It’s been a tough year at the Cannabis Control Commission. The agency has been mired with internal conflict, leadership departures and suspensions, investigations into misconduct allegations, calls for more oversight from across state government and a number of high-level positions left vacant.
While the ongoing drama continues to unfold, many local cannabis advocates and small business owners say the turmoil has distracted commissioners from doing their jobs to keep the state’s $7 billion cannabis industry equitable, fair and stable.
Ed DeSousa, who owns the small wholesale grow facility River Run Gardens in Newburyport, said small business owners like himself are hurt when commissioners can’t get through a meeting without conflict.
“You have a group of commissioners that can’t agree on anything and legal counsel competing with each other, and nothing’s getting done,” he said. “You have people waiting to get licenses renewed or sales that need to be approved, or even consumer concerns — and instead the drama just takes away all this time. It’s really taking a toll.”
On Monday, State Treasurer Deb Goldberg fired Shannon O’Brien from her position as head of the agency, citing “gross misconduct.” The following day, O’Brien’s legal team announced plans to appeal Goldberg’s decision in the state’s highest court, citing unfair treatment from Goldberg and an agency “in crisis,” according to O’Brien’s testimony.
“When Shannon O’Brien walked into that agency, the knives were out for her, in the same way they were out for Steve Hoffman, her predecessor,” Joe Baerlein, a spokesman for O’Brien, said Tuesday. “She’s asked by Treasurer Goldberg to bring systemic change, clean up the dysfunction. And when she attempts to do it, at every turn, she is thwarted and she is challenged.”
When DeSousa heard the news, he said his frustrations with the commission only grew.
“What bothers me is how much all of this cost,” he said.
O’Brien was suspended for nearly a year following allegations of racially insensitive comments and mistreatment of an employee. During her suspension, O’Brien continued to receive a $196,551 annual salary. As of Sept. 3, the law firm Morgan, Lewis and Bockius had billed Treasurer Goldberg’s office more than $790,000 in legal fees for representation in her legal battle against O’Brien, according to state payroll records.
“Meanwhile, I’m barely making $0.25 over the cost of production to sell a product and struggling to pay my employees, pay my mortgage and feed my kids,” DeSousa said. “There’s already enough problems for us to deal with on a daily basis as small business owners in a regulatory market that’s only legal in our state. It’s just so frustrating.”
Kevin Gilnack, the policy co-chair of cannabis nonprofit Equitable Opportunities Now, said chaos in the state’s cannabis industry is nothing new. He encourages people to look at the progress that has emerged from the CCC, despite all the conflict.
“If they’re enforcing the laws and processing the paperwork and getting people reviewed and into the social equity program and doing all the programmatic and regulatory things they’re supposed to be doing, that’s what I think is most important,” Gilnack said. “Not enough people are paying attention to whether that’s getting done or asking folks … it’s mostly just bad vibes.”
The wait time for CCC inspections is down from four months in 2019 to two weeks. And last year, commissioners approved historic regulatory changes to reform the host community agreement process between towns and businesses, a process historically affected by unfair business practices the commission was slow to correct.
Large-scale, multistate corporate operators received the same priority as economic and social equity applicants in the beginning stages of legalization, Gilnack explained. “So they had the best success getting those initial HCAs and were in a position to pay the extortion fees for them,” he said. “And we’ve just been playing catch-up ever since.”
Though Gilnack has placed the bar relatively low for the CCC, he concedes that inefficiency does hurt operators trying to make it in what has always been a tumultuous industry.
“I would love to see it be run more efficiently,” he said. “Anything that distracts from the agency’s mission is not particularly helpful.”
Equitable Opportunities Now and The Mass Cannabis Equity Council are drafting a letter encouraging Goldberg to “cast a wide and inclusive net” in her search for a new chair to lead the commission, Gilnack said.
“I hope she tries to ensure that the next permanent chair is somebody with a commitment to equity and experience with the cannabis industry and hopefully a good team mentality,” he said. “I hope that she takes her time.”
On Tuesday, Goldberg appointed Commissioner Bruce Stebbins as acting chair, and the commission began the process of evaluating candidates to replace O’Brien, according to a spokesperson for Goldberg. The commission’s next public meeting is scheduled for Sept. 12.
“I am confident that Commissioner Stebbins will ensure stability during this period,” Goldberg said in a statement Tuesday.
DeSousa says he’s just hoping the Cannabis Control Commission can return the focus to where it counts: the business owners who keep the industry going.
“We just want a fair shake,” he said. “If my business fails and it’s on me, if I made bad decisions or I was lazy, shame on me. But don’t let me fail because the people in charge of the framework have dropped the ball.”
