Personnel and Compensation Committee Meeting   7/13/2022

I love the efficiency.

To Joan, state of town.

What else do you do, right, for welcome?

Yeah, yeah.

You did good.

Well done.

Gold star.

At the last full board meeting, there was a request to talk about the risk associated with talent.

If you remember, we had conversation around culture,

and lots of accolades about forming a great team.

And then as we were talking about risk management, the conversation circled back to talent again.

And so what we wanted to do was to give you a preview of what we will also go over in the full board meeting next week.

And that includes a very high level state of talent externally, and then we'll translate that into what that looks like and feels like for VPRA.

These slides we took from Gartner, which is a $4 billion S&P 500 organization.

I've worked with them for many years, and they have a lot of great information and really important data.

I find that they turn it into really actionable items.

I've borrowed shamelessly from the work that they had done and what I'll use over the next couple of slides is I'll highlight a couple of things.

There is legitimately a war on talent right now in the external market.

It is unlike anything we have seen before, really significantly impacted by the pandemic, but it's created an unprecedented market and we're finding really two key things.

It's very hard to attract candidates

and for long-standing organizations it's very hard to retain them because the market is so hot.

We at VPRA are in a unique position because we can capitalize on the potential attrition from other organizations and we'll talk a little more about what that means for us organizationally.

On the next slide, there's a couple of things I wanted to highlight here.

There are the sudden surge in demand, so a significant increase in job openings, which has created a tremendous amount of opportunity in the market.

So there's lots of things out there right now.

There's this concept around pent up attrition.

Companies were unprepared for the pandemic.

And so what that meant was they put more pressure, even more pressure on their current staff, which created frustration and led to increased attrition and dissatisfaction, which led to increased attrition.

And then there's this whole candidate revolution that's happening now.

Candidates in the market are actually expecting

different things and they're behaving differently as well.

You'll see in the red box what they're notating is the people are applying for the things that they truly want to pursue.

They're not doing kind of mass applications anymore.

and interestingly is this concept around candidate ghosting.

We have had, even at VPRA, we have had people who are scheduled for interviews and they don't show up because they're busy interviewing somewhere else.

Years ago, you would have never heard that, right?

Don't you think the most interesting question, I don't know the answer to it, right?

is what happens if we go into a recession.

There's also been some interesting conversation in the talent acquisition market that if you are kind of, they equated it to musical chairs.

And so if you're looking to move and when that recession hits, if you're left without a seat, you're going to be in a pickle.

So it's really interesting how the market is already kind of anticipating that.

This I thought was a really important point.

We talk about lots of opportunities, especially for talent, especially for people who have marketable, transferable skill sets.

Once they put themselves in the market, they're getting offers and they have multiple offers from multiple places.

They have their choice.

and it's been really interesting.

We, again, we've been impacted by that as well.

We've talked to candidates as we've been hiring who have multiple offers and some we've kept and some we've lost, but really it's an important thing to consider that once they're in the market, they have some real choices to make.

On the next slide, I did want to talk a little bit about the new candidate expectations, which I alluded to a little earlier, the flexibility component

is a very interesting one.

And this was already hitting the market with the younger generations that were entering the workforce, the pandemic.

magnified it exponentially.

So this concept of hybrid and remote work matters a lot to the candidates.

And so that I don't think is going to change.

And I really, if I could look into my crystal ball and anyone wants to place a bet, I don't see organizations going back to five days a week in the office.

It's just that the candidates are expecting something much different.

From a wellbeing perspective, again, the market has changed.

The folks that are looking for jobs are considering what organizations are doing in terms of support and tools and resources for mental health and emotional wellbeing.

And that's a real significant shift in the market.

And then the last point here is they are, the candidates are really telling us loud and clear that culture matters, which is what makes the work that we've already done at VPRA critical and the attraction and retention.

We need to continue to drive that work forward.

But those, there's a pretty interesting changes in the market.

The next slide, I simply wanted to highlight Gardner had done some research and of the organizations that they studied, they found that operations, which is the vast majority of our staff, is most at risk for attrition.

And we'll talk a little bit more about what that looks like for us organizationally in a moment.

So what do we do to hire top talent?

Remove any bottlenecks.

Now the good news is we're small and nimble and we've got to stay that way and just not make it hard for our hiring managers to find the right talent.

We also are getting to the point where we need to be more proactive in sourcing for the talent that we need.

And so that's going to be an important factor for us to consider.

We've got to look at the total skills market as well.

And this is an interesting and different concept that I thought I'd highlight as well.

That first bullet there, higher for potential, not for credentials, especially for entry-level and mid-level managers.

There might be people who don't have exactly the years of experience you might be looking for or exactly the skill set, but if you see potential,

and you see that they could learn it or gain that over time.

You said hiring managers.

I would say almost everybody on staff has helped with interviewing.

The panel interviews?

Generally three.

The minimum of three is what we ask for.

And you will have on those panels generally the department manager, the hiring manager, and two of their selected folks, if you can get another person

But since we've been so small, two or three is what we can get in order to have that interview piece.

Got it.

They're aware of what questions to ask.

Do you want to speak a little bit more to that?

Yes, so we together tools that give the hiring managers the guide on what to interview, how to interview, questions to ask.

Before the whole process begins, I give them a batch of competency type questions they can utilize.

They write those, they put their questions together, HR reviews them to make sure that they're not

Not askable.

It presents another option for them to ask a question.

Then they put it together, they send it out to their committee, who all have access to the exact same information, what to ask, what not to ask, etc.

So it's an interesting concept here to hire for potential.

The one component that I'll highlight is it's difficult for VPRA to do that in a lot of cases.

Any startup, right?

We're building the foundation.

So what we find we need more of are really experienced, really skilled people who can hit the ground running.

So we want to keep that in mind as we're filling some of our other positions.

But that's one thing that the market's suggesting we do.

It's going to be hard for any startup.

That would include us as we're setting the foundation.

And then the last point around attracting with the human deal, the employee value proposition that we covered, and I have it later in the deck, but the employee value proposition, that stuff matters to the folks out in the market right now.

What's your culture look like?

What are your values?

You know, I'm so old fashioned when I say position EVP against competitors, I'm thinking, all right, EVP is going to war.

Long-term expectations just reiterates, again, the Gartner information.

There's just a shift out there in the market and it's very real and it's very tangible, very much around the flexibility, the work flexibility component as well.

How much, if any, does it

Well, it's an interesting dynamic.

It's got to be a little different.

What we're finding is there's a lot of appetite.

The video conferencing, it works okay.

We do have folks in the office more regularly.

Most of the time they're in the same days and we're establishing relationships very quickly.

And as long as you take the time to establish those relationships up front, human behavior and how we connect, what I will tell you is that video matters much more than phone calls.

So non-video and there's a science behind it and some stats behind it as well, but the more you can visually see the person and know that they're engaged in the conversation and they're paying attention matters too.

We have a commitment to communication.

We've got an internal communication cadence now with weekly updates.

We do all staff meetings.

For the all staff meetings, we get probably 60% in person, 40% virtual.

Tomorrow night, we're having happy hour, 100% in person.

So I mean, the priorities are important.

How are you thinking right now and what are the requirements you're putting out around percentage of office versus percentage not in the office and are you trying to have those days which you kind of mentioned where you're trying to schedule it where most everyone's in the office that day.

It is, it's different by job type because we have a lot of folks that are already... Yeah, and you've got a lot, you've got people out in the field too, right?

Yeah.

We have folks in Alexandria and then we have folks here.

Right.

We also have folks that are actually at these sites.

Right, yeah.

Doing the infrastructure, yes.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

That makes perfect sense.

Yeah.

I mean, an operations person could easily, you know, be out four days a week because that's where their job is.

That's their office.

Right.

Okay.

Okay.

I got it.

I do want to add one more comment to your question, which was how do we keep folks engaged in person?

There's some really interesting opportunities we want to pursue for the coming fiscal year.

When you think about things like Operation Lifesaver,

and finding volunteer opportunities that are related to rail safety, for example.

Why don't you shift those things to me?

Because I literally was interviewed on this very topic just yesterday by Virginia Business or somebody.

Great that what you're doing.

Yeah, I don't think any business has.

Yeah, but we got to be better with that too.

Yeah, I don't know what Richmond is like.

I know in Norfolk and Hampton Roads, when we lived there, a lot of organizations did that.

You know, did it through someone like the United Way, right?

They're the ones who are more aware of all the possibilities.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

So all of that external information kind of takes us to where we are as an organization.

We have had impressive growth.

We are very, very proud of what we've created in a very short time.

And I think this is a great visual because we went from three employees in April of 21 to by the end of this month, we'll have 38 and they're really good, talented hires.

So very, very proud of that.

That's right.

What I would suggest though, as I think about the external environment is we do have a little bit of beginner's grace.

And so because it's new and because people are excited and for all of the reasons that they wanted to join the organization, we as a leadership team have to deliver on the things that they're expecting, which takes us back to some of the things that we talked about, right?

They're expecting flexibility.

They're expecting a good culture.

They're expecting us to look out for their wellbeing as a total person.

And so we have to make sure we get things like the compensation structure in place, which Pam's going to talk about shortly.

We've got to make sure we take that good culture work and really come up with actionable, observable behaviors that how are we going to be with each other and make sure that we start to follow through on the things that these folks are expecting.

Otherwise we're going to be close to seeing attrition too.

And it's going to be very interesting.

Yeah.

It's important to, as you look at this growth, we've been very focused on hiring, not just for credentials and potential, as John talked about, but also for fit.

You can be the best bridge builder in the world, but if you don't get along with the folks that we have here, you're not going to work.

And we've worked very hard, and there's a slide later, to not settle for mediocrity.

Chemistry.

I actually feel like we're in a pretty good place and Pam and Jonah may disagree a little bit.

What we need to do now over the next six months is figure out how we're going to deliver the big projects, Long Bridge and the Bypass, because

where that pendulum is on heavy employee or heavy consult contractor.

We've got to figure out exactly and then deliver that.

And we're starting that process now.

Okay.

Okay.

But I feel like we've grown pretty quickly.

We're going to plateau.

We'll probably get some some more of the construction experts will help guide us.

But but I feel like we're in a pretty good place.

I think John Carney is going to tell you a little differently.

He's got some needs and you just need to make sure we balance it.

No, I agree with your points.

I'll add to it that John Carney, that it has been a really important hire for us because he agrees with the importance of culture and he is equally interested in making sure we maintain the kind of magical thing we've created here.

And so that matters a lot from an operations perspective because how we spent the last

Two days at events hearing about how we're setting a model for the rest of the country on how to execute against things like this.

And you've heard that from our partners, CSX, and that's when they spoke at these events.

They said, look, we hold Virginia in our

because we collaborate and we have hard work to do, but we do it openly and honestly, and we go to ensure our goals are met.

And that's not something that happens in every partnership.

On the next slide, what I want to talk a little bit about is, we mentioned the culture work, right?

You saw this at the last full board meeting, the mission, the vision, the values.

The early engagement drivers.

So these are the things on the right hand side that people have told us.

This is why they joined us.

The mission.

They really do like the idea of getting congestion off of the highways and offering a more sustainable, environment friendly mode of transportation.

They like the aspect of public service.

They like the idea of leaving a legacy.

The build aspect is also very interesting to folks.

They like the idea of starting, while it's difficult and has lots of organizational challenges, they like the idea of building something instead of just moving into a position of some well-established organization.

So there's a bit perhaps sadistic aspect of the build component that people are really drawn to.

And the compensation piece matters as well.

We've talked before as a board around compensating in a fair way.

We'll talk about the comp philosophy shortly that we've mapped out, but compensating in a fair way, and that's relevant to folks too.

And then on the next side, the talent risk management piece of it.

I'm very happy with the foundation we have started to set, but we need to continue those efforts going forward.

We talked a lot about mission vision values,

We have established that the employee manual we reviewed at the last board meeting and the policies, and we're going to walk you through a high level overview of the comp structure that we set up.

But we can't stop there.

It's not enough as it ties back to that external market that I described earlier.

We've got to make sure we do things like the community service out treat, like the ongoing team building, like bringing people together so that employee engagement is there.

Learning and development will matter.

What we're finding is people

employees.

risk assessment, which we can consider and implement in FY23 to just gauge and check how people are doing and how satisfied they are.

Again, a lot of it goes back to culture.

Hopefully, if people are starting to feel unhappy or unsatisfied with their work, they'll approach us and we can tackle it together.

So we're very, very optimistic about that.

From the onset, everything that we've heard and from the board meetings, and we've talked about this as a leadership team all the time, we've agreed not to settle for mediocrity and that traditional perception of government entities.

The key here that we want to remember, because we're doing such great collaboration, because HRPS and CSX and NS are working with us and it's going really well,

It inherently puts us at risk because we've got skill sets, we've got good people, and the external folks, they know it, and they know it already.

So right now, again, the people are happy to be here, but it could get very enticing very quickly if we don't follow through on our commitments.

So that's a real, it's a blessing and a curse to be well-known and to do good work and be known for, because some of our folks have already been approached and we want to be very, very thoughtful about that.

That takes us back to following through on our commitments to them and taking it from there.

I think this is fantastic.

I mean, I do what I do for a living and you're doing it well.

All right, very good.

Well, I'm actually going to turn it over to Pam.

Okay, so we're going to talk a little bit about our compensation philosophy.

It has been designed to enable us to achieve our mission of promoting sustaining and expanding availability.

of the commuter rail and the Commonwealth, enabling us to attract, adopt, reward, and retain the top talent that we have and the top talent that we will be bringing along.

So we've done that.

In order to do that, we know we need to focus on four things that will deliver a reward that people are expecting.

Number one, we need to align our rewards with the market and

Our program then will reflect and support that goal of being able to pay fairly against the market.

We will also be calibrating to business needs.

We're going to target our conversation will be calibrated to represent the 50th percentile of that market.

Our performance, we also focused on performance.

So

Our compensation and reward system is tied to individual and organizational-wide performance goals in a manner that will motivate our employees to grow knowledge, skill, and competency.

And lastly, but not least, career-driven.

Providing development opportunities to advance employees' personal and career goals

and support the organization's goals.

As Joan was talking about in our competition for the talent that we have and need to acquire, people asking for different things.

They want a place that they can grow.

We know with the younger employees that they have a high turnover.

Before the pandemic, they had a high turnover of two to three years.

With the market as it is now, the talent market,

It's best grown to even shorter.

One of the other interesting shifts as we talk about prevention is

The traditional career path was very much the latter.

You get a promotion and your span and scope grows with that promotion.

The models we're seeing today are much different.

It has less to do with the promotion per se, which is helpful for us because our organization is really kind of flat.

It's skills.

What else can I learn?

I may stay a director, but can I learn finance?

Can I learn operations?

Can I learn HR?

What else can I do?

Now, one of the things we do recognize is that this philosophy will not match to the market

and we're still not going to be the leader in pay, but given you all's edict to us to be small but mighty and to not accept mediocrity, we need this top talent and this philosophy we think will achieve that goal.

So a question, and maybe you're going to get to this, is there,

Connecting with other learning tools that will help people build skills like LinkedIn Learning.

We've selected a new HR Payroll system that also has a learning capacity to it so that people can direct part of their own thing.

Our performance management also includes a development section.

As we are laying this out, we'll have

opportunities that teach them in operations, I want to learn about finance.

We're going to put together a curriculum that they could follow to start helping them.

Okay.

All right.

So let's talk about what the structure actually looks like.

The conversation structure has four career streams with multiple career levels in each stream.

I'm going to start talking about the far right over here, which is the executive level.

It typically includes top executives and function heads providing strategic vision and the tactical strategic direction across the multiple jobs or subfamilies.

So if you think of the executive team that we have here, DJ, Joan, Michael Westerman, Michael McLaughlin, and Steve Pittard, this career stream applies to them.

The next career stream is management.

management and supervisory professionals focusing on tactical operational activities within a specified area.

Those are the type of people that are like the directors or managers within our organization.

Majority of these times, these people are planning, organizing and making sure it gets done.

And they often have a set of

employees that will report to them to make sure that they can help execute their goals and objectives.

The next level is professional.

The professional level are individual contributors with a specialty and professional or technical expertise.

Our engineers are in that professional level.

So if you think about those folks that have that kind of specialty knowledge, specialty ability,

this is their career stream.

Our last career stream I'm going to talk about is support.

These are individual contributors who provide organizational related support or service, often the administrative and clerical roles, and they are as well as calculating support for daily business activities.

So our administrative staff are the folks that are supporting

supporting us, for example, Mary Estelle, who keeps us all burning and moving forward.

So, I just want to note, as we've talked about these career streams, that there are those multiple levels that you can see within each career stream.

The levels help to create an internal structure for VPRA, and when employees seek to transfer or promote

As your level of proficiency expands, as your scope of responsibility expands, we're not using all of these levels today, but we want to design it with the future in mind.

And I assume each one of these has a compensation band, a range associated with it.

On the next slide.

Okay, so we partnered with Mercer.

to identify the bands for levels and provide the necessary flexibility.

What you're seeing in front of you now are those individual bands that coordinates with the career streams, excuse me, that's the career streams, with the job levels, career levels in our organization.

We have two sets of data for our two locations.

One set for folks based in Richmond, one set for folks

based in Alexandria.

The reason we have that is because the cost of living is significantly higher in the NOVA area, as many of us are aware.

All right.

So we took a look at, to develop this, we took a look at the market data in our internal equity and to ensure both levels and salary fit within our organization.

The best practices have these bands reviewed periodically, annually, or at least every two years.

It gives us some inherent flexibility.

And I'll give you an example.

We're not required with this kind of a structure to pay every manager level the same amount, right?

An IT manager in the market could be worth a little more than an HR manager in the market.

What's really important for us to make this model work, and we've had this conversation with leaders as well, we have to be gatekeepers at the onset.

So when we're hiring, we have to make very sure we've leveled it correctly at the start.

Right.

because you don't want to get into the right, this is really what you're looking for and you find, you don't want to negotiate once you've identified the candidate because then it becomes person specific, which creates, it could create some inequities.

Okay, so let's talk about our fiscal year 22 and what we're looking at.

So by the end of July, as has been stated, we will have 38 employees, 35 FTE.

As we make decisions on how to reward employees who have worked for VPRA this past year since we didn't have a comp structure set, it's been decided to give employees an adjustment to full-time regular employees with solid performance rating or higher.

And depending on the employee's start date, there will be two possible increases.

The first is 5%.

which is for any employee hired before April 25th.

This 5% is in line with the General Assembly's approved rate for the state agencies.

And given that 22 out of our 35 employees are former state employees, it will align with their expectations as well.

The second reward will be a 2.5% increase

for our new employees and those are the employees that started April 25th to July 25th.

We want to make sure that we are, one, rewarding them for their good performance because otherwise they will have to wait 18 months before they get another performance increase and that will present a challenge for them knowing that we value them and value their talent.

and then also we want to make sure we're keeping pace with the market because the market is shifting very quickly.

We feel like the bands that we've chosen are supportive of that and we know they're going to be supportive of that.

But the market has been a little crazy because of the talent war that has been going on.

Okay?

Remind me again, when's your fiscal year?

Our fiscal year ends June 30th.

Our performance year goes October through September.

Why is there a difference?

What does that mean?

So that was decided with the executive team because they wanted to give that a little time between June and June 30th, the ability to look and see if things had actually, how the year ended.

When you say performance year, what you're really saying is whatever increases and salary adjustments are made, they're made

Yes.

Our performance ratings are completed, the trailing quarter.

The trailing quarter, yeah.

It takes some time to get the operational data from Amtrak front, our performance of those kinds of things if we're going to hold folks accountable for that work, getting the finances, the books... Getting all the bills in, right, all of that stuff.

Then you know exactly how...

I got it.

Look, there's a lot of pressure when the performance year, quote unquote, ends to get these appraisals done quickly.

I also want to add that this is our plan for FY22.

As Pam pointed out, it aligns very closely with what the state did, what the General Assembly did for state employees.

to what the state does.

I feel very strongly that there should be a bump up in pay, but also a bonus program.

So folks having one time... Yeah, I think we're going to talk about that.

I agree with that completely.

It's a game now.

You're putting a psychic handle.

Are you going to have a merit program and is that...

So we've always tried to be very thoughtful about what we're doing and what we've communicated.

So FY22, right, the year has wrapped up, we feel comfortable aligning with the General Assembly increase because, as Pam mentioned, most of our employees have transferred or have state experience, that would be their expectation.

What we want to do very soon is finalize the approach for 23 and communicate that to folks and say, here's your opportunity.

You may have expected General Assembly type increases before.

We need to shift that expectation, right?

We're going to detach a little bit, but we want to give folks time to digest that detachment a bit.

FY22 wasn't enough time to do that.

So we're very deliberately aligning this year.

And then we want to give them time to say, but here's what we're going to do.

So we're going to create a compensation manual.

And in the month of August, we are going to do a deep dive into

With all of our employees, here's what you can start to expect.

So, we didn't do this at NS and we always had big debates about it.

Big companies, as you know, establish budgets in different ways.

What you're really thinking about here is a, for want of a better word, a COLO, but with some ability, discretion around if someone, if you have a poor performer or someone on a performance improvement plan, you can have an adjustment.

But normally it's just kind of,

with folks throughout the Commonwealth.

The COLA, the General Assembly Increased Merit sometimes are all used synonymously, but they're all very different and they accomplish different things and they feel different to employees, right?

Because the COLA is kind of a given, there's no incentive or motivation around that.

But if I start to see, and one of the things we want to weave into FY23 is some discretionary dollars.

So the manager says, Sharon has done an outstanding job

this year.

And so I want to give her a little more this year than I might give other folks, right?

And so we want some flexibility to be able to do that for that very reason.

Well, you know, because the opposite way of doing it is you look at the year ahead and everyone who's setting bonus levels, every manager, right,

You take the sum of the salaries and, you know, you say you've got 5% distributed accordingly and that increases, right?

That makes sure that they have to do a good job with their performance appraisal.

That's right.

But it takes out this, the good and bad thing about doing that is it eliminates the idea of COLA.

Correct.

There are some very interesting challenges too when you paint with the broad brush.

There's some advantages because it makes conversations easier, right?

Everybody's getting the same and the conversations performance-wise are much easier, but it's not very motivating.

So in Fairfax County, we tried to eliminate a COLA and we went to a system called pay for performance, which was, you know, all based on your individual performance and on a scale, if you were outstanding, if you were mediocre, you know, and that's, and it depended very strongly on what kind of a manager you had who was paying attention.

coaching you, giving you guidance, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Never could make it work.

Well, there's an institutional, I remember I heard a statistic one time about someone who went in, I think as Assistant Secretary of Energy in the federal government, and they tried to implement a performance appraisal system and something like, and they had, you know, exceptional exceeds expectations, meets expectations, blank,

But when the managers did it, only 5% of employees were below expectations.

But I think in a small organization, this is very manageable.

But you have to be aware, and I've lived through those dynamics, right?

Because in theory, you want a bell curve, but that so and ever, you never really get there.

and you don't want to hang on to lower performers just so you have some subset.

That's going to be very dangerous for us.

So we need to make sure we've got the top talent and everybody's firing on all cylinders at all times.

But the other advantage you have in doing it the way you propose, which I think is absolutely fine, is that

Because it's such a small group, you don't run the risk of really seriously distorting what you're budgeting, right?

Because you can do what you want, you can manage it without the finances getting, if it's an organization, 3,000 people, unless you have some kind of really tight budget control, you can lose it and you can start spending more money than you intended to spend.

I think this makes perfect sense.

To just pull at this point, to stay away from the COLA is the right thing to do because it becomes not pay for performance, but pay for pulse.

If I make it to the first October, I get another X percent, I'm just going to stay and just going to ride it out.

improve or leave.

But the improvement is important because you talked about potential versus qualifications.

The potential is going to take a moment to get jump started, just like a train.

Correct.

I think the process supports that.

I know that was discussed before, where we have goals and competencies.

We have two triennial

Sounds good.

Write a note to your governor, because if there's anybody who believes in all this stuff, it's him, right?

Yeah.

It'd be interesting to see if

What if any changes go along?

Yeah, it takes a lot of work.

Okay, so we talked about with the philosophy we put together, we've talked about what the structure is to be upfront honest with you all.

We still have work to do.

One of the things that we need to do is, as Joan had talked about a little bit earlier, is develop the compensation manual with the philosophy and policies as they will work, finalize the fiscal year 23 approach, and then share this information.

This transparency is key for us.

Share this information about the compensation philosophy and policies and the fiscal 23 year with all employees so that they know what to expect.

Okay, thanks.

Are we good?

Yes.

Good?

Yes.

Yeah, I think well done.

Good stuff.

Very well done.

Thank you.

Would you like to make... Well, no, as the chairperson of this,

I understand that I'm going to ask for a motion from one of my esteemed colleagues.

I seem to recall that Ms. Bulova has some expertise in making this kind of motion, and might I ask you to?

Is that the close?

That is my specialty.

That's my specialty.

If you're ready, Mr. Chairman, I move that the committee convene in a closed session pursuant to

Section 2.2.3711A1, the Code of Virginia, for the purpose of discussing the performance of a specific public officer and that the VPRA chief administrative officer attend the closed session because her presence is deemed necessary and will aid the committee in its consideration of these matters.

Thank you, Ms. Bolivar.

Do I have a second?

Second.

Aye.

Aye.

No, actually, Mr. Hall, we are going to disconnect and you are actually off the hook for the conversation.

We were committed to doing this in person and I know you were unable to join us.

Hey, Rod.

I appreciate that.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.