again. All right, we'll get started today. Now that we're streaming live, I'll need a role called Commissioner Cameron. I am here. Commissioner O'Brien. I am here. Commissioner Hill, there you go. Okay, we're all set then to proceed with public meeting number 365. And really a continuing conversation with Chief Skinner. Good afternoon. And thank you again, Nakeshia for joining us again on this matter. Good afternoon, Chair and commissioners. Yes. So this is take two for this item. Excuse me. On-car Boston Harbour's request for amendment of its gaming beverage license. So at last Thursday's meeting, I had a request for conditional approval. But Commissioner Hill wisely said no. So I'm back today with a with a request for full approval. So to recap, Encore is opening its Black Tier Lounge tomorrow, December 22. And the lounge is a new concept at Encore. The space is going to be dedicated to their Black Tier win rewards members. It's in the space formally occupied by Garden Lounge, which is currently licensed. They plan to have complimentary food and beverage service in the space, along with bar top video poker machines rendering the space part of the casino floor. Excuse me. The issue last time was that there was some minor construction needing to take place still. Since last Thursday, Encore completed those construction issues, and were set to have a final inspection done by IEB. And IEB has given its full approval of the space, the surveillance system and the alcohol storage plans. And Luis Lizano, who's the senior supervising gaming agent, he's present for this meeting. And Bruce's absence in case you have any questions about his inspection. Alcohol beverage service hours will be between 8am and 4am. As Commissioner O'Brien pointed out last time, the materials in your packet indicate that the operating hours are between 2pm and 12am, Sunday through Thursday, and between 2pm and 2am Friday and Saturday. Encore will need to test the demand for the space so they'd like the flexibility to extend their operating hours as they see fit and provide, providing the license for the maximum time would enable them to do that without seeking commission approval at a public meeting. And so that's why 8am to 4am is referenced on the application attachment. Can I ask, Akisha, the concern I had with that was sort of the one was the inconsistency which you just addressed. And the other was the alcohol is supposed to be keyed in to the gaming. And I know they've got terminals or whatever they're going to be in this area. And maybe, Lewis, maybe you can speak to this, but is there a way that we know that those are going to be up and running, that there's going to be some way of checking that the people actually qualify in terms of who can get alcohol service from two to four? Like if they're closing it to, is there going to still have to be some sort of review by IEV to make sure that they want to continue to do that, that whatever the mechanisms are they use for the main floor in terms of the two to four alcohol service can also be followed and checked into the gaming agents. So I think my next point will address your question, but if not, please let me know. The second to last bullet on the attachment to the application talks about automatic disabling of the alcohol service buttons. So those will correspond, the shutting the automatic disabling of those buttons will correspond with the closing hours. So whether that's 12am, 2am, or 4am. No, I stopped up freezing my question correctly, but we had a lot of conversations about when we initially voted to allow them to go from the two to four period rather than having to stop alcohol service at two, that there was, you know, we talked about what the process was in terms of making sure people don't kind of come into the area to just get alcohol service that weren't already on the floor at two. And so I guess my question is probably more for Lewis, I guess than you, Nakisha, is because it's sort of in a separate space, is there any concern at all in terms of making sure that they're complying with that portion of the alcohol beverage license that allows two to four service connected to gaming? I can talk a little bit about that. I don't see too much of a concern. There will be currently there aren't any slot machines in there. The slot machines are on back order, but when they're installed, I think that will be the visual. So if somebody is gaming, that's how you know they'll be able to be served or not. So they'll have to be only seated at, I assume not every seat has one of these terminals that will be at it. Yeah, there'll be eight. I'm sorry. No good. There'll be eight slot machines on the bar top. Okay, so only those eight seats would be the ones that could actually serve two to four once they're installed. Yes. And Commissioner O'Brien, if I can can jump in, you know, the monitoring of this would be performed in the same way as the two to four monitoring on the main floor, which there's some ability to real time monitoring both in place and remotely through surveillance and after the fact, monitoring through surveillance. So we will work with the team as this new venue opens to add that piece to the routine monitoring that the agents have on their list. Is this set off from the rest of the normal flow sort of at that hour? In Lewis, you can probably describe better, but it is on the second floor to remember where the garden cafe was. So it is different. It is a different area. You know, one of the inspections that Lewis performed was a camera coverage area. You know, for exactly that purposes, I think you're getting at. Yeah, just to add on that, to be able to enter the new VIP area, you would have to go through the Highlanded Slot area. That'll be the only entrance point. If you are familiar with the curving escalators, if you go up the curving escalators, it's the previous location was on the right of the curving escalators when you went up on the second level. But as they now constructed, they put up a about a three and a half foot fence to prevent people from entering that area from the curving escalators. The fence made out of I'm sure it's prettier than I'm picturing in my head. It's nicer than any fence I would put up at my house. All right, thank you. So unless there are any more questions, this will require a vote. So any any questions in terms of the completion of the work, Brad, anything that you have for the future, you're all set. But as Chief Skinner has pointed out, we, they do anticipate tomorrow still as they're opening. So we do need about to move forward. Drive a motion. None of us have our documents open. Todd, can you provide the commissioners with motion so they have it handy? It would have been in the packet. I think I have a poll. I have it, Madam Chair. I don't know who just said that. Karen? Yeah, so I don't know if you want me to read it and someone can. I have it as well. I have it as well. I'm happy to make the motion. And it's different because that one is has the conditional part, Gail, but you just do it without the conditional part. Yes. I'm looking for the committee. I don't see it. As we're looking for that, Nikisha, I had one other question for you in terms of the so that the end of business hours being 12 or two, but the authorization to serve alcohol two to four, is that rectified? Or is that inherently authorized for them to change that once they come, they have to go back to IEB or it's my it's my understanding that a vote to approve the amendment would allow the service for those hours between two and four should on core decide a later date that they want to extend their operating hours. Would they have to come back though and just ask for an amendment to the face of it for the hours or is that once we vote to approve? I think that I would that question to Loretta, I'm not sure what whether that's required under under there. Is that ministerial in it or would they have to come back and just ask for some sort of correction? No, I just have to email to Gail, I think it's a I have it as well. I don't think they need to come back. I think it's inherent in and allows them to respond to, you know, business over business needs. So if they if they were to change other ones that they have the license for change the hours of operating, the service of alcohol didn't line up with their hours of service, that's not a concern that we have, right? Well, the license allows them to go on this on this venue allows them to go to to for with the restriction that actively gaming. No, I guess I just it's more a ministerial question I have, which is the hours, the stated hours of operation don't line up with the alcohol service. So it seems like it's fine if those if there's a disconnect there, given the underlying authority to serve. Is that what I'm hearing? Yes, that's my understanding. Yes, that's our operational approach. I just wanted to make sure we didn't need to clean something up. OK, great. Thank you. So, Madam Chair, I'm happy to make that motion at this point. I move that the Commission approve the request submitted by Encore of Boston Harbor to amend its gaming beverage license to add a new licensed area referred to as the Black Tier Lounge in accordance with the terms outlined in the submission contained in the commissioners packet with the approvals that were discussed here today. Second. For the discussion, Mr. O'Brien, you're all set. Your questions have been answered. Yes. OK. Mr. Cameron. Aye. Mr. Hill. Aye. And I went out of order. Like a drum roll, like you expect me to do something. I'm here and I and I vote yes to it's interesting. I you're the four of us are in a quarter. And I think I just went clockwise and my mind is working in a certain direction at 401 p.m. here. So that takes care of that piece of business. Thank you, Nakeshah, for following up on that. And to Lewis, thank you for for chiming in today. I don't know if you've had the chance to meet Commissioner Hill. I can't remember if Lewis, if you've met him yet formally. I have not. I did. I did hear you made a visit to Encore and I was, unfortunately, away on vacation when you made your visit. And I look forward to meeting you in person to Commissioner Hill. Me as well. Thank you. Thank you, Lewis, and happy holidays. Do we have any commissioner updates right now? OK, I think we do have a matter that has arisen today. We couldn't recently anticipate this matter, but it does relate to Governor Baker's adviser that he issued with respect to the the ongoing challenges of the pandemic. And so I want to turn this matter over to Director Wells and Director Lillianos. Thanks. Thank you. So as you know, the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, Department of Public Health issued an advisory and the governor made that announcement. So Loretta, I don't know if you want to sort of go over the provisions, but the advisory has to do with Mac with masks and face coverings. And it now is issued an advisory that all residents, regardless of vaccination status, wear a mask or face covering when indoors and not in your own home. So that has some implications for the casinos. We should probably talk about our own staff and what's going on in our other offices in particular Boston. But maybe I can talk, turn it over to Loretta. She has, I think, reached out to the casinos or is going to reach out to the casinos to confirm their compliance with this as an advisory, what that would mean. Sure. Thanks. Thanks, Karen. So the advisory was issued today this morning. As Karen mentioned, it talks with talks about mask wearing. The first part of the it's a two page advisory. The first part of the advisory talks about urging everybody to get vaccinated and boosted because vaccination provides the most effective protection from severe illness from COVID-19. And then the advisory goes on to talk about in response to the spread of the Delta and Omicron variants. The Department of Public Health now advise that all residents, regardless of vaccination status or mask or face covered when indoors and not in your own home and the advisory goes on to particularly urge this recommendation for vulnerable individuals and people who are living with vulnerable individuals. The three casinos are under a directive from the Commission with respect to any advisories from the Department of Public Health to make those advisories known to patrons. And in that vein, I have reached out to the three properties, made sure they were aware of the advisory and reminded them of their obligation to adjust their communications plan, their signage, their website, their social media and to include this particular advisory. Of course, they've been through this type of drill before. They are well in tune to know how to do that. You know, I sent that communication, I don't know about our hour and a half ago or so, and they will get back to the IEB and notify the IEB when they've completed that. I have the expectation that they will do that promptly. Questions for Loretta on that. Did everybody get a chance to review the advisory? I think that got distributed to you, Loretta. So I know the mask mandates are done in municipality by municipality. And the last time I looked, none of the towns where the casinos are located had indoor mask mandates. Is that still the case? Or has anything changed since this DPH advisory came up? No, nothing has changed. Previously, Springfield did have a mask mandate that was lifted some time ago. I frankly can't remember exactly when it was lifted. So there are no mask mandates at this moment in any of the host communities. And are there policies in terms of the various casinos? Can you remind me again what the employee masking requirements are at the different casinos? Yeah, so we went over this last week. Let me pull it up again so that I can accurately tell you that. So bear with me for just a moment. I just opened some notes from our meeting on December, but it was December COVID notes from December 2020. So we've been at this for a while as we all. And the notes would be different. Wouldn't they be, has evolved and evolved and evolved? So let's see here. So. On court requires notification of vaccine status. OK, here we go. There and they have are continuing their practice of requiring employees to provide proof of vaccine upon receipt. Employees are issued new badges, not required to wear a mask, but they may continue to do so. And of course, they've been had a vaccine program on site with a lot of boosters given recently. MGM continues to require employees to wear a mask, regardless of vaccine status. Oh, that's actually not accurate. Salaried employees at MGM had a deadline to be vaccinated back in October. All salary team members are now fully vaccinated. New employees who have come on board in the past few months were required to be vaccinated. They do have a badging differential between vaccinated and unvaccinated unvaccinated are required to wear masks. PPC proof of vaccine status is voluntary without proof of without proof of vaccine employees must wear a mask. Just an update on MGM, Brad, correct me if you had a different impression, but it's our understanding that all employees were expected to wear masks. The president was there masked and we toured with his team and everybody did wear masks. We were not required to be both, of course, opted to wear a mask. So I don't know. I stand corrected. That was my note. And then I got confused, but that is my note. That is correct. They are still required to wear a mask, regardless of their vaccine status. Thank you, Kathy. My understanding is all of those positions are company specific. It's not anything we've mandated that they do. But it would be I wouldn't be displeased if I heard that PPC and EPH were going the way of MGM for making the employees mask, give them the advisory. And I think I sense. Yeah, I think that may be able that may be reported to you soon on at least one of the properties. I'm glad to use the advisory. Um, I apologize if I missed this. I just needed to get that liquor license signed. Did you also mention that the advisory said that vaccines and boosters were strongly urged? I believe I did read from that part, which is. I thought you had. Thank you. And again, we haven't formally addressed boosters because there hasn't been a mandate, but I think it is important for us to remind everyone that. Many ways are looking at the vaccination as a three part three series, as opposed to a booster, something extra special. Its efficacy is a million matter of the three shots. So. So, Karen, in terms of first off, Commissioner Hill, Commissioner Cameron, do you have any questions for Loretta on the gaming facilities? And the timeframe Loretta, they're going to be able to turn this over very quickly and incorporate the advice. I have every reason to think that, like I said, they've they've been through this and have turned on a dime before on this the signage of communication matters. So you wanted to address our office policy, perhaps? Yes, I think that in light of this, it's appropriate for the commissioners to have some discussion about what to do with the MGC folks. We have obviously individuals at the casinos. We also have people in a Boston office that are that are not at the casinos. We do an employee that works out of that works out of Springfield that is not not a gaming agent. So that would be incorporated in the Boston office sort of protocols. So let's I think it would be helpful to break it down and start with the casinos. Given that we need folks on site while the casinos are open, there are a couple options that we could do now, given the updated advisory from the governor. We could leave it alone and keep things as they are. We could either urge or require our own staff to be wearing masks sort of in in alignment with the recommendation from DPH. So those are sort of preliminary questions. The other thing we could think about is authorization for the either Loretta or the gaming agent, senior management team to potentially reduce staffing on site during the the height of the pandemic before there were vaccines. We had gaming agents just be on site one at a time so that they were not exposed to other people and they would be in the offices as opposed to on the floor. So my suggestion for at this point is potentially to either urge or require masks for the folks that are on site and then potentially vote to allow some discretion within the the management team over the next couple of weeks. If things, you know, monitoring how things are going and authorize them to potentially reduce staffing or take other measures to ensure the staff. So that's one piece, the casino piece. The other piece is the Boston office from this advisory. It does not limit it to public public places. We had been interpreting our offices not being a public place because we are not open to the public. We don't have the public in for meetings. We don't have public in for limited meetings. I mean, internal meetings. We don't have the public meetings there, but this advisory doesn't limit it to that. So my my thought is that we could change the policy in in the interim, say until the next meeting on January 12th and have working at the Boston office be voluntary. So people that want to come in, but that recommend or mandate the people in the Boston office, if they are going to do that voluntarily wear masks. So those are those are sort of some issues for us to discuss. It may be easier to start with the Boston office and then go back to the casinos and see what makes sense. But, you know, happy to sort of hash this out and talk this through the threat on the other members of the team. I do recognize a lot of folks will be on vacation over the holidays and we didn't work effectively remotely. So it may be that taking a pause and making this voluntary in the Boston office for the next couple weeks may make sense until we get a handle on what's going on with the variant and the public health metrics. Let's tackle the office first. I think that's a good idea. Yeah. So what Karen's suggesting is we just adopted the hybrid policy in our last meeting. In essence, you would like perhaps a temporary suspension to our next commission meeting. And but that doesn't mean that folks who and some folks do need to come to the office. I already understand that for access to your technology, but that if they came in, it would be voluntary, not fulfilling their two or three day in office commitment, but they would have to wear their mask both outside in the public space, coming to our offices as well as in the office while we're working. Is that what you're somewhat suggesting as a and I don't think that's out of line with what a lot of offices are doing already. Gail, you're not here. I agree. I had two previous meetings today where this topic came up and I did advise folks that we would have an opportunity to talk about this later today and I would make their concerns. No. So I do think that taking a pause through the holidays until our next meeting in January makes a lot of sense, a voluntary program where people can come in if they need to or wish to and others who may be feeling a bit vulnerable right now, have the opportunity to voluntarily step away and work remotely until we get through our next meeting and see what see what the situation on the ground is at that time. So I actually thought that was a good suggestion and one that I could one that I could certainly endorse. And one thing I just want to remind the team of is that the casinos have parking so folks are able to work at the casinos, the gaming agents are able to drive to the casinos, but Boston, I think a lot of our staff takes public transportation, so it's not just being in the office, which, you know, I compliment the commission for, you know, having a vaccine mandate because it makes you feel much safer at the office, but people do have to get from their homes to the office. And there are people that are taking public transportation to the Boston office to just unmindful of that. I don't have a problem with what's being suggested. We talked before the meeting started, well, family coming in and coming from all over the country. So I think taking a little breather for a couple of weeks would be the prudent thing to do. And I'd be okay with that. Actually, I've seen where people can work from home and get in the work done, and that's what we care about. It's getting done. I haven't seen any evidence to show me otherwise. So I'd be okay with the suggestion. No, I agree. I was talking to Karen about this earlier. I think it's actually the prudent course, which is to pull back in the short term, particularly given the holidays and what might be above given the behavior that's probably just naturally going to happen. So I think it's the safer way to go. Karen, can you just remind me of the date of our... Yes, so we have another commission meeting on Wednesday, January 12th. So that is one, that is just over three weeks away. It's a Wednesday. That's right. It's a Wednesday and then a Wednesday. Okay, so January 12th, and then we'll just reassess. If in fact, we'll say it continues through the 12th. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So, okay. Okay, so the other question... I wouldn't have a... I don't think you need a formal vote. It just seems that to us that you have support from the commissioners. On the... The one other question I had on the Boston office, are we going to require folks in the interim to wear masks in the office if they do come into the office on a voluntary basis? Oh, I thought that I had said yes. If they want to come in, they must wear a mask. Yeah. I would agree with that. And then if people are alone in an office, but can they take their masks off? I anticipate I'm going to get these kinds of questions. So if someone's alone and not with anyone else in an office, can they take the mask off? As opposed... And then the question is, if I'm at my work station at a queue, can I take my mask off? I would just go with the governor's policy. If you're not at home, wear a mask. Right? Yeah. Just so that you're, you know... Yep. That makes it easier. Walk in and out, and then no one's more privileged than the other. Madam chair, I don't usually disagree with you. But on this one, I intend on going in. And if I'm sitting in my office by myself, you know my health issues, wearing a mask for that long can be a problem for me. And I would want to be able to take it off if I'm by myself. If there was anybody in my office where I was to walk around, I would absolutely put that mask on. But I think I disagree with you a little bit in regards to if you're by yourself, being able to take it off. I don't know how others feel about that. But, and then again, I'm in a private office compared to a cubicle. So that may, you know, be a little different, but... And of course I respect your need for any accommodation. I guess I was trying to simplify it for Karen because of what the advisory was kind of, it was well written in that it said, unless you're at home, wear a mask indoors. And that stuck with me, Commissioner Hill, but I'm only one of four. Commissioner O'Brien and Commissioner Cameron, obviously I do think the risk is substantially reduced if we're in our offices. I just, I'm thinking almost from an equity point of view, but Commissioner Hill, whenever there's a accommodation that needs to be made for a helper, you know, and that includes mental health, we would work to accommodate that, of course. Commissioner O'Brien? I mean, it may create some inequities, although someone could maybe go to a conference room and close the door. I think if you're by yourself, if you're closing the door and not interacting with somebody, I think it would be okay to drop a mask in that circumstance. And then when you go out into the common area where there's no barriers to the ventilation that the mask should go back up. I think that's reasonable too. I think it is an advisory and our people are really smart and they have been using good sense. So that makes sense to me too, if you're alone, but obviously we wanna protect others. And if you're out in the common area with people, respecting them and protecting yourself is really the way to go. So I'm fine with that as well. I am too. So we have a consensus on that. All right, so that's helpful. So then the other question is the, obviously the state police and the local police that are in the gaming enforcement unit are their own separate entity that are required to be there, but our gaming agents need to be on site. So the question is, do we either urge or require masks on site? And then also, do we give some kind of authorization to the management team to adjust sort of scheduling and allow for some hybrid working and only have one person at a time if they determine that's appropriate. Missioners, who wants to start? Mr. Cameron, you're leaning in? Yeah, sure. I think we've done well by allowing discretion to our directors and those who are in charge of a unit of work, knowing what has to get done, knowing what it takes to get it done. And now we actually have experience, right? We have had our gaming agents working in a single capacity to get the job done and we've also had them working recently in more of the original style. So I am for providing that flexibility and really assessing what needs to be done and again, protecting our own people in the public. So if that means coming back to one agent at a time, I am in favor of allowing that flexibility. Roger, you're nodding your head? Yeah, I'm fine with that. Yeah, I agree. And then as far as the mask wearing, do you want the same rule to apply at the properties that unless you're by yourself in a room with the door closed, you should be wearing a mask? Yeah. With the time being? Okay. And then I'll put an email out to the staff today but that would be at least through January 12th and expect that to be addressed at the January 12th commission meeting. Karen, did you want to address, I think from a high level, the game sense? Yeah. I know Mark wanted that. Yes, so we spoke with Mark earlier today. Mark is going to be reaching out to the game sense team. As you know, there are contractors, our vendors for the onsite part of the responsible gaming operation. So my understanding is they are basically mirroring what the gaming commission is doing. So he'll have this information and he'll be reaching out to them, he'll encourage them to do the same thing. They're not technically our employees but they are our partners with us in keeping everyone safe on property. Any questions for Karen on this? I see no, I'll stop. Karen, is there anything else you need from us? No, I think that's it. If something comes up, I'll be reaching out, especially during the holidays, I'll still be available even on vacation time. So just keep you informed. But I think this is the smart move and it's gonna help to sort of get through this way. My hope is that we come out on the other end and get some better news in January and we'll see, but we'll update you on where we are. Okay, then I think our next matter on the agenda is respect to an executive session. Commission anticipates that it will meet an executive session in accordance with General Laws Chapter 30A, Section 21A3 to continue its discussion from December 20th in executive session relative to strategy with respect to litigation related to the confidentiality of certain documents and information as discussion of the subject that are at an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the litigating position of the commission. And in accordance with General Laws, Chapter 30A, Section 21A7 to evaluate a matter relative to the non-disclosure agreement between the commission and when LLC pursuant to General Laws, Chapter 23, Section 21A7 and 205CMR 139.02 as discussion of the matter in a public forum would frustrate the purpose of the statute, the regulation and agreement. In order for us to move forward into executive session, we must vote as a majority. Do I have a motion? So moved. Second. Thank you. Any questions, discussion for Todd? Okay, Commissioner Cameron. Aye. Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. And I vote for zero. Thank you. I wanna make sure that the public understands that the session will not reconvene as a public session at the conclusion of the executive session. So remotely, I will end this meeting and those attending the executive session will enter into a different virtual room. I'll set top of that. Okay. Thank you everyone. We appreciate all those who just fit in today's public meeting.


Let me first say that when Julian Assange was still free He held a speech in front of Occupy London Where he made a brilliant joke. I guess most of you watched Life of Brian by Monty Python If you don't know what Julian did go to YouTube and watch it. It's really funny. He said we are all individuals and Then most of the people who were gathered here like in Monty Python repeated after Julian But let me say this today is not the joke We are not all individuals We are all Julian Assange Not because Julian Assange is in Belmarsh prison in a British Guantanamo We are all Julian Assange because something much more than just an individual is in danger here What is endangered with Julian Assange and Chelsea a man in prison is our collective right to know Not more not less We are here today in front of the Brandenburg a tour because something much more than just an individual is in danger Yes, a human being with a great sense of humor and a great sense for justice is in prison But what is really in danger here is the very foundation of our democracy Namely the freedom of press As long as Julian Assange is in this or any other prison To paraphrase as beach which Ronald Reagan gave just in front of this Brandenburg a tour in 1987 It is not only the German question that remains open But the question of freedom for all mankind What is the German question? The German question is the question where the Germany will stand up and take its Historical role in protecting whistleblowers publishers and the freedom of speech How would you know that the NSA and the US government by the way? Hello to the US Embassy who can hear us here How can you know that the US government and the NSA? Spite on the German government the German institutions and on the German citizens if there wasn't the revelations of Edward Snowden No about all the crimes committed in our names if there weren't the billions of leaks published by WikiLeaks Why is it illegal to reveal secrets, but it is still legal to undermine democracy? What happened to Chelsea a manning when she rejected to testify against WikiLeaks 56 days ago She disappeared Literally She's still here Her body is in the prison in the same way Julian's Assange body and mind is in prison but the voice of Chelsea a manning is not here today and the voice of Julian Assange is also not here today She can't speak and Julian Assange also the moment can't speak This is the reason why we are here today This is the reason why we are giving the voice to Chelsea a manning to Julian Assange and to everything what they present Do you remember the the book by Ray Bradbury fire and hide 451? You probably know most of the topics which incur in the book, you know people Firefighters who are burning books, but does anyone here remember the end of the movie? Or the book at the very end of the book and the movie what happens is that all those people who were reading books Who were using books in order to find out the truth and also in order to build a better humanity a better world? hide in a forest and They hide in a forest and since there are no books in society anymore each and one and single of them Learns a book by heart So each person becomes a book in a situation in which people make Julian Assange Chelsea a manning Edward Snowden cannot be with us today here. We have to become Julian Assange We have to become Chelsea a manning We have to become Edward Snowden and talk instead of them Thinking what they would talk because this is just the start of a very long battle for freedom of press If Julian Assange is extradited to the United States, they will come after you They will come after you they will come after everyone and there will be no one else to speak in In your name anymore In the end to quote a great German poet Felderlin It might be a sad moment that we are here, but it's not a sad moment We can see many people here. We can see masks here. We can see many supporters here, but that's Hulderlin said Voaber Gefaris Vex does threaten the owl it means Even if we are in deep shit Even if our democracies are not democracies anymore Even if institutions represented by the US Embassy by the UK Embassy, which is just there Even if precisely these governments are undermining democracy There is hope there is hope as long as we can gather here as long as we can give a voice to those Who don't have a voice anymore free Chelsea a manning free Julian Assange Free all the whistleblowers who are in prison today


I liked making the video because I got to take pictures of everybody and sometimes I got to get out of class. The most enjoyable part was filming and photo-ing outside just to be out there and doing it, interviewing kids. In early December 2021, student members of the Arn Media Nights, an after-school club at Arn Elementary School, began actively filming video and taking photos to document a day in the life of an average American student. A few years ago, we started a cultural exchange with Kurihara Elementary School, which is a local Japanese school, and at that time we were able to visit their school and their students were able to come to ours. Due to COVID restrictions, last year we were not able to conduct the exchange. This year, a plan was created to exchange videos between the two schools. They captured students' morning routines at the school, along with scenes in the classroom, the cafeteria, and on the school bus. They even captured footage of what the restrooms in an American school look like in an effort to show every detail as part of a cultural exchange project with their friends at the Japanese Kurihara Elementary School. When I made the video, I was thinking I would do bathrooms and buses. The reason I did buses was because I go on the bus, so I know a little bit about it. And when we came out, I started taking pictures and videos of the buses. We went on to the bus and it was really fun. But for the bathrooms, it was different than the buses. When we were doing the bathrooms, we had to kind of coach down to get some of the good pictures and it was confusing of how to get the right pictures. We had to take lots of videos of classrooms and we got to take pictures of what all the classrooms look like or what all the critters look like for the entire classes and it was kind of fun. There was definitely a learning curve for our students because we just started the club in about November. And so this was our very first project, but we all just dove in and they did wonderfully. While the students at ARN were preparing their video, the students and one teacher at Kurihara were doing the same, capturing various scenes of daily life at a Japanese school. This included footage inside the classrooms, the latest things that were popular with students and even a special dance they performed at their annual sports festival. In early January of this year, school officials including ARN Principal Dr. Edwin Munoz and staff from the U.S. Army Garrison Japan Public Affairs Office visited Kurihara to give their video to the school and received from Kurihara the video the Japanese students had created. I kind of liked how they were trying really hard to speak English and I really liked how all the classrooms taught us how to play their classroom games. I kind of would like them to know how different or how similar the schools could be if you just compare them. It was really nice how they showed what their activities were and all their events, how they celebrated it. It makes me feel really good about being part of this and helping the Japanese kids learn what we do because maybe someday in the future if they know English and they want to go to schools in America then they can know sort of how we do things. This unique cultural exchange gave the students at both schools the opportunity to get an in-depth look at student life from a different perspective. The ARN Media Knights also got to learn more about the technical aspects of photography and videography in creating their video. I think that the students have definitely learned exactly what a day is like in the Japanese school which is very interesting to them because we're fortunate to be able to live here in this wonderful country of Japan. However, we don't always get to see the day-to-day activities that Japanese children and adults have so I think that's been a wonderful opportunity for them to see similarities and differences and just to be able to have that opportunity to share out about our world to them and we hope going forward once the COVID restrictions lift that we'll be able to continue this exchange in person and so then they can potentially even build friendships going forward. Reporting for U.S. Army Garrison Japan, this is Dustin Perry.


Stanford University. Now the next session we are very delighted to have three panelists really devote their career for public service to discuss with us regarding the clean and equitable energy transition. So let's welcome Dean Aruma Jinda to moderate the session. This session is about clean and equitable energy transition. I can't find a more important topic in terms of this, the attributes of a transition that we like to see happen. And we have a terrific panel. We have Eddie Ahn, the executive director of Brightline Defense. We have Alice Reynolds, president of the California Public Utility Commission. And Leanne Randolph, chair of the California Air Resources Board. Let me take this option to welcome all of them. Let's have a seat. First of all, it's terrific to have you here. Thank you for taking the time, all of you, to come and spend some time with us. You heard some of the discussions in the morning. Let me first offer you some time to offer you remarks of how you're thinking about your job and your California. Leanne, you want to get started? Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Looking forward to this discussion. I'm Leanne Randolph, chair of the California Air Resources Board. Of course, we are focused both on meeting our Clean Air Act obligations and trying to reach attainment with Clean Air Act standards in the state of California. And we are working on cleaning up mobile sources of pollution and tackling climate change in our role as the agency responsible for developing the AB 32 climate change scoping plan, which we recently updated at the end of 2022. So in terms of thinking about our challenges, I think we are at this sort of intersection of wanting to move fast, tackle both the causes of climate change and the impacts of climate change, but at the same time recognizing that we are an expensive state, it is imperative that we recognize that the, as with society writ large, the benefits and burdens are not distributed equitably. So how as policymakers can we implement these policies that we have set forth in a way that helps bring communities along and addresses localized impacts, but also recognizes that we need to achieve change at a global scale. One of the things I enjoy in my role at CARB is working with other states and other countries. And a lot of what we think about as CARB is how do we build strategies and policies that are scalable and that can be beneficial to other jurisdictions. So that's sort of like the hard part and the fun part of my job at CARB. Alice? Great. Alice Reynolds, I'm the president of the California Public Utilities Commission, and I want to start by just thanking CEC and Stanford for convening this group today. Really a fantastic group of folks and agenda. I will say I'm a Stanford graduate, so I'm always happy to be back here. We heard from one of the senators today about the number of Stanford graduates in the Senate. I don't know if I'm the only Stanford graduate who's been the president of PUC, but I'm glad to be there and I'm thankful for having been to Stanford and just what I brought throughout my career from starting at Stanford. So a couple of things about the PUC. PUC is the utility regulator for privately-owned utilities, and that includes energy, so electricity and gas, water, transportation, telecommunications, and we do some regulatory work in the rail sector. So what that means is we focus on safety and reliability of utility services, and for the energy sector, we're also intensely focused on clean energy, fighting climate change, and then we think about affordability and equity. And so for all of those things, and even more now, we're focusing on equity, centering on equity, and thinking about the impacts of our decisions. Here now, and I think you heard this morning, we're now at this point where in California we have many goals, including for the electrical sector, but we're at the point where we're really working hard to implement those goals. And so when you think about electricity, we have the goal for 100% clean electricity. All of our, so we're thinking about cleaning up that fuel. How do we make the electricity that is delivered to every single Californian clean electricity? And then we think about how do we electrify the transportation sector and the building sector, and for the utilities that we regulate, that means how is the grid ready to support the changes that we need to see for transportation and building. So how is the grid not an impediment? We need to make sure the grid is anticipating and is ready for the new technologies that are developed and the new grid needs that transportation electrification and building electrification bring to us. And this of course creates a challenge for affordability. We know that energy bills are a disproportionate amount of income for low income customers goes to energy compared to higher income customers. So every time we increase energy costs, it hits low income customers harder. And we are also needing to think about rates in different ways. And we've talked about that a little bit this morning. So I think as Leanne said, it's both the hardest part and the funnest part of my job. The questions we have to think about involve many, you know, predictions about the future, impacts on different people in the state and lots of different industries. So I guess I'll stop there, but a lot to talk about. Eddie? Good afternoon everybody. Eddie, I'm the executive director of Brightline. In case you don't know Brightline, we're an environmental justice organization based in San Francisco. And we essentially have two buckets of work that I like to describe. One is direct services to frontline communities in the form of say an air quality monitoring program, AB 617 with the California Air Resources Board. We do a job training program. We do also significant amount of youth leadership and community organizing to keep our work connected to environmental justice communities that we've always cared about. And the second big book of work is essentially our policy work that is probably the reason why I'm here before you today, which has come from a long history of organizing to shut down originally power plants, fossil fuel power plants in Baby Hunter's Point that Chair Hope Shield earlier mentioned, as well as low income household incentives around rooftop solar or EV rebates. And more recently, we've been getting very heavily into the offshore wind space. And every time we approach a clean energy piece, policy piece, it's with the lens of equity, making sure that we're trying to ensure not only community benefits for local communities as these offshore wind projects, for instance, get set up, but also looking at the longer term picture, and this is where the CPUC becomes so important, is looking at what is the overall energy mix and how does it help us hopefully in the long term retire peak or power plants across the state, which are, as we heard earlier, primarily sighted in low income communities. So these environmental justice issues are not going away. A lot of what Brightline also thinks about is just generally community storytelling, how to make these offshore wind turbines are fantastical looking and having utility scale solar installation before you is really a stunning sight. But at the end of the day, what does it mean to communities? Especially, let's say, if you have a huge solar installation, a dirt road, and then a rural community without broadband access to even understand the meaning of it, the impact of what's being placed there. I think that's what leads to the populism that you see today and ultimately resentment against environmental policy. So a lot of my non-profit is trying to bridge those worlds. Let me start by asking Leanne and Alice the same question that I asked the policy makers. That is, we want to go as fast as possible in addressing climate and cleaning and having a clean energy system. We have some goals. California has some targets. But if you go too fast, we could have, you know, the prices could go up or some other bad things could happen. So how do you, as a regulator, as an execution, as part of the executive branch, how are you thinking about what's the right pace and what are the things in a framework of dares that I talked about? Decarbonization, affordability, reliability, equity and security. How do you make decisions? So that's a lot of what we did in our 2022 Scoping Plan in terms of rolling up our sleeves, doing a lot of detailed modeling and trying to understand sort of what are the costs and benefits of various strategies and how do you, you know, structure it all. We started with four different scenarios. At the time, we did not have a statutory carbon neutrality goal when we first did the modeling, when we first started. But the legislature subsequently did adopt, did codify Governor Brown's executive order for carbon neutrality by 2045. So we looked at what are the most cost-effective ways to decarbonize? What are the strategies that we as a state need to support? What are the market-based programs like cap-and-trade and low-carbon fuel standard that we need to keep in place and what ambition do those programs need to have? But also what are some of the other strategies? For instance, as is frequently mentioned, our last Scoping Plan did not have a big role for energy storage, for battery storage. So, you know, as we update that plan every five years, it allows us to calibrate and kind of say, okay, here are some new things on the horizon. This time around, the plan really talks a lot about offshore wind, carbon capture, utilization in storage, direct carbon removal. It talks about the role of natural and working lands. Are there strategies we can deploy in that sector? And those strategies take a long time to bear fruit. So we need to start as soon as possible. So using kind of enough analysis that helps us understand at an economy-wide scale, what are the things we need to lean into and what are some of the benefits and trade-offs in those different strategies? That's sort of the approach we took in the Scoping Plan. And so now, as Alice said, we are in implementation mode. We are doing the regulatory work and the implementation work and the interagency coordination work that's necessary to bring the vision that was laid out in the Scoping Plan to life. Alice, you're right in the trenches of execution on these plans. So how do you manage the extension? What keeps you awake at night? Sure. And to get to your question about whether we need to slow down or whether there are trade-offs on going fast, I think it's not so much about slowing down as it is about thinking about the strategies we're using, making sure that they're cost-effective and that they're geared towards addressing the problems that we need to address. Eddie mentioned the gas plants. And so for the investor-owned utilities, the focus really is on reducing reliance on gas plants, so reducing the time that they run and then eventually getting away from the gas plants so that we don't need to rely on them. So what are the things that really make a difference in transitioning our portfolio of resources that supplies electricity to the state? And resources all include energy efficiency, which is very important, demand response is very important. How do those tools really get to the result that we want to see? So I do regulate the investor-owned utilities and their infrastructure, but when we think about the choices about our energy portfolio, it's not just PG&E, SDG&E, and SE. We're also talking about the community choice aggregators. We haven't mentioned them yet today. I hope there's somebody here from the community choice aggregator. Maybe not, but they play a very important role in deciding what energy resources we need in our portfolio to make sure that we are relying less on our gas plants so that we can eventually get away from them. Some of the public energy utilities are also dealing with getting away from coal, but for us the focus is on the gas plants. And so we have a process that tees off of Leanne's, the scoping plan that she talked about that CARB creates and looks at the reductions that we need to see as a state from the energy sector and then requires all of the entities that provide retail services to customers to look at their load and that includes their entire load shapes, summer, winter, morning, night, and figure out what they need to do to cover that load with clean resources. And so they come to us, to the PUC with plans, how are we going to transition our systems over time? We're now planning, we have a short-term planning system that we pair with requirements for purchasing clean energy and then we also look out further into the future. So what do you see that you need in your portfolio into the future? And we use modeling to figure out what the most cost-effective tools are to get there because, of course, it's repairs. It's people in communities that have to pay their electricity bills to manage this transition, to take us to the transition and take us where we need to go. So really it's about figuring out what are those gas plants providing now that we need to get away from and how can we replace it? We talked some about the incident on September 6th and I think of last year where we saw a record load, we also had some good demand response performance through the text that we talked about this morning, but I also wanted to mention that on September 6th of this year, the load was about 20,000 megawatts smaller than it was the previous year. So basically we have to have a portfolio of resources ready to serve a 52 gigawatt load one year and a 32, 34 gigawatt load the next year, which means some resources will sit around and maybe not be used for the entire year, but they need to be there. And more and more, we're thinking about electricity as something that has to be there when you need it and there's a payment for that. Do we have resources that are available so that we can demand can be met at all times, all days of every year? And so we're looking at ways to make sure we can guarantee reliability, but also control costs. So Eddie, let me ask you, I mean you're representing communities, you worry about equity in this transition. When we look at new technology, we need new innovations. When you look at new technologies, initially they're more expensive, like take EVs for the time, right? And so initially they may not be equitable, but eventually we want equity later on. And there are lessons learned from the past where there have been inequities. And I was wondering if you could tell us, educate us on how you're thinking about this because the underserved communities are probably going to get more affected by climate extremes and climate issues than the higher income households, et cetera. So how are you thinking about this and listening to the California plans? Where do you think we could add some value in addressing the equity issue? I'll start with maybe a hyper-local story in San Francisco. I'm just curious, a show of hands. Does anybody here know of SRO buildings, single room occupancy buildings? Not bad, actually. Yeah, it's maybe 5%, if you had to guess. So single room occupancy buildings are a form of housing stock that still exists in San Francisco. They actually existed in most major American cities in the 1900s, but have been mostly taken over and made way for whatever, condominiums, multi-family affordable housing that we know today. SRO buildings have been maintained in San Francisco as a form of very low-income housing. And unfortunately these buildings are aging. They don't have modern HVAC infrastructure. They don't have essentially insulation that we would expect out of a typical CPC energy efficiency program. And in other words, they're not well maintained. They're serving a low-income population, usually racially diverse in San Francisco. But it shows when something like wildfires happens in San Francisco, it's a population that's disproportionately impacted. They don't have an air filtration unit or even a housing unit that they can retreat to. And because their own buildings themselves are so leaky where the wildfire smoke will seep in. So it's an example of the overall impacts that are happening from climate change but a disproportionately burdened community that we work with. The one thing I do want to caution, though, the way Brightline thinks about it is we don't go out and claim to represent every community. Environmental justice, that's often hard because the sense of place that's demanded in the work and the accountability that comes from that. I think when we talk about new technologies, that's one of the challenges is that, as I mentioned earlier, offshore wind, floating offshore wind turbines are almost fantastical. You could describe them as turbines the size of the Eiffel Tower that float on the water and then power up to 25% of the state's power. But that description probably means nothing to a local community resident in the North Coast who's never been to Paris, for instance, or even on the Central Coast where they're being primarily proposed. The Eiffel Tower itself is just like a generic, in other words, a romantic description of the technology that may not be applicable at the end of the day. So part, again, of thinking through what's in it for the communities where renewable energy projects are being cited is a lot of what we do, whether it's in the form of, say, workforce benefits through community benefits agreements. It could be as simple as providing broadband access that I describe as lacking in certain communities. But ultimately, our perspective is going to the community, going through that process first and asking them what they would like to see out of the projects too. Alice, maybe I could follow up on the question of the electricity system. The grid was never designed for solar and wind. We are integrating solar and wind to a grid that was designed for turbo machinery. There will be fluctuations. You need storage solutions. And in this process, if you look at the pricing on the wholesale market, it's actually stable or maybe going down because the marginal cost of electricity from solar and wind is much lower than gas and other units. So the price, the wholesale price is going down or flat, whereas the retail price seems to be going up. So there's this gap that is increasing and that's the business model of the utilities and return on investment. That's the way it is structured. And I was wondering if that's a source of inequity that may be coming because of the pricing of the retail side. And are there innovations in the business models that are required for the utility sector to make sure that the prices don't go up and hopefully go down and follow the wholesale market? I'm just curious how you're thinking about that. Sure. So you write the wholesale market. I mean, is it a good tool to keep the cost of generation down? And even we're looking at west-wide markets that provide resilience against weather events and so ensuring resilience of the system in the face of extreme heat served by the wholesale market, but that's not the only thing that goes into retail rates. And I mentioned capacity payments for one. So the wholesale real-time price of energy doesn't reflect everything that we pay to energy generators. We also pay them to capacity payments, meaning they need to be there when we need them. And part of those payments help compensate renewable energy generators to get their projects built. We also support low-income customers through electricity bills. So the retail rates include subsidies for low-income ratepayers. About a third of our customers of the investor-owned utilities use the CARE or FERA discount that we give. And that's a big proportion of Californians. But California is an expensive place to live, and we have a large number of people who struggle to pay their energy bills. So retail rates also include that subsidy and thankfully people that can have some disposable income pay that through retail rates and we're fortunate to have that. Retail rates also include the cost of the distribution system and the cost of the transmission system. And even if, you know, customers have their own sources of generation, have storage, they're still using the distribution system, there are still technicians that come to serve them, and there are upgrades that are needed. We are, and will in the future, fund the transportation sector through electrification, through rates, retail rates. So grid upgrades will be needed to accommodate vehicle charging. That's already starting to happen and we're seeing that in rates. We're also seeing wildfire mitigation hit rates so that utilities are hurting their systems to prevent wildfires. Wildfire is something that also has an equity component because smoke impacts health. We know it impacts the entire state and so we need to make sure that our system is ready to be resilient against the hot, windy days when the conditions are still dry and to invest in a system that isn't ready in the face of climate change. So all of these things have cost. Again, we need to look at the most cost effective way to do this and so if the investments don't need to be made, we don't want them to be made because they hit rates. There are a lot of really difficult questions to look at. We just finished PG&E's GRC, their general rate case. It was a thousand page decision. Anyone who's interested can look at our docket and see the... Or if you need something to read to fall asleep at night. But no, it's actually a very interesting case and we get information from all the utilities on what do you need to pay for, what do you plan to do and we have participants in our proceedings that give us information about what they don't need to do or a cheaper way to do things and so that's something that we look at the PUC to try to keep costs down as much as possible. It's all very available for parties to look at and we also have individual rate pairs are represented by rate pair advocates. So it's not on individuals to come in and read the thousand page decision. We do have advocates who represent rate pairs from the residential side. At the same time, we want to encourage innovation and a lot of innovation has fallen on rate pairs. So when you talk about investment, the investment in innovative technologies, a lot of the repayment for that investment comes from rate pairs. So we need to be careful about that as well, although it's certainly a great way to keep California at the forefront of all of the technologies that can help us into the future. Maybe you could use the AI to read the thousand page and make a summary. That is a good idea so much to do that with ChatGP2. Yeah, let me ask you. The Air Resources Board has the responsibility to take some of the legislative mandates and goals and develop plans. And how we plan in California affects not only California but frankly many other states in our neighborhood as well as people are watching from around the world. California is a role model in many ways. So as you look at the planning, I mean there are a huge amount of renewables, injection that we want in the grid. There are transmission lines that need to be built and ask this question to the senators as well. Let me ask you, give us a view of the coordination between the Energy Commission, between the PUC, between Cal ISO, between the Air Resources Board in trying to streamline the regulatory process and actually build infrastructure. Where is the bottleneck out here? Yeah, so as you note and as the senators discussed earlier, we need a huge amount of renewable energy deployment. Those projects need to move faster. They need to get approved. We need the transmission upgrades and distribution upgrades. I think there's a really important legislative conversation going on around some of sort of the permitting challenges, some of the more specific permitting challenges and the laws governing those challenges like CEQA. I think it's really critical to have those conversations. But to your point, there is a lot we can do at the administrative agency level to try to make things smoother. I'll give you an example I was just talking about earlier, which is the charging needs for heavy duty transportation. The light duty sector, I think we're feeling like there's capacity there. We can see a path. In the heavy duty sector, it's going to take a lot of work in certain areas of the state. There's certain areas of the state where there's plenty of capacity, but it is more challenging in other places. It's also a big question. For instance, in the very large vehicles, like the Class 8 vehicles, it's unclear where the market is going in terms of how much of those vehicles are going to be hydrogen and how much of those vehicles are going to be battery electric. It makes it a little challenging to do that kind of forward planning. The coordination we have with the PUC and the Energy Commission is kind of a critical piece of that. The PUC is working on more forward planning strategies specifically on heavy duty transportation. It's really important for us to be talking to them and CEC staff about this is how the regulation works. I will tell you our advanced clean fleet regulation is very complicated because there's a lot of different timelines for deployment. Helping them figure out what those timelines are, how we anticipate it playing out, how do we prioritize in the energy sector the same things that are prioritized in the rule? For instance, the advanced clean fleets rule, the first deadline is around draged truck deployment from ports to warehouses. We need to be in constant communication with the Energy Commission, with the PUC, and with the ports themselves about how we see that rule playing out and where we see those registries happening in the draged registry. That's just kind of one small example. Another example of a success story, I think, is we have closer coordination in our incentive programs between the incentives that CARB distributes through the HVIP program to purchase the vehicles and then the Energize program, which the CEC administers for the infrastructure. So we are trying to stay as closely coordinated as possible, but sometimes it's not up to us because, for instance, we do sometimes have disconnect where an applicant in the HVIP program will sign up for vouchers to get incentives for their vehicles, but then the charging infrastructure lags behind. And so they're like, oh wait, we want to have these vehicles delivered in six months and I'm hearing from the utility that they're not going to be ready for another 12 months. So these are the kind of individual problems that we have to work to smooth out in communication with our sister agencies and with the utilities themselves. And I will say the utilities have been much more open to being creative in how to solve some of those problems. And I think that's really a positive result of the understanding that no one agency or private entity can do it by themselves. We all have to be coordinating together. Eddie, let me switch to you. Take an example of undergrounding to reduce the wildfire risk. And this is the low-income communities have wildfire risk, but the policy framework for undergrounding is not quite what is followed based on equity. So how would you, this is just one example. There could be many others. When you look at this transition from an equity point of view and you look at some of the plans, how would you overlay equity in this transition and say that if you're going to do this, we've got to look at it with this lens. Is that happening? And if not, should more of this be happening? What's your thought? I think there are two different levels and perhaps President Reynolds can even speak more to the rate structure and the way it potentially protects moderate to low-income homeowners or ratepayers generally. But that would be one level I'd look at when talking about undergrounding and just essentially the cost of a resiliency we had not anticipated even five years ago that we're now rushing toward. The other second thing, again, to return to the idea of community benefits is perhaps the workforce development. I do know one narrative that's often pushed around undergrounding is the idea of creating jobs that this creates a lot of potential long-term jobs around building futuristic transmission structure. And then when you create those jobs, it's not just about union jobs, but a concept called local hiring. So if you have a certain project who's getting hired within that radius of a project is the basic concept of local hiring and how does it tie into local job training systems that can ultimately feed into this vision that everybody knows the term green new deal but ideally inequitable in just economy where everybody can share the economic benefits. It's a hard vision. Union politics itself, labor politics is something that Brightline's very familiar with having done mandatory local hire in San Francisco, but it is possible. It's not just local ordinances, even state law can potentially require it. We're even seeing federal projects at the DOT level that require local hiring, but through even direct benefit agreements, community benefit agreements from the developer with the community. It's all an act of negotiation at the end of the day to determine what's best for the community. We're going to open it up for a question, but let me ask you since you mentioned workforce, we think we are in some of the workforce development business ourselves. What would you tell the young Leanne, the young Alice and the young Eddie who are there in a UC system out here or a Cal State system, or maybe at Stanford, what would you tell them in terms of your lessons learned from your own life and the future ahead that you see? Leanne? I guess I would start by saying don't set yourself on too rigid of a path no matter what you do, right? As you build your career, you want to think about experiences and building blocks, but always be open to where those experiences and building blocks are going to take you. So have a vision for your career. If your vision is, I want to make the world better. I appreciated the senator's points about public service being really important. Speaking of someone who came out of school with a heavy debt load, I can understand that that's not an option for everyone. So being creative about looking for jobs that include potentially a debt forgiveness component to them, being able to take advantage of some of those federal programs. But also recognizing that if you have a vision for your career to make change and make good, be open to the possibilities and where those might take you and don't get too set on a specific path because there are industries that didn't exist five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. So having that flexibility I think is so important. Alice? Just to tee off of something, Lance, I also came out of school with a lot of debt and so public service was not an option for me at the beginning and a lot of people said, if you go into the private sector, you'll never go back because you'll get used to it and it's really hard to transition into the public sector. It's not necessarily true. You can go into the private sector, get a lot of good training, maybe you stay in the private sector and you might include shifting into the public sector. The PUC is hiring. We have... We are too. I'm hiring too. See? Options. We have a lot of dedicated staff members who are doing the work that they do because they care about it and a lot of them come from a place where they worked really hard in school, they focused on learning and getting an education that would support them with a technical knowledge to come to a place like this at CPUC and so I would encourage students, if you're thinking about energy, there are lots of opportunities for you and just try to explore the full range of opportunities. We did fortunately have a shot school fellowship this summer, so Stanford came from Stanford. She was fantastic. A graduate student at Stanford, she worked in my office and so there are opportunities like that to explore different agencies throughout state government and so I would say just keep an open mind, as Leanne said, and be open to different paths. Maybe? I'll share something about myself that I normally do not do at conferences. I actually haven't done this before besides a class at Brown which were relatively small convenings. So I do illustration work. I've been doing it more seriously since the pandemic and the Instagram account I have has grown and grown and nowadays I'm going to have an upcoming graphic memoir about my career development, the work that I've done published by Penguin Random House in April 2024. So it's been an extraordinary trajectory to even get to that point but part of the reason why I wanted to create that story was what's not talked a lot about is the sacrifice needed to make environmental policy work and happen and I get personally nervous as a gentle argument, counter argument to what President Reynolds was saying. I get sometimes nervous when people go into the private sector, think they'll make, and this is not what I'm saying here, is the ideal pathway, but make a ton of money and then come back with a plan to save the world. That makes me nervous because in my mind that's what a James Bond villain does sometimes and I just worry sometimes that we don't think a lot about the trade-offs that we make in our life and in some ways I think the graphic memoir that I've created will indicate in some ways I've made too severe of a trade-off. I think about like have I been a dummy that honestly for working in the nonprofit sector as long as I have. I've always believed in the mission. I think it's a result of my own family background that I'm still doing what I do but when we talk about environmental policy, environmental careers, I also want to make sure that we set our sights on a social mission not just about making a quick buck, hopefully. Let me ask you, Leon. What was the... I don't know if you had plans, right, when you were college to become the head of the Air Resources Board. So what was the most pleasant surprise you have had as the president of Air Resources Board? Oh, that's a great question. Well, you know, when I was in high school I wanted to be Secretary of State, so I don't know. That was a... I clearly moved away from foreign policy. So I guess I would say that has been the thing that I have... The biggest surprise I think I enjoy most is the international engagement. Last year I visited seven different countries. You know, spoke with people from... in Japan, in Mexico, I had an opportunity to go to the European Union and advocate for strong heavy-duty standards. And it's really a great opportunity to learn from other countries what they're doing. You know, when I went to China and saw their electric vehicle deployment and their offshore wind deployment, it was just... it was great to see. And so I... And I think it's, as I mentioned earlier, you know, it's so important. California is... We're 1% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions, but because we have been able to, through our strong economy, we've been able to... and our strong policies, we've been able to, you know, be a thought leader, drive innovation, show how deployment can work, and the opportunity to share that experience and hear from others and figure out how we can make our policies and deployment better I think is the thing that's been most enjoyable about my job. Alice, when you were in Stanford, I don't know if you had plans to become the president of the California Public Utility Commission. So if you had, what was the... Has it lived up to your expectations? And if not, what was the most pleasant surprise that you have encountered? Well, I'll start by saying that I think Leigh-Anne would make a fantastic secretary of state. So... But no, I never thought I would be the president of the PC. I'm a lawyer by training, so I graduated from Stanford with a philosophy degree, didn't quite know what I wanted to do, and ended up going to law school, and really enjoyed the practice of law, but also kind of wanted to do things that felt more interesting to me. I had always cared about environmental work and tried to do as much of it as I could, and so got into state government. And then just really enjoyed state government and just feel like we have a lot of tools, we have more tools than what a litigator brings to the table, being as a part, being an administrative branch of state government. We work with the legislature, and then we implement laws, and we work with our litigators, and so we kind of have the full range of tools to build a government that works for the people. So I've enjoyed doing that, and I guess, you know, as far as a surprise at the PC, I think, you know, I learned, I was in the governor's office before, so I knew a little bit about what the PC did. It was a, not necessarily a surprise, but we're very welcome to me to see the quality of the staff and the dedication of the staff and work more closely with the staff at the CPUC. And so to see a full agency, we have 1,500 people who are, you know, really believe in what they're doing was important to me. The other thing they'll add is that I've really enjoyed working with commissioners throughout the country. So Public Utilities Commission, through our national organization, and then especially the Western commissioners who are working together with California on reliability and cleaner energy and cost-effectiveness. And so that has been just a real pleasure, and I've enjoyed learning from them and hopefully spreading some of what we're doing too throughout the West and throughout the country. Fantastic. We're going to open it up for questions now. I just encourage people to ask short questions so that we can have many more. So let's start with this side and then we'll sort of go back and go back and forth. Anyone from this side, questions? Yes. You can barely see the headlights. Okay. Go ahead. Hi. Thanks so much for your time. I'm Kailash Raman. I'm from FormEnergy. I work on a strategy and market development team. I wanted to ask about California's fleet of gas generators and disadvantaged communities. I believe the state has roughly 15 gigawatts of gas in disadvantaged communities or adjacent to them. And out of that 15, about 10 are in local reliability areas where they're being kept online due to kind of transmission constraints. So I wanted to ask what the state's vision is for ultimately transitioning away from these resources. Sure. I mean, I think it's through our planning process. We're looking at reliability needs both on a system level and a local level. Most of the gas plants are continued to be needed for system reliability in extreme conditions. One thing that we did recently was start a strategic reliability reserve. And so kind of the concept that I mentioned before is that we're having these wide variations in demand on, at this point, it's hot summer days. And we have to plan for that. And we're trying to look at new ways to do that. So on a small number of days in the summer, we need a large number of resources. And because, of course, reliability events affect low-income communities disproportionately, too. If the power is going out, there are some people that are hit harder than others. And so in planning for reliability, we created a reserve that would be controlled by the state where the state could make decisions about holding those resources out of the market so the state doesn't need to necessarily be compensated in order to have a viable business plan. And we shifted some of our gas resources recently into the reliability reserve so that they were there when we needed them, but we're not running them just because the private owner needs to continue to support the financial model. And with that transfer, those resources were taken out of the wholesale market. So they no longer bid in to the market. Some resources bid in, they don't get taken if we don't need them, but they're not even bid in at all. And so I think it's a really great model on how we can ensure that we have enough reliability but also be ready for those extreme events. I mean, look, you're from FormEnergy so I'll say also that we are looking very closely in evaluating long-duration energy storage. We know that some of the gas plants also provide the long-term, those days when the sun isn't shining and the batteries aren't able to charge up. So looking forward in the future as we model what we're going to need for the system, we're showing that in the future we are absolutely going to need long-duration energy storage. And so the question of how we do that, how we encourage it, how we get it at the right time, at the right cost is something we're really thinking a lot about. All right, let's move to that side. The lady in red. Hi, thanks. I'm Mindy Craig, Blue Point Planning. Thank you for this really thoughtful panel. So one of the things that seems to be a common baseline for everybody is that we're just doing like for like. We aren't asking anybody to make any compromises or to change what we're doing in terms of our energy use. And I'm curious, you know, to what end should we, as a society, as a state be looking at actually reducing our energy use overall and not planning for the highest worst case, but actually looking and say, we need to be more equitable, we need to be more affordable, and therefore we actually do have to make some compromises and can't have 100% or 120% of where we are. Eddie, you want to take it? I don't have the answer to this, but I also wanted to add like two more sentences to layer onto that is what happens when the power demand goes up, right? And when we're talking about charging EVs and, you know, electrifying homes, like in other words, the demand curve, how was that met the other day? And maybe I'll kick it to the regulators to answer this. I'm going to say something and I'll pass it over to Alice, but I guess I would quibble a little bit with the premise because I actually think it's not true what we're just doing like for like, I think we are really thinking much, much more deeper and systematically. And, you know, like the conversation around reliability is a great example. And you mentioned that earlier today that, you know, the grid was built to do a certain thing in a certain way with certain types of resources. And so what Alice has to do is sort of rethink that whole thing and figure out, you know, how you bring the right resources. What are the right policies and programs? What are the right market signals? What's the right market structure that needs to happen to shift? Kind of the form energy example is a good example. Like, you know, how do you think about the market structure for demand response? How do you think about the market structure for long duration storage? How do you think about those planning things? How do you continue to make progress on energy efficiency, which is always as Alice mentioned, sort of your first thing you're trying to do. And I think all of those things are happening. And one of the reasons they are happening is because if the lights go out then the support for these policies is affected, right? So we have to have a solid grid. If we are going to get people to move away from their natural gas appliances and towards energy, move their electricity towards transportation, towards electricity, they have to be confident that it's going to be there. And we are on a trajectory where we want to, for the first time in many decades of state policy, we do want demand to go up, but we want it to go up in a clean, efficient way. So I don't think we're trying to do like for like, Alice? Yeah, so I was going to start at the same place you did, Leanne, is that I don't think that that's true. We are asking people, individual California to think about the way they do things differently. Businesses to think about the way they do things differently. We do have an existing grid, and so we have to take that into account. And we have to take into account what the grid needs to accommodate all of these new changes. But the idea of saying to people, look, if you're going to charge your car, you need to think about when you charge it. If you're going to use electricity, it's not all about using less necessarily. It's about using it at the right time. Because, you know, so if we had, and you'll start hearing more and more about the coincidental peak, if you had every person charge in, plug in their electric vehicle in 2035, what is that, including heavy duty trucks, and you know, so if everyone's charging at the same time, what do you need to plan? The system that you need to plan to meet that demand is different than what we're planning for. We don't want that to happen. We are going to be using responsive technologies, both in rate design and other types of incentives to make sure that the grid is managed and used efficiently and that demand is managed and used. We're doing a lot of thinking about flexible rates and flexible demand at the PUC. But we also need to make sure that we're not just envisioning a customer who lives in Los Altos Hills and has an electric vehicle and, you know, can run their dishwasher at night or do all of the things that they need to do on a managed schedule. We're also thinking about people who live in SROs and people who live in inner cities, people who live in West Oakland and have jobs that don't allow them to charge their vehicles at the time when the PUC is telling them would be a good time to charge them. And so there are a lot of complicated questions that we're thinking about, but we very much are encouraging people to not think about business as usual. One quick thing to add. I did want to appreciate the CPC for your recent IRP decision that really takes into account the idea of on-lotting new sources of power generation, whether it's geothermal, offshore wind. There's a lot to like in the way our agencies are moving toward hopefully what's going to be a cleaner, more resilient grid. But it's also dependent on our ability to build to something we do. Let's move over here to the next question. Hi, my name is Shen Wang from the Green Development Institute. I have a question about climate finance. What financial instruments or tools do you think we should use most frequently or most, you know, like to support the energy transition? Thanks. That's a very broad question. Financial instruments. Actually, maybe I could put a little finer touch to this. There are lots of now federal incentives that are coming in into this. How are you planning from the state side to leverage the financial instruments into the project finance or other kind of investments for all the renewables and the infrastructure that needs to be built? How are you thinking about it? I think the most important thing is to make sure that we do not have policy decisions at the federal and the state level that are conflicting. Right? They need to be consistent. And so, you know, our staff spends a lot of time watching what's happening at the federal level, commenting on proposals, and making sure that we are not moving in opposite directions. I think that the federal, what the federal government is doing at this time is extremely important, extremely helpful for California since we are at this breaking point in rates and just our affordability crisis that we have here. Lance Ray, we need to make sure that our policies are consistent and that the programs work for us. We're trying to do so much, and we're ahead of other states in many ways. And so, some programs that are designed for West Virginia might not be great for California. But we need to try to fit into the federal programs to the greatest extent we can. I think it's important to recognize that the tax credits that the federal government has offered and extended have been very, very important and played a huge role. Great. Any questions from this side? Yes, ma'am? Claire Broom, 350 Bay Area. Thank you for a really engaging panel and important information. President Reynolds, you and both Senator Stern and Becker mentioned the importance of keeping the lights on. But as Lumen has demonstrated, over 95% of the power outages for customers are on the distribution grid. So I'd like to ask when the CPUC will put a value on resilience when they do their cost-effectiveness studies, particularly for distributed energy resources? So I think we have an open proceeding that relates to that question. I think 350 is a party. I don't think I should comment on that, but maybe others want to. I think if it's an active case, I guess you cannot talk about it. We'll shelve that for the time being. But let me ask you this issue about reliability and about the system and the resilience. I mean, there is an inherent tension out here. One is that you want as little risk as possible so that the things are reliable. On the other hand, we know there's a transition that we need to make that involves risk. So that is the inherent tension that we're dealing with out here, right? And how do you manage to navigate this in terms of risk? And I was going to ask you, there are lots of new technologies that are being developed. Is there a process in California to be able to de-risk it so that you integrate it into the system as rapidly as possible, but as little risk? Are you thinking about this in the Air Resources Board, for example? Yeah, I mean, I think all of the, you know, CEC, PUC, and CARB are all thinking about that in sort of our own ways. I think, you know, one way to... It is the tension, right? And I'll kind of restate the tension. You know, one way to reduce risk is to create redundancy, but redundancy increased costs. And so how can you de-risk without creating those additional costs? And I think there's being very clear about what you're trying to achieve and what are the ways you can achieve it without deploying new resources. You know, being creative around a lot of the work that the PUC is doing around demand response and other market opportunities to create those redundancies without building new resources. And, you know, also thinking about ways that you can achieve as much benefit from each of your programs, right? Circling back to our Advanced Clean Fleets rule. I mean, we really spent a lot of time thinking about how do you get the most air quality and climate benefits in structuring the program, but at the same time, really pushing innovation so that that innovation in the sector is as effective as possible. I think one thing that we do is we create pilot programs so to test new technologies, new rate designs, and we challenge our regulated utilities and also work together with the community choice aggregators to come forward with innovative pilot programs. So we have many. One of them that we recently approved is to take another step in creative rate reform and to have very dynamic rates and appliances and ag pumps also that respond to rate changes. And then we do what was talked about earlier is we have a shadow bill, and so the program doesn't cost the customer money, and in fact they only benefit if they're able to modify their rates in a way that matches this new structure that we're developing. And so it's a way to test a rate structure with a limited number of customers because there is a cost, of course. And then we study the results and we see how we can build and improve. Let me ask the last question. And Leanne, I think you triggered this. I was not planning to go there, but you mentioned about the international, all your visits internationally, et cetera. And the way I look at it is that every country, every region has a different initial condition, has a different constraints of boundary conditions. And when you go around, help us think about how you place California in the world. What are the lessons learned from California that can be used worldwide and what are the lessons worldwide that can be used out here? What are the best practices? Well, that's a big question. I guess I'll highlight a couple things. As Alice mentioned, sort of trying things out in a smaller scale and then deploying them in a larger scale, I think that's one way to think about it. As you think about decarbonizing different sectors of the economy, if you pick strategies that might create technologies that can then be deployed to other sectors, that's a really effective way of kind of expanding your... Cool benefits. Right. So we started with battery technology for vehicles and that battery technology is now scaling to be used in different ways. I think there's an opportunity to think about that with hydrogen, right? People are like, okay, you can start with hydrogen in fuel cells or in industrial processes and how can you take that technology and scale it up? In India, they're doing an amazing job of getting rid of two-stroke engines and they're deploying a lot of sort of battery swapping and there's some battery swapping going on in China. We don't do that in the United States. So is that something we need to think about? So I guess sort of using technology, incentivizing technology and then trying to use that technology in other ways and in other sectors. This is a fantastic discussion. This could have gone on for much longer. Let's give a big round of applause for the panelists out here. Thank you so much for your service. Thank you.


So we first saw that space was homogenous, there was no special place that I could point to and say everyone must agree that this is the origin. We next saw that speed isn't special either, you might see someone is going very quickly or very slowly depending on your reference frame and either point of view is equally valid. To wrap things up, let's see how we can transform between two reference frames moving at different speed. So here we have Bob's reference frame like this and in describing this situation we're going to make a few simplifying assumptions. The first of these is that the initial time t equals zero, Alice's origin coincides with Bob's origin so at t equals zero Alice's origin is right here. Now we're also going to assume that Alice's and Bob's axes initially line up and lie on top of each other like this and finally we're going to assume that Alice moves along Bob's x-axis and it's going to be at some constant velocity v so no acceleration, no turning. Now the no acceleration and the no turning are important but the other three assumptions aren't so we could have for example at t equals zero Alice's origin is somewhere else maybe their axes are rotated with respect to each other and Alice moves in some random direction. Now doing this would make the maths a bit more complicated but it won't teach us any new physics so we're going to stick to this simple system. So at some later time t Alice's axes have moved over here and let's say some event happens right here. What coordinates do Alice and Bob give this event? Before we start though let's write things a little bit differently. So previously when I've written x, b and y, b I've meant Bob's x and y axes now what I'm going to do is let x, b and y, b be the coordinates of the event in Bob's reference frame. Similarly let x, a and y, a be the coordinates of the event in Alice's reference frame. So now what we want is an expression for x, b and y, b in terms of x, a, y, a, v and t.