Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Alright. Good morning, everyone. We are at January, shortly after 09:30AM, and we are joined by Fisher Wendy Knight, Department of Winter and Lottery. We are doing introduction priorities and then maybe chitchat about a couple other ideas that are floating around within the, landscape of that portfolio. We did not do a miscellaneous alcohol bill last year, so we are starting to build some ideas. So, that's what we got going for us for this first tranche this morning. Kushner, good to

[Rep. Chea Waters Evans (Ranking Member)]: see you.

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: Thank you for having me. Good morning, everyone. Good to see you all. Happy New Year. I just wanted to briefly introduce Hannah Chauvin as our Director of Legislative Affairs and Communications. You might have met her last year. We weren't really in the State House much last year because we didn't have the miscellaneous alcohol bill and the department didn't have any legislative proactive policies. So you'll see Hannah around quite a bit. If you have any questions, connect with her or reach out to me directly.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: We get emails from her. Great.

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: Sure do.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: She hasn't had any presence in her inbox.

[Rep. Michael Morgan (Member)]: It's all good. So

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: good morning. Thanks for having me here. I think you wanted me to chat about a little bit of an update of the department. I thought I would start there and then talk about the legislative priorities for this year. Does that sound good, mister Chearet?

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Wonderful plan.

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: Excellent. Okay. So to recap, FY '25, we finished, alcohol sales, the retail sales at $101,000,000 in revenue. That's about 2% down from the previous year. You've heard me talk the last couple of years that alcohol sales are trending down nationally. We're seeing that in Vermont. We are actually seeing a better situation here in Vermont. In November, the control states, which are about 21 different states, collectively had year over year sales down by about 6%, and we're trending down about 2%. So we're doing a little better. Again, remember, we're not here to promote consumption. All we do at the department is we sell the product. We let people know where it is and how much it is. And so if sales are going down because people are drinking less, so be it. There are things we try to do in terms of, supporting the on premise licensees. Those are the bars and the restaurants and the resorts that must purchase alcohol from us. And so we're doing some sales programs for them and some initiatives. One of them is the b to b what we call the b to b connect. I think we talked about it last year. This is the online ordering system for the on premise licensees so that they don't have to walk into an eight zero two Spirit store literally with an order like this. They go online. It's very much set up like Amazon, and they can place their order. And so we've launched that this fall. So that's a very exciting initiative. And that is one of many steps the department has taken the last couple of years to support our business partners. We're in a unique situation. And you've heard me talk about we are certainly regulators, right? And we take that role very seriously. However, we also run businesses. And so we talk about our licensees, the Vermont businesses, whether they're manufacturers or they're the restaurants or resorts, as our business partners, because they are. And we're here to support them and make it easier for them and less costly and more efficient to purchase distilled spirits from them because they have no choice, right? So we want to make it easier for them and more efficient. The profits for FY '25 were $18,000,000 We transferred 9.5 into the general fund. And the reason for that, and you've probably heard me talk about it last year, certainly in appropriations, is because the department had historically been running a deficit on the fund balance, and that was because in 2018, the way that the state required us to account for retirement funding. So we cleaned that up last year, which is why we didn't send the 18,000,000. Normally, would have just sent the 18,000,000 over to the general fund, but because we, in consultation with finance and management, wanted to zero out the fund deficit, so we transferred 9,500,000.0. This year, our target is to transfer 16,000,000 into the general fund from the liquor control fund. On the liquor I'm sorry, lottery. Vermont Lottery is the other business we run. We had 155,000,000 in revenue, closing out FY '25, and then we transferred $30,000,000 of profit into the education fund. Remember, lottery contributes to the education fund. Even though 100% of our profits go to the education fund, it's a very tiny portion

[Rep. Robert "Bob" Hooper (Member)]: of the ed fund. It's less than 2%. And I think it's noting whenever we can, because I think people have a miss not you all, you know this, but

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: the general public has sometimes a misconception, and they think that the Vermont Lottery funds the education fund in a much more dramatic way. So we don't.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: I've actually had people suggest to me that we should use the lottery proceeds to fund education. Not realizing.

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: Great idea. Great idea. Right?

[Rep. Robert "Bob" Hooper (Member)]: So

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: we are planning to send $32,000,000 in profit FY '26. So you will see that it fluctuates in terms of over the years how much we've transferred from the lottery fund to the ed fund. Sometimes it's been high as 35,000,000. This year, it's $3,030,000,000. Part of that is because lottery sales are also down nationally. And so we saw f y '25, US lottery sales were down 5.6%. Again, in Vermont, we're doing a little better than nationally, yay for us. Right? We saw a decrease in lottery sales by 2.8%. So less of a decline, but still a little bit of a decline. A lot of that is obviously jackpot driven. Right? It's, inflation, people, whether they have disposable income. So, it's hard to predict what that end result will be for a transfer, and we are trying to be conservative. We would rather write under promise, over deliver. Is that it? So that's what we're trying to do. We did introduce two $30 tickets, so that price point is actually doing quite well in the market. And we will have a new game launched in February, and that is what we call a muscle game, and that's the multi state, all of the multi state lottery, I don't know, I can give you the, it's the governing body of all the national lottery stuff. And so, they're changing Lucky for Life will be Millionaire for Life. So, that's a new game that will launch in February. Sports Wagering, that's the other portfolio we have. We had FY '25, 6,200,000.0 in revenue share, and that was transferred to the general fund.

[Rep. Michael Morgan (Member)]: Can you repeat that, please?

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: Yes, 6,200,000.0 in revenue share for FY '25, and that was transferred to the general fund. We're expecting 6,200,000.0 this year. We're projecting, it to be flat. Part of the issue with though handle has been going up, handle is the total amount that's bet, has been going up. Remember, we just launched this in January, January 2024. So FY '25 that I gave you, that's the very first full fiscal year of activity and revenue that we have. What we had been seeing is that even though handle is going up, the winning payouts were going up as well, right? Because the way people were betting, they were winning the bets. And so that means that we are our revenue share comes from the adjusted gross wagering revenue. So we'll see. We we're on target to meet that. I I don't have any concern. Last year, I think we were a little optimistic. Right? Because we looked at our first six months of activity. We saw 3.5 revenue share. Great. Let's just double that and come up with seven. Well, that didn't materialize. We have we're having a strong NFL season, and so we'll see. But I'm confident that we'll be up to 6,200,000. You've been hearing, no doubt, a lot about some of the illegal gambling activity that's been occurring nationally. We had some incidents with the Major League Baseball, NBA. So, again, this is we haven't seen any activity in Vermont. We are starting to look at the proposition bets. Proposition bets, if you recall, is when people are allowed to to bet on a particular event and bet bet on a particular player. That's where you see nationally what's the problem is that you have unscrupulous coaches or players who are purposely throwing the game or not making certain rebounds and affecting gambling, which impacts the integrity of the game. So, we were one of the first states to not allow proposition bets to college players. So, if you recall a year or so ago, Charlie Baker, the president of the NCAA, had been asking states to not allow them, and so we've completely restricted that. So you are not allowed to bet on an individual college player in Vermont. Isn't what I'm saying is, if you're in Vermont, regardless of where that college player is, you're not allowed to place a bet out of proposition.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: And if I actually recall, was two years ago, because I think we were settled down in Room

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: 10. Yes.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: And you folks actually got accolades because you brought

[Rep. Michael Morgan (Member)]: Yes.

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: I had the note from Yes. Yes.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Yes. And I guess just for a situational one, remember one of the more notable instances with these proposition bets being caught. It was on a single pitch. And the pitcher, like, literally threw the ball, like, seven feet into the dirt outside the batter's box, and there was, like, a $75,000 bet on it. And so the platform that the bet was wagered on flagged that as just totally, like, just happened. So as as nefarious as it is, it was actually the system caught it. Right? Right. Yeah.

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: So we're also looking at the VIP programs, in the sports wagering realm. So we, you know, just it's it's, it's always, we have an excellent director of sports wagering, and there's always something that's coming up, and there's, there's some oversight that we have, obviously. We don't run that. Unlike the Vermont Lottery and liquor control, those are businesses that we run. With the sports wagering, we are solely the regulatory agency, and we work really well with the Department of Mental Health. They're our partner for the Responsible Gaming. That report program is working well as it should be. We're raising awareness, people aren't calling in, they're seeking services and assistance that they need it. And so we feel like we've really structured a really good relationship. As a reminder, the Responsible Gaming Program is for anyone that's participating in the gaming or sports betting. It's not just for the sports betting players, we combined it so it's for motel lottery players as well. We have a compliance program, as you know. So we have 14 sworn law enforcement officers. And this past year, we have So we have our regulatory inspections. That's where we go into license establishments and making sure that they're doing what they're supposed to be doing. Sometimes it's complaint driven, sometimes it's data driven in terms of where we see issues, and we go into these establishments and making sure that they have their certifications, education certifications, etcetera. So we had 2,360 regulatory inspections in FY '25. We also have a compliance program specifically to ensure that minors don't have access to tobacco and alcohol. And there we did twelve forty four compliance checks as part of that targeted youth access effort. I will say that for tobacco and alcohol, we always run about 91% compliance, sometimes higher. So generally last year, we were at 91% compliance. So that tells us that most of the license establishment are in compliance. We obviously lead with an education first. So we have an education team, and the investigators are there to educate our licensees. We find that for the most part, the licensees, the businesses want to do the right thing. They want to abide by the laws. They don't necessarily know what they are. So we just use a lot of guidance and written materials and graphics just so that they understand sort of where they need to be. We have also been working with the AG's office on the online tobacco compliance checks. You know, we know that there's a lot of activity online, and so we did 119 online tobacco compliance checks as well. And we referred 29 violations to the AG's office.

[Rep. Chea Waters Evans (Ranking Member)]: Yes. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Exactly what you mean? Like, what would people be doing online?

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: Illegally selling vapes or tobacco products online. To Vermonters or

[Rep. Chea Waters Evans (Ranking Member)]: Bless you. Thank you. Yes. Is it to Vermonters or is it Vermonters selling?

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: You're not allowed to purchase alcohol or vaping products online. Right.

[Rep. Chea Waters Evans (Ranking Member)]: Just period. Period. Okay. Thank you.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: You're welcome.

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: I know we'll be following the tobacco reform bill that the Attorney General's office has spearheaded. I think there's a bill, so we'll be talking more about that. Because we obviously work in partnership with the AGs on the tobacco compliance. Okay. Any questions before I move on to

[Rep. Michael Morgan (Member)]: What's that? I'm heading

[Chair Matthew Birong]: up on the screen from a representative Hooper of Burlington.

[Rep. Robert "Bob" Hooper (Member)]: Good morning.

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: Good morning.

[Rep. Robert "Bob" Hooper (Member)]: I have three questions, I guess. Is there a correlation between the online lottery income and the business of changing the win rate were, like, Powerball or Mega Millions. It's almost like you can't win it anymore. Who's the second question is who's monitoring the responsible gaming advertising? I've only seen a problem gambling commercial, quote, unquote, on a nineteen thirties World War one movie that I was up at 02:00 in the morning watching. So I'm wondering if we're hitting our target audience, and why did the retirement money go into the general fund?

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: Okay, let's start with the third, and I'll work my way up. So the retirement fund didn't go into the general fund. So what I was saying was the way that the finance and management asked the departments to hold money for retirement, started in 2018 and ended we ended up with a deficit. So that's what I was saying. To clear out the deficit, we only transferred 9,500,000.0 as as opposed to the 18,000,000.

[Rep. Robert "Bob" Hooper (Member)]: Okay.

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: So we cleared up the the the running deficit, basically, last year. Your other question, who is monitoring advertising? Are you talking about the advertising from the sports wagering operators?

[Rep. Robert "Bob" Hooper (Member)]: Yes. Yes. No, no, no. I'm talking about the, if you need help, here's where we call sort of infomercials that you might find on television cable anytime, anywhere, but I'm really not seeing anything that I'm noticing during prime time. So I'm wondering if we're getting bang for the buck for it.

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: I I'm not certain. I'm not understanding who who who you're talking about for the advertising. The sports book operators? I mean, we require them to have they do advertising that's sending information to their players. You're talking about the PSAs that the state is doing?

[Rep. Robert "Bob" Hooper (Member)]: Yes.

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: Yeah. I'm gonna have to get back to you on that. I don't I don't know the answer to that question.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Bob, you referring to, like, the problem gaming advertising from the Department of Mental Health?

[Rep. Robert "Bob" Hooper (Member)]: Probably, yes.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Okay.

[Rep. Robert "Bob" Hooper (Member)]: Yeah. It was a component of the bill originally.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Correct. I think there is, like, two different, like, inputs possibly, but we'll we'll look into that and get a better answer for you then.

[Rep. Robert "Bob" Hooper (Member)]: I was surprised that, they were talking about somebody made a bet on whether we were gonna go in and blow up Venezuela, and somebody made $400,000 on it. So betting seems to be coming pretty prevalent on everything.

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: Yeah. That that kind of, wagering is not allowed in Vermont. So, our online sports betting is for sporting events?

[Rep. Robert "Bob" Hooper (Member)]: Yes. Was an I'm sorry. What was implied? That was an aside. Aside. Oh. Oh. Sorry. I don't have much voice.

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: It's okay.

[Rep. Robert "Bob" Hooper (Member)]: The link between lottery games changing and participation going down, Is that something that So

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: you so the first question, let me can you repeat your first question? I heard online lottery and odds.

[Rep. Robert "Bob" Hooper (Member)]: Have you seen a correlation in decreased participation since things like Powerball or Mega Millions or whatever have changed their odds of winning to make them less favorable? Are people not playing as much because of that, or do we have an idea?

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: I'm not aware that, Muscle has changed the odds for Powerball and Mega Millions. I don't I don't think that's accurate. I think, you know, sales are down, again, because people have less disposable income. Things are costing more money. You know, if there's not a high jackpot, people, I guess, they don't think a million dollars is worth buying a lottery ticket. So they wait till it's $1,800,000,000.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: I feel just isn't

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: worth Apparently. But it's not I did we did have a game change with Mega Millions, and the price ticket went up from $3 to $5, and we did see that that impacted sales price point. Ironically, the $30 ticket is doing very well. But people are buying less of the 1 and $2 tickets except around the holidays. You know, but the $30 ticket is doing well.

[Rep. Robert "Bob" Hooper (Member)]: I can't pretty much. You

[Chair Matthew Birong]: very much.

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: You're very welcome. Any other questions about the updates?

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Hands from the table, curiosities. Representative Morgan, do we get a cut out of, speaking of power ball, do we get a cut out of that, the national level power ball? Do we get a cut out of that?

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: We get a do we get a cut out of that? I mean, what do think?

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Do anything we out of that?

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: Of course. Yeah. That's part of the revenue, and I can give you that for FY 20

[Chair Matthew Birong]: larger scale program nationally. We still

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: Yeah. When we sell Powerball tickets in Vermont

[Chair Matthew Birong]: I assume we do.

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: That's part of the revenue. Yep. Yeah. I mean, we get a

[Chair Matthew Birong]: You get a you get a cut on the sale and you get a cut off On the wind.

[Rep. Michael Morgan (Member)]: Correct. That was what I was asking. I think percentage of somebody in the state wins.

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: Well, if someone from Vermont were to win and I was just talking about the tax commissioner about this yesterday. So if someone in Vermont was to win a large jackpot, which they did. I forgot the amount, but there was a fairly sizable jackpot winner in Vermont. And so the state, and I don't have all the details, but the state automatically takes a percentage of that. The feds take a percent and the state takes a percentage of the winnings. Additionally, that Vermonter would have to pay, income tax. So the state receives an additional, percentage from that, in addition to the revenue that we make selling the tickets. So we're always hoping for a a Vermont or two. So is the commissioner. Exactly. Exactly.

[Rep. Chea Waters Evans (Ranking Member)]: That's how we'll fund the education system.

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: We

[Chair Matthew Birong]: can talk about the chop later.

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: All right, so talking about lottery, our one legislative policy this year from the department is modernizing lottery and seeking legislative approval to allow digital lottery. And that's the purchase of a lottery ticket on your phone or the Internet. So right now, you go into a retail store, you can buy the lottery tickets from the clerk on the counter, or you can go to a self-service vending machine. That's a new technology that we launched a couple of years ago. And the next iteration is allowing players to set up accounts to purchase their lottery tickets from the phone or internet. Lottery is a retail network. It's a product that people buy in grocery stores or convenience stores, just like milk or bread, whatever. So it's important to realize the retail landscape and that we want to meet the players where they are. And whether we like it or not, people are using their phones to do banking and to do shopping. And that's really what digital lottery is, is allowing, the the players Vermont Lottery players to set up accounts and purchase their tickets that way. I met with Representative Nugent this winter and talked about shopping, right? Like, people go to Target, they can go to a physical store, they can shop at Target's website, or they can shop on the app. And that's very much what this is about.

[Rep. Michael Morgan (Member)]: My question then is, if we purchase it online,

[Chair Matthew Birong]: and

[Rep. Michael Morgan (Member)]: we were to win something, then the Department of the Grand Marry would get that percentage that a retailer would normally get?

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: Yes, so the way we're going to set it up is online sales, the department would essentially function as the agent. And so right now, if you go into agent store like representative Marcotte, who's actually gonna sponsor the bill, he is a lottery agent. And so people walk into the store, they buy tickets, and he gets the commission on that. The way we're planning to structure digital lottery is to, collaborate with the retailers. So a couple of things, as how we would set this up. We would create a percentage share, a revenue share in a sense with the retailers so Whether it's 1% or 2% or 5%, whatever that flat percentage is, we would give of the digital lottery sales to our lottery agents. We would do that on prorated sales basis. And that invests them into the program. When you think about this, it's not one or the other, right? It's called omni channel because you're allowing players to either go into the retail store, play online, and both. And so you could set up promotions where you're encouraging people, if they were to win on their digital lottery platforms, they could go in and claim their prize. There might be an incentive to go in and claim their prize. The other thing we would do is set up a QR code for each of the lottery agents. So if I go into Representative Markout's store, I see the promotion or the advertising about digital lottery, I'd say, oh, what's this? It's a QR code. I click on it, I go and I set up an account, and representative markup then gets a commission for me signing up, because I want these customers, and I've signed up to the account. So we've created an arrangement with the retailer to benefit digital lottery. In other states that have launched digital lottery, like Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, they have seen an increase in overall sales. So you're not cannibalizing the retail sales, you're seeing that you're growing sales overall. Part of that is because you are tapping into a new customer base. And this is the other important piece of digital lottery. There are younger players, more tech savvy players, or maybe there are people that don't want to be maybe they're in a wheelchair and they don't have it's too hard for them to get out and about. The ability to offer lottery products and purchases on the phone opens up the program to other people that wouldn't be taking advantage of it right now or playing. Right? So you're really investing in the future of your lottery player. And as we've heard from the governor yesterday, obviously education is very important, and we need to do something about our education system. Our small piece in that is ensuring that we're constantly generating 30 to $40,000,000 for the Ed Funds. And so by really sort of keeping up with modern technology, we're ensuring the future of the Vermont Lottery by investing in those programs.

[Rep. Michael Morgan (Member)]: I think that's a good concept, because I'd hate to see some of the mom and pops that depend on that extra little income of their lottery sales to lose out on lottery sales. To know that they're getting a kickback.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: They're being Consciously compensated

[Rep. Michael Morgan (Member)]: for it, then that's great.

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: Yeah, wouldn't use the term kickback.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: I was just going to say

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: I didn't mean kickback, as percentage

[Rep. Michael Morgan (Member)]: of the sales.

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: They will get a percentage of the digital lottery. That's good.

[Rep. Lucy Boyden (Clerk)]: Boyden? I see in your testimony that our lottery would need a staffing need. Do you agree on your budget for that at the moment?

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: That actually is a piece of It's a request that we have in our budget to the governor, that's not been approved yet. I don't know whether that's approved. We are planning to do, assuming we get the legislative approval, we're planning to proceed. We don't need to have that position. We'll figure out how to do it without it. That's what I told Adam Gresham.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Fair enough. I

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: understand that there's a lot of need right now across the enterprise. So we are trying to make our request as minimal as possible.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: For at Waters Evans?

[Rep. Chea Waters Evans (Ranking Member)]: Does system work similarly to the way it would for sports wagering, of preventing people who aren't old enough from Yes.

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: Yes, we have So in lottery, it's 18 and above. And so we have the age verification programs in place like we do for sports wagering. And then you have your know your customer program, so the responsible gaming component would be the same way it is for sports wagering, in terms of timeouts, algorithms that detect responsible gaming, problem gaming behavior. They would have access to all of the resources that the Department of Mental Health has created for the responsible gaming. They would be able to sign up for the voluntary self exclusion list that the department maintains. And, again, unlike going into a retail network right now, we have no idea who the players are, what they're wagering, how much money they're spending. There's no data whatsoever. We don't collect that. It's all cash. Right?

[Chair Matthew Birong]: So analog.

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: Yeah. So when you, the benefit of the digital lottery is then you actually will have all kinds of data on the players, what they're purchasing, what they're setting for limits, the activity that we see in sports Beijing, you'll be able to see that for digital lottery as well.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: And I guess my question is, sort of geofencing technology would apply to capture at a state tourism coming in with like the how we said that was sports right here, right? Like the tourists come in from that state, we're still capturing all of that the same way

[Rep. Robert "Bob" Hooper (Member)]: it does with sports right here?

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: I think so.

[Rep. Michael Morgan (Member)]: You can only play Vermont Lottery in Vermont. Can't play New Hampshire Lottery here. So if you were to be on a platform, it wouldn't necessarily be the location you would do.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Okay, gotcha. Cool. I guess that's the same answer, but different things. Yes. Just wanna make sure somebody coming up from Connecticut who is playing is scooping our stuff.

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: Yeah. So that's a yeah. That's a great point because same as sports wagering. If you're in Connecticut and you're on digital lottery, come to Vermont, you're going to be shut off and go on

[Rep. Michael Morgan (Member)]: the Digital Lottery app for Vermont. It would be a different app. The Connecticut Lottery app in the state of Vermont would be

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: a lot of good money.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: We'll get granular on that one later.

[Rep. Michael Morgan (Member)]: Each state has an app.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Yeah. I mean, that's what we're gonna figure out.

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: Yes. Yes. Every state has an app. Every state that does, digital lottery has a different vendor. So the way it would work is we would do an RFP, we would send it out, submit bids, review them, and we would select one vendor. On the lottery side, just like for our gaming system, we have one vendor, Scientific Games, and that's what we would do for this as well. We would be selecting one company to do the digital lottery platform. Unlike sports wagering, where we had up to three to six, we chose three. Alright. Any other questions on our lottery modernization?

[Chair Matthew Birong]: I think that was a great run through for the first conversation. Thank you, Commissioner.

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: You're very welcome. So miscellaneous alcohol bill, we have a few technical corrections that we've put forward. If you have any questions, I mean, these are things that we feel we needed to clean up. I know that the miscellaneous alcohol bill, you're working on it. It has other things that industry has asked us of, asked you of. But those technical corrections are truly technical corrections, just meaning to clear up things that were oversights or, I would say, mistakes. I realized that when we did the special event permit to allow special events in retail establishments, The bill, you know, the language used to be very specific about a gallery or this or that, and we cleaned that up and said retail establishment. Because whether you're selling ceramics or you're selling books or you're,

[Chair Matthew Birong]: you know,

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: cares, right, as long as you get the permit. And apparently, that was set to sunset in July, which was never the intention. So we need to do something about that, I think. But we can talk more about the miscellaneous alcohol bill when you have it ready. Happy to come in, talk about it. Great, any other questions?

[Chair Matthew Birong]: I don't have anything for you right now. So, So I guess that gives us a couple of minutes before our

[Rep. Michael Morgan (Member)]: tentatively quarantine.

[Commissioner Wendy Knight (Department of Liquor and Lottery)]: Yeah.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Eleven. We actually have till eleven. So I guess we have nothing else from you folks. We'll take a break for a little while. We can take a look at, what we're gonna be speaking to with two representative Stone's bills at eleven. And with

[Rep. Robert "Bob" Hooper (Member)]: that,

[Chair Matthew Birong]: thank you