Latest / The SEANC View / $148.3B and Counting: Treasurer Briner on AI, Timber Troubles, and the Hurricanes

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$148.3B and Counting: Treasurer Briner on AI, Timber Troubles, and the Hurricanes · The SEANC View

0:00
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of the Scenic View podcast.
0:13
This is Jonathan Owens, joined by artist Watkins, and today we have another recurring guest.
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The state treasurer, Brad Bronner, was nice enough to join us this week for a few hard-hitting
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questions, and we do appreciate—we also appreciate you giving us a room to do the
0:29
interview in, because we are still homeless, from what we said last week.
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We are, and we do appreciate it, but, hey, we also appreciate the fact that everybody
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wants to talk to you right now, and you're talking to the state employees.
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I told him before we started that, you know, this is probably a little more pressure than
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the CNBC interview that he just did, but we're going to get through it.
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Welcome to the palatial treasurer's office.
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I think it is true that we have the lowest lease rate of all the agencies in government
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here, and we're proud of that.
1:01
Really?
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Twenty-one bucks a foot.
1:03
Yeah, we're right across the way there through the woods, and I've always thought this is
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a really nice area here.
1:09
So this building is owned by a company we invest in, right?
1:13
It is.
1:14
I don't think so.
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Trinity Properties is the owner of this building.
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I don't think we invest with them.
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Okay.
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One time, somebody who owned it, but that's probably been a long time.
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We just extended the lease for four more years.
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We looked at moving downtown.
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It was more than double the price, and I couldn't figure out why that was good value for the
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taxpayer money.
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So here we are, and it works just fine, as you see.
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It's a great building.
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Well, we're happy to have you in the neighborhood.
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First hard-hitting question for you.
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We have to bring this up because of the time that we're in.
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Tell us about the hurricanes and how we could have owned the hurricanes.
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It would be fascinating, I'm sure, to be an owner of a sports franchise.
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And I think there's some that are publicly traded, so you can go do that yourself if
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you want.
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They have appreciated in value unbelievably.
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It's not a surprise in the world we live in where everything's available at all time on
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your device that the value of in-person experiences goes up.
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And so it is with sports, but that's reflected in the valuations of the franchises.
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So Tom Dundon is a fantastic guy and a great entrepreneur.
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He bought the hurricane some years ago for, I think, $450 million.
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And as he was thinking about buying the Portland Trail Blazers, he was going to raise some
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money by selling some of his hurricane stake.
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The problem to our mind was that the valuation was $2.6 billion, so almost six times what
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he paid.
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And it is more valuable than what he paid.
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It is a good business, but we couldn't figure out why that was good value.
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And so we don't get to consider whether it would be cool.
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We get to consider whether it's going to make all the state employees and the retirees
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money.
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That's our job.
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That's fair.
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So we passed on that.
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Yeah.
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We appreciate that.
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We do.
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John pointed out it would be weird anyway for state employees to own something they
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can't afford tickets to.
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Well, nobody can afford them right now.
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Yeah.
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Well, right now.
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Yeah.
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That's true.
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Yeah.
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But it is a cool...
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We think it's wonderful that the hurricanes are doing as well as they're doing.
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We are recording this on Thursday.
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Is it the 11th of June?
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The 11th.
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Yes.
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Yeah.
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They play tonight and hopefully advance.
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Even for...
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Well, they keep advancing.
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Yes.
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So the first question that I have, we saw a report out, I guess it was a week or two
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ago, that the pension fund is now at a record $148.3 billion.
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It's important to get that .3 in there.
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And it's gained $25 billion since you took office.
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It has.
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So congrats.
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Thank you.
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For that.
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Congrats to all of us.
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It's everybody who's listening to this money.
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So it's for all of us to enjoy and we've had a tailwind.
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No mistake about that.
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The stock market has gone up a reasonable amount since you took office.
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But a lot of the changes that we've made have helped too with you guys' support and the
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General Assembly support.
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We're doing this in a way that I think is responsible and still conservative, but it
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gets the gains we need so that we can do the things we all want to do with the people's
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money.
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So along those same lines, you know, retirees will see that number and they'll say, well,
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there is our COLA.
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How do you answer that question?
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Sure.
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So I've gotten that question a lot and it's a high quality problem to have to answer that
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question at the immediate moment.
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You get really quickly into actuarial and pension math.
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When you cut through all that, we've got 93 or 94 cents on the dollar today of what we
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owe to our retirees now and in the future.
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And the question becomes, how close to 100 do you want to get before you start adding
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to what you're paying people?
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We had a policy in place that essentially said the number had to be 100.
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We changed that policy.
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So the way that it will work from here, and we'll start these conversations in January
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of next year for the following fiscal year, is that we've got to have gains that allow
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us to pay if we're below 100 cents.
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You'd think that gains meant like recent.
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We smoothed it over five years.
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So we had a tough 2022.
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Interest rates went up a lot.
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Some bond prices went down.
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Stock market went down.
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And so we got hit on both sides of our portfolio.
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And we're still recovering from that because it's in the five-year number.
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Once we get out of the five-year number, we'll be in really good shape.
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I hate the five-year smoothing so much, like with a perfect passion, because as long as
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I've been doing this, which is, you know, since Methuselah, it has been an issue because
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at some point in a five-year period, there's usually a little lull.
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And we've been told every time, well, it's the five-year smoothing.
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That's, you know, that's what's holding us back.
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Mike McDonald I hear you.
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And it is interesting to think about that statement because, yeah, it is roughly every
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five years, it seems.
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But the trick and the goal is to make the other four so good that we can deal with that
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fifth, not to hope the fifth goes away.
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And so that's what, you know, 2025 is a great year.
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2026 is off to a good start.
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I think we're evolving the portfolio in really interesting ways that are not the most traditional
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ways.
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We're buying things like Anthropic.
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We announced that last week.
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This is a late-stage artificial intelligence company that is not a typical thing for a
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pension to buy.
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But if you've used artificial intelligence, you know the power of that company.
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That stake is up 150% since we bought it 12 weeks ago.
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And so we're doing things like that.
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We're buying an office building in Raleigh that's fully leased, that doesn't even have
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any debt on it.
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It's pretty boring, but it makes us 9%.
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So hopefully we won't have this, the stock market is all that matters and the ups and
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downs we have to live and die by.
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Going forward, we'll have a portfolio that will just consistently deliver.
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So we'll get out of the worried, worry about five-year smoothing.
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We still have a bunch of timber.
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That was another one of my pet peeves.
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Unfortunately we do.
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We have been embarked on a project for a year to try to solve that problem.
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We've had that timber for 20 years.
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I hate the timber.
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We have made, I think, almost no money on it.
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Can we make guitars, like custom-made guitars, and then make a lot of money?
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I think it's like essentially for pulp and paper use.
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So I don't think you'd want that guitar.
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So we need another toilet paper run like in COVID.
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It would help.
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Yeah.
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Okay, I'm lost.
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Is this an actual like plot of timber or is it growing now?
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We own a million acres of timber all over the country.
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That's a reed, right?
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We own it in two different entities and yeah, it's over a billion dollars and we've been
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trying to move on from it for some time.
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I'm hopeful that we can get that done.
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As people think about the term opportunity cost, that is the biggest opportunity cost
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you could conceive of for this pension.
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We put in a billion dollars, we'll take out a billion dollars.
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If we'd put in anything else, it'd be at least two, maybe three.
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Oh my goodness.
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Yeah.
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A money market that got you 1%, right?
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More.
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Right.
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The stock market would have quadrupled or quintupled over that time.
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Pick your favorite asset that's not timber and it would have been better.
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Well, I have to say one of my favorite things that I've seen come out of this office recently
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and I liked a lot of the things that have come out of this office, but you did a video
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about the really good performance of the plan and you said, you know, what kind of things
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can we do with that?
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Well, we can do a COLA for the members and we could maybe bring down the cost to the
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taxpayers through what the General Assembly puts in.
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The order of those things was very important.
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Oftentimes we just hear, oh good, the legislature can put less in.
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So it always feels to state employees and retirees like it doesn't matter how much
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we make in profit, it never somehow makes it to us.
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So I think that was a really, I don't know if that was an intentional thing on your part,
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but it was a powerful message.
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Well, thank you.
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I'm a firm believer if we do our job right, we can have both.
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And at 17.49% in teachers right now, that's a big number.
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But I also know another big number and that's 43% and that's the cumulative inflation since
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we did a permanent COLA.
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That's a bigger problem.
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It's huge, yeah.
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But both are problems.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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And, you know, we have retirees who definitely were working or some of them were retired
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during the days when the state put in zero or 0.23 of 1%.
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We've never forgotten that.
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So we were screaming at the time, don't do this because eventually you'll have to put
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a ton in.
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And here we are.
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So again, it's really nice to see somebody recognize that this isn't just because retirees
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are just somehow crazy expensive, it's because we didn't take care of our plan appropriately.
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This ad hoc approach can get some really interesting results where you might ignore it one year
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and you might have to really overfund it.
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The next year.
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But what is your theory on if you could have your wish, how would the system be funded
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on the employer side?
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So I think there's real pressure and you saw this in the UNC system a couple of years ago.
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Yes.
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Right.
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For our employing entities to try to figure a way out of the defined benefit plans, particularly
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if they're paying for it.
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Yeah.
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And so we got to respect that.
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I think there's another piece to this whole puzzle, which is a longer term conversation.
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You have a five-year vesting period and the truth is the defined benefit plan is really
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valuable if you've been in state employment for 15 years or more and not so much if less.
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Is there a way to create an option for people that they would like more around, you know,
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we already have a 401k, we could do a 401k match for them.
11:06
There's lots of ideas around how you meet our employees where they are to give them
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the best value.
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It's not about saving money, it's about giving them what they want.
11:15
Right.
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And, you know, we got a lot of people who thankfully served the state for a long time
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and so we wouldn't change anything for them.
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And we certainly wouldn't take that option away going forward at all.
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But can you create another option that is interesting to people?
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I think that's a conversation worth having, but it's a very long conversation.
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We want to make sure that everyone's voice is heard.
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Yeah.
11:35
So you mentioned AI a little bit, so that's and that was kind of the reason for your visit
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to Squawk Box, right, to CNBC.
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We have 40 million in open AI and a quarter billion committed to Anthropic from what I
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understand, right?
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Yes.
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So you're not worried at all that AI is just a fad and a bubble, right?
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So I started my investment career in the 90s and there's so many parallels to the Internet
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in this conversation.
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Could it be a fad or a bubble?
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Could it be a life-changing event that destroys every single job or maybe it's somewhere in
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between?
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Usually it's somewhere in between.
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I think the old saying goes that innovation is overestimated in the short run and underestimated
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in the long run.
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And so it is with the Internet.
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If you think about how all of our lives have changed by the devices we carry and the access
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to information, I think that's what we'll see with artificial intelligence too.
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It's not all bad.
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There's some dystopian elements of it, that is true.
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But in the short run, we're all struggling with, like, what is it?
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How do we use it?
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Why do we use it?
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That's true for every employer I know.
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That's certainly true in our agency.
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And in the long run, it's going to help us all do things we never imagined.
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And that doesn't mean that jobs go away, but jobs do change as a result of that.
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We've got more work than we can do with the 503 employees that we have here.
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And so we would like to do more work.
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And that's the goal that artificial intelligence, I think, helps us achieve.
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Steve McLaughlin And it's odd to say this, but, you know,
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$300 million, well, $148 billion pension is not going to break, you know, if something
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happens.
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Matthew Feeney No, but I think, so the anthropic stake at
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$250 million invested is now worth over $600 million.
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And I think that that will make us over a billion dollars by the time we're done.
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So that's why we've done it.
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Investing in kind of that end of the risk return spectrum, the high risk, high return
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spectrum is something we should have a small amount of.
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And to your point, $250 million is not a small amount of money.
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But when you compare it to all the money that we have saved up across all the retirees and
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all the active employees, it's a small percentage.
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We should have exposure to things that can change everything, because to some degree
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they act as a hedge against other things we own.
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But also, these are pretty iconic companies that could have massive valuations.
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Danielle Pletka I haven't heard the pushback from folks about
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AI that I did about crypto.
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Crypto broke our Facebook page.
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Is that...
14:18
Matthew Feeney Well, I think, yeah, that people see the
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results of AI more than, but I guess along those same lines, though, you did have a pilot
14:29
program here with your staff, and it seemed to go well for AI use, and now you've expanded
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to the rest of your staff.
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Danielle Pletka We have.
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So that pilot ended last August, and we implemented full access in April.
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And so you might ask, well, what took so long?
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A couple things.
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One, we needed to get through procurement, and DIT told us that it was going to take
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19 months.
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So we got a helpful exemption from that process.
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We did that ourselves.
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But two, we needed to make sure that we were protecting private information.
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And we run the health plan around here and other things.
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There are serious federal laws in play.
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So not interested at all in violating HIPAA in general, but none of our people in specific
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either are.
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So we wanted to set up, first of all, an agreement that did not allow the models to train on
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any data that we input.
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That's a custom agreement.
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That's not the one you'd have as an average user of these models.
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So that took some time.
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And then second, we need to train our people.
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Not just on how to use it, but how to be sure that you are protecting our people's data.
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So everyone here has gone through a pretty rigorous training program.
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None of it is surprising.
15:41
You know that you're not supposed to do this.
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You're not supposed to send it out by email either.
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And so we have to remind people a lot of these things.
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So we went live in April.
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We have seen, and it's been voluntary, right?
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So we have 150 people or so out of the 500 and change that are using it.
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What we see is there's more adoption every week.
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What ends up happening is you use it, I notice that you're much more efficient, and maybe
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you're able to take longer lunches and, huh, I like that.
16:08
Yeah, exactly.
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And that's been a great way to do it because we process a lot of data around here.
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And it turns out computers are better at that than people generally.
16:17
Well, and yeah, I mean, just in what we process, we've definitely discovered the more we can
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automate things and, you know, use technology, unfortunately, or fortunately, that's, I mean,
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that's where it's at.
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And it's very expensive to do it and then to train people to use it properly because
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it's not enough to buy the technology.
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You have to get everybody ready.
16:42
But I could not leave retirement as a topic without bringing up my favorite topic about
16:48
retirement, transparency of the investment fees.
16:51
Where are you, having settled into this job, you know, for what, 18 months now?
16:59
Are you still in the same place on, well, where are you on transparency?
17:03
So we have transparency of holdings that's new.
17:07
So if you go to our website, you'll see that we now publish a monthly report of every single
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line item we own.
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We didn't do that before.
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That's about 120 pages.
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So there's a lot of things we own in $148 billion, as you might expect.
17:19
So that's the first piece of transparency.
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As it relates to fees, I'm in the same place where we were.
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It is always, we're always trying to minimize fees, right?
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Where we get the most value for those fees.
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Where we have to keep them out of the public domain because we're getting something for
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it, we have to make a value-based judgment as to whether that's worth it.
17:41
And I know that people have to trust us to make that value-based judgment.
17:46
But to get access to certain investments, to get access to certain managers, they insist
17:50
that we don't disclose those publicly.
17:53
And so we've got to decide whether it's worth it or not.
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And in some cases, we decide that that is worth it.
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And I understand that that can be frustrating for people.
18:00
But I ask you to look at the bottom line result as the ultimate arbiter of whether you should
18:04
trust us to do that.
18:05
Yeah.
18:06
I mean, I understand what you're saying.
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But what if your result could be that much better?
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You know, your performance is good performance.
18:15
What if net of fees yielded even more money for benefits for retirees?
18:19
No, I understand that.
18:21
It's always part of our calculus, right?
18:23
Our people are incentivized to get the maximum net return.
18:26
And so they think about that all the time.
18:29
Twenty percent of our investment committee discussion every week is about terms and how
18:33
we get them better and how we use our scale to make sure we can drive better terms with
18:37
our investment managers.
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So it is absolutely on our mind, but it's not the only thing on our mind.
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We've got to get our retirees and our active employees invested in great assets.
18:48
And sometimes you have to pay fees to do that.
18:50
Yeah.
18:51
Well, I don't think paying fees is the issue.
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It's just knowing what they are.
18:54
Yeah.
18:55
And so you can see that in aggregate, right?
18:57
We report that in aggregate, our total fee structure.
19:00
Where it becomes problematic is when we have a manager who's high quality who says, you
19:04
can do business with me as long as you don't put that up on your website.
19:08
Really, though, as big as you are, seriously people are going to tell you we're not going
19:12
to invest for you.
19:13
A hundred percent true.
19:15
So it's not in every asset class.
19:17
Right.
19:18
If the real precious capacity in this business exists within venture capital, these are the
19:23
people who start the SpaceX and start the Anthropics of the world.
19:28
And I don't know if people will have read, there was a Wall Street Journal article earlier
19:32
this week about the UNC endowment where they put some money into SpaceX and over 10 percent
19:37
of their fund is now there because they made a thousand times their money on it.
19:41
The manager who put that position on for them was one I've worked with previously.
19:46
I will tell you definitively Founders Fund would not take your money if you disclose that.
19:51
Well, you just disclosed it.
19:53
Not their future.
19:54
I'm just kidding.
19:56
It's never going to be a perfectly satisfying answer.
19:58
I know that.
19:59
Yeah.
20:00
Well, it's not.
20:01
And I'll tell you, I'll tell you the main reason.
20:03
Obviously, we want transparency around the health plan fees as well.
20:06
Yes.
20:07
And I think it's very important for the taxpayers as well as the state health plan members.
20:10
But what really gets me about the retirement system is that the six percent does come out
20:16
of their check every month.
20:17
And if they went and bought a financial instrument, they would see, they would get all of that
20:23
information.
20:24
Right?
20:25
Nope.
20:26
What do you mean, no?
20:27
No.
20:28
As you get into alternative investments and in the retail channel, you don't get disclosed
20:33
all those things either.
20:34
But the public funds have not really, they have short-term great results with these alternatives,
20:40
but long-term, the story of alternatives hasn't really been kittens and rainbows.
20:44
Alternatives, you mean.
20:45
I think you are probably right about hedge funds.
20:49
Hedge funds have under-delivered on their promise for a long, long time.
20:53
That is definitely true.
20:55
Private equity, not so much.
20:56
In the short run, public equities have had a fantastic run here.
21:00
Yeah.
21:01
Trying to compare anything to that is tough.
21:03
But over any double-digit number a year period, you'll see private equity outperform public
21:07
equity materially.
21:08
Well, I'm sitting here debating a guy that can go on Squawk Box because of his experience
21:13
and success in investing.
21:14
So probably let's move on to the health plan because I think this guy is going to win the
21:19
investment debate.
21:20
I'm putting my money on it.
21:22
Quickly about the Squawk Box interview, I just wanted to mention this, that the first
21:27
question the interviewer asked you was, why does a state treasurer care about investments?
21:33
And it was like so weird, and I was like, are you serious?
21:38
I think in most states, the state treasurer is a highly political job that doesn't really
21:44
get involved in the investments.
21:47
And we've organized it a little bit differently here where it is not the only, but a very
21:52
important piece of this role.
21:55
Certainly as sole fiduciary previously, that was particularly true, and we were one of
21:59
three remaining of those.
22:01
And so you'd see that focus in New York or Connecticut where the other sole fiduciaries,
22:07
as it's changed in role in other states, it has become more political, I suppose everything
22:12
has.
22:13
And I think that's why they were surprised.
22:15
Yeah.
22:16
So yeah, moving to the state health plan, the other big part of your job that affects
22:22
so many of our members.
22:24
Last week, the board voted to increase the cost in the Medicare Advantage plans with
22:30
Humana, not the premiums, but some of the other costs.
22:35
Can you explain a little bit about that decision and how that helps the plan?
22:39
Yeah.
22:40
It's a very important point you've made, though, and I want to reiterate it.
22:43
Not premiums.
22:44
This is a premium-free plan.
22:46
That is the promise we have made to retirees.
22:48
That promise is not changing.
22:49
What we did change was the out-of-pocket maximums, among some other copay changes as well.
22:56
As everybody knows, healthcare costs continue to rise dramatically.
23:00
I think everybody knows the state health plan has got some serious financial challenges
23:03
that we've been fighting for 18 months, and I know prior treasurers were fighting too.
23:09
So we have seen a material increase in what Humana charges us for all of our Medicare
23:17
Advantage retirees.
23:19
The plan has been absorbing those costs for, I think, six years now as they've increased
23:24
each year.
23:26
And we're to the point where we need to ask for people to help us a little bit.
23:30
And I know that it's hard.
23:31
And I know that people are on fixed incomes, and I know we haven't had a cost of living
23:35
on the pension side.
23:37
And so it's not something we did without thinking about it, without considering the impact of it.
23:41
But as we think about the spirit of we're all in this together and we're asking everybody
23:46
for money, literally everyone, it felt like we needed to ask the retirees as well.
23:54
We have heard people's displeasure with that.
23:57
I respect it.
23:58
I understand it.
23:59
I wish we didn't have a 15 percent year-over-year growth in our medical costs, but we do.
24:05
And we're trying to get a hold of those better through a number of the initiatives we're
24:09
bringing to the active side, both last year with Lantern and going forward for providers.
24:15
But we need everyone to help us make sure this plan stays around for everybody.
24:19
Well, you know, I think we're thrilled at the market pressure you're trying to naturally
24:25
create to drive those costs down to something more reasonable in some cases.
24:30
I mean, some folks are probably still being kind of woefully underpaid using Medicare
24:36
as a reference point for reimbursement.
24:39
But come on, most of them are doing pretty well.
24:41
Do you think it would sell better to retirees or anyone else whose costs go up?
24:47
If they could see that, the way they could know that you're asking more from the providers,
24:54
from hospitals is what we're talking about.
24:55
It's not doctors that are driving these costs up nationwide.
25:00
I don't know if it is here in the health plan, but nationwide it's hospitals more than it
25:03
is doctors.
25:05
So if you could show we were paying this percent to this hospital or hospital group, and now
25:12
we've made a tougher deal, you know, a more reasonable deal, I think that could help sell
25:18
it to folks.
25:19
But I think they're having a hard time accepting, look, we're asking everybody for something.
25:23
Because especially when they see, I mean, they read the paper.
25:27
They know that a lot of these hospitals are doing very, very well.
25:31
So what do you say to them because you can't tell them by law, you cannot share what you're
25:37
paying these hospitals?
25:38
Right.
25:39
So what I'd say is that we are a working process and we need your help getting to the other
25:46
side.
25:48
We are early stages of creating competition and that will allow us to create cost pressure,
25:54
to create people's clear desire to work with our state employees, to lower their costs
25:59
over time.
26:00
You will see that in the plan's results.
26:03
And whether we can get to the state where we can share every single contractual provision
26:08
or not, what we pay in the future, perhaps it actually might help set up a more clear
26:15
competition for folks because they really don't know even what their competitors are
26:18
charging in many cases, too.
26:22
We can't do that alone, though.
26:23
We need a broader transparency effort as a state, as a country.
26:28
There were some early steps in that in 2020.
26:32
The truth is they didn't put high enough fines into the noncompliance of those.
26:36
Oh, yeah.
26:37
They're willing to pay.
26:38
Sure.
26:39
I mean, right.
26:40
It's a cost of doing business.
26:41
I hope that the Trump administration revisits that because that would be the clearest way
26:46
to do it.
26:47
We always struggle with solving the healthcare system's problems and solving the state health
26:52
plan's problems because we want to do the former, right?
26:56
We want to get this system to a place where it works for everybody.
27:00
But it's a monumental task that we're but a small player in.
27:04
And so we have to keep coming back to what's actually good for the state health plan.
27:08
And we've got to focus on that because we've got a real effort there, too.
27:12
And it's like you said, there's things that, I mean, obviously you can't control.
27:15
Like, I mean, North Carolina is the most expensive state in the nation for healthcare costs.
27:20
And, you know, you can't really change that with just the state health plan.
27:25
But the treasurer has a bully pulpit.
27:27
And so I know the trade secret exception in North Carolina is kind of a running joke among
27:33
attorneys as so broad compared to a lot of other places in the country that you can
27:39
call anything a trade secret.
27:42
And that kind of flies in the face of the general theory of transparency we're seeing
27:45
out of our state government and certainly anywhere public employees are concerned.
27:50
Their salaries have to go on the Internet and in papers and everything about them is
27:54
considered fair game to know.
27:57
And yet people who make great profit off of them can say, hey, it's a trade secret, so
28:01
hands off.
28:02
Have you ever considered saying, I think we should have transparency?
28:06
I think that the law should be made explicit.
28:09
I think it needs to be system level.
28:12
So CMS started this with Medicare, Medicaid, and it's imperfect.
28:16
So that to me is the best answer.
28:19
That's more than half of all health care in this country is paid for this way.
28:23
So if you start there, the second would be at the state level and all claims payer database,
28:29
right, where everything is public.
28:32
That would need to come from the General Assembly.
28:34
Doing it just at the state health plan, even if we could, is an incomplete solution.
28:39
And it ends up with, I think, some distortions that you probably ultimately don't want in
28:45
the long run.
28:46
What I think we want to do is have this be mandated for everybody.
28:51
And then the system can organize itself around that.
28:54
So to my mind, it begins at the federal level and then it would be at the General Assembly.
28:58
STEVENS Well, I don't have any other questions.
29:00
Do you have anything else you want to talk about, Ernest?
29:02
DAVIS What would you want state employees and retirees
29:05
to know the most, other than what we've talked about, which is a lot?
29:08
I know this office does a lot.
29:10
And there might be things we're not even thinking about asking you that you think are pertinent
29:14
to the lives of state employees and retirees.
29:16
SIMON There's a lot we do here.
29:18
And it all intersects with the money of the state.
29:21
And it's not just the two big ones.
29:23
We have five plus other ones.
29:26
We're focused on affordability in a lot of ways.
29:30
There's a lot of money that exists at the federal level to help with affordability challenges.
29:35
One that we've been working on recently, and we don't have a division for this.
29:39
We don't have a mandate to do this.
29:40
I just think it's really compelling for the people of North Carolina is around power.
29:45
The federal government is really interested in developing more power because power bills
29:50
have gotten out of control, because power demand is extremely high and growing.
29:55
And as a state, we need to raise our hand and say, yes, please.
29:59
We'll take a couple billion dollars to help offset our people's power costs.
30:04
And there's no one really doing that in the state right now.
30:07
And so we've leaned into that to try to help our Utilities Commission and others get as
30:12
much as we can so that we can lower power bills.
30:15
So those are the things that you won't see that go on around here.
30:19
We got a lot of people doing things that always come back to being better with your money.
30:24
Yeah, I think that that's one of the things we've wanted to do with this podcast is let
30:28
people who run these important agencies tell us what their employees are doing, because
30:35
taxpayers really don't have any reason to know what state employees are doing to make
30:40
their life better.
30:42
And so I definitely want to give you a chance to...
30:45
That was actually my question of the week was, you know, you are an employer.
30:49
You are a boss of state employees here.
30:52
Tell us one thing that your employees are doing that people may not know about that
30:56
is pretty awesome.
30:57
Well, I mean, we're here in June, so I got to talk about America 250.
31:02
This is such a big deal, and we have all our different divisions leaning into it in different
31:07
ways.
31:08
And of course, we're overly maybe focused on the financial history of America, but it's
31:13
nonetheless so fascinating.
31:15
And I think it brings us all back to the simple fact that we were so blessed to be Americans.
31:20
It has always been an imperfect country.
31:21
I think we know that, but it also happens to be the best country in the world.
31:26
It doesn't mean we can't make it better, but we're spending a lot of time on that throughout
31:30
the department.
31:31
And frankly, I think everyone in the state government is, and appropriately so.
31:34
So that's, you know, because it's June.
31:36
Wait, what are you doing about the financial history of...
31:39
I'm curious now.
31:40
You've got me hooked.
31:41
We were at the Charlotte Mint yesterday, actually.
31:44
So the first gold rush in America here in North Carolina.
31:47
Yep, yep.
31:49
In the early 1800s.
31:50
Who knew?
31:52
Whereabouts were they digging?
31:53
Right in Charlotte.
31:54
Reed's Gold Mine, right?
31:55
There you go.
31:56
Yeah.
31:57
You know.
31:58
We went there as a...
31:59
I was in Texas at that time.
32:01
So they found a 12-pound gold nugget just in the middle of a field.
32:06
Holy cow.
32:07
And they used it as a doorstop for like 10 years.
32:08
Man, have you...
32:09
Yeah.
32:10
You're good.
32:11
I was into it.
32:12
You imagine.
32:13
But then, after they finished using it as a doorstop, they sold it to a jeweler for $3.50.
32:18
Wow.
32:19
12 pounds of gold.
32:21
Oh my...
32:22
It was a different time, age.
32:23
Yes.
32:24
That was probably like $3 million.
32:25
Oh, more.
32:26
I'm sure.
32:27
It's $4,000 an ounce.
32:28
Wow.
32:29
Yeah.
32:30
So, yeah.
32:31
Yeah.
32:32
We'll have to take a field trip there.
32:34
Apparently.
32:35
But go to Halifax.
32:36
If you haven't been to see the Resolves, it's really cool.
32:40
This is really one of the seminal documents in American independence, and we understand
32:44
it kind of because it's on the flag, but seeing it in person is really cool, and it's not
32:48
far from Raleigh.
32:49
So we can expect more videos and maybe some videos around the financial history.
32:55
Interesting.
32:56
That's really cool.
32:57
One other plug I want to give about July 4th is actually about Trump accounts.
33:02
So for folks who have under age 18, kids or grandkids, there's free money on offer through
33:10
the Trump accounts, and the idea is to get people started early investing in the American
33:14
economy, and they are allowed to add to it.
33:17
It's like an IRA, but you start at zero.
33:19
Yeah.
33:20
The government puts money in for you, and it grows long term.
33:24
Those open July 4th.
33:26
You go apply on trumpaccounts.gov, I think it is.
33:30
And so claim that for your kids, for your grandkids, because why not?
33:35
It's free money, and God bless America, right?
33:38
Yeah.
33:39
Well, why not?
33:42
Thank you for having us today, and I'm sure everyone will love the interview, and hope
33:50
you'll come back on again soon.
33:52
I hope to see your new palatial headquarters.
33:54
That's right.
33:55
Me too.
33:56
No goals, doorstops.
33:57
Well, thank you very much.
33:58
My pleasure.