any instance I can think of where it would be legal for the online except of horse racing we do allow for that but for mobile betting now Yes and so we covered all forms of online gambling and of course yes as you say the majority of these would not be legal in the states of Massachusetts right now okay thank you unless they unless they're Massachusetts residents who went to another state who had online gambling would that survey capture that so if they had a summer place in New Hampshire which allows for online betting for sports It wouldn't but I would imagine that the numbers would be so small in comparison to the overall sample size that it wouldn't really show a difference there so I think you're right it's capturing the the illegal gambling yeah okay thank you so much okay my apologies no no it's okay and so yeah so for lottery games online and sports betting online it did go up slightly during the the closure and then drops it down again once when the casino is open and then as we go across this very much the same pattern all the way across some of these games they didn't play them at all during the closure and so really these all the players in this group the high frequency multi-game players they're playing lots of different games and on average they're playing them between sort of once a month and a few times a month now the second cluster of players that we identified these this was a much larger group of players and we turn these the lower frequency lottery game players and so we have the same chart here but the difference here is that these players are primarily just playing on with instant lottery tickets and lottery draw games and they're playing them at a lower rate so between sort of less than once a month and about once a month and as you can see we also have the same profile here so they were playing more frequently before the casino closure and then that dropped off during the casino closure and then when the casino is opened again they were still playing less but now if we look at the other games across here they're hardly playing those at all it's sort of between never and you know once or twice a year and so there are big differences between these groups of players in terms of the types of games they're playing and how frequently they're playing those games so the next thing we wanted to do was compare those two groups in terms of their positive play scores so first of all we looked at the low frequency lottery players and in terms of the personal responsibility they were scoring quite high for the high frequency multi-game players it was significantly lower then we look at gambling literacy the low frequency lottery players were scoring around 45% for the high frequency multi-game players it was only 9.4% who were scoring high in terms of gambling literacy and honesty and control we get pretty much the same profile much lower for the multi-game players and then pre-commitment much lower for the multi-game players so there are big differences in the levels of responsible or positive play between those two groups so according to the types of games that they play and how frequently they play those games and then we also looked at these two groups of players in terms of their PGSI scores so the blue bar represents those that play primarily the lottery and the orange of the multi-game players and so those with no problem gambling no gambling problems it was very few multi-game players and mostly the lottery players low risk players again it was mostly the lottery players then as we start to get into the more problematic categories so moderate risk you can see it flips around now there's more multi-game players and less frequency lottery players and then when we get to the problem gambling players we can see that it's more than two-thirds of those players are multi-game players and it's only a very small percentage of low frequency lottery players so these game frequency in types of games played is related to both positive play, responsible gambling and the levels of problem gambling overall so knowing all of this then if we wanted to focus on lower scoring positive players in Massachusetts who might we focus on who might the game sense players want to engage with and in what ways and so from the data we're arguing that these particular player segments should be targeted for an increased responsible gambling focus so first of all, younger players particularly in the age range of 21 to 44 because they were scoring much lower on all of the sub-scales but in particular in relation to gambling literacy and pre-commitments and so focusing on these groups with using the medium content that resonate with these players and helping them to understand the benefits of pre-commitments and how games work could be a worthwhile avenue to pursue and maybe something that game sense players want to focus on with their clients and then the second group were the higher frequency multi-game players so those players who are playing a lot across lots of other types of games they may play the lottery but they're playing lots of other games as well and although there were no meaningful gender differences in the entire sample with this group of players the high frequency multi-game players they were more likely to be male and so future responsible gambling efforts might want to focus on high frequency players and again try to increase their levels of gambling literacy and pre-commitment as they were the lowest levels overall and then finally I just want to talk very briefly about some ideas for increasing positive play because now that we know who's scoring what and in what areas the next real kind of frontier I guess is to try to help those players and increase their positive play scores. I have to say that this is a fairly new area in the field of responsible gambling and so we've been drawing upon the behavioural insights literature to provide some suggestions and a way forward and one thing is critical that a segmented approach is the best way to go and that this one size fits all approach is definitely not optimal the different players have different needs but we really need to work with stakeholders to narrow down ideas and to test ideas for increasing positive play before we use them and frequently what we tend to find is that often in market research companies will be used to develop messaging for responsible gambling and whilst they're very good at coming up with eye catching ideas sometimes those initiatives don't have the best sort of theory underpinning them and really what we need to do is set goals and strategies so that we can test these ideas before they're sort of rolled out in practice and one way that this could be done is to use positive play scores before and after these messages are rolled out to see the impact so that we know that what we're doing is actually working so some other ideas then for increasing gambling literacy the behavioral insights literature shows us that social proof can be a really good way to persuade people to change their attitudes and behaviors and so what we mean by that is that when you communicate to people what the majority of other people are doing it can be very persuasive people want to they don't want to stand out too much they want to conform I suppose is the word to what other players are doing and so communicating a message such as gambling is not a good way to try to make money 82% of players in Massachusetts agree could be a powerful way to show people this is what sort of the normally inverted commons behavior looks like your chances of winning don't improve if you lose you could say the majority of Massachusetts players agree with that so this can be a very powerful persuasive way to get players to change their attitudes and behavior there are also some good evidence to show that videos educating people about how games work can be effective our colleague Dr. Michael Wild developed a really good animation about slot machines called what every player needs to know which is has been tested and shown to increase players levels of gambling literacy over time and what's more it's a very entertaining video and something that players can engage with so that would be one way to encourage players to be more gambling literate in terms of pre-commitment then again social proof can be very powerful so as an example here we could say 94% of players in Massachusetts agree that they should only gamble when they have enough money to cover their bills first and there are other examples there that could be used another technique is called anchoring and this is about communicating what what a sort of average amount is that players bet and that forms an anchor so that players have an idea of where they should start and one idea that could be used would be to communicate the average amount that a lotto or scratch ticket winner bets to show that you don't need to be betting hundreds of dollars in order to win and so that could be another approach and then another idea for increasing pre-commitment then concerns consistency and encouraging players to make a commitment because again the research is shown that people in general like to be consistent with what they do and if they make a commitment to something they're more likely to follow through with that so for example game sense advisors could ask players how are you going to decide on a limit before they gamble and this helps them to think about it and then they're more likely to be consistent and carry through with that and it's providing a kind of verbal commitment or you could give them some options about these are some ways to figure out how much you want to spend before you play and they could tick boxers and that is a kind of commitment reducing friction this is particularly important for certainly for online games but for any game that has a player card where you can set limits you know it should be easy to use it should be the default action before playing so that more players will develop it and then finally I think we really need to develop more positive language and this was really the kind of part of the impetus of the positive play scale because we know that the term responsible gambling it has a lot of negative connotations for players but many players find it patronizing or they think that it's irrelevant for them because they think that it's all about people with gambling problems and so we're really trying to shift the frame to get players to see responsible gambling or positive players we term it as something that all players do and so we need to think about the more general language around it so instead of saying things like limit setting or budgets which don't sound like very much fun at all we could talk about say my money or my bankroll and I would say that we need to try and move away from the term responsible gambling and I think actually game sense is a step in the right direction towards doing that and yeah that's it I've come to the end so thank you very much I hope you found that informative and if you have any more questions please feel free to ask them now great thank you so much Dr. Wood if we could just have the slides taken down now we'll be able to see everyone's faces great thank you so much commissioners do you have questions for Dr. Wood sorry thank you thank you Dr. Wood that was great I I want to talk a little bit about that personal responsibility part which we both seem to be doing best in terms of some of the Massachusetts players and as you said towards the end is the one area that is most off-putting because it can be perceived as patronizing etc which I remember well during the game sense we were thinking about game sense that was one of the big bindings the way you talk about responsible gaming is in many ways mentioning the word responsible and other things but in terms of increasing that or how are you first measuring it if you could expand a little bit and what can be done in that regard or is that simply an area that is better left to the individual by us focusing on the areas of both opportunity and because we have them as per your findings as well as avoiding the risk of becoming patronizing or perceived as lecture that is an interesting question I think first of all it is interesting that personal responsibility was the highest scoring and I think maybe that speaks to the success of past responsible gambling initiatives to some extent in that they tended to focus on personal responsibility a common slogan is please play responsibly and that is something that we are actually seeing I would suggest really that is less of an area that we need to focus on because it is actually doing quite well most players are scoring high on that but if we wanted to focus in on that particularly we could look at the individual items on the positive play scale and game sense advise this could have discussions I think about personal responsibility so we have items like I should be able to walk away from gambling at any time I should be aware of how much money I spend when I gamble it is my responsibility to spend only money that I can afford to lose I should only gamble when I have enough money to cover all of my builds first and I think those areas of things that could be discussed and we could also use the sort of social proof examples to show that this is actually what the majority of players do so that I don't have the figures to hand but I think that it is very high so you could communicate that 95% of players only gamble when they have enough money to cover all their builds first so I think that could be an effective way of doing that and something that game sense advisors could look at but I think in general I would if you are going to put the resources there I would focus more on the gambling literacy and the pre-commitment but I suppose if you're a game sense advisor and you're having a discussion and you find that the player that you're talking to has a low level of personal responsibility then it would be worth having a conversation about those particular areas and certainly we could divide the figures so that they could communicate back what is the most players do in the relation to those elements so I think I hope that answers your question yeah no thank you I think it does my follow up a little bit is relative to something I guess that you were already at the end which is the notion that a couple of these could be joined you know one in our experience and Marlene has and Marika said this before when we rolled out play my way at BPC which is the tool about pre-commitment really because of the games and advisors I think we had quite a bit of a great uptake because they were the ones promoting it and so in effect there was this the notion of you know the games and advisors are there about gambling literacy but helping us on the pre-commitment was in retrospective a great outcome so this combination as you say at the end seems to me to be the most promising yeah great you know that makes sense Commissioner Cameron yep Dr. Wood excellent presentation thank you I just had a question about Canada you list Canada but how many provinces is this program actually rolled out you know we talking several provinces or not and is it been rolled out long enough to have any measurables like what is working well and did that influence your recommendations for what to recommend here in Massachusetts right so we initially developed the policy play scale in Canada first of all we developed it in British Columbia but then we undertook a project with the Canadian responsible gambling association which represents all of the provincial operators and we actually use the policy play scale in every province across Canada and that allowed us to validate the scale with a much larger sample and to look at other important elements that came up in the research so it's been used widely across Canada and I was going to say sorry I lost my train of thought now I was just asking about measurables if it's too soon yes I remember that so we're actually at the point now where we're starting to run a second study in various provinces across Canada to see if there's going to be any change over time so it's going to be interesting to see if those scores have shifted and of course that will be dependent to some extent on the actions that those operators have taken it's going to be a little bit tricky because of course this year we've had Covid and a lot of places have closed down we did however undertake two studies in New Zealand so we undertook one in 2018 and then one in 2020 and we actually did see that scores in general had increased over time and actually in New Zealand they'd introduced a similar system to game sense play smart that had been introduced during that period so whether it's hard to know how much of that had an impact but certainly those scores had shifted over time and so I think it's going to be interesting moving forward to see how those scores change and I think as I said at some part of my presentation it's really important to figure out when we're developing initiatives how well they work before we roll them out and to test them you know if we're going to develop a message to test it with players before it gets rolled out and so then we have the kind of the best chance of shifting those scores over time Thank you Commissioner's other questions for Dr. Wood? Fascinating and it shows such a dynamic area where we we're noted for being so ahead and yet it's feeling like we're trying to keep up right Teresa the language is evolving on a regular basis so we really appreciate today's presentation Mark next steps do we are you all set today? Yeah Chair if I could just make two points Thank you One is I see this as a nice compliment in the research agenda that's currently underway so for example in the next couple months you'll hear about the Massachusetts Gaming Impact cohort that study really was designed in order to have a better understanding of at-risk and problem gambling in Massachusetts in fact the sample was drawn specifically to try to recruit as many individuals who are struggling with gambling as possible and from that study that that will help us and help our public health partners really develop strategies and interventions to target that specific group or those groups and communities whereas the positive play study as Dr. Wood pointed out really is what are the characteristics of the other 98% or so of individuals that exhibit positive play and this really is intended to help us develop those strategies that really foster sort of the protective factors that help keep their play and that positive domain and so I like just sort of the compliment of the different types of studies that we currently have underway in Massachusetts and thanks to Dr. Wood for this specific effort the other point I just wanted to make is and it really didn't strike me until until recently is we really we have a lot of we have the components available to us and through the game sense program and whether it's our creative ways that we're promoting gambling literacy or the play my way program or relationships that game sense advisors have with patrons that are coming into the casinos all of these are really essential components and and we're really you know how do we do that here how do we craft that message so that it's that take the component that already exists move it shift it a little bit so that it becomes more more effective and in a way that is measurable and so I think that that is that to me is a really valuable piece of what we'll be able to take take from this we're not we're not going light years ahead introducing entirely new programs we're talking about incremental changes along the way to to become the best program we can that was my take away to mark you said in a more eloquent way but that dynamic nature where it might be tweaking might come more but to maintain our leadership position this is just great input you think really well done and very clear for me dr. Wood thank you thank you very much yeah thank you if I if I if I may I see Marlene is he's in the in the in the meeting here as part of our as our vendor on the game sense program Marlene did you want to make a comment you know a lot of what dr. Wood is identifying as things to do we are we have been thinking about or we are doing a version of and we should go further into some of the social proofing and messaging as well as the game sense advisor interactions did you want to comment or have a quick question well I just want to thank everyone for the support in the time I think you know when we initiated this with dr. Richard Wood we weren't really sure what we were going to find out right and so one of the things that was helpful just as has been alluded to here is that they're we do have the right tools I think I mean if I'm excited the game sense advisors are that much more excited about this data and the very reason you said Ricky I think it really helps us to figure out how to solidify and anchor some of the messages that we've been using with the right segments and we've seen this work alluded to in other jurisdictions we also by the way have reached out to all the game sense licensees who have done this research in the past and are trying to align some of our efforts to figure out what is already working for them what do we want to apply here and then we're also going to reach out to some of there are there are a few jurisdictions that have used the positive play data here in the United States to also find out just kind of what are the differences that we're going to be able to utilize their experiences here in the US versus Canada but but I'm really excited about this is as Mark said I think that they're moving forward you know it's not enough to just have you know say we're going to focus on older adults are going to focus on you know slop I think we really are going to be able to further segment and specify the outreach the gambling literacy in what we are working on so was a little discouraging at first to see that our numbers were as low as they were but it just gives us lots of room for improvement so so we're eager and I also say that the operators can take away I think sometimes they feel they don't what to do because a game sense is kind of so powerful and we do so much but this really gives an opportunity for the operators to think about their role in terms of marketing gambling or some of the messages to to their segmented you know players and on their list so so I'm encouraged I'm really excited about this thank you thank you great okay Mark thank you so much I want I want to pause now excellent report Dr. Wood stay well and safe thank you I want to just pause because it is 1130 we have a good amount of work and consideration ahead do we need a brief break or can we continue on but Commissioner Zunica is asking for a brief break it's 1130 if we could 1140 is that sufficient is that okay all right and then if we need a lunch break we'll do a little bit longer but I'd love to get through the the next couple of items thanks we'll return at 1140 thank you everyone we can get started again we're reconvening public meeting 334 Commissioner Cameron you too yeah I am here Commissioner Bryan I'm here and Commissioner Zunica here thanks we're all set to continue and now we are looking at item number five General Council Grossman good morning good morning Madam Chair commissioners and everyone the item before you now pertains to amendments and additions to two sections of the regulations those found in 134.01 and these amendments have been in effect by emergency since December 3rd you may recall and they apply to provisions that will allow the licensees to essentially bring in employees from sister properties on a temporary basis to assist with gaming establishment strategy and or operation these provisions are similar to those that found in 134.03 that have been in effect for quite some time and were made necessary by the circumstances of the pandemic and so Commissioner Zunica this morning presided over a public hearing and with that the entire promulgation process has been completed and the provisions are now appropriate for review by the commission for adoption and so with that you have before you the draft amendments as well as amended small business impact statements and perhaps I can turn it over to Zunica for any comment relative to the public hearing if that would be helpful. Thank you Todd. The only comment was that of course there was no comment so as Todd mentioned he would have seen a position to complete the promulgation process. Any questions for Todd on this matter? Todd I do understand that you need to have an action by the commission on this. Commissioner Cameron. Happy to make a motion Madam Chair. Thank you. I move that the commission approve the amended small business impact statement included in the commissioners packet relative to the amendment to section 13401 as discussed. I further move that the commission approve the maybe we should take one at a time. Let me stop with the small business impact statement. Do I have a second? I second that motion. Any questions on that? We'll do the vote on that matter then. Commissioner Cameron. I. Commissioner O'Brien. I. Commissioner Zunica. I. I vote yes. 4-0. Thanks Commissioner Cameron. I further move that the commission approve the amendments to 205CMR as discussed. I second that the commission approve the amendment to see that we can review the proposed amendment today and authorize staff to take all necessary steps to finalize the associated propagation process. Thank you, Commissioner. Any questions on that? We've come full circle here. So Commissioner Cameron. I. Commissioner O'Brien. I. Commissioner Zunica. I vote yes. The title of 205 CMR 134.01 in the packet has a typo and it says it reads 1434 as the section. So I don't have that open. I don't have that open Todd can we make that correction. So, it is, it is, it is just a typo. I don't, I don't think we have a CMR in the packet. I think the root and the reference is correct is 134.01. But the, the packet that I see here for far one 34.01. The title Todd has 205 CMR 1434. I see that I'm not sure how that happened, but I will take a look at that. Yeah. If necessary, circle back to the Secretary of State's office or whatever. That's fine. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Zunica for picking up on that. Alrighty. And then we need to move on to the. The next item. Just before we do it looks like the next one has the same type of. I was just about to check that, but yeah, it's, it's, it's, it must be the title that carried through. I see. I don't have the pack in front of me. I'm sorry. That's helpful. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner approved the amended small impact. Small business impact statement. For regulation two or five CMR 134.02. Gaming employee licenses. As presented in the packet. Second. Any questions or edits on that. Okay. Then we'll go ahead with the vote. Commissioner Cameron. Hi. Commissioner Brian. Hi. Hi. And I vote yes. Or zero. No. With respect to the substance. I further move madam chair that the commission approve. The amendments to two or five CMR 134.02. Gaming employee licensees. As included in the packet. With the correction to the title reference. I've got a couple of questions. Yeah. I'm not right. I've got a couple of questions. And authorized up to proceed with the final promulgation process. Second. Thank you. Any questions for Todd on, and carry on that. Okay. Commissioner Cameron. Hi. Commissioner Brian. Hi. Commissioner Zunica. Hi. I vote yes. Okay, four zero. Vivian, thank you so much. Okay, we got the thumbs up. That's good. Then we can move on to item numbers. Todd, thank you so much and good work. We've completed that. That process item number six. IAB director. Thank you. Hi, good morning again. We placed this item on the agenda. I'm just going to start by asking you to review the commission's regulations around the use of juvenile records in the background review process. There's great public interest in the policy side of questions around juvenile records. And you also received a letter from greater Boston legal services a few months ago. That you expressed in intention at the time to want to have a better understanding of the issues around this issue. So I'll jump right in. I wanted to start by reminding that under state law, juvenile court proceedings and by extension juvenile records are treated differently than adult criminal records. Juvenile proceedings are closed to the public. Where's this a presumption of openness to the public in, you know, juvenile courts are closed to the public. And so juvenile court is open to adult criminal proceedings. Even the language that's used around juvenile matters is different. Juveniles that commit offenses are not called juvenile. I'm sorry. I'm not called criminal offenders. They're not said to have been convicted of crimes. They're not said to be guilty of crimes. They're adjudicated delinquent is the language that's used. intended to avoid the attachment of a criminal stigma to children who are considered by society and by law to be highly amenable to rehabilitation. So we know that yes under 23k there is an explicit policy directive that the paramount policy of the gaming law is to ensure public confidence in the integrity of gaming through the licensing process that policy directive goes hand-in-hand with 23k's other explicit policy directive of creating employment opportunities particularly for the unemployed. So our mission in the IEB is to ensure the credibility of gaming in the Commonwealth and ensure the safety of patrons and the public but in doing so in the background review process we are very mindful that we don't want to be hurting the very people that the Massachusetts gaming law was created to help. So with that said I wanted to bring your attention to a few provisions of 23k our gaming law and to be clear nothing in 23k restricts the IEB's access to reviewing juvenile records in the background review process. 23k does require that the IEB perform background checks on all individuals who are seeking to be licensed or registered as casino employees. 23k accomplishes this by creating different levels of licensure with corresponding levels of background review depending on the job that the person will be doing. There's a higher level of licensure required under the statute for those who actually participate and work in the conduct of gaming like handling chips or handling money or have access to restricted areas of casino positions like a table games dealer, a cashier in the casino's bank, a count room employee, a slot mechanic who has access to the inner workings of the slot machine and security guards who have this higher level of licensure required compared to positions requiring registration such as food and beverage workers who work on the casino floor, quarters, environmental service workers who work on the casino floor and those employees who are not directly related to gaming itself but are still on the casino floor require that level of certification that the statute calls registration with the commensurate level of background review that corresponds to the exposure and risk posed by the position. So our mandate, the IEB's mandate under 23k of ensuring credibility and integrity, we want to accomplish the integrity piece in the background review process but in other ways as well right you know our 24-7 presence in the casino by our gaming agents and by the gaming enforcement unit of the state police but the background review process is a significant way that we do that and it's part of the statutory licensing scheme. So in all instances of licensure and registration the statute directs us to perform a background review with an eye towards overall reputation and the statute specifies integrity, honesty and good character that we look for. Statute also mandates that we consider patterns of misconduct that may make a person unsuitable. Now over the years the Commission has taken a number of steps because you've always been interested in this issue and making sure that people are getting a fair chance at these good jobs and the Commonwealth. Back in 2014 when you were first adopting the licensing regulations you promulgated a regulation that requires us to consider all information in the light most favorable to the applicant. So that's an old overlay that we look at the entire process and always look at our evidence in the light most favorable to the applicant. Also in that first set of regulations you addressed juvenile records explicitly and you said in the regulations that are in you remain in effect that adjudications of delinquency are not to be treated as automatic disqualifiers under section 16 of the statute. Section 16 as you know has language that disqualifies individuals with certain prior convictions, felonies and some convictions that go to truthfulness like embezzlement, theft, fraud, perjury but the regulation that you promulgated in 2014 says that there are no automatic disqualifiers for any juvenile matter and so a juvenile record never renders a person ineligible for licensure or registration. Also in that in the initial licensing regs you addressed sealed records and stated that sealed records are off limits as part of the background review process. The legislature has given the judiciary the authority to seal both juvenile and adult records and people with juvenile history or criminal history for that matter can avail themselves of that process and have their records sealed. They are off limits to the IEB and we take no negative inference from the existence of any sealed record. Last year in 2020 the IEB sought your guidance on a question related to sealed records because in some limited instances investigators were finding they know the sealed records is off limits but they were finding some information in public source information like media reports that reported on the incident behind a sealed record. So we sought your guidance about okay we know we can't consider the sealed record but what about this other information that does not fall within the statutory definition of sealed records under the sealed record statute and you promulgated or you amended the sealed records reg that we have directing that any information related to the sealed record is also off limits so we take no negative inference from the existence of the sealed record or any information related to it. In 2017 the legislature amended 23k to allow the commission to create exempted job positions of the casinos and these exempted positions that have been created are not subject to any IEB background review at all. These positions are entirely exempted from the licensing registration and background review process and that amendment was signed into law by the current governor was fully supported by the commission may even be fair to say was spearheaded by the commission. Under that provision the commission has approved over 300 exempt positions and for each of those positions there can be numerous actual employees within each position. Those positions are in areas not directly related to gaming not on the gaming floor there are a lot of positions in beverage for instance including supervisory positions transportation departments at the properties positions in hotel administration at the two resort casinos banquet and convention positions for instance. So the background review process applies to some but not all of the jobs connected at the casinos. So I do want to note that although the juvenile records are accorded a high degree of privacy we are not alone as an agency as having transparency into them for suitability purposes. The example that comes to mind is in the firearm licensing scheme juvenile records you know this full transparency into juvenile records there and in some of the schemes around a childcare workers evaluation of foster parents and adoptive homes there's some transparency there and even in some employment situations like we're in a licensing situation not you know an employer but even in some employment situations camps for instance have a lens transparency to juvenile records for camp workers and volunteers at camps. So just to reiterate our statute just not restrict our window into juvenile records but you know you may want to entertain changing our regulations around that area but I want to emphasize that when we review an application we are not we understand that there's a full person behind that application person you know with their own trials and tribulations their own struggles their own challenges and we take our responsibility very seriously. We know that there's a policy driver of second chances behind this whole scheme and we have exercised our licensing decisions in that way we you know we work really hard to be fair and we know that the people behind these applications are just trying to get a job a better job to improve their lives and improve the lives of their families and get a good job in this industry and that's you know always been front and center in our work. So you know those are my prepared comments here you know I'm happy to try to give you any more information that might help you in your in your discussion but I you know turn it over turn it back to you at this point. Thank you Lorena this is really a great stage that you've set for our discussion. I think today that the idea would be for us to determine whether we have some kind of a consensus because the any formal action would actually be the beginning of a regulatory change if we were going to shift from the status quo. So thoughts perhaps commissioner who would like to start commissioner Karen hand first thank you. Thank you Lorena thank you that was an excellent summary of where we where we started where we revolved to and the issue at hand and this the question I have maybe for director Griffin and that is you know I know there was a real undertaking with sealed records with adults so community groups were very active and really educating folks on how to do that. Has there been any similar efforts with juvenile records to educate them so that they understand clearly how to seal a record which makes them eligible for a job that they may not have otherwise been eligible for? Commissioner Cameron I'm not aware of any specific efforts around juvenile records. I know the community has been in community advocacy groups have been working with individuals generally surrounding sealing their records but I'm not aware of any efforts focused on the juvenile records. My one concern with removing this tool from the toolbox from our investigators is really with those individuals who may have very recent very serious or repeated a pattern of delinquency that would be my one concern would be that in that very rare circumstance where again there's not a time frame there's not a gap between these serious matters and it is repeated and that would be my concern about removing this toolbox since it is we do have two obligations right we do have to make sure it is we're obligated to investigate and we do have to make sure we're very concerned about integrity on the other hand we're very concerned about opportunities for for folks too so that is my one issue with removing this tool from the toolbox for from for our investigators. Commissioner O'Brien or Commissioner Zuniga who would like to go next? Bill on what Commissioner Cameron just said part of it is my background in terms of looking at that question of suitability I obviously see it through the lens of almost witness credibility etc and looking at what's allowable and I went back having had the two by two with Commissioner Zuniga and once again went back through our statute and to touch a little bit on what Commissioner Cameron is saying there are you know there's a duality to statute there is an employment basis and then there is a regulatory oversight component to it and and right in the beginning 23k11 talks about the fact that the paramount objective of 23k policy objective would be to have public confidence and the integrity of the licensing process and strict oversight and then I went back through the statute and I continued to look at suitability what does that in light of all of the changes that Loretta just talked about in terms of the regulations the 300 plus exempt positions our discussion less than a year ago in terms of taking what was sort of a technical legal question in that ceiling statute and then reading it broadly to sort of take the intent of that ceiling statute and put it into the process and my understanding of how we do this right now is it plays into that question of reputation for honesty and integrity which to me particularly when you look at the ceiling statute itself which you cannot seal a record unless the disposition and or whatever the penalty was is at least three years old which i think loops into what Commissioner Cameron is saying which is we have an obligation in the statute and it is the paramount objective so i would argue slightly more than simply a job creation bill to make sure that we are completing what we need to do and that iv is tasked with the responsibility of assessing someone's suitability so to me we have reached what is at this moment i think an excellent way of handling those records which is we comply with not only the letter but the spirit of the ceiling of the juvenile records but we don't do so in a way that's going to hamstring iv's ability to truly assess someone's suitability and i think from what i've been able to gather and going back and looking at the statute looking again at 100 b looking at 100 c looking at 100 f looking at the fact that if you reoffend within that time period it resurrects there is a scheme that has been carefully thought out in this area and i think if we are consistent with that which we are people can seal they are barred from sealing in certain circumstances and i do not see the reason particularly in our statutory scheme to change what iv has access to in making that statutory mandated determination thank you commissioners Zunagato and then we can always circle back thank you yeah i know those are those are very good points and eloquent as usual i'm on the other on the other side of this i i know we're all trying to strike a balance i know that it's easier to think it's easier to think of the exception or that one instance in which it's egregious the repeated offender for example but if we could put that aside for a minute you know thinking that the repeated offender is likely to also show up in you know after being a juvenile my my take on on all of these especially in the last year is everything we were learning about the interactions with the criminal justice system that tends to be disproportionately falling on on on minorities on on communities of color and when that when that happens it's i'm not saying that this is what iv will will do because they are very thoughtful about looking at things holistically like like articulated but the likelihood of an adverse finding of suitability based on you know these these statistics simply increases and i'll i'll i'll mention something here that we've we've also talked about in in in another context in the equity and inclusion group one of the recommendations was to do a regulatory review towards an eye on regulations that may have an impact this proportionate impact on on the people that we deal with specifically communities of color i would argue that this would be an element of that review that if we were reviewing that with that lens we would be having this conversation just like we're having now is it likely that when licensing and looking at for suitability all of which is in the statute i have knowledge that all of that are we are we likely going to have a more adverse effect on certain communities the other the other piece and my and my instinct i don't have you know hard data on this i just have a lot of what's reported in you know in the recent history is that statistically you know communities of color have a greater chance of having had bad interactions with with the system as well as a bad outcomes if you will the other piece i think is is something that loretta mentioned early early on in her remarks and that is the notion of you know that as a whole the the the assistance treats juvenile records in a more benign way society treats them in a more in a more benign way compared to the criminal system for adults of course and and in that spirit i think we we should do the same when we when we bring in all of the records for consideration that pertain to the juvenile records um i think we are we are leaning on the side of this leniency in my in my opinion now again it's easy to think of the one or two exceptions you know somebody who's going to be a repeat offended and offended etc etc but i'm thinking of averages and likelihood and that's my that's my take so i'll chime in right now and then we can circle back um first up i want to thank i e b and and general counsel grossman for looking at this this matter um it's been some good time thinking about it and it was a matter that i i asked them to look at after our discussion on the sealed record because um miss carrion had raised in her her thoughtful letter from great boss and legal services office you know concerns and wanted to really raise awareness around um juvenile records so i'm pleased that we had the input from the community and um and experts in the area and i also really appreciate the thoughtfulness that our own team has put into this this matter um i want to note again that right now under the legislative scheme we do have considerable discretion in our regulatory function and we are aware of that and with that comes a great deal of responsibility um there is no prohibition on the review of juvenile records and the statute we also have considered um that we've gone back and and the reda has outlined all the steps of the commission has taken over history to think about the issues that come with the responsibility of ongoing suitability the um when we think about juvenile records we are all aware about the increased responsibility we have to the science associated with juvenile development and with a societal impact on on their records as just as already raised um i am also appreciating commissioner zuniga's point that we have made an internal commitment to making sure that our practices our regulations don't in some way have a disproportionate effect on people of color with that said it's my understanding right now that we have not disqualified am i right mirena over the course of your review of licenses of any any juvenile at this point that's right that was part of your initial uh regulation promulgation back in 2014 you made the affirmative determination that uh no juveniles regardless of the record would be disqualified or rendered ineligible by virtue of the existence of a record excuse me excuse me commissioner um but there is a possibility that that they would not be able to be hired given the review of the pattern is that correct that that's correct that the uh uh the existence of a record could still be considered as part of the overall suitability determination and at this point have we had any individual be denied a position based on that pattern you know our denial rate overall is pretty low and we have not had any rejection rate based solely on the existence of the juvenile record okay so i think that's just really helpful background to know um i am very much thinking that um i have i'd have a couple of recommendations that for the ieb to think about and for us to consider as a commission legislature hasn't taken that tool out of the toolbox and commissioner cameron's quite right and it's it in in commissioner zunaga says yes there is always a potential for a couple of the outlier situations where that 17 year old has made a very significant poor choice that could come up through the juvenile record and at 18 now remember that individual would not be precluded from being hired at certain entry level positions but where there are more risks attached to the integrity of the gain which is a paramount obligation of our mission where there is of course our our paramount obligation to protect safety of patrons and employees including our own who work at the game those jobs do have a higher level of scrutiny and if we were to take away to a reg that this legislature hasn't taken out of our toolbox that ability to review those juvenile records for that those particular jobs we might even though it would be very low risk challenging our core mission which is to protect as i said the integrity of the games and the safety of the individuals there i'm wondering i also want i think we've all heard and i think i know i have personal confidence in the IEB's long history under under Karen Wells earlier direction and now under Loretta's current direction and and into the future of unknown IEB director in the future that we understand we must strike that balance and we've used that words today of our obligation to to recognize we have huge broad discretion but that we also have other duties of fairness around the issues that Loretta outlined juveniles and the second chance theory the idea of individuals being able to get these jobs i'm wondering if it would be helpful that outside a formal regulatory process Loretta and team could memorialize but that's their approach to the balance and the factors that get considered and then we leave our tool chest the status quo i also know that one of the concerns that has been raised since i've been it and commission is if an individual is denied because the first round Loretta goes through the IEB process and then if an individual doesn't have the opportunity to be hired because of an background review they would have an appeal right to the commission as a whole am i is that a fair characterization of the process already do you want to i do and i'm glad you brought that up because i did want to put a finer point on this notion of discretion and and i know you're aware of this but just so there's no misapprehension in in the public because you know really the IEB does not have broad or subjective discretion in this arena every decision that we make on suitability one way or the other must be directly tied to statutory and regulatory criteria the in getting to your question about the review process Kathy the if there's an aggrieved person you know somebody that's denied that person has a right to review by an impartial hearing officer and as part of that review and part of that hearing process the person has the right to all of the materials that the IEB has considered in its decision person has a right to tell their own story to bring in witnesses to examine the IEB's witnesses and these hearing officers that you have retained are experienced in the administrative review and hearing process including for individuals who are not represented by counsel and making sure that those individuals have a fair opportunity the technical rules of evidence for example do not apply in those hearings so those people are not you know prohibited by complicated rules that you know technical rules that they may not understand and those impartial unbiased hearing officers who are not part of the IEB I can tell you from personal experience that you know put the IEB take the IEB to task for for any decision so I did want to correct any misperception by the public that there's you know a broad or subjective discretion by the IEB but getting to your question about the hearing there is the that hearing right for like impartial hearing officer and then review is available to the full commission you know following that process right and thank you for clarifying the discretion that's broad is with us in terms of our regulatory scheme my yes right now the statute does contain that tool yes with all records and theoretically we may have discretion to limit it on balance given all the considerations and all of the as commissioner brian points out all the regulatory scheme that supports your review plus the sensibilities that you've outlined that i'm wondering if we would want maybe in a in some kind of a policy to memorialize that safeguarded with our appellate process which I know too can could perhaps be explained you know in in in a way that folks might avail themselves of that appellate process if they do have a adverse decision and recognize that they may not even need a lawyer that it's accessible and we would work to make sure that it is so i'm thinking that there's some room to perhaps memorialize the sensibilities of the process the review of our and and our ongoing suitability responsibilities at these not the not the entry level positions remember the a juvenile with a record that that those records are never looked at for the entry level positions and they're extensive positions and that's great work by the legislature and the governor and then perhaps we also think about making sure that for all people they understand their right for an appeal and how we can actually make that a very accessible process into commissioners on a good point make sure that that process isn't somehow either perceived or actually in reality haven't an inadvertent effect on people of color communities of color because it could it could seem like it's more burdensome than really we would want it to be so that was my thought in terms of maybe not a regulatory change but some internal practices that could be more realized anyway enough for me commissioner Cameron commissioner a brian wants to go next i agree with all of that that makes a lot of sense and i i have been captain Connors will advise you that i have been sensitive to these issues from day one making sure people are treated with respect in that we do a very thorough but very fair investigation and we do err on the side of getting people employed giving folks an opportunity and i i can say that over the years i've been i've tested the system i've looked at it closely and i i have really i have really been pleased with the manner in which we interview the the way that we do err on the side of getting people to work and the understanding that that's a big part of our mission so i agree with what you just said chair commissioner brian thank you commissioner Cameron no i think that makes a lot of sense i would reiterate what you've said which is when you look at how this statutory regulatory scheme has been implemented from its inception i don't see any reason to question the manner in which it's been executed there is also the appellate process that's an avenue for relief if someone does feel like they have been wronged but i do think that the regulatory scheme that we have right now complies with the statutory mandate it strikes the balance i think continuing always to have conversations about disproportionate impact on any sort of communities is that will be perpetual i don't think wherever going to not have that conversation so sort of memorializing it to me is fine it makes perfect sense mentioned soon ago you know to to that end i i was thinking and talking to loretta you know loretta before today about the information in the forms that we've approved in the past that tend to be uh you know mostly about all the history all the records juvenile you know in this case or the criminal etc and we don't have a lot of space where i think we could you know do well by including elements like a personal statement or a way for applicants to explain facts and circumstances around a particular record you know that could actually or involve many other you know other activities that would be worthy i don't know community organizations volunteering church etc that can actually go to irrigate if you will or or paint a fuller picture of an individual with an actual record or set of records in which then you know in the test review that that ivy does all that additional potentially beneficial information could be also considered i know there's references that mostly are followed up on for the highest levels of licensure which is i think very appropriate but as you speak about what we could do in terms of policy or out of the regulatory scheme my it occurs to me that the form taking back and we've looked at this and it's extensive and it's not right away but we could come up with you know a system to enhance the ability of somebody to explain the the facts as one day it's not honor us the facts and circumstances around a particular record or other elements about their life that could be viewed as a mitigating slash rehabilitating element to to their past so what i hear you saying commissioners and this has been the topic of the working group on equity and inclusion is that that when investigations director milios are conducted in the tools that that your team uses to conduct investigations could they be enhanced in any way to ensure that somehow the stories of the individuals applying are clear and are full and that somehow they don't disproportionately affect people of color or communities of color for whatever reason including our all of us we have those implicit biases that is an exercise i think that we are contemplating director wells for overall of reg review and practices review that doesn't necessarily that's not necessarily directed at the issue today which really other inclusion of juvenile records in that review but i do think it's probably not i imagine all of us are agreeing commissioners that that's always a fair fair review that we should be doing commissioner cameron i see nodding head commissioner brian and uh and director griffin i think that you know you're she's nodding her head too and and i know director milios we've already had some preliminary discussions on that work that will be comprehensive going forward but today's focus and again not a formal vote would be simply put based on the totality of our discussions today and considerations do we remove from the i e b's consideration in their ongoing suitability responsibilities review of juvenile records and i i'm seeing no from commissioner brian nod at this juncture to do so through a regulatory commissioner cameron and commissioner brian uh zuniga i'm sorry would you say that you would want them removed i would and i understand i understand very well the arguments against against that but i i hope you do the same and so and i i am do support maintaining the status quo again with ongoing vigilance around the thoughtful practices that i have confidence are in place today and to assure you know that we sort of understand that's always healthy i think to memorialize them so perhaps that's an exercise that we can we can proceed on and reflect upon and that actually might um my put commissioner zuniga in a different thinking but at this time i i don't think we have a consensus to to vote into a commencement of a regulatory change that's going okay but um you know i think this is a really important discussion and one that i have to say for myself that i've been really thinking about um for a while but certainly um knowing that today i would have to make some kind of a decision on this really reflecting on as i said all of the totality of our responsibilities and i have concerted carefully with the legislature intended as commissioner brian so carefully outlined today for us so thank you director lilios is that helpful uh very much i you know appreciate the very thoughtful conversation uh around this you know i understand the directive on memorializing as a policy matter around the consideration of these issues and you know we'll get going on on that and just appreciate your attention and just the careful consideration that you give and your guidance and leadership on these really important questions thank you and again thank you to pauline carry on for the input we it did it did launch us to really think about this with careful consideration so thank you and and uh director griffon i know that you you are in touch with members of the community and so again we we welcome their their input on an ongoing basis so thank you all right and you know what that conversation was just long enough that might computer speak so what do i have i have a backup plan here and i've got in front of me the next one is the independent directors gaming vendor primary status update thank you so much with kate um yes we're gonna do you want to frame it or is kate going to launch right now i'll let her jump right in thank you thank you so much good good morning um do i see her oh there she is good morning kate hi there how are you oh thank you i'm glad to hear it and hello uh other commissioners nice to see you as always i love lovely to see everybody on the meeting um i'm here today to report on a project um about review of the chair people of auditing compliance committees for our vendors um this was a project undertaken as part of some periodic review that's been done by the ieb surrounding our qualification practices and our scoping practices when we are undertaking suitability investigations for our vendors specifically we wanted to determine whether or not changes should be made to the current practice of examining the shares of the auditing compliance committees of our vendors on a case-by-case basis during the course of our suitability investigations for vendors or as an alternative whether they should be made more of a compulsory part of that process and the regulation governing this particular qualification process is 205 cmr 130 404 and specifically the sections relevant to this discussion on gaming vendor qualifiers are at sub parts d and e and those discuss the discretionary authority of the ieb and the licensing division and determining who should be an individual qualifier for a gaming vendor and that's across gaming vendor primaries and secondaries without going into the specific language there and i'm happy to if it's instructive to the commissioners or if you'd rather just pull it up as i read along this as review as i mentioned is not the first review surrounding this particular provision of the regulations originally at the inception of the agency we were capturing all directors regardless of their status we then revised the procedure surrounding outside directors or independent directors and these are directors who would have a stake in the company and ownership share in the company that's serving as the vendor in massachusetts and we then examined more specifically after that the chairs of the board of directors of our vendors and their status as either inside or outside directors and how that factor into our scoping and qualification procedures for those particular positions that are vendors so a further iteration of that inquiry was whether or not the chairs of the audit and compliance committee should become more of an automatic part of our scoping due to the fact that audit and compliance are particularly relevant issues when evaluating suitability of a vendor we currently do examine these positions on a case by case basis and specifically we examine also some documents in conjunction with the function of these committees which we find particularly helpful and these include committee charters and the minutes of compliance and audit meetings that are conducted by our vendors at pursuant to their corporate governance these are very helpful in evaluating how efficiently these particular committees are functioning and whether they're serving the purpose that is set out in the bylaws of the vendors that's particularly important in evaluating suitability and another piece of this inquiry was whether or not subjecting the chair people of those particular committees would help us to evaluate you know the efficacy of those particular committees to dig down into the details of how we further this inquiry we asked our vendors for some information and what we needed to evaluate was how subjected this to individual qualification would interact with the timing of a suitability investigation and that is largely due to the fact that these positions rotate so someone may step into a role and then rotate out of it and was that a set period like a term limit was it mandated by either local or sometimes national regulation as in the case of Australia or is it something that was just at the discretion of the rest of the board of directors could we complete an investigation into an individual in one of these positions in enough time before they rotated out of the position to sync up with the larger investigation on suitability of the vendor at which they were serving in that position that end we surveyed a landscape of 24 vendors and we essentially had 24 very different answers leading us to believe that perhaps remaining in a posture of evaluating these on a case by case was the most practical and in addition we wanted to know how other jurisdictions handled this this specific interplay between the timing of an investigation and their regulatory authority along with the variants and corporate practices at this level reached out to other regulators in Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Maryland and we found that they also have a similar discretionary authority conferred by their regs and that they do rely upon it to evaluate these particular positions essentially if they feel that this person the chair of auditor compliance has a direct tender influence on the operation or business that the vendor is doing in the jurisdiction they may be captured but it's not a compulsory part of the processes in those jurisdictions either so based on the information we received from our vendors and we're quite thankful for their willingness to provide that and the cooperation we received from other jurisdictions we do believe that our current practice of evaluating these roles on a case by case basis for qualification is the best way to ensure a thorough suitability investigation at the vendor level and I do want to thank my counterparts in the licensing division for their help and also our paralegal and IEB Erica Willis she was crucial in helping me complete this project it was definitely a team effort with that any questions from commissioners I'd welcome and hopefully I can help you answer them commissioners commissioner bryan do you have questions or comments per Kate um you don't have to go into a lot of detail but when you say you surveyed 24 vendors and got basically 24 different answers um sure what do you mean so so we asked vendors uh whether or not their chairs of auditor clients were either um inside directors outside directors there was no real consensus there some of them were inside some were outside in one case someone was an independent contractor um we asked whether or not they were subject to mandatory rotation um in or out you know at the particular story of anyone that varied quite widely some were appointed at the discretion of the board uh some had to be re-elected annually some served for a term of a few years so quite a quite a wide variance there um and as I say some were regulated purely by kind of their corporate bylaws and sometimes a local or a national level regulation mandated um a term limit uh in some of some all right that's helpful thank you sure commissioner camera yeah I had a quick question as well you mentioned um Kate that um you know because they have different roles and responsibilities or that that would determine if in fact you take a closer look if it warranted uh conducting this investigation is that the only factor involved is is there control um in in the company or are there any other factors that would cause you to take a closer look sure we would want to evaluate um first of all what you know what is what is the vendor doing in in our jurisdiction in general and then evaluate um how the reporting structure function uh with regard to that person because although they may not have you know perhaps an ownership stake in the company they may be crucial in the reporting structure that um really is the underpinning of an effective compliance or audit committee um so that's something we would look at I found it to be a very individualized inquiry depending on the size um of the vendor uh the purpose of the vendor and also where they're located whether internationally or nationally so there are several different lines of inquiry we would take and again we find review of the documentary um you know kind of the documents associated with these committees to be very helpful as well in making sure that we're consistent across our vendors okay thank you commissioner um Zunica you you shipped it on my my chart there you are oh I'm here yeah I um just to say Kate that's a very good summary I'm um I'm very comfortable with the approach that that you've taken and and I want to commend you for the research that you and the team have done towards this topic uh I think leaving your approach as you are outlining it is is appropriate we've had you know early discussions I remember about taking a risk based approach on a number of of issues and it occurs to me that because of all the complicating factors that you outline relative to how some of these committees are structured etc that it's best to take the approach that that you have so thank you for all that great summary and good work thank you for the feedback I'm all set thank you um I also had the benefit of a very thorough review and ahead Kate um thank you and thank you too thank you for acknowledging that it was a team effort and thank you to that team thank you very much director Lillios are we all set then uh with respect to your items for consideration today we are thank you I'll set okay thanks very thorough work moving on now uh to item number seven I see Dr. Lightbound has joined us good good afternoon Dr. Lightbound good afternoon everyone um our items today uh deal with the unclaimed tickets um as you know by statute patrons have a calendar year after the year they have placed a paramount bet uh to cash it so this year the tickets that were purchased in 2019 are coming up um by statute again the uh tracks have 90 days from the end of 2020 to send these tickets to the gaming commission um payable to the commonwealth um our senior financial officer Chad has met with the different tracks and um has reviewed their unclaimed tickets and come up with the amounts that are due um for Plain Ridge it's 173,507 and 17 cents for Suffolk it's 263,731 and 41 cents Wonderland is 3,813 uh 12 cents and then for Rainham it's 140,009 dollars and 95 cents um we can uh go through these on the agenda they're listed as items a through d for separate votes or in the packet we have a motion that um puts them all together so it's up to the commission how they would like to um proceed my recommendation is that we approve the payment of these funds to the gaming commission general counsel Grossman is there any reason that we can't make it one motion or would you prefer that they be all separated I think they can be done together I think the record is clear as to what the figures are that you're discussing they're all outlined clearly in the packet but it's uh just a matter of preference and does it combine the um the new authorization for for um CFA of um Lennon do we need to separate that out I think you should separate that yes okay thanks so it's the the figures first that you want to approve and then the authorization to redistribute them yeah so this is to have it come into the gaming commission a through d do I have a motion or any discussion maybe I should say that are there any questions for um Alex and I see Chad has joined us I see no very no questions yes I was just going to say that this is something we've done over the years and without any any issues whatsoever the work is always well done well prepared so if you'd like madam chair I'd be happy to make a motion thank you very much I move that the commission approve the unclaimed winnings for figures presented in Dr. Lightbaum's memorandum including included in the commissioners packet so that the respective licensees may deposit those funds with the commission second any clarifying language needed all right commissioner Cameron aye commissioner brian aye question is in a guy aye and I vote yes so that's four zero now to create further efficiencies Dr. Lightbaum so item F talks about how we distribute the unclaimed tickets again this is all by statute procedurally once the monies come back from the tracks then our financial division send these monies back out to the track once they've cleared and then they get distributed to different funds for the course racing tracks they go into a purse account and for the great tracks they go into the racing stabilization fund so usually we wait until these funds have come in usually around April and then we bring it all back again to the commission for their approval so we thought trying to do things a little more efficiently that procedurally we would ask that once these funds have been submitted by the licensees and cleared by the um mgc bank account um that the finance department will be able to um distribute these funds back to the licensees if the commission um so feels just be appropriate and then they'll be accredited uh credited to the appropriate funds any discussions go ahead it's appropriate that we move in this manner um and that it is an efficiency okay and i see commissioners in ago who is our yeah our advocate for streamlining and efficiencies and cost savings so that all makes good sense then do i have a motion yep madam chair i further move that the commission authorized the commission's finance office to distribute those funds upon deposit to the respective purse accounts of the licensee that generate the unclaimed funds second second thank you commissioner commissioner karen hi commissioner zinniga hi commissioner brian hi and i vote yes four zero great work dr lightbound and chat thank you for joining today thank you if i could also um thank chad um and pard and derrick for their help on this issue excellent thank you so much uh i know that uh derrick isn't isn't here today but general counsel uh grossman thank you okay commissioner updates anything that anyone wants to bring to the attention of the team today or the public okay and no other business but we do have um um an executive session that we're anticipating that requires of course a a vote on the part of the commission we um understand that um from our general counsel that it would be helpful and we anticipate meeting in an executive session to review um to review minutes from previous executive sessions convened in accordance with gl chapter 30a in order for the commission to discuss strategy i'm really wondering about this you can see i'm struggling with it as i read it uh first up we are going to convene for the purposes of discussing the matter as well as for review of minutes is that fair god general counsel grossman or is it simply to review minutes i think it's really just to review the minutes um at this point okay the commission as well yeah okay so i just want to make sure commission anticipates that it'll meet in executives to review minutes from previous executive sessions convened in accordance with gl chapter 30a in order for the commission to discuss strategy with respect to litigation where such discussion at an open meeting may have had a detrimental effect on the commission's legating position for the public the public session of the commission meeting will not reconvene at the conclusion of the executive session so um at this point we don't adjourn the public meeting formally we will do that in the executive session if we vote to some move are there any questions for general counsel grossman as we as i take a roll call vote on this matter just to clarify so it's appropriate for us to go into executive session to deliberate review and potentially edit the minutes is that correct i believe that's wholly appropriate there's no other way to discuss minutes i mean that's the only item i mean it's the only agenda that's the only item absolutely i think it would defeat the purpose of holding an executive session in the first place if a public body you know we're required to review the minutes in public so that's we're just going in solely to look at minutes but there is a strategic component to that at least that's what i think is important a strategic component for the review of the minutes and that's why we need to go into executive session is that correct commissioner ryan i'm sorry no that's that's the clarification that i was just looking for yep is that there general counsel grossman that's right i mean there is absolutely that was the whole purpose behind the executive session in the first place and now you're looking at the minutes of that discussion okay excellent thank you thank you so much so i do need to take a vote based on a general counsel grossman's advice well i'll make the motion um madam chair that the commission going to executive session for the purposes that you discussed on our career second thank you all right we'll take a roll call vote for the record commissioner cameron i commissioner o'brien i commissioner zunica i and i vote yes for zero vivian thank you so much for your assistance today um i'm sure you got it all it was a lengthy meeting so we appreciate your um taking on this uh responsibility today and again as i noted we don't have a full adjournment second director wells are we all set to shift to i guess we need to talk about timing um yeah shift to our other meeting room yes exactly my understanding is we have that schedule for two o'clock so that the team can take a break for lunch and then we convene right at two is that correct do you think that we could move it up or do we need it's in my right that it's ten of it's it's seven it's one three right now one thirty if that works and we could grab lunch and then go into this i would welcome moving it up is there is there anyone who would be hindered by moving it up no does anybody benefit by moving it up yes all right then as long as as long as the team that's necessary for assistance on this matter is available we'll we'll reconvene at the in the executive session meeting room which of course virtual um for one thirty uh karen i don't know if that means we need to have a adjustment to the invitation my understanding it when i've done it before you can just click on it and you can click on it early and get in you just have to be the first one in but i can confirm with it and if there's something different i'll send everyone to email you'll send a new invite or something for one thirty excellent all right everyone thanks so much for the great work today to the entire team really interesting meeting as always we're very fortunate that we have such a wide range of really interesting compelling topics to discuss and and and with that comes a wide-ranging responsibility so thank you okay thank you everybody one time