And so what does that mean for regulatory stability?

It throws a lot of question into what's going to happen.

I mean, you also look at Thailand as well, where there's always political change.

But for the most part, there hasn't been as much capital flight, partly because the business community is fairly strong.

That's not to say that it isn't chipping away at it and slowing growth.

recognizing that business and investment keeps the country going, that touching regulation is not necessarily going to be as big a concern.

We're starting to see more stability around Malaysian regulatory and laws around investment, and certainly a more pro-business sense.

So what do you see is the biggest opportunities in Southeast Asia for US businesses?

And what do you want to say about that?

Well, I have a lot of trust and faith in Melissa Wickland, our chair, who did a lot of work with, uh, the administration of HCMC to understand what they need.

Um, and we continued to get good information from them that helped us zero in on what we could do with one-time money.

Uh, the, the hospital, um, in Minneapolis is a statewide asset.

We know that if you experience a severe burn, a traumatic accident, a traumatic farm accident, this is the place where you're gonna go get care.

Um, we need HCMC to survive.

Um, and from my perspective, because of the shifting arena, the funding sources for hospitals across the state, it is important we, weProvide a bolus, if you will, of funding now, but we wrestle with the ongoing support that we need to give to both that hospital in Minneapolis, HCMC, and the healthcare delivery system more broadly.

Logistically, how, how difficult or easy are they gonna be for Medicaid program administrators to, to verify a- and, and keep up with?

Thank you for coming.

Yeah.

So l- late files are part of the procedures for us on the council to use.

Um, the agenda is published 48 hours for open meeting law reasons, so Monday at noon we get the weekly council meeting agenda that we hold every Wednesday at noon, and if things happen after the 10:00 AM deadline, then we file them on the floor as a late file, and there's no open, open law meeting violation if they go through the right channels.

And as you know, a lot of things can happen after Monday morning at 10:00 AM.

So, um, in this case, we had our budget hearing with the Boston Fire Department on Monday morning at 10:00 AM, and at that hearing they spoke about one, um, of the recurring grants that they have applied for in the past and received that funded much needed cancer and health screenings, mental health and wellness supports.

So they were losing that grant this year, and that's one... about $1.2, $1.3 million that they use to make sure our firefighters, who m- many people know, but may not know, that the firefighters have a life expectancy of only five years after retirement.

... has been very outspoken about this, but give me a rundown on that.

Um, were you, were you doing personal appearances too? I know that was kind of a thing back then.

Yeah.

Personal appearances were a big deal.

I think they kind of are now again, but back in the '60s and '70s, it was a thing.

So, um, I had to take tap dance lessons because it was kind of a marketable skill, which is hilarious to me.

So I would go and do a little tap dance.

Terrible, not a, not a great dancer.

Yeah

... audit and for people to get kind of a list of where their money is going a- and what it's being used on, and in some cases, like what we saw with the baseball hats, what it's not being used on?

Right.

We're not prioritizing things.

And even at the council level, when I ask questions, last year I think we talked about how, you know, a request for information, we call them RFIs, when we come in front of the different departments and we ask them specific budget questions.

There were over 300 questions that they just never even bothered answering.

So oftentimes even the power we supposedly have on the council when we ask departments direct questions, and we just had the athletics department in last week, and they didn't wanna answer a lot of our questions either.

So it's frustrating, but I think we have to continue to share, and thank you for this opportunity to share out that it's, to me, it's just unacceptable.

... about auditing the, the, the spending in Boston?