Well, I'll pause here.
So good morning, everyone.
Thanks so much for being here this afternoon.
We'll gavel in in the second session
of the 34th legislature at 1 PM today's.
And I just want to say, it's great to have you here,
you place such a key role in making sure
the public knows what's going on here
and appreciate your professionalism.
And truthfulness, and it's been great work for you in the past.
I don't see anybody I haven't worked with, or maybe a few back there, but good to see
all of you back.
So today, our press availability will include Senator Giesel, Senator Volkowski,
Senator Hoppen, senator Sedwin,
Senator Tobin, my self-stevens.
As we all expect, the upcoming session is going to be challenging in many ways.
But we have a lot of experience at this table and in the Senate majority, a
lot knowledge to help us tackle these challenges. We know we're facing even
tighter revenue constraints than before.
We now that demands are will continue to rise, as I always have.
Interesting that our finance co-chairs alone bring 90 years of
experience. 90
Anyway, pleased to have them here as well.
We have a well-rounded leadership team,
and we're looking forward to truly hitting
the ground running this year.
In spite of those challenges,
our focus will remain on fiscal discipline,
on protecting the essential services that we provide,
the people of Alaska,
and on making responsible decisions
that a laskin's gonna afford now,
and that they can afford as we move into the future.
Senator Steadman and Senator Hoppen are here to give us a snapshot
What the Senate's finance Senate finance committee is seeing in this upcoming budget and the path that we're going to take to balance the governor's proposed version
Senator
proposal. He has a dividend, a full dividend.
proposed in his budget, which given the forecast for this year, last year it was based upon
FY26 on $65 a barrel. This year that number for the fall forecast is down to $62 a
barrel, that makes it more complicated. But given, the fact that if we did have a full dividend,
I anticipate there's going to be a lot of discussion this year on what the dividend
should be, but I would assume from last year's discussion if we adopted a $1,000 dividend
with the governor's proposed budget that would give us a surplus of about $150 million.
That doesn't mean that that money is of will be available because there are
approximately
200 in excess of 200 million dollars that I see as
Items that have been have not been addressed in the governor's budget. I'll just mention the
top three. The first is the disparity test and that is a decision that hasn't been made yet,
but if that was ruled against the state, that would be about $71 million.
The second item is the Medicaid projections.
The governor doesn't fully fund that and that would be another $47 million hit to the operating budget.
And the last one is, the match from the arms board to pay for purrs and turs, which is about $38 million.
what the legislature is going to do.
We've been dealing with deficit spending
for well over two decades.
We used to have a substantial amount of money
in the constitutional budget reserve account
in excess of 20 billion,
but that has gone by the wayside
and we need to continue to
save what we have in the constitutional budget reserve as a buffer for rainy day times, and
I've said it a couple of times. We shouldn't be spending those dollars on one-time items.
We should be looking at revenues for reoccurring expenditures. And that is why I think that
or retreat, and made revenue measures as our number one priority.
I know that it is a difficult issue to address,
but it has to be addressed because we have not been able
to reduce the governor, the operating budget,
the only thing that we've been...
successful at and criticized heavily on is reducing the dividend from a
statutory level down to a thousand dollars. So it's going to be a very
difficult question. I don't know the governor has said that he wants to work
with the legislature and address revenue measures. They may be there.
I would assume they're probably going to be substantially different, but one way or another,
if we are going continue to provide the services that the people of Alaska have been accustomed
to, that is the million dollar question, can we come up with revenue measures this session?
Well, thank you said or often such a downer sometimes
We're gonna go to senator Sedman to raise our spirits. Thank you, Miss President. Well
Following up on the operating budget chairman after he spends all the money
Then comes a capital budget and the capital of budget I don't see having a whole lot of flexibility in it
The concern there is that we have not had as much funding in
Maintenance is that I think we should have clearly last year there's only three schools in the major maintenance list that got funded
I Think we had a list of ten when we sent the budget to the governor
This year, there is no money in a budget for
Major maintenance at K-12 and I just heard a few minutes ago some school up north fell down
And yack and yak whole school felled down around their years
There's no money in it for courts for major maintenance. There is no
money for the third one. I'll think of it here in a minute or the university. So if
we don't do major-maintenance, you're going to end up with just a bunch of junk and it's
not going work.
address DOT major maintenance, the whole road.
For instance, with the trucks getting their
undercarriage ripped up, brand new trucks.
I think we need more funds in the maintenance.
And those shortfalls that Senator Hoffman had mentioned
that he's dealing with in your operating budget
does not include these.
Telling my district that this current year's budget will be very similar to the current budget in place
The price of oil is down a little bit
Headcount in schools are down 2% across the state
So that you know reduces that a Little bit
But we're gonna have another tight year and I would agree with the center Hoffman at some point
you know, the dam's going to break.
We also have not talked about some of the agencies
that are having extreme difficulties
in meeting their fundamental goals and objectives.
So if you look forward to a financial plan
going forward for the state,
you've got to not go broken near.
three, if you're looking at a five-year plan or if
you looking a 10- year plan, you can't go broken
year five and you certainly have to have a good
base to start with.
So we're gonna have
to add back a lot of these components into the
current year's budget, just for the starting number.
And those in the state that think we should not
maintain schools, probably don't have any children
in school or grandkids in schools.
That's one of our fundamental obligations.
So I look forward to working with Senator Hoffman.
Hopefully he has a little bit extra change for the capital budget,
but payroll comes first.
Payroll comes 1st when push comes the shove.
And we're going to make payroll one way or the other.
Thank you, Senator Steban,
Senator Hoppe, I'd appreciate those comments.
At the same time, all of this is going on.
We're keeping a close eye on education.
and how we can help improve educational outcomes in our state, provide sustainable and reliable
resources to our schools, and, how can we keep young families and teachers here in Alaska.
We established the Education Task Force last session, started its work in August, I've
provide a brief overview of the progress of this important task force bipartisan and
bicameral and Senator Tobin is the co-chair of that taskforce and what do you anticipate?
going forward, Senator Tobin.
Thank you, President Stevens.
Well, as folks know, the Education Task Force
was authorized under House Bill 57.
We did kick off with our inaugural meeting this past year,
and we are looking forward to submitting our recommendations
to the full legislature on the first day
of the 35th legislature in 2027.
One of the things that we've really appreciated is the opportunity to visit many different
school sites.
We have gone to Wasilla to Anchorage to Kenai to Fairbanks and Inana and we are continuing
our school site visits this year by focusing here on Southeast while we're here in session
and then of course organizing what we hopefully will be a large contingency of lawmakers out
to the Bethel area so that can see schools in our rural communities.
We anticipate continuing our task force meetings during the legislative session
We will actually be taking up the Senate Education Committee time so that we are able to maximize lawmakers schedules
I will be leading many of those along with my co-chair representative him chute.
We are looking forward to our next task force meeting which will
be this Friday where we'll be talking about attendance policy.
We have heard many folks question our enrollment practices including
changing to an open enrollment system, trying to address chronic absenteeism and of course
the students who are experiencing
houselessness and homelessness and housing insecurity.
As we know, federal resources are very volatile
at this current moment as the current budget
defunds the entire McKinney-Vento program.
Future topics and conversations include really focusing in
on healthcare and insurance and continued conversations
about charter schools and charter school funding
as well as tribal compacting and localizing education.
I am very much looking forward to hearing from community members. We had a great opportunity
to have round table conversations with students in Fairbanks. It was incredible to hear these
young people talk about the awesome opportunities they've had. I did not know that Lathrop has one
of the nationally ranked applicants.
academic decathlon teams, which is quite exciting and knowing that their educators have put
so much energy into ensuring that those students are successful. We also are hopeful that the
community will continue to provide their public comment and I'm going to share the public
comment email once again as I somehow get it wrong every time I try to show it so I am going
to read it off. It is edfundtaskforce at akaleg.gov.
We have a lot of folks provide input and insight and we hope that will
it really informs the work that we are doing
on the education task force.
Thank you, Senator Tobin.
I really appreciate you're stepping forward
and sharing, co-chairing in that committee.
It's an extremely important and appreciate
all the efforts you have put in so far,
and that I know will occur in the future as well.
So, I'm not turned to Senator Wieckowski who has been working on the election reform
package because of the timing last year, you know, we weren't able to get it across
the finish line.
But moving forward on this issue is definitely a priority of this caucus.
Senator Wilkowski, can you give us an update on what's happening, how where the bell stands,
changes that are maybe taking place and a timeline for getting this done this session?
continues to be by far the most challenging state
in the nation to conduct elections,
some of which are things that are out of our control,
like whether you have communities
where you can't get ballots in or out sometimes for days,
but some are within our controls,
like the inability to get poll workers.
And so this bill has been a work in progress
for a number of years.
Hopefully, we've refined it to the point now where we're ready to pass it and get it
to governor for his signature.
Some of the critical things, though, that we are looking at addressing are the fact
that there are 106 percent more registered voters in Alaska than there is adults in
Alaska.
That is something that is very concerning to people.
The fact that 15 percent of ballots in many rural communities were thrown out because
the fact that high percentage of military voters ballots were thrown out because of
technicalities. The fact, that a number of people, dozens, perhaps hundreds of
people living in assisted living homes ballots, were
thrown up, not because
of an error that they made, but because
of errors by poll workers, concerns over the
length of time to get ballots counted. These are the things that we
the version that is now in front of the House Finance Committee.
This bill is passed the Senate and it is in the house.
The hope is that this will be a priority.
I know it's a party for the senate.
I've talked in talking with House members.
I don't know. It's the priority for them as well.
And the hope that we can get it passed early on so that
we get these changes, these critically needed changes.
These bipartisan.
non-partisan changes in place for next year's election.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Well, thank you.
Senator Wieckowski.
So with that, welcome, again,
welcome to all of you glad you are here.
It's good to see you again.
We're looking forward to the work that ahead of us this session.
And now we'd be pleased to take any questions you may have.
If you would raise your hand, we'll get to you now.
Becky bore with the Associated Press Senator Hoffman had mentioned revenue measures as
priority one that passed last year the online
Tax bill was vetoed by the governor and I'm wondering if
Leadership is still viewing a joint session for overrides as a requirement versus optional and if so when that might occur
Yes, absolutely be glad to explain where we are how that's transpired
I've been working closely with the Speaker of the House and we had thought that we would
do that override today, but the Governor has asked us to postpone that to give him a little
more time to reach out to some other folks in the Senate and House.
And so that's where we are.
We've had a schedule now for Thursday at 9 a.m.
So we'll give the override at that time.
Yeah, we had thought that we'd do it today, but it's best that
we take the time to make sure that the government we we comply
with the governor's request. It's a reasonable one. And so
Thursday at nine AM.
Jeff Landfield, I imagine you've all seen the letter from about
25 trade groups, resource trade, groups and chambers of commerce
and labor unions. Folks that don't normally always get along
about the 70 million that The Governor vetoed that you had
approved last year and he talked about funding source issues and the general access road
money but they're saying if it's not approved very quickly then the match of the 700 million
won't be allowed to be used in the construction season. So I'm wondering if that's a priority
and how you're going to get the three quarters vote to access.
Thank you. A real concern, Jeff. Senator seven. Yes, thanks for the question,
substantial concern of the timeline. That doesn't go unnoticed. I don't know what the
governor intends to do to propose fixing this and coming up with the three-quarter vote to
do that. There's a lot of interest in having the time line from DOT in federal highways.
You know, the drop-dead date is to actually lose the money.
That's one question.
Another question that is on the table is the one that you brought up, and
that's losing the construction season.
It's a significant issue.
We do have a deficit in this current fiscal year.
And it is very difficult to deal with three quarter votes.
They get expensive.
So, we'll wait and see what the governor's proposal is to fix the mess he created.
I think if we all realize how devastating this could be to the industry and so we're
trying to work forward on that and it's Senator Giesel.
Thank you, Mr. President.
This is a really serious issue.
There are businesses that are going to close if the next construction year is not funded.
And so I'm pretty concerned about it.
You know, we talk about funding government
to the level that citizens expect.
This is funding, government,
so that the private sector can prosper.
So the public sector
can do the work that we needed to do.
DOT doesn't actually build the roads.
They contract with contractors.
And those are the people that are standing by
Waiting to do the work, but had very minimal work this last year, and if they don't have this money for next year or this coming year this summer of 26, they'll be businesses closing.
So this is a top issue, again, the veto was senseless, we need to find a way to fund it, thank you.
Thank you, Senator Geesele. I can't stress that enough that the governor did create this issue by vetoing it and we're looking to him to help us resolve it.
James Brooks with the Alaska Beacon for Senator Giesle, what's the plan to address the gas pipeline and issues surrounding that?
The gas pipe line will be the lead subject for Senate resources. Coming up this Friday is our first meeting.
We're going to have a consultant called Pegasus presenting to us the Legislative Budget and Audit Committee just
Engaged them as a contractor a Consultant for us
They've done a robust report looking at our previous mega project and that was the building
of the Trans-Alaska pipeline system, TAPs.
The errors that were made there, the things that we should be looking for in this next
mega-project.
So we'll be leading with that.
I have numerous people coming to testify as well as the companies that own the gas,
Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission that regulates how much gas can reasonably
but we want to look at costs. What are we giving up? The governor is proposing that we give up a
substantial amount of property tax, not just for a few years, but for the life of the project.
That's a pretty big ask. We've never done that before. So the fiscal issues are going to be huge.
Of course, the resources committee will be looking at the resource itself and its impact
and the project's impact, then we'll be sending it on to the finance committee that will dig
even deeper into the finances.
Thank you, Ms. Argyzal.
Iris Samuels with the Anchorage Daily News. I was hoping to ask about the plan to deal with
the governor's fiscal plan proposal, but first I have a quick follow-up question to James' question.
The legislature had contracted Gaffney Klein to provide information on oil and gas-related
issues. Can you articulate why there was this need to add a new contractor to
provide the information to the legislature? Yes, Iris. Gafney Kline is still going to be
The reason that I requested Pegasus is because of the work they had done on the TAP system and the errors we had made there just to get kind of a broader picture and a more diverse picture from our consultants.
Mr. President, I wanted to just add something here and it kind segues to education.
You know, our education system is turning out some amazing kids and I have an intern
in my office this year, Ben Golds.
He is a junior at Dartmouth College.
He asked to intern in the office.
This year he's majoring in economics and the gas pipeline is big piece for him.
This is an Alaskan kid, graduated from our Alaska schools in a highly gifted program.
This was the kind of students that were turning it out.
And I'm trying to make sure that he has a great experience here so he comes back to
All right, and then related to the governor's fiscal plan proposal, I'm curious, you know,
none of us have seen the details yet, but given what you
know about his plan so far, how do you plan to approach dealing with that?
Do you plant a whole hearings on it as a
whole?
The governor has basically said he wants a variety of issues to be dealt with in the
form of a package.
Do
you
plan
to heed his request on that or deal with it kind of element by element, revenue measure by
revenue
You know, we'll be dealing with that.
Certainly, the governor has, earlier was talking about
several bills, maybe five, six, seven bills.
And now there's going to be a ominous bill
that has all of the issues in it.
We don't really know all the details.
We've heard some of them, but I think we need to wait
and let the government give a speech.
On Thursday, Thursday evening, I'm sure he'll go
into detail on exactly what his plans are.
So we're not really prepared to,
going to any depth or criticize or say yes or no on things right now. We need to see
what the governor's package includes when he makes this presentation.
Hi, Corinne Smith, Alaska Beacon. My question is about disaster relief funding and is there any
And also, are you planning to budget more disaster relief funding, given the higher risk of these types of extreme weather events in Alaska?
Well, thank you. I'll turn to Senator Hoffman, who's district's typhoon hit.
Well, we're monitoring what happened with that typhoon. I know many families that are directly
affected. Um, I would like to say that the governor's office has so far has done a tremendous job
in addressing those disaster funds. However, last year we looked at increasing the amount of money,
We had included a five-year average that was subsequently reduced by the governor.
It's my intention to go forward and increase that from and address it on a 5- year average
again.
We, for some reason, have been unfortunate in both of those areas, but we need to be prepared.
That's not to say that those disasters are not being met.
They are being meant.
But the funding is a separate issue.
But I said that we will probably be coming forward with the five-year average again.
Thank you.
Just for a little more clarity, we spent a lot of time last year at the finance table led by
Senator Hoffman coming up with how we're going to handle the disaster and funds
and a couple other things. And it took a lotta effort to fit him in the budget. It wasn't easy
and it wasn t fun. We came up at that five-year average of 50 million and we put that in.
The political game is a governor could take big chunks out,
claim he's saving money, and then when there's a disaster,
he just declares the disaster and spends the money
and puts it in a supplemental.
That's what we want to avoid.
We want truth and budgeting.
And if five years isn't, you know, a good average,
hopefully the administration will tell us they want a three-year
or a seven- year or something.
but we need to get away from the supplemental impact because you could take it, the governor
could to take to zero and declare emergencies and spend whatever they want and that's not
good budgeting at all. Eric's done with Alaska Public Media. I have two questions, I hope you'll
humor me on that.
The first is for Senator Hoffman, and that's Senator Dan Sullivan posted on his campaign
page that you had endorsed him.
I was hoping you could speak a little bit as to why.
And for the rest of the panel, especially Senator Giesle, there are a series of license
and its application for all of this rural health transformation project funding,
interstate medical license compact, EMS, psychology, physician assistants, nurse licensure,
and a change to the scope of practice for pharmacists.
I'm curious sort of for your general thoughts on are these a good idea?
Are these things that you see passing this session?
So yeah, those are my two questions. Thanks.
Thank you, Eric, let's go to Senator Hoppe on first.
Well, what I do in my private life and who I support and
who hang out with and stuff I feel are my business.
And I'd rather not answer that question.
Thank-you very much.
Okay, Senator Giesel.
Yes, related to the compacts.
So, well, first let me speak to
the pharmacy.
practice. There's actually a bill that will do that. It's called the Patient
Services Bill.
It is still in this, it's in labor and commerce right now. Our labor
and comers.
It would allow pharmacists to practice to the full scope of their ability that
being treating things that didn't require complex treatment. They would not be
able to treat cancer, but they could treat strep throat.
Walking into a pharmacy. They could do that simple test and then prescribe because they're pharmacists
The antibiotics, so that makes purple perfect sense and in fact I have a bill to do
That in terms of the compacts. I
Have a huge question about the compacts mainly because I
Care deeply that Alaskans are employed in this state
We know that 25% of people that work in the state right now
Compacts facilitate that so that this, if it were, for example, a medical practice
physician compact,
physicians could fly in and out taking their wages because we don't have an income tax taking
their wages to another state where they would pay an Income Tax where, they have a home and
paying property tax have kids in the schools etc. I'm not a fan of the compacts. Speaking
specifically to the nursing compact as a previous chair of The Board of Nursing we've expedited
coming into this state. Military nurses as well as citizen nurses. So a compact really
doesn't expedite the licensure. Uh so those are my concerns with the compacts.
Senator Giesle further questions. We're going to go online to Hanalee with Alaska's new source.
Over the weekend, Representative Gray expressed his wish for few D officials to be invited
to the Joint Honor Services Committee to explain the use of U.S. and therefore in another military
unit station in Alaska to use Minnesota, Minnesota or other possible places.
Are there any planned hearings or wishes to carry hearings to invite those officials
to do enough?
Any response from anyone?
I'm sorry, we don't have a response for you, Hannah.
We'll certainly look into it.
Thank you for your question.
Jeff Lanfield, again, I have the question for Senator Stedman.
He once told me that the legislature is capable
of doing one or two big things each session.
I was kind of curious with the gas line thing
and the pension bill and sales tax
or fiscal plan thing and dividend and deficit
and all of these things going on.
proceed the session going one big log jam um it's true we could concentrate and
get one or two big items done uh the more big
items you put in on the plate the higher or the
higher the probability of the throughput goes
you know into a logjam so we'll have to prioritize that
that list there's only so much bandwidth in the legislature
There's a huge education gap, a knowledge gap in the legislature just to get the legislators up to speed
because there's so many new ones over the last decade or so. It's going to take a lot of work.
The physical plan the governor's gonna put on the table, that sounds to me like something that's
going be very involved. Those are two big items. The pension issue we've worked on for years,
that is pretty much known in a building a little more than some of the other items,
as a clumber sum as some of the other ones.
It's a hot button item politically,
but it's not as mysterious as the gas line
or the fiscal plan.
So we have to concentrate and also
to Senator Hoffman's earlier comment
of challenge of their operating budget.
That's big issue.
We've got to have a balanced budget
and look out for the next generation of Alaskans.
That alone.
that item alone will suck up a lot of time and then when we put and it's
constitutionally mandated we have a budget. We it is not constitutionally
mandated these other issues. So we work and have our hands full in the
legislature but generally speaking that is correct. Fewer items are easier to
Last question from Irish Samples.
Thank you. I wanted to follow up on pensions actually.
There's been a lot of discussion about that in the building over the past few years.
Do you feel like this is the year that the legislature can actually get something across related to
public pensions in this state and
somewhat related question. It seems from the governor's budget proposal that there's some disagreement between him and the arm board on
how the state should be handling its liabilities related too.
to pensions and past liabilities, I'm wondering if that's something that you think the legislature
should get involved in. Thank you, RSS. Senator Giesle, can you address that?
Sure. There's a house version of a new pension proposal. It's incidentally we're in commerce
right now. I know they'll be addressing it right out of the gate. Then it will move on to the finance
had significant problems with recruitment and retention.
We get a single audit every year,
that's an audit of state government departments
that repeatedly
for the past few years over and over has said, new staff inadequately trained, not enough staff
have made fiscal errors, errors that cost us millions of dollars, federal money that is not
being managed properly and reported back properly. Again,
not because there are bad people working in state government, but they're inadequatly trained.
They're new or there aren't enough of them. So this is an issue we need to address. Teachers.
who have no Social Security at retirement.
Well, that makes it pretty hard to recruit
and retain teachers.
So it's an issue we definitely need to address.
We'll see.
There is a bill moving.
We will see where it ends up.
I've got a couple of comments on how Hot Button issue.
Let me address the unfunded liability first.
There's been significant concern of the
unfunted liability which is just for round numbers,
$8 billion.
We've spent about $8 billion so far in the last couple of decades.
We have made virtually no progress for the amount of money being spent on that over the
last decade, and this deals with the pensions.
The concern that will be on the table when you short-fund the unfunded liability, you
extend its life.
Over two decades ago when we started cleaning up the pension debacle,
a lot of us thought that it would be a cap at about eight billion and we'd have it behind us.
That turned out to be substantially underestimated. We thought we were being
over the aggressive and looking at how bad it was going to get.
We had no clue.
We were completely the opposite side of that.
We thought that the healthcare would be the problem
and pension would okay.
Turns out we've got the health care fixed.
The pension is the problems.
So that is a huge issue.
So then we go into the current system.
True, there is bill.
There's several bills in the building.
That's just one of them.
The concern there is that we have a diminishment of benefits and play.
And I think that's detrimental to any intent we've ever had is the diminished benefits
to the employees.
So there's a concern.
We also ranked 11th in the nation for long-term retirement for teachers, 11.
So we had a very flush retirement plan.
It's very strong, and I'm not advocating diminishing it.
And if you ask any of the workers in the building
about their supplemental benefit system,
they probably won't want to answer it
because it is extremely lucrative
and that's the replacement for Social Security.
And it's true, teachers are not in Social security.
That's of their own accord.
But there are school districts,
and even in my district,
that are looking at going into Social-Security.
That is roughly about a third of retirement to quarter.
40% depending on where you land, they are leaving, teachers are
leaving on the table 100% match from about 6.2% of their salary,
every paycheck and the employer being 6,200%
match every single paycheck. They're leaving hundreds and
hundreds of thousands of dollars on a table per teacher.
And we have a bill to point that out.
And there are districts that are looking at school districts
that looking going into Social Security.
I personally think this SPS supplemental benefit system
by the state is far superior than Social security,
but the districts can make their selection
what they want to do.
So the pension, if you can be in a pension plan
or you could be a defined benefit plan.
Is it going to move the needle much one way or the other we can argue back and forth the who's going
to win who is going lose?
But when you factor in Social Security, you're moving the need hundreds and hundreds of thousands
of dollars.
I was having a steak dinner the night at Club Paris, the guy sitting next to me working
for a fishing game had 1.4 million in his SBS account, 1 point 4 million.
Now you tell me, would you walk away from that?
And he, I think he worked for the state maybe 30 years.
We're talking huge numbers.
Average teacher, 600 million, or $600,000 to $700, 000
when they retire.
And the NEA needs to put that in front of the teachers
and have a discussion.
And then we gotta figure out how to fund our side.
But, you know, we can't decline any citizen
from accessing Social Security.
retirement mechanism and safety net for the vast majority of American
citizens. And the teachers need to get off the dime, get in Social Security or
get an SBS, and then we don't have to fund it, which is probably 50 to 70
million. Other than that, things are going personal. That's a totally inappropriate
way to end this press conference.
as a retired professor when you talk about ad awakening the
minishment. I'm glad you said that that's not going to happen.
So thank you all for being here. We'll see you next week.