California Publishers and Journalists Call for Hearings on Local News Efforts

Press Conference Transcript

Steven Waldman: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us.

I’m Steve Waldman. I’m the President of Rebuild Local News, a coalition of national and state groups that work to advance public policy to strengthen community news, including many outlets in California.  I’m joined here today by local news leaders from throughout California, publishers, broadcasters, and labor unions committed to addressing this crisis.

As you know, many California communities lack basic coverage of their towns, schools, governments, and the contraction has been particularly severe in California. A 68% drop in newspaper employment since 2002, according to Medill, and we all know from studies and from our own experience, that communities without local news are likely to have more corruption, misinformation, and polarization, and less civic involvement, and even tax revenue.

In August of 2024, a deal was announced with Google to provide some support from them, and from the State of California, for community news. Now some of the folks on this call were critical at the time, some supported it.  We, at Rebuild Local News actually called it a step forward. Since then, no final plan has been unveiled, nor have there been any announcements about other tech companies contributing significantly, and of course no money has flowed.  We understand that stakeholders are working conscientiously, quite hard to make this happen as soon as possible, and we truly appreciate that.  But these California media leaders who are with us today, believe two things. First, the process can only benefit from some transparency. It’s time for the legislature to hold public hearings on this plan, and second, that one of the things that such hearings should consider is, how can we make this effort bigger. So it would actually address the scale of this crisis. That’s why Rebuild Local News is also releasing a plan today to increase the size of the pool to 125 million dollars per year by requiring Meta, Amazon, and maybe other Big Tech companies, to help support local news, too. Not just Google.

This plan can build on top of the original deal, and would make it possible to address some of its limitations, notably that it excluded public radio, public TV and the local TV stations, and it would generally provide too little for other news organizations struggling to survive.  The idea is being endorsed today by an impressive range of groups, including the California Broadcasters Association, California Independent News Alliance, Alliance of Independent Newspapers, Public Media Company and Senator Leyva. And together, we all agree that California needs more local reporters covering its communities.

And now I would like to turn this over to some of the local news leaders who are here today for their thoughts, and I would like to start with Connie Leyva, who is a former State Senator and is currently the Executive Director of KVCR Public Media, the Inland Empire’s only public media.

Steven Waldman: Senator Leyva.

Connie Leyva KVCR: Awesome. Thank you, Steven. Good afternoon, everybody. Hello to my former colleague, Senator Glazer. Good to see you, and thank you for getting me involved in this. You know you never know where life is going to take you. Two years ago, if someone would have told me when I exited the Senate I would be working at the Inland Empire, PBS and NPR station,  I probably wouldn’t have believed it, but it is such an amazing place to be. And when I started this job, what I told people was what a wonderful time, 2 years ago, even more important now, it is to be in public media where there’s no spin, where we just give you the facts, and then you get to make up your mind as to what you think  is right or wrong. So the thing that we definitely know is, we are under-resourced. Here in the Inland Empire we have 3 major, if you could call them major papers, that all just kind of share the same news. And so you can pick up one paper or the other and see the same thing. When I got here, we had a half time reporter. Now we have  two and a half reporters and we could use more because we want to see what’s happening in the Inland Empire. We want the Inland Empire to be recognized for what it is. One of the papers that we have out here is a version of the LA Times and LA Times is wonderful for LA, but we want people to know exactly what’s happening in their own backyard. So I’m highly supportive of this. I was not in the Senate and not able to be a part of the first deal, but maybe I can be supportive of this one and help move the ball forward. So I thank you, Steven and Senator Glazer and everyone else here for trying to help make this happen.  We know that the new administration wants a dumbed down electorate. We don’t want that. We need people. Knowledge is power, and that all happens with local news,  local radio. So thank you for including us public media in the new version. We appreciate it, and anything I can do to be helpful, happy to do it.

Steven Waldman: Thank you, Senator Levya. Next, I would like to turn to Steve Stuck, who’s the President and CEO of the California Broadcasters Association, which represents the local TV stations in California, which, as you know, did such a phenomenal job in covering the fires and other natural disasters, among other things, Steve.

Steve Stuck – CBA: Steve, thank you, appreciate that, and thank you to the Rebuild Local News team for including us in this critical effort. You know, as stated, we want to just build on the work that has already been done and as we support local journalism, and strengthen community news and information. Now the California Broadcasters Association proudly represents over 1,000 TV and radio stations across the State and our members are on the front line of journalism providing trusted information, vital emergency updates and programming that reflects and serves California’s diverse communities. To continue to offer live, local, and more importantly, free content to all these Californians, broadcasters need a level playing field and currently Big Tech benefits from unfair advantages mainly due to enabled by a lack of oversight and regulation. So, we’re urging lawmakers to hold hearings on current dynamics and advance legislation that ensures fair compensation for news content.  It’s time to hold Big Tech accountable so we can sustain the essential journalism that our communities rely on. Thank you very much.

Steven Waldman: Thanks so much, Steve. Laura Rearwin Ward is the owner and publisher of the Ojai Valley News, and the founder of the California Independent News Alliance, which represents scores of independent news outlets around the State. Laura.

Laura Rearwin Ward: Hi, I am a small town, independent, legacy newspaper publisher and part owner. We’ve got 10 employees, about 5 full-time equivalent reporters. So it’s the Ojai Valley News, Ventura County Sun. I’m the founder of this amazing small group of independents,  California Independent News Alliance (CINA). We’ve got 70 news outlets so far as members, and we advocate for the interests of the 250 plus local independent newsrooms in our State. The number of California reporters per capita continues to drop, and that leads to corruption and fractured communities.

CINA sees the loss of journalists and the destruction of newsrooms to be a direct result of the domination by Big Tech monopolies on search and advertising, and then exacerbated by big media’s strip mining of the 4th Estate through consolidation for profit demands.

CINA had advocated for the passage of SB1327, Senator Glazer’s bill, which we believe would have leveled the playing field, got Big Tech to pay its fair share and stabilized independent news outlets. However, the end of the road for SB1327 and AB886, was a handshake deal made by a few players last August, known as the Google Deal. Rebuild Local News has stepped forward with a revised plan, and we, the independent publishers, stand alongside in support. And together, we’re asking that that deal be made good, and that that deal be made better, to one that provides a future for professional news reporting in the state, and we don’t ask this for ourselves. We ask it for the people of California and for our right to know.

So newspapers, we’re not asking for a handout to a dying industry, we’re asking for a weight of justice to be placed on unbalanced scales that have been tipped by Big Tech monopolies who have gained an unfair advantage.  

Our industry is on life support, the only industry that is specifically protected by the Bill of Rights. Google, Meta, and Amazon need to pay for the data they mine for advertising advantage and mitigate that damage. Likewise, the public needs to invest in its watchdog because press freedom is not free.  CINA supports the Rebuild framework and is committed to help work out the details that must include putting the interests of professional news reporting by California local, independent outlets first. And, we call on Governor Newsom and our California representatives to take action on behalf of the news industry. Thank you.

Steven Waldman: Thank you very much, Laura.  Next we’ll hear from Derek Moore, who is the Vice President of California of the Pacific Media Workers Guild, which represents more than 1,000 newspaper and communication workers in both nonprofit and commercial newsrooms in Northern California, and the Central Valley. Derek.

Derek Moore: Hello, everybody, and thank you for your time. I can’t believe I’m going to say this out loud, but I look back on my career and it began before there was such a thing as the Internet and Google–and we used things like dial up. The strategy back then was, well, the Internet will never catch on. Everybody’s going to read content on print and, boy, that sure worked out well. We were not necessarily visionaries back in the day. The axis has turned, it’s 180 degrees. We know now what the Googles of the world are doing and what they benefit from, from the work of what I represent mainly, which is the rank and file. And that’s the message I would like to convey today.

My Union, Media Guild of the West, we represent the frontline workers who are really in the trenches on a day-to-day basis, bringing news to consumers and doing the hard work of bridging and connecting communities. Through this process with the Google deal though, we’ve often felt, I would say, that our contributions are being overlooked, that our voices are not necessarily being heard, and that needs to change going forward. Labor absolutely needs a seat at the table.

Looking to the current and into the future, Big Tech needs to pay to support journalists because otherwise the relationship continues to feel very parasitic. Google is developing AI models that extract our business model without sending anything back. They use our talent, they use our content. But really, what are we getting in return?  Thank you for your time.

Steven Waldman: Thank you. Derek. Brandi Rivera is the Vice President of the Association of Alternative News Media and the publisher of the Santa Barbara Independent.  Brandi.

Brandi Rivera: Great. Thank you, Steve, for having me. As mentioned, I’m a publisher. I have been a part of the Rebuild Local News coalition from its inception, and then also Vice President of AAN. In all of these varying roles, really, my guiding light has been to help get more reporters into local communities. And, I think that’s the reason why we are all here today.

The communities that we serve really rely on our publications for vital information. But also, we build the fabric of our community.  We’ve learned today more about the deal being worked on and, more importantly, that this deal that is being worked on needs to support smaller independent news publications. The Independent is about to celebrate 40 years of publishing in our market. We no longer have a print daily publication, but in our time as a weekly and then online daily, we have really stepped up to fill the void that has been left.

We have the trust of our community, but building that trust it takes time, it takes money, and it definitely takes reporters on the ground. As the State moves forward with this bill, I believe that what happens here is going to impact nationwide. So, I really think that we need to get it right here in California.

For me, it means including all stakeholders. It also means that we are focused on that guiding light of more reporters in our community. I attended the December 23rd hearing on the state of local news, and from there what I took away was that there are independent publishers that are serving our communities the best we can. But, funding that would come from a plan like this would be instrumental in our growth, in truly moving into the digital forefront, and also continued sustainability. So with that, there must be enough funds from this plan that really supports all publications.

We also know that there’s varying opinions in our industry. So it’s important that as we move forward, a wide representation of publishers are given the opportunity to share how impactful this funding would be. We’ve done a lot of calculations about what it means to put more funds into our newsroom for journalists, and I think it’s important that we share those numbers again. This funding would be very important to our publications, but, as Laura mentioned, more importantly, it would really have an impact on our communities. So thank you for having me.

Steven Waldman: Thank you so much. Brandi.  And finally, Sean Emery is the unit chair at the Southern California News Group Guild, Unit of the Media Guild of the West, and again represents both nonprofit and commercial newsrooms. He’s also the courts and crime reporter for the Orange County Register.  Sean, thank you. 

Sean Emery: Thank you very much. For us, this is all about fairness, and it’s about jobs, because there’s no such thing as local journalism without local journalists. We represent the interests of journalists, not the businesses they work for.

Many of California’s journalists are unionized, and the two News Guild locals represent the largest print and digital newsrooms across the State. We support our fellow journalists across the board that includes print, digital, public media and nonprofit newsrooms. All of which have lost jobs in recent years. None have been spared in the issues with Big Tech.

When Alden Global Capital buys a local newsroom as they did the Orange County Register during my tenure, journalists can unionize, and we can organize, strike, to get better pay and working conditions, which we did. But what we can’t do is go on strike and bargain with Google, which is why a fair deal with Big Tech is so important for journalism jobs.

We were strong supporters of Assemblymember Buffy Wick’s CJPA and Senator Glazer’s SB1327 bills to make Big Tech give back some of their advertising revenue to local newsrooms. Our guilds and labor movement strongly criticized last year’s proposed deal with Google, which is far smaller than the deals Google struck with Australia and Canada.

California Federation of Labor Union’s Lorena Gonzalez joined us in that criticism, especially of the deal’s very vague proposal for a Google AI accelerator that a lot of working journalists were concerned about, but not consulted on. As she told the San Francisco Chronicle last year, if you’re going to have a deal about journalism, it should include the journalists. You cannot save an industry with a policy proposal that the workers in that industry are adamantly opposed to.

We’re also appreciative that Assemblymember Wicks included a seat for the Guild on the Nonprofit board overseeing the proposed Google program. However, we have gotten little or no outreach from Governor Newsom’s office or other State leaders in months since then about their intentions for the program, including the proposed AI accelerator. So, we’re supposed to help oversee this fund. It’s definitely odd that we have not been contacted about it.

The Media Guild of the West, my local, has submitted a letter to Governor Newsom’s office and legislative leaders in January with suggested improvements to the proposed Google Deal. Overall, we just believe that Big Tech needs to give their fair share. I’ve watched… I’ve seen in 1st person how newsrooms have dwindled, and important issues aren’t covered as they used to. We do our best with what we have, but it’s time that Big Tech gave their fair share. Thank you.

Steven Waldman: Great. Thank you, everyone, and let’s open up for questions. Ray, I’ll defer to you on how to do this.

Ray Garcia | Rebuild Local News: Yes, for this Q&A portion, please raise your hand if you have a question, and once we call on you, you can unmute yourself just so we can have a little bit of order.

Ray Garcia | Rebuild Local News: Carla Maranucci. I see you raising your hand here.

Carla Marinucci: Hi, hey! I want to thank all of you for participating in this and Senator Glazer for being the lead on this. It’s so important for the news organizations and for the public here in California. My question is, what do we need to tell the public about what they need to do. I’ve been putting stuff on Twitter, and I think on other platforms, but the public people have been asking me, what can we, as voters do? What do you advise at this point?

Steven Waldman: I think, contact your Senators and your Assembly members, saying that the State should be pushing a big package that consists of both contributions from the tech companies and the State, that’s big enough to actually address the size of the problem and include all of the key parts of the local news system.

Ray Garcia | Rebuild Local News: Thank you, Carla. I see we have a question here from Ruth.

Ruth Dusseault: Hi! My name is Ruth Dusseault with Bay City News, and I’m a member of the 1st cohort of the California Local News Fellowship. Thank you for trying to save local news. I have a question about what happened last year, and maybe Steve Glazer could answer if he wants. But

was the Google plan created out of a fear that those other 2 bills would result in Google just dramatically suing the State and draining our general funds?

Steven Waldman: Well, I’ll start. And then, yeah, if Senator Glazer, who is here, is a senior advisor to Rebuild Local News, we’re very, very proud to have him as part of our team.

You know, I do think that Google has in the past contributed some money to supporting local news. And in that sense they are different from Meta and Amazon, which have not. But it is not enough, and it is not nearly what they’ve done in Canada and other places. So the bills by Assemblymember Wicks and Senator Glazer were in different ways, pushing for a more significant contribution, and I do believe that it was that pressure, from those 2 bills, that helped lead to the settlement.

Steven Waldman: Senator Glazer, do you want to say anything?

Senator Steve Glazer: Well, thanks for the question. I think, Steve, you answered it well, you know SB1327 was going to require, through a data extraction mitigation fee, a billion dollar assessment on the 3 biggest platforms in advertising in California. Certainly, as we saw from Google’s 3rd quarter lobbying report last year they spent 10 million dollars to defeat my bill, Assemblymember Wicks’ bill, among others. I think you take the last 10 years of lobbying contributions from Google, and it was less than what they spent just in the 3rd quarter. So there was a lot of distress about my proposal and Assemblymember Wicks’ proposal.

I was aware of the negotiations. I wasn’t privy to the details of them until I was given what I was told was, the final agreement, and I found it to be way short, and I didn’t support it. So, I’m only speculating as to why that agreement happened. But I think you can look at the tea leaves, but I think we all saw that they saw a bigger threat. They saw they could get out of the deal with crumbs and the other technology platforms weren’t even touched by it, which is a part of, I think, why Rebuild has put forward the plan they have.

Steven Waldman: And since I am still a journalist at heart, I will throw in a little bit of breaking news, which is that Amazon just reported their 1st quarter earnings, 155 billion dollars in revenue and 17 billion dollars in net income or profit. That’s 1 quarter. And earlier in the week, Google reported their revenue as 90 billion dollars and their net income is 35 billion. And Meta’s was 42 billion in revenue and 16 in profit. So you add that up, this is again one quarter.  You know they clearly have done well by this digital revolution, and, by the way, I’m not saying they’re the only causes of our problems.

Ruth Dusseault: That’s also tax revenue. Right? Well, I mean, what’s wrong with, I mean, there’s another effort underway of just getting a line item, put into the budget.

Steven Waldman: Wait. I’m sorry I can’t see who’s speaking, Ruth. Oh, okay, good.

Ruth Dusseault: Ruth, I’m sorry.

Steven Waldman: Sorry.

Ruth Dusseault: There’s another effort underway of just getting a line, a regular line item put into the budget. What’s wrong with that one?

Steven Waldman: Line item, for what?

Ruth Dusseault: 15 million, just to continue funding the local news fellowship.

Steven Waldman: Oh, oh, that absolutely should happen. But we shouldn’t be pitting these programs against each other. The fellowship program absolutely should continue. But we need support well above that as well.

Ruth Dusseault: And I’m sorry,  I was a little confused. Brandi Rivera referred to a bill that’s moving forward. What bill is that?

Brandi Rivera: No, specifically, this plan moving forward.

Ruth Dusseault: Oh, I’m sorry. Thank you for clarifying. I appreciate it, that’s my answers.

Laura Rearwin Ward: I had something to add to the question that Ruth had asked, was my understanding at the time of SB1327, and AB886, and that deal when it was made, was that there was question about whether those bills, if they passed, would be signed by the Governor. And my understanding was that from people involved in that conversation, that that was one of the drivers, that there might not, might possibly not be support for that. That is not firsthand, but that was from people that were there. So I’m not sure anyone here really knows exactly, but.

Ruth Dusseault: Why would the governor not sign it?

Laura Rearwin Ward: I don’t know.

Ruth Dusseault: Thank you.

Ray Garcia | Rebuild Local News: Thank you, Ruth. We have a question here in the chat from Wesley Whitaker. It reads, the 30 million dollars State contribution that was announced as part of the deal wasn’t included in the Governor’s January proposed budget, and I haven’t seen it on any agendas in the legislative budget committees. How confident are you that the State is actually going to commit any money at all?

Steven Waldman: I was actually under the impression that it was included in the State budget, but in the proposal. But this needs to be approved by the legislature. This, and so the legislature is going to get involved in our view is that while you’re looking at the 30 billion, you should look at making that much bigger and requiring these other steps to get more funding from other tech companies.

Ray Garcia | Rebuild Local News: Great.

Ray Garcia | Rebuild Local News: This next question is from Embarcadero Media Foundation. The question is, assuming that the Google agreement does make its way into law. One of the complications is figuring out how to divide the pie. This is purportedly to be allocated, based on the number of California journalists. I fear a land grab of organizations trying to use expansive definitions of journalists, does Rebuild or other stakeholders have a proposal on how to define local journalists?

Steven Waldman: Well, there are a lot of ways at this. We liked Senator Glaser’s bill 1327, and it had very specific definitions for how to define a journalist, how to find news organizations. They were based on some pretty well worn strategies that had been developed by passing shield laws from press freedom groups, so we certainly think there are ways of doing it, and it should be done in a rigorous way. Part of why we like the employment credit approach, it’s certainly not the only way to do it, but we like the idea of pegging this to the number of reporters in the newsroom. It creates a good incentive structure, means if you add reporters, you get more. If you cut back reporters, you get less. It’s really tied to the heart of what we’re going for. So we tend to like that approach. But you know, we’re certainly open to other ways of doing it.

Ray Garcia | Rebuild Local News: Not seeing any more questions in the chat.

Ray Garcia | Rebuild Local News: Actually, we have a raised hand from Ruth.

Ruth Dusseault: Am I allowed to go twice?

Steven Waldman: Absolutely.

Ray Garcia | Rebuild Local News: Yes.

Ruth Dusseault: I suppose, in an overarching way. You know this is about the defense of democracy, and I don’t know whether there’s been any conversations. If private corporations are funding public media, doesn’t that place Big Tech in the role of government?

Steven Waldman: Well, I think that you know any revenue stream that any news organization gets. You know the news organization has to have professional standards to not let that affect you, and it’s always the best approach is always to have a diverse set of revenue streams. So that’s true. whether all of your advertising is, you know, from one car dealer in the community, or having a lot of it from the government or from Big Tech. The best safeguard is diversity of revenue streams.

Ruth Dusseault:  I guess I’m concerned that that wouldn’t be very diverse. And also I’m seeing all these regulations dissolve with the Administration. I’m worried about there being safeguards for accountability.

Steven Waldman: Right safeguards from.. for accountability.

Ruth Dusseault: for accountability. Yes.

Steven Waldman: Pressure from the tech companies?

Ruth Dusseault: Correct, like in other countries that have lost their democracies, the media is not neutral.

Steven Waldman: One of the reasons we like the idea of the tech companies putting money into a fund that is controlled independently, or using it as tax dollars to do an employment tax credit, is that creates a firewall. That means it’s not someone at the tech companies making individual decisions of, let’s give grants to places we like and take away grants from places we don’t like. We don’t want the Government to do that, either. Any form of support should have that kind of editorial independence embedded into its structure. So it’s a good question. And I think we should look at that with the tech companies and any government part of it.

Steven Waldman: And, Senator Leyva, you had a thought on this.

Connie Leyva KVCR: I just want to say, Ruth. I think we always have to worry about that coming from the legislature, where you know people contribute to your campaigns, and then you wonder about their voting records.  But what I would say for us at PBS and NPR, we have very strict guidelines that we have to follow. And we take money, also to your point, Steven, we take money from different sources. We are membership based, but we also do underwriting, we get contributions from different folks, organizations.  So I think for us in public media, if you’re a PBS or an NPR station, we do adhere to very strict standards, regardless of where we’re getting our money from. But, Ruth, to your point, I think we always have to worry about that.

Ruth Dusseault: Thank you.

Connie Leyva KVCR: You’re welcome.

Laura Rearwin Ward:  I also think that the there’s more concern about that separation from the money that’s coming from the State, if  State legislators get to approve or disapprove of money for the media every single year, or we need some firewalls built into the plan so that we aren’t going soft on Sacramento before it comes up, that they vote again for funding for this. So to me it’s stronger on that side than it is on the tech companies paying their fair share. Because we’re not asking for a gift or grants from them, it’s a set amount of money based on some metric or other, but it’s related to what they need to pay to mitigate what the data…the advantage they’ve gained already off of our backs. So this is asking legislators to again, as I said before, apply a weight to the scale that has been unfairly tipped, and it’s dangerous because the free press is weakening everywhere in California, and I’m  just speaking about our State, and I’m not talking about the current national legislation, this has been going on, this is a problem over the past 10 years, and as we decrease, we lose power to actually keep looking under those covers and kicking over those rocks. So I know you know this so I’ll stop.

Steven Waldman: No, I think that’s a really key point. There are risks whenever you look at policy like this, whether it’s from the government or from the tech companies. We’re very sensitive to that. Rebuild Local News spends a lot of time trying to figure out what the right policies are to make sure they have objective criteria and firewalls, but you also do have to look at the risk of inaction. And there are communities in California, there are daily newspapers in California that have not a single reporter. 

So you know, this is really whacking California communities in a big way and requires action. I’ll also point out that in our plan, and even though the really key point to our plan is to make it bigger by broadening the base of who’s helping to financially support it, we also have a couple of ideas that do relate to this issue of independence.

You know there’s a few different ways at that. One is to establish a dedicated revenue stream, so that we’re not going back up to the legislature every year to ask for money. Second, is to do what the corporation for public broadcasting does, which is to have the money forward funded so that the funding that’s being approved in any given year is not the funding that supports that year’s budget.  And there may be opportunities to do that here in California as well.

Ray Garcia | Rebuild Local News: I see we have a question here from Tyler. Katzenberger. Has anyone with Rebuild Local News spoken with Assemblymember Wicks, or her office about potential terms of the News Transformation Fund outlined in the Google deal. If yes, when and what was discussed?

Steven Waldman: Well, you should talk to them about that. I know they’re working very hard on the deal and seem optimistic that it’s going to be produced pretty soon, and we really look forward to seeing what they come up with.

Ray Garcia | Rebuild Local News: Thank you, Tyler. We have another question from Jenny Jarvie. How do you propose to ensure that other tech platforms pay their fair share? To what extent does the national political climate potentially shift dynamics in California legislature and Governor Newsom’s calculations on this deal.

Steven Waldman: That’s an interesting question.

Steven Waldman: Our proposal is roughly based on something that they’re doing in Australia, which is that the tech companies can voluntarily help support local news in ways that are similar to what Google is doing with its Google news initiative and things like that. But in Australia they’re saying, well, if they don’t, then we’ll essentially tax them, or we’ll force them to donate.

And I think that’s a good approach. On the front end. If they want to do it voluntarily, they’ll have flexibility, more flexibility, and how it’s done. If they don’t, that’s fine. You could do it through a data mitigation fee, or a tax, which by the way, would be extremely modest in percentage terms, to generate the kinds of money that we’re talking about, a very, very small type of fee to have a massively positive impact on California’s communities.

Steven Waldman: Any others.

Steven Waldman: So I think we have links to our plan in the chat. And you know, if other questions occur to you afterwards, obviously, we’re happy to talk. Maybe Ray, put our phone numbers and emails in the chat in case anyone doesn’t have them. We’re happy to answer any other questions.

Ruth Dusseault: What is your timeline?

Steven Waldman: Well, the budget process is, you know, rolling out right now, is we’re in the kind of final phases. So we think that they need to address this in the next month. Because you know, the 30 million dollars that was promised from the State, needs to be approved by the legislature. That’s part of the budget process. So the moment to deal with this is in the next month. So it’s quite soon.

Steven Waldman: Thank you very much. Thank you very much to our guests for being here, and also all that you do in serving your communities with local news and have a great day. Thank you everyone.