Commissioner James McHugh responds to recent letter received from the City of Revere
- December 06, 2014
- by MGC Communications
- 0 comments
The Honorable Daniel Rizzo
Mayor
City of Revere
281 Broadway
Revere, MA 02151
Dear Mr. Mayor:
With reference to your letter of December 1, 2014, I have several observations and comments. First, as the Commission discussed at yesterday’s public meeting, it first learned of the federal inquiry from a published report in the Wall Street Journal on November 20, 2014.
Second, the Commission’s Investigation and Enforcement Bureau has determined that the federal inquiry did not involve a summons or subpoena, i.e., “process” as that term is used in G.L. c. 23K and as term is used in common legal parlance. Accordingly, the inquiry did not trigger the reporting obligations G.L. c. 23K contains. Although the absence of process moots the issue, your letter finds some mischief in the Commission’s removal from the Wynn license agreement a condition that mentioned Wynn’s reporting obligations upon its receipt of process. There was no mischief. The language of that condition precisely tracked language in G.L. c. 23K, §21(a)(8). The Commission also removed other specific conditions that also tracked language found in G.L. c. 23K, and replaced all of those specific conditions with an obligation to comply “with all of the requirements of G.L. c. 23K, including but not limited to all conditions set forth in G.L. c.23K, §21 (a) and (b), as now in effect and as hereafter amended …. ” Thus, nothing changed save the format and that format change was consolidation, not capitulation.
Third, the Commission takes the requirement of regulatory compliance by its licensees very seriously. Accordingly, the Bureau is actively conducting a review of the circumstances surrounding the federal inquiry and will report to the Commission when it is in possession of facts, not
speculation, sufficient to support any course of action it proposes.
Finally, your suggestion that the Commission knew of the inquiry before its September licensing hearing and consciously suppressed that knowledge is untrue and is wholly unsupported by anything on which you have relied or could rely. Under those circumstances and with all due respect, that suggestion is simply reckless.
To view Commissioner McHugh’s letter, click here.
To view letter from the City of Revere, click here.