Latest / The SEANC View / Staffing challenges, budget talks and 'Pension Fight Club'

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Staffing challenges, budget talks and 'Pension Fight Club' · The SEANC View

• 0:00
  Hello, and welcome to another edition of the Scenic View podcast.
• 0:03
  I'm your host, Jonathan Owens, with artists Watkins, Suzanne Beasley and Sammy Klein.
• 0:07
  We are at a new location this week, but we have the same great show. So let's jump right in.
• 0:23
  I can't help it. It sounds like we're not paying our rent or something every
• 0:27
  time John makes paper a new life. I wish we had a list of all the places we've been.
• 0:31
  We've been a bunch of places. We've been just homeless.
• 0:34
  But we're very grateful for the people that have taken us in during our time and age. Yeah.
• 0:39
  And I think we're getting closer to our return to the office.
• 0:42
  Yeah, we're coming back in a few weeks.
• 0:44
  It's going to be so exciting to be able to put this microphone system out in
• 0:49
  a room. And then back to the room, Sammy decorated in a perfect way.
• 0:55
  Not decorated. She fixed it up. Put soundproof stuff on the walls.
• 0:59
  And y'all don't see the bag that John has been having to carry around.
• 1:02
  Oh, yeah. The mics and everything in it. We can't even offer to do it for him. Yeah. That heavy.
• 1:07
  Oh, y'all act like I'm strong or something. Well, okay, maybe we're weak.
• 1:11
  I don't know. But it'll be nice to finally have some trunk space in my car for sure.
• 1:15
  So every week we always start with a budget update. Again, there's not a huge
• 1:20
  amount of news out. Do you have any?
• 1:22
  Yeah, not a huge amount out. Leadership is still saying middle of the month, we'll see a budget.
• 1:28
  So and passed by the end of the month is what we heard from some other appropriations
• 1:33
  members yesterday. and then they'll take a break July 4th, which is pretty traditional,
• 1:38
  and they'll come back three days a month for session through December.
• 1:43
  So the goal is June 15th? Yeah, the week of June 15th.
• 1:48
  And I saw that Governor Josh Stein spoke out a little bit about this at the
• 1:51
  Council of State meeting this week,
• 1:53
  and he said that he's never seen a date set out a month beforehand that's ever
• 1:59
  been met by the General Assembly. Yeah, well, he's not wrong.
• 2:03
  I guess he has his doubts. He said if he was a betting man, which he's not,
• 2:08
  then he would not place a bet on that actually happening.
• 2:11
  I know they've come back pretty much every month for years now,
• 2:15
  even though that's not how they were set up to be a citizen legislature.
• 2:19
  But why is it they have said as a reason they're coming back three days a month?
• 2:24
  Yeah, I did not hear a reason specifically for this. Because that's mileage
• 2:28
  for all these people to come here and, you know, just do like 12 days in one
• 2:33
  month and be done with it, right?
• 2:35
  Well, I mean. Come here one time. Technically, everything out there stays alive, as we call it.
• 2:41
  So, it just extends, you know, time for. That's expensive.
• 2:46
  Expensive and time for activity. Is there any statutory reason for them to do
• 2:50
  that or? Not that I'm aware. Okay.
• 2:53
  Okay. I mean, it's, again, it's built to be a citizen legislature.
• 2:57
  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I can remember back in the days when they would actually, you know, sign e-die.
• 3:03
  That was a big deal. I am still the biggest proponent of paying them good money,
• 3:11
  a salary, and making it a full-time legislature so that every walk of life can
• 3:17
  run for office and can afford to survive if they do it.
• 3:21
  And it's not just retired or independently wealthy or just super wealthy in
• 3:27
  their jobs, people who run law firms, insurance companies, et cetera.
• 3:31
  Nothing against them, but we need diversity if we're going to have people making
• 3:35
  decisions for everybody in North Carolina.
• 3:37
  And common misconception, the state legislature is not Congress.
• 3:41
  They do not make a huge amount of money. The salary for being a legislator is
• 3:46
  a little over $13,000 a year, and then they get per diem, which is,
• 3:50
  you know, a boost on top of that.
• 3:51
  But they're not making money enough for them to
• 3:54
  be away from their jobs to conduct business
• 3:57
  here so yeah i agree and when you say and when
• 4:00
  artist says diversity like you're not saying just you know what everybody thinks
• 4:05
  of as when someone says diversity like racial diversity i mean i'm for all kinds
• 4:09
  of diversity down there because how in the world else do you make so i have
• 4:13
  no problem saying look i'm for all kinds of diversity down there because if
• 4:17
  you're deciding the fate of.
• 4:20
  The lives of, you know, over 10 million people, you need to kind of look like
• 4:25
  those people in every way.
• 4:27
  But, yeah, you're right, John. What I'm really saying is economic diversity
• 4:31
  here, because there's not.
• 4:32
  Yeah, our legislature is not a cross-section of what our show is.
• 4:35
  If you work at the Dollar General, you can't afford to go work at the General Assembly.
• 4:39
  That's what I was getting at. Like, you know, if you worked in Waynesville,
• 4:42
  you couldn't run for the General Assembly because you'd have to drive.
• 4:46
  Well, it depends where you work. I mean, yeah, if you worked at like a Dollar
• 4:48
  General. If you ran your own law firm or something.
• 4:50
  But, I mean, I want to know what the folks who work at Dollar General or anywhere
• 4:54
  else have to say because they're bringing something to the table that can't
• 4:59
  get to the table any other way except through advocacy groups.
• 5:02
  Yeah. That's not the same. That person needs to have a vote. If we had...
• 5:07
  Good salary. People would run for these things and be willing.
• 5:12
  That's public service. It's not, I don't know, it's self-selected right now
• 5:16
  that it can only be rich people or retired.
• 5:19
  Or retired. And one underserved demographic would be state employees, right?
• 5:23
  They can, most, I mean, no one who works at a facility could take the time off
• 5:29
  or have the money to run for office, you know.
• 5:32
  We occasionally see a retired state employee. Usually, though,
• 5:34
  Even they are from right around Raleigh because otherwise it's unaffordable for a state retiree.
• 5:41
  They don't have the kind of retirement that would afford doing this job.
• 5:45
  So still wait and see on the budget then, I guess. Correct.
• 5:49
  Now, you said that there was a bill moving through the OSHR bill?
• 5:53
  Yeah. So the Workforce Modernization Act is a rewrite of the State Human Resources Act.
• 6:00
  It's streamlining a lot of the processes that are already in the State Human
• 6:04
  Resources Act, especially hiring processes to make it easier to get staff.
• 6:09
  You know, that crisis we've been experiencing for years now is certainly not over.
• 6:14
  There are some changes in there on bereavement leave and family leave for qualifying
• 6:20
  events like, you know, having a baby.
• 6:22
  You know, so some good things are in there that weren't in there.
• 6:25
  I think there's one more vacation day. Oh, nice.
• 6:28
  Yeah. So I've actually gotten some comments on Facebook from our members who
• 6:33
  are pushing for a week of leave added to the what they're given for the budget.
• 6:39
  I know they've done that in the past, but they have.
• 6:41
  And, you know, we get to a point in the budget process where people start asking about the bonus leave.
• 6:46
  There was a bonus included in the framework of this budget. So I'm not sure
• 6:51
  how likely it would be to get bonus leave time on top of that.
• 6:54
  Well, the problem with the bonus leave in recent years when it was given is
• 6:58
  that you couldn't roll it over.
• 6:59
  And there's so few staff right now.
• 7:02
  So many vacancies, people weren't able to take their leave in that year, so they would lose it.
• 7:08
  And I know, you know, when they first started this and then they realized,
• 7:12
  oh, this is going to cost us money, and they figured out a way to do it without
• 7:14
  it, you know, costing money for the state.
• 7:17
  But, you know, when they first did the bonus leave, you could bank it for retirement, which was great.
• 7:23
  And this isn't, it's not terrible if they do put the non-monetary bonus leave
• 7:28
  in there for new employees, but we don't have a lot of new employees right now,
• 7:32
  you know, somebody without a lot of leave.
• 7:34
  So this bill from the OSHR, I think it points out something about scenic that
• 7:39
  people never really see in that we were approached with this bill some time back.
• 7:45
  And there were some parts of this that we objected to, right?
• 7:49
  There were. And we were able to work to get those taken care of,
• 7:52
  you know, get those taken out.
• 7:54
  No one will really ever know that, you know. And so when people say we're not
• 7:58
  working for them, We're doing a lot they never see, right?
• 8:01
  Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of, one of the terms we use over at the legislature, inside baseball.
• 8:06
  We worked closely with Director Stacey Meyer and her team.
• 8:10
  Wesley Davis is a great asset to her team over there to, you know,
• 8:13
  address our concerns. Yeah, they were really awesome.
• 8:17
  You know, they weren't trying to run gotcha bills on anybody.
• 8:20
  And they said, here's what it's going to look like.
• 8:23
  We're trying to make this system stronger. Yeah.
• 8:27
  And make more sense, you know, streamline everything, make it more modern.
• 8:32
  If you see anything that you have an issue with, it certainly wasn't because
• 8:37
  we're trying to hurt anybody. So let us know.
• 8:39
  So that's great to do that kind of work on the front end.
• 8:43
  So, you know, you avoid drama and committee. So thank you to OSHR for that.
• 8:47
  Yes, we appreciate working together.
• 8:49
  I mean, it shows that, you know, we do have some relationship with these people,
• 8:53
  but But our core responsibility is to look out for our members.
• 8:57
  And so anything like that, we're going to have to fight against,
• 9:01
  you know, and we are doing that.
• 9:03
  It's just we do. I think, you know, folks don't realize that a lot of our time
• 9:07
  is spent stomping out fires.
• 9:09
  Yeah. Well, listen, when I came to work for Scenic, I had been a state employee.
• 9:13
  And I was not a Scenic member. Nobody ever talked to me about Scenic,
• 9:18
  and I didn't know about Scenic.
• 9:20
  But I would have said, what have they done for me?
• 9:23
  When I got to Scenic as an employee and was in the file cabinets and saw all
• 9:28
  of the bad things that could have happened to me that did not because of Scenic,
• 9:32
  I realized only then, oh, my goodness, thank goodness somebody was on this kind
• 9:37
  of stuff, and it didn't happen.
• 9:40
  And just for the record, on our website, if you're, you know,
• 9:43
  one of those folks out there questioning what Scenic has done for us,
• 9:46
  there is an extensive list.
• 9:49
  Put together, but let's give a shout out to District 2 Chairman Cliff Johnson,
• 9:54
  who's... Yeah, he did a great job of putting a year-long list of accomplishments
• 10:00
  and things that we did stop.
• 10:02
  And you can find that on our website at www.scenic.org if you have questions. And soak it up.
• 10:07
  Yeah. I think that's pretty much all I have about the legislature.
• 10:11
  Do you have anything else that you wanted to touch on? Not at this hour.
• 10:15
  All right. Well, switching gears now. Sometimes we have the segment of things
• 10:20
  heard on other podcasts.
• 10:21
  And Artis, you brought us one today from the Under the Dome podcast this week.
• 10:26
  The horrific story about six-year-old Dominic Moody in Mecklenburg County who
• 10:31
  died in December and had endured several years of abuse and neglect,
• 10:37
  and she weighed just 27 pounds when she was found.
• 10:40
  Just a horrible story, but there is kind of a state employee angle to this story, right?
• 10:45
  Yeah, we'll know more later about everything that went down between Mecklenburg
• 10:50
  county between the state.
• 10:52
  But the one thing we do know about the state is that we have 100 counties and
• 10:57
  DHHS has to oversee all of these social services and all these 100 counties,
• 11:03
  and their staff's not very big doing that.
• 11:07
  So I think it just highlights, without knowing any more particulars about it,
• 11:13
  It just struck me listening to it. Oh, my goodness.
• 11:16
  This is just another way that it's so important that we properly staff all of
• 11:23
  state government because all these awful things that happen,
• 11:27
  they just make me wonder every time, okay.
• 11:31
  Did we have enough staffing in all these governmental jobs?
• 11:35
  Did we have the right people? Are we paying enough to recruit and retain the
• 11:39
  right people to do these jobs? people's lives are at stake, but a six-year-old
• 11:44
  girl, I think that, I don't know, for me, it was particularly appalling. Laring, yeah.
• 11:50
  There's a House Oversight Committee having a hearing right now.
• 11:53
  I guess today is Thursday. As we speak.
• 11:55
  And so there'll be a lot more come out about this story. But the allegations
• 11:59
  have prompted Mecklenburg County to review its Youth and Family Services Division,
• 12:04
  and DHHS is conducting its own child welfare program review.
• 12:09
  But at the end of the day, you have taxpayers who say, if you were to ask a
• 12:13
  random taxpayer on the street, hey, what should we pay state employees?
• 12:17
  Most of them would tell you, as little as possible, and I don't want many,
• 12:22
  have as few state employees as we can have.
• 12:25
  But if you said a six-year-old girl died and here's the circumstances,
• 12:28
  and I don't know, but there's a possibility we may not have had proper staffing
• 12:32
  to make sure these kind of things didn't happen. Does that change your opinion?
• 12:37
  I think it would. Yeah, but people aren't making these connections.
• 12:40
  And what kind of bothers me is there's a lot of armchair quarterbacking that
• 12:44
  goes on afterwards about how did they let this happen there?
• 12:48
  Well, it all starts with funding and it starts with respecting these jobs.
• 12:54
  And there are so many jobs where North Carolinians are being protected by state
• 12:59
  employees, county employees, city employees.
• 13:02
  And yet the disrespect for these public employees stays off the charts.
• 13:07
  So if you respect North Carolinians, if you respect your constituents,
• 13:11
  you have to respect the people who are taking care of them.
• 13:14
  It's just there's no you can't have it any other way. And I think that's that's
• 13:19
  my soapbox I'm going to be on about that.
• 13:21
  It's my second soapbox of the episode.
• 13:24
  Following up on the legislator pay, but it makes me very upset every time I
• 13:28
  hear a story like this because the finger pointing will be going on like crazy.
• 13:34
  But at the end of the day, what I really want to know out of all of this,
• 13:37
  do we have big enough divisions to actually make sure this kind of crap doesn't happen?
• 13:43
  And, you know, we work really hard as an organization to bring some awareness,
• 13:47
  you know, not only to legislators, but to the general public about what it is
• 13:51
  state government and public service covers, and that's a hard thing to do.
• 13:56
  Everybody understands teachers, but not everybody understands the rest of state
• 14:00
  government that keeps our state operating and safe.
• 14:04
  So I saw, this is kind of tangentially related, I guess, but when the amendment
• 14:10
  was put on the ballot about the income tax cap,
• 14:13
  I saw a lot of, you know, right-wing pundit folks in North Carolina kind of
• 14:19
  doing gotcha with people who voted against it, saying, you want to raise taxes.
• 14:23
  This is the argument. Well, people will be against it until they're standing
• 14:28
  in lines at the DMV again. Yeah.
• 14:31
  Well, I think you're talking about local taxes. No, this was the income tax cap from.
• 14:36
  Oh, I thought you were talking about the property tax for a minute there, the income tax cap.
• 14:40
  Yeah. I mean, that too, as far as locals being able to budget for needs.
• 14:44
  But if you're OK with where state government is right now, then a cap would make sense. But.
• 14:51
  I don't know. This is a fight we'll have probably several more times before
• 14:54
  November. It just popped in my head.
• 14:55
  But people don't understand that. Yeah. The correlation between lack of funding if this is capped.
• 15:02
  One of my favorite. Funding services, two different things to them.
• 15:04
  One of my favorite idioms, or is that a word? I don't know. I wasn't very good in English.
• 15:09
  Is you get what you pay for. You really do, though. Like, that's always true, it seems like. So, yeah.
• 15:15
  Yeah. Do you want the cheapest employee in charge of children's safety?
• 15:20
  Do you want the cheapest employee in charge of public safety in any way?
• 15:24
  Or no employee because you can't hire someone.
• 15:26
  You know, in charge of, we talked about bridges last week.
• 15:29
  Do you want the person inspecting the bridges that you're going to drive over
• 15:32
  with your children to be the cheapest person you could get? Do you?
• 15:36
  Doubt it. And then you haul the people in front of the committee and,
• 15:40
  you know, question them when they're working as hard as they can, pretty much.
• 15:45
  But I digress. So another story I saw this week was that our recurring guest
• 15:51
  and friend of the podcast, state auditor Dave Bullock, said he plans to audit
• 15:56
  the Opportunity Scholarship Voucher Program.
• 15:59
  We've talked about this program a lot on this podcast.
• 16:02
  Well, there's a lot of reasons, but one of them is you're handing over taxpayer
• 16:06
  money that could go to public services to rich families to send their kids to private schools.
• 16:12
  In some cases, yes. Yeah. What do you expect out of an audit?
• 16:16
  I know that the auditor is from the Republican side who is pushing these scholarships.
• 16:22
  But I found that, you know, some of his, I mean, his audits,
• 16:26
  like on the jobs, he also said things that. Oh, yeah. I think he's an auditor.
• 16:33
  You know, auditors are not really, they just can't be political because it's about the numbers.
• 16:39
  It is what it is. Yeah, I don't have a question as to whether he's going to go into this.
• 16:45
  With a critical auditor eye, I think he will. There's so many questions.
• 16:48
  I have so many questions about this, and I hope his audit gets to all of them.
• 16:52
  And part of the reason this is so important to every North Carolinian,
• 16:55
  but particularly state employees and retirees, is that this program, state lawmakers,
• 17:02
  according to the News & Observer, have pledged to raise funding for the program
• 17:05
  to $875 million a year by 2032.
• 17:10
  Almost a billion dollars every year, happening in less than a decade,
• 17:16
  just a little over five years.
• 17:17
  You combine that with lower income taxes, and you're talking about very little
• 17:24
  to grow government if our population grows anymore, and to pay enough to retain decent people.
• 17:31
  So this is a very, very critical issue. But again, I have so many questions.
• 17:35
  I'm wondering what happens if I get a check, it's paid to the school,
• 17:41
  I put my child in a private school.
• 17:43
  And then in October. Say they don't make a sports team they wanted to get up.
• 17:47
  Yeah. And then I moved my child to public school.
• 17:50
  I mean, I would assume, and I don't know, maybe these are the kind of questions
• 17:53
  he'll answer for the public.
• 17:54
  I assume when that school gets that money, it's their money,
• 17:58
  whether the child stays the whole year or not.
• 18:00
  And I want to know what percentage of the folks who take advantage of this program
• 18:06
  have an income over a hundred grand a year.
• 18:09
  Yeah. I'm just really curious. I mean, we already know that a lot of people
• 18:13
  who qualify for it already have children in private schools,
• 18:15
  so it's not like it's drawing, you know, public school kids.
• 18:20
  The program paid $587 million this year for 106,000 students as of May.
• 18:27
  That's more than triple what it did the year before.
• 18:30
  Students now make up the majority of enrollment at at least 520 of the 930 private
• 18:36
  schools in North Carolina.
• 18:39
  So it seems like it's really been promoted, right? I mean, I know that one high
• 18:42
  school in my area requires you to apply for it, for enrollment.
• 18:47
  And I think their tuition has doubled since this program came about,
• 18:51
  and 94 percent of their students are receiving vouchers.
• 18:54
  So it's really not facilitating the ability. Because some people look,
• 18:58
  public school's not for everyone. True.
• 19:01
  For whatever reason. but it's not necessarily facilitating
• 19:05
  the ability to go over to a private school to have
• 19:07
  these vouchers if the schools have increased their tuition
• 19:11
  because some of these schools seem like they're still trying to elbow
• 19:14
  people out that might not be you know as
• 19:17
  rich as others yeah still try to keep a
• 19:20
  kind of country club atmosphere and sammy you
• 19:23
  said you had some information on this right yeah i
• 19:26
  saw a report that was from the news and observer raleigh where they were talking
• 19:31
  about how a breakdown shows that 12,252 of the voucher students were previously
• 19:39
  in public school of the 106,789 students receiving vouchers.
• 19:45
  And more than 61% of those students were not economically disadvantaged.
• 19:52
  Yeah. Wow. Rich get richer.
• 19:55
  All right. Meanwhile, some of our, you know, some of our schools are struggling.
• 19:59
  So we'll see what comes from that audit.
• 20:01
  I hope he makes a dashboard for it. You think he'll make a dashboard? Look, he, you know.
• 20:06
  Yeah. He loves his dashboard. He loves it. Yeah, I'm sure there'll be one.
• 20:09
  And he, by the way, the auditor has a podcast now. So go, I don't know if it
• 20:14
  started yet, but he's going to.
• 20:16
  If he hadn't already started. I don't know if he'll invite you on this.
• 20:19
  Oh, no, I would be happy to go on.
• 20:21
  I think he's having folks from, it looked to me from the ad about it.
• 20:25
  It's folks within the department talking about the work they do,
• 20:28
  which is cool. So if it hadn't started, check it out later. If it has started, check it out now.
• 20:34
  Go to the State Auditor's website, and I'm sure they'll have a link to their
• 20:38
  podcast, but check it out.
• 20:40
  I have a sports-related story. You know I like sports, and I couldn't do a podcast
• 20:45
  without mentioning this one because it's kind of intersection of both my favorite
• 20:50
  state employees and sports now.
• 20:53
  So the pension system could have bought part of the Carolina Hurricanes.
• 20:57
  State Treasurer Brad Briner said it would obviously have been cool to own as
• 21:02
  a pension system part of the Hurricanes, but we don't get to consider that as
• 21:06
  part of the investment philosophy.
• 21:09
  They had a chance to do it last year when owner Tom Dundon sold,
• 21:13
  I think he had to sell part of the team to be an owner of another sports team,
• 21:18
  which is the Portland Trailblazers.
• 21:20
  So don't fact check me on that, but that's how I understand it.
• 21:24
  So I guess they approached the pension system because we're just a huge, big pot of money.
• 21:29
  And everybody wants a piece of it. Yeah. But last week it was AI,
• 21:32
  remember? Oh, yeah. Build the data centers with the pension money.
• 21:35
  I had a funny thought, though.
• 21:37
  We might have been the only sports team owners in America who couldn't afford
• 21:41
  the tickets for their team. Oh, my gosh. Fair point. Fair point.
• 21:46
  I saw some of these Stanley Cup tickets are going for like $5,000 each. Good Lord.
• 21:51
  Yeah. So what do you think about owning a sports team for the pension system artists?
• 21:56
  Pension systems own insane things. They really do. Really, really insane things.
• 22:02
  The amount of timber alone we own is dumb. But, and that's, Treasurer Briner
• 22:07
  has nothing to do with any of that.
• 22:09
  So I want to commend Treasurer Briner for not taking the Hurricanes up on that
• 22:15
  offer as, quote, cool as it might have been.
• 22:19
  He is nothing if not a savvy investor. The Canes are fun.
• 22:25
  I'm so glad they're doing well. But not me. But no. No.
• 22:29
  Now if State Employee's got a discount to go to that boy aquarium based on that.
• 22:33
  Then it would be a great event. No, I'm kidding. No, I mean, it just, no.
• 22:38
  No. Even, I mean, I'm, you know, obviously I like sports, but I don't even know
• 22:44
  the financial situation of some of these teams.
• 22:46
  I know that, you know, like NFL teams are grossly overvalued. Yeah.
• 22:52
  For, you know, but I don't know about hockey. So I don't know if they're making money or they're.
• 22:57
  I'm sure there probably are, but you can't always guarantee they might be terrible.
• 23:01
  Just because what you're investing in is making money doesn't mean that you make money. Yeah.
• 23:05
  Especially as more and more shows come out about hockey, more and more people are getting into it.
• 23:12
  True. It's very au courant. But I have to say, you know, everybody is going
• 23:18
  to approach Treasure or Briner.
• 23:20
  They always have with any treasure we've had or anybody else has, for that matter.
• 23:25
  With everything under the sun they want the person to invest in. And it's hard.
• 23:30
  It's hard for these systems to keep from jumping on to the train of all kinds
• 23:35
  of crazy stuff. So thank you again to Treasurer Briner.
• 23:38
  Yeah, I still stand by my investment advice for Sam.
• 23:42
  Sam Watts, when he came over, just buy some lottery tickets.
• 23:45
  Buy like a billion dollars worth of lottery tickets. We do. It's called private
• 23:49
  equity. It's the same thing.
• 23:51
  Speaking of private equity, That's how we make it back there.
• 23:55
  Another plug for Pension Fight Club. I see that it's out now.
• 23:59
  It's a movie or a documentary about the investment of pension funds into alternative
• 24:05
  things like hedge funds. And I guess just anything.
• 24:09
  But we're talking more about it. It's about the lack of transparency in the
• 24:12
  investments generally across the whole country.
• 24:15
  Yeah. So we're going to be promoting that on our Facebook and social media outlets
• 24:19
  because people really need to see it. And it's a little bit difficult to find
• 24:24
  that I found, and so we need to make that easier for folks. But I think everybody needs to.
• 24:29
  To watch it. We need to start sending it to legislators, too. Very. Yeah.
• 24:34
  So we're going to add. You want to know why you're not getting a COLA. Yeah.
• 24:37
  But good news on the steps towards the COLA front this week.
• 24:42
  The treasurer announced.
• 24:43
  That's right. Yeah. Pretty impressive, impressive gains. Thank you, Treasurer Briner.
• 24:49
  And then thank you for, in your statement about those gains,
• 24:54
  saying first that, you know, this is good because we need to give a COLA.
• 24:58
  I'm paraphrasing him here, for retirees.
• 25:01
  And then the second thing is, you know, it's good for taxpayers because hopefully
• 25:06
  after we would give a COLA, then maybe it would give relief to what the state
• 25:10
  has to put into the system.
• 25:12
  So the pension system hit a record high as of the end of May.
• 25:16
  It holds $148.3 billion.
• 25:20
  It's a huge jump from where it was just 17 months ago when Briner took office.
• 25:25
  That's his words, not me. I don't know. I'm just reading. But so that's good news.
• 25:29
  And our retirees will quickly comment, but so where is our COLA?
• 25:34
  And we've, they have every right to ask that, you know. Sure.
• 25:38
  I mean, for years, the system under multiple treasurers would crow about the
• 25:42
  asset to liability ratio and how we were at times number two in the country at times number three.
• 25:48
  Okay, so where's McCullough? You know, stop bragging.
• 25:52
  But I like that he didn't just brag, as he should, on behalf of him and his staff.
• 25:58
  They've done, obviously, good work, made good choices to make money.
• 26:02
  But after the bragging, he said, the reason this is so important is the people.
• 26:06
  He said it's important on two fronts.
• 26:08
  For retirees, if a deficit is eliminated, it gives the state more opportunity
• 26:13
  to do meaningful cost of living adjustments.
• 26:16
  And for taxpayers, that money can be used for other priorities in the state.
• 26:20
  So that's, I mean, that's two ways it could help, I remember.
• 26:22
  It is. And, you know, the board of trustees, the last time they met,
• 26:25
  they made new policy that anything after they reach the benchmark of six and a half percent,
• 26:31
  you know, will be used to enhance benefits in the way of a COLA or,
• 26:35
  you know, any other way of clicking the formula.
• 26:38
  There are a number of ways that they could enhance benefits.
• 26:41
  Yeah. So that's all the news stories I have. So my question of the week.
• 26:45
  John's wacky weird question.
• 26:52
  So there's actually a state employee angle this week, kind of.
• 26:55
  I mean, there's a legislative angle, I guess.
• 26:57
  So the social media and AI safety bill is quickly moving through committees in the legislature.
• 27:04
  It's House Bill 301, and it'll outline social media protections for minors under
• 27:09
  16, including age verification for social media platforms.
• 27:15
  Now, my question is, I guess, just broadly, what do you think about this?
• 27:19
  But the reason I want to talk about it is I have a 13-year-old daughter.
• 27:23
  And at one time, I would be like, this is crazy. Don't set any regulations on things like this.
• 27:29
  I think it's sorely needed right now. Do you have any thoughts?
• 27:34
  I agree with you on regulations. My thing is, though, how many times have you
• 27:38
  signed into any platform anywhere and it requires you to put in your age and
• 27:43
  all you do is type it in there? Yeah.
• 27:45
  I guess they're saying age verification. So there needs to be some way.
• 27:49
  How would you do that? So if it's like a 16 thing, does that mean they need
• 27:53
  their driver's license?
• 27:55
  Yeah. But not every 16-year-old gets a driver's license. Yeah.
• 27:59
  And it also includes AI literacy for K-12 computer science students.
• 28:05
  So I guess that's definitely needed.
• 28:09
  There's been, I mean, there's been a lot of coverage over AI actually,
• 28:14
  in some cases, encouraging young people to hurt themselves.
• 28:20
  Yeah. That's the most outrageous thing I can think of. As someone who uses ChatGPT
• 28:25
  every now and then for, like, personal...
• 28:28
  Playing around with it, see what it comes up with, you can put pretty much anything into it.
• 28:33
  If you're trying to vent like you would vent to a therapist,
• 28:37
  you can put something into it and ask for advice.
• 28:39
  And the way you word things can affect the advice you give you.
• 28:44
  So if someone already has mental health struggles and is putting something in there saying,
• 28:49
  I want to do this to harm myself, how
• 28:53
  do i do it ai will give them
• 28:56
  that advice okay see that should not i mean
• 28:59
  because like even social media platforms like
• 29:02
  pinterest tiktok if you search certain things that are self-harm related eating
• 29:08
  disorder related things that could be construed even that way these social media
• 29:13
  platforms will say absolutely not hard stop and we'll give you a notice at the
• 29:17
  top saying if you're struggling,
• 29:19
  please contact this number, or we do not have anything related to this because
• 29:23
  this is against our policies.
• 29:25
  But the fact that you can go to AI platforms like Claude, ChatGPT and stuff,
• 29:30
  and type these things in and basically get told, here's how you do these things,
• 29:36
  it's a problem. It's terrifying.
• 29:37
  I have noticed that I use Claude a lot, and I have noticed that It's starting
• 29:42
  to take extra steps to tell you, hey, we're not, it's not a real thing.
• 29:47
  So the other day I was working with Claude and was building,
• 29:52
  I think, something for our website.
• 29:54
  And it produced, what it produced was pretty awesome. So I wrote like,
• 29:58
  you're the man, Claude, or something like that.
• 30:01
  I think you are starting to think Claude is real, but keep going. I mean, it is real. Okay.
• 30:08
  But it returned this whole paragraph, this long paragraph. No,
• 30:12
  I said, I said, Claude, you're my best friend or something like that. What?
• 30:16
  Yeah. And it returned this whole paragraph that was like, I am not a real thing.
• 30:19
  You should never say that we're best friends.
• 30:24
  I mean. I was joking, but. There was someone who had a whole story on TikTok
• 30:29
  talking about how ChatGPT,
• 30:32
  Claude, AI, all these platforms that she was using, basically told her that
• 30:36
  her therapist was in love with her and she believed it. Oh, yeah.
• 30:40
  So they kind of had to start changing some things.
• 30:44
  Vulnerable people. I mean. Yeah. Yeah.
• 30:48
  Wow. That's a heavy thing. Heavy topic.
• 30:51
  But it's real. And I mean. I really think that regulation needs to go further and.
• 30:58
  Well, you got the two grandmas over here that are like all for it, you know.
• 31:02
  There are certain countries that do not allow, because I know in America,
• 31:06
  like Facebook, you can get on at 13.
• 31:08
  Instagram, all those platforms, it's like 13 years old is the limit of you have
• 31:11
  to be that age. But other countries, they're like, you have to be 16 years or older.
• 31:15
  Yeah. I think that everyone should be allowed just one account and you should
• 31:19
  have to verify that one account. So you can't create like 30 Facebook pages
• 31:24
  or Twitter accounts, you know, you should. Some grandparents forget their passwords.
• 31:29
  Verify it in a real way. Yeah. You know, not just enter your age here. Yeah.
• 31:34
  Because any 13-year-old can enter 18. I wanted to do that when I was younger.
• 31:38
  My parents wouldn't let me because all of the kids I knew in school were on
• 31:41
  social media. And I was like, I'm not allowed to have it. And they're like, why?
• 31:45
  There are definitely ways to regulate these things, but there's so much money
• 31:49
  on the other side that I don't know that it'll ever happen.
• 31:52
  Well, with that upbeat note, I think that's the end of our show.
• 31:56
  Anything else we want to get to?
• 31:57
  I'm good. You guys have a good rest of your week. Okay. Thanks for joining us,
• 32:01
  and we'll see you next week.