MINUTES OF THE meeting
of the
ASSEMBLY Committee on Judiciary
Seventy-Second Session
March 12, 2003
The Committee on Judiciarywas called to order at 8:14 a.m., on Wednesday, March 12, 2003. Vice Chairman John Oceguera presided in Room 3138 of the Legislative Building, Carson City, Nevada, and, via simultaneous videoconference, in Room 4401 of the Grant Sawyer State Office Building, Las Vegas, Nevada. Exhibit A is the Agenda. Exhibit B is the Guest List. All exhibits are available and on file at the Research Library of the Legislative Counsel Bureau.
Note: These minutes are compiled in the modified verbatim style. Bracketed material indicates language used to clarify and further describe testimony. Actions of the Committee are presented in the traditional legislative style.
COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT:
Mr. John Oceguera, Vice Chairman
Mrs. Sharron Angle
Mr. David Brown
Mr. John C. Carpenter
Mr. Jerry D. Claborn
Mr. Marcus Conklin
Mr. Jason Geddes
Mr. Don Gustavson
Mr. William Horne
Mr. Garn Mabey
Mr. Harry Mortenson
Ms. Genie Ohrenschall
Mr. Rod Sherer
COMMITTEE MEMBERS ABSENT:
Mr. Bernie Anderson, Chairman (excused)
Ms. Barbara Buckley (excused)
GUEST LEGISLATORS PRESENT:
Assemblyman David E. Goldwater, District No. 10, Clark County
STAFF MEMBERS PRESENT:
Allison Combs, Committee Policy Analyst
Risa B. Lang, Committee Counsel
Deborah Rengler, Committee Secretary
OTHERS PRESENT:
Dennis K. Neilander, Chairman, State Gaming Control Board
Dean Heller, Secretary of State, State of Nevada
Vice Chairman Oceguera:
I do not know where Mr. Anderson is, so we are going to start. The Assembly Committee on Judiciary will come to order. [Roll called.] Ms. Buckley should be excused; all other members should be marked present as they arrive. This morning it appears that we have one bill on the agenda. Our colleague, the Chairman of Assembly Committee on Commerce and Labor, Mr. Goldwater, welcome to the Assembly Committee on Judiciary.
Assembly Bill 163: Makes various changes to provisions concerning financial practices. (BDR 7-383)
Assemblyman David E. Goldwater, District No. 10, Clark County:
[Introduced himself.] What an honor it is to be in front of this esteemed Committee. I have today before you Assembly Bill 163, which I will explain to you, and I am honored today to be supporting A.B. 163 through the hard work of not only the Secretary of State Dean Heller, who sits at the table with me and has worked diligently along with Ms. Renee Parker, his Chief Deputy, but also with the help of Dennis Neilander of the State Gaming Control Board, who has worked with me on a particular section of this bill.
Assembly Bill 163, had I brought this issue to you a few years ago, would have seemed probably as pointless as Tartan Day. Corporate governance—do we even know what that means? What it is? In fact, if you recall, before this Committee last session, we weren’t talking about protecting investors, we were talking about protecting boards of directors. In fact, [former Nevada] Senator [Mark A.] James brought us a bill that immunized boards of directors, further extending the alter ego doctrine. In the end, I think we settled on what was current practice, which was that we recodified what was the Polaris decision through the wisdom of this Committee. I think you did a wonderful job protecting investors and companies.
But, three years ago, two years ago, even savvy financial professionals could not have told you what corporate governance was. They could not identify the major issues involved in corporate governance. In 2002, I did a little search; the words “corporate governance” appeared roughly the same number of times in news articles, which was about 575 in 2002, as the six years before combined, so it was not on anyone’s tongue.
Then what happened? Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia—these companies were exposed in committing massive corporate fraud, defrauding shareholders, investors; they defrauded everybody. But who cares, right? Your constituents may own Enron or WorldCom, caveat emptor. They bought it; they knew what came along with it. What we found out was, when there is no confidence in the governance system, in the regulatory system, markets suffer. And when markets suffer, we all suffer.
What I brought to you today is a bill that addresses this at a state level. I could rehash what happened in all those different companies; there is a lot of information out there and I encourage you to do that. In fact, I provided you with some information (Exhibit C and Exhibit D), and I will go through that in a moment, but we are not here to rehash what went wrong. We are here to figure out what we can do to provide solutions to make Nevada the best place in the country to do business, so let us go first to the material I have provided for the Committee.
It starts with a little schematic here, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. Most of what is done in the regulatory system to address fraud and corporate governance issues is done by federal regulators and by the federal government. They reacted so swiftly to this pressing problem, they passed what is called the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The schematic shows the regulatory framework that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act lays out. This is important because it helps me understand a lot better how the Secretary of State functions and, we hope through the passage of this legislation, how he will be regulating. I would put him more as an SEC (Security Exchange Commission) if you sort of transpose this down to the state level. That is what he does, and it is important to understand the role that he and his agency play in the regulation of state entities.
Next was sort of an Enron chronology. What brought this to mind was how fast, or why this was important was just how fast things went wrong on one of the biggest, most well-respected companies in the country. You need good laws in place not during the crisis, not after the crisis, you need good strong statutes, good strong regulations, good strong enforcers, and good strong regulators in place long before the crisis occurs or else you will be in real trouble.
[Assemblyman Goldwater continued] And then I put together sort of a who, what, where, when, why of all the different kinds of corporate scandals. A lot of us do not understand, I know that I did not understand for a long time, exactly what went wrong there. It just seemed like there were these guys in suits that seemed to have done pretty bad things, and that is absolutely the case. But a lot of it is basic large organization flaws. There were problems with conflicts of interest. There were problems where somebody who is supposed to be objective, an auditor, was being paid for “other work” besides the audit, and then all of a sudden we question the quality of the audit that he is providing. Those are some of the things that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act addresses and it is also addressed in A.B. 163.
Let me go through the bill, or the Secretary of State and his Chief Deputy can go through the bill, but it is pretty simple. Section 1 talks about impeding an investigation by his office or any other office in this state, and it applies, if you notice, to Chapter 90 of the Nevada Revised Statutes [NRS], which is the Securities [Uniform Act] chapter. It seems strange we need to put these things into law, but they are very important. It is a very important tool for his office to use. “Destroy, alter, erase, obliterate or conceal any book, paper, document or record with the intent to conceal a violation of any provision of this chapter.” We are talking about destroying records. I want to emphasize to this Committee on the record, this certainly applies to electronic communications, which these days can be a very powerful “paper trail.” I know that I feel strongly that this applies to a hard disc, as well as it does to any general ledger. “Delay, hinder the investigation”; you get a very good sense what we are trying to stop in Section 1.
Section 2 is the increase in penalty. There is not one thing we can do to change the regulatory framework that would do anything to hinder fraud and abuse of our corporations as much as putting one guy in jail for a long time. All the experts who review these issues say that is a very significant deterrent to committing fraud. When these guys are getting away with murder, and pardon me, it is not murder, it is fraud to the tune of ten hundreds of millions of dollars. And now you are a thief, you are a thief, and it does not matter if you steal 5 cents or $5 million. But these guys are saying to themselves, “Geez, I put an extra $100 million in my pocket, so they fine me $50,000 – big deal.” Put the guy in jail for a year, 2 years, 20 years, and fine them $100,000 or $200,000 per incident, and the guy starts having second thoughts. In this corporate culture of greed, where [people think] “hey, it is OK if I do it because the guy next to me is doing it.” Well, when the guy next to you is going to jail, it is a whole other item.
Section 3 extends the statute of limitations for the above-mentioned item. I am not sure what Section 4 does, maybe Ms. Parker can help me, but it seems to me it applies some criminal statutes.
Then we want to get down to Section 5, which is something that the Chairman of the State Gaming Control Board assisted me with adding. What Section 5 says is if a non-restrictive licensee uses one company to do their internal audit, then they will not be able to use that same company to do their external audit. Is this a practice that is occurring today? Yes, to a very small degree. Is it a problem today in the state of Nevada? No, not right now. Could it be a problem in the future? Could you some day question whether or not the internal audit is aboveboard, or even the external audit is aboveboard if they are the same company? Yes. So, we want to change that; we want to make sure that our gaming companies in this state have no questions on the quality of their financial documents.
That is this bill. I invite the Secretary [of State] or even the Chairman [of the State Gaming Control Board] to speak if they would like. If not, I will answer any questions.
Assemblyman Carpenter:
I do not know in Enron’s case, but did the same thing happen? It seemed like all the auditors were the ones that were at fault. Does this bill cover any of that area, like what you are talking about in the gaming arena?
Assemblyman Goldwater:
[Let me give you] a little summary of what happened at Enron, and I did a lot of work in my private life in this area. What happened at Enron was twofold and both of them are addressed in this bill:
The [United States] Senate Finance Committee just released a report on what happened there as very critical of Arthur Andersen and the safeguards the accounting profession was supposed to put in place. If this happens at the state level, you start going to that degree to destroy documents, you are committing a crime, and you potentially could go to jail for it.
Assemblyman Carpenter:
What about the situation you were talking about in the bill that the internal auditor for gaming property cannot do the outside audit. Is there anything like that in the bill that would pertain to an Enron situation?
Assemblyman Goldwater:
Absolutely, just for the gaming companies. The schematic here explains it. In the Enron situation, there is not much we could do at the state level. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which is very analogous to this bill on the federal level, addresses the conflict of interest between auditor, company management, and other work done by the auditor. That was addressed at the federal level.
Assemblyman Geddes:
I am not sure if the question is directed to Mr. Goldwater or the LCB [Legislative Counsel Bureau]. The question I have is, where we change it from a Class C to a Class B [felony], we go on to specify what the Class B penalty is, and I am just wondering why we need to do that and not just leave it as the original language, where it refers back to NRS 193.130. Was there a reason to explicitly put it in there?
Allison Combs, Committee Policy Analyst:
Category C and D and E are all standard terms of years. D and E are both 1 to 4; C is a 1 to 5 term of years; Bs range throughout the statutes and they can vary between the 1 to 20 [year] range – some are 1 to 6, 1 to 10, 1 to 20. So for Bs, you need to specify.
Assemblyman Claborn:
Mr. Goldwater, I am going to ask you a question along the lines of Mr. Carpenter. We are talking about Arthur Andersen and the auditing with Enron and so on. This particular bill we are discussing, that would not pertain to something like Arthur Andersen auditing; it would have to go to a federal level?
Assemblyman Goldwater:
I think that probably the best way to illustrate the difference between what we are doing here in the state of Nevada and what is under the jurisdiction of the Securities and Exchange Commission is probably to let the Secretary of State tell you or give you some anecdotal evidence of what is occurring here in the state, if you will allow me.
Vice Chairman Oceguera:
I have about four people with questions and then we will jump back to the Secretary of State, unless they are all going to be directed that way.
Assemblyman Mortenson:
I thought I understood the difference between an internal and an external audit, but maybe I do not. Maybe you can explain to me.
Assemblyman Goldwater:
I can even have Mr. Neilander come up. Statutorily, if you look at the bill, the [State Gaming Control] Board is going to prescribe an internal audit that looks into internal controls, that looks at a number of different things that are in the statute. I am sure that Mr. Neilander can tell you a lot more clearly than I can what is going on inside, on the revenue side of things. An external audit looks at the company’s balance sheet and income statement as a whole, which also decides just the revenue, what is coming in. It looks also at the liability side of the balance sheet, how things are spent, and whether or not things balance. An internal audit, I do not think, is as balance-sheet-oriented as an external audit. I am certainly not the expert on that, but Mr. Neilander can clear that up for you.
Dennis K. Neilander, Chairman, State Gaming Control Board:
[Introduced himself.] I would just amplify what Mr. Goldwater has already said. Essentially, the way this works in Nevada, I think the easiest way to describe it, is a three-legged stool and the three legs are as follows: The Board’s audit division is one leg; the internal auditor is another leg; and the external auditor is the third leg. Those three legs have to all stand on their own, but together they make up the whole system. Now, if two of the legs get a little bit too close to each other, you still have some stability but it is not as strong of a stool. It is an analogy that I use sometimes to describe this.
The internal audit is primarily focused on compliance with internal controls. Within a casino environment, we adopt the minimum internal control standards and there are an excess of a hundred that may apply to any one department. That internal audit function is constantly monitoring compliance with minimum internal controls.
The external audit, as Mr. Goldwater said, is primarily focused on financial matters. The external auditors are looking at the balance sheet, the income statement, but they are also looking at the supporting documentation that leads to those final numbers. Now, they do, to some extent, rely on some of the work of the internal auditors. One of the benefits in this bill is you have a clear separation between the external auditors and the internal auditors. And then, of course, in Nevada we have something unique inasmuch as we have a separate state-controlled Audit Division that does its own audits. So, you really then have the three-legged stool and, of course, our audit’s focus is on internal controls and also on tax revenue. Obviously, our main concern is ensuring that the state is getting its fair share of the taxes and the taxes that are due to it.
Assemblyman Brown:
Just a couple of questions. First of all, Mr. Goldwater, does this go then both through the external accountants and the internal corporate individuals as far as the application of Section 1? I just want to make sure, I certainly think it should.
Assemblyman Goldwater:
I think anybody in any investigation.
Assemblyman Brown:
That is what I was thinking. The second question, if I may. Was there any discussion about the language, for instance, used on page 2, line 7, with regard to “destroy, alter, erase, or obliterate”? I want to make sure we are including not only those who do the actual deed but a lot of times that comes by directive from above. So I am wondering if there was some discussion or if we feel maybe we need to say something either “personally or through another cause to destroy, alter…” I just want to be sure that somebody does not try to escape this by saying, “I didn’t do it,” while the other guy is saying, “Well, he told me to.” I think we could get those folks, but I think we might want to include language that clearly gets someone that is directing that.
Assemblyman Goldwater:
I think you have made an excellent point, Mr. Brown. I think if we can clarify the statute here. I will not speak for the Secretary of State, but I think that only makes this a better bill. Thank you for the suggestion.
Assemblyman Brown:
The other thing, I look at the fine in Section 2, and we hear about folks that walk away. There are really two sins to me in this: one is that huge, enormous loss of investor assets; and the other is that you have some of these folks that make the inside trade as the stock price is going down. They know what is happening. And, of course, an offshore bank cannot stock up with money, so to me the $100,000, in some instances, is absolutely a pittance. I do see that it states “for each violation,” and I would hope that we could extend that as far as possible. Was there any discussion of tying that fine to some of their activities and looking at specific facts of what they may have walked away with in perpetrating the crime?
Assemblyman Goldwater:
You make another great point, something I think about all the time. This Committee deals with criminal issues. If I hit somebody over the head and steal their purse, I will make a hundred bucks or two, but I will go to jail for a long time, and I will have something hanging around my neck. These guys did far worse, they hit thousands of people over the head and in many cases stole more than their purse – stole their life’s dreams. What you are talking about here is not only a criminal fine, but there are provisions in the statute now that exist to exact restitution as well as provisions in the civil law that allow people to prove damages, as well, so restitution is part of the current law, as well as a civil remedy.
Vice Chairman Oceguera:
You did an excellent job of presenting this bill. I cannot believe that the Secretary of State could have anything more, but I…
Assemblyman Goldwater:
I really would like to commend the Secretary of State, the Chairman of the State Gaming Control Board, and the members of the State Gaming Control Board, who really do look out for investors [and] for corporate officers. I think [they] have a genuine nonpartisan altruistic desire to make Nevada a great place to do business.
Dean Heller, Secretary of State, State of Nevada:
[Introduced himself.] With me is our Chief Deputy, Renee Parker. Mr. Goldwater and I decided to put her between us because we feel that she is better than both of us combined, so if there are any specific questions maybe she is the correct person to ask.
We also have in the audience our lone attendee in Las Vegas, Charlie Moore, who is the Director of our Securities Division. So if there are any questions that arise that are more specific, perhaps Charlie can come forward.
I want to thank the author of this bill, Mr. Goldwater, in his efforts. He gives a lot of credit to others but truly he came to our office, wanting to do something in this state to reflect the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. He asked our office specifically, “What can we do here in Nevada to assure that the investors are protected in Nevada?” We had some legislation that we were working on and said, “Why don’t we combine the two pieces of legislation and put something together that truly does protect the investors here in the State of Nevada?” And I think this is a good result of the work that we have done together. So again, [while he] gives a lot of credit to other people, truly Mr. Goldwater deserves the necessary credit for bringing this bill forward.
I want to kind of put a local face on this for the Committee and hope you understand that what we are dealing with constantly within our Securities Division. I remember a story a few years ago of a couple here in Carson City, and these are stories that could occur anywhere in the state – Clark County, Elko County, Washoe County – but this one happened to be in Carson City. This couple was in their 80s and both of them had prepared and worked their whole lives so they had a small nest egg. In fact, the gentleman that I talked to had been a meat cutter for forty years, he had saved enough money so that he could retire, chose Nevada to retire to, he owned his home, and he had about $250,000 in the bank. He was going to use that $250,000 in his 80s, figuring that was enough money to take care of him for the rest of his life…until a broker got hold of him and went through what I consider to be some churning of their account. I asked to see copies of the receipts of the transactions and they were done on yellow pads of paper, so there was not even an official receipt. It was all done on a yellow pad of paper and those were the receipts he was handing to me. But in the process, over six months and $250,000, he had lost somewhere between $100,000 and $150,000 dollars.
The purpose of A.B. 163, in my opinion, is [to serve as] a deterrent to stop these things from happening. The increase in some of these penalties will send a strong message to the industry that those who are willing to prey on some of these seniors. It is not just seniors, but typically it is. Young families also find that, in their efforts to buy their first house or get their kids to college or whatever the case may be, they are preyed upon as much as the senior citizens are in this state. But, this bill goes a long way, I believe, as Mr. Goldwater said, to deter some of these activities.
Section 1 specifically discusses the protection of some of this paperwork that we are discussing. The destroying, the altering, the obliteration, the concealing of documents – we do not have a lot of concerns in this particular area but I think it is a good part of the federal act that ought to be moved into the state act. Then in the future, we have a good basis for investigations so that we do not have that kind of problem in the future. Again, we do not deal with the Enrons, we do not deal with the WorldComs; we do deal with brokerage houses, we do deal with banks, we do deal with security brokerage houses, and these kinds of provisions would be very helpful in our investigations as we go forward to protect the public.
Vice Chairman Oceguera:
On that Section 1, Mr. Goldwater mentioned that he thought that the document of record would cover electronic documents or e-mail. Is there somewhere where that is referenced that a record is in electronic format just so that we are covered on the electronic means? We are not sure, but we will find out.
Secretary of State Heller:
Going on to Section 2, again, the author of this bill was very frank and straightforward on this. I think corporate fraud in the past has paid in the state of Nevada. Prior to the last three years, when the market had a historic downturn, we had found in the first five years and prior to the ten years of a real healthy market, people who had diversified their portfolios, even though they would lose money in one section of it, they were making so much money in the other areas that they were willing to overlook some of the concerns and the problems that were occurring, even if these activities were fraudulent, because they were making money at the time.
Complaints have risen in our office because investors and Nevadans are taking a closer look at their statements. If they are losing money, they are obviously far more concerned, so we see complaints rising. I think investors in this state and around the country were taken advantage of during the good times. Now it is coming back to bite them and this is a penalty. Frankly, it was frustrating at times in our office to see someone, as Mr. Goldwater says, steal, literally take tens of millions of dollars away from these investors, only to be slapped with a $50,000 fine. It just did not make any sense.
[By changing] this from a Class C to a Class B felony, we are looking for some serious jail time here. We are hoping that this would be the deterrent necessary to make these people think twice before they go after some of these investors. I think it helps and, again, we highly support moving this and making some of these penalties stronger.
Moving to Section 3 and Section 4 of the bill, which talks about civil in Section 3 and criminal in Section 4 of the statutes of limitations and moving those out. The biggest difficulty we have in our Securities Division and the biggest obstacle we have to overcome is time. Unfortunately, most of these investors do not realize they have been defrauded for maybe a year, maybe two years, or even more after they have actually made the initial investment. What this allows our office to do is give us more time to prosecute some of these cases, especially in the area of criminal [fraud] where [the statute of limitation] increases from two to four years.
Investigating some of these criminal complaints is very difficult because you are dealing with a tremendous amount of records, which goes back to Section 1. We deal with banking records, with security records; we are looking at tens of thousands of records that we must go through in order to move forward on some of these complaints. Sometimes it takes three or four months just for the banks or brokerage houses to get the information to us that we request, so moving the statute of limitations is very helpful in these investigations, in moving forward, trying to protect these investors, and protecting Nevadans in these areas. So Sections 3 and 4 increase the statute of limitations. Having said that, those are the sections that affect the Secretary of State’s office and I would be happy to answer any questions.
Vice Chairman Oceguera:
Mr. Claborn, are your questions answered there?
Assemblyman Claborn:
Yes, I am satisfied, thank you very much. I would like to commend Mr. Goldwater on his very important bill and I really love the concept of it. I am in full support of the bill.
Assemblyman Carpenter:
My statement is kind of along the same line as Mr. Brown. I was reading the [news reports] of the 500 richest guys in the world; I think some in the top ten are some of these people who have bilked people out of millions. I think one or two of them even have done some jail time. So I am just wondering whether we could bump that $100,000 up a little bit. Is there any reason why we cannot do that?
Secretary of State Heller:
I do not see any reason why we cannot. The priority in our Securities Division is restitution. We feel that it is imperative that we do the best we can to receive and to be able to return the money to these investors. If it is a case of $3 million to $5 million and we are able to successfully prosecute it, the first thing we do is take a look at their assets to see if we can make these investors whole. That is the number one priority: to get the money back to these investors, back to these Nevadans. At that point then we go forward with the prosecution and the fines. But I see no reason why we could not increase some of the penalties on these and I think, frankly, it would make a lot of sense.
Assemblyman Carpenter:
I do not think we want to do anything to damage the restitution, which we absolutely need, but I think a lot of these people have plenty of money left over, so we ought to go after them. The only other question I have is on Section 3, whether two years is enough time for you to do that.
Assemblyman Goldwater:
I think the Secretary of State would agree it is two years to discover it and then it is two years after that to prosecute it. I think that is plenty of time.
Assemblywoman Angle:
I see that there is a fiscal impact to your office; is that correct, Mr. Heller? It says that there is an impact and I am just wondering if…
Secretary of State Heller:
We are unaware of any fiscal note on this.
Assemblywoman Angle:
It just says “effects on the state,” and I was not sure if that affected your office or not.
Assemblyman Goldwater:
The fiscal note is when you increase the penalties, there is going to be an impact on the jail system. They are not flocking to the prison system under these prosecutions right now.
Vice Chairman Oceguera:
The fiscal note provides a term of imprisonment in city/county jail. They are saying there could be an increase, so there is no number.
Assemblywoman Angle:
I was just making sure that our Secretary of State was not going to have any increased impact on his office with this. And, my second is just a comment or suggestion. To me, a fine, when we are talking about millions of dollars, perhaps should be a percentage of what [the perpetrator] got. It is just a suggestion, rather than just a flat fee.
Dennis Neilander:
I have not discussed this with the sponsor, but I do not view this as being a substantive suggestion, so I do not think it will be a problem, but it is an area that I would like to see amended. I am sure that the sponsor will let me know immediately since he is sitting right behind me.
In Section 5 at line 31, you see the beginning of the amendatory language where it provides “the regulations,” and that is drafted consistent with this section, because NRS 463.175 prescribes the things that the Board and Commission must do in respect to regulations. But the way we handle subsection 2, which is internal audits, we have a regulation that allows the Chairman to adopt guidelines and checklists that apply to audit functions and the way we do that by regulation is through public hearings and notices, and we have workshops and things of that nature. But it does not necessarily show up as an official regulation at the checklist; it is possible that we may handle this via that checklist process.
What I would suggest is that rather than saying “the regulations,” you would just delete those two words and insert the words “such provisions.” That would allow us to do it either by regulation or through checklist. It is really not a substantive thing; it has more to do with the internal workings of the Board and Commission. When we adopt a regulation it does cost a little bit more money than when we process a checklist. So it is the same process, there is public input, and the public has the ability to comment on it.
That would be a suggestion that I would have and I can provide that language to your staff.
Assemblyman Goldwater:
Mr. Neilander practically applies these provisions, so I think his amendments are friendly.
Vice Chairman Oceguera:
Are there any questions for Mr. Neilander? Seeing none, Mr. Secretary of State, does your person in Las Vegas need to talk? No.
I have no one else to speak on this bill. Is there anyone in the room who wants to speak on this bill? For or against? It does not appear so. We will close the hearing on A.B. 163. [Is there] any further business to come before the Committee?
We did a work session yesterday and got most of that cleared up. This meeting is adjourned [at 8:56 a.m.]
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED:
Deborah Rengler
Committee Secretary
APPROVED BY:
Assemblyman John Oceguera, Vice Chairman
DATE: