State ed officials go woke on voke schools | Journalism or just old fashioned local boosterism? | Tough words from top state watchdog for scandal-plagued pot commission | When it comes to history, Arizona has Mass. beat on this one | Wu’s contentious tax proposal up for another potential State House vote | Quick hits |
News tips? Story ideas? Email us at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com
Have a great Thanksgiving. In observance of the holiday, Contrarian Boston will not be publishing on Friday.
No retreat: State Inspector General contends troubled Mass. pot industry watchdog still in need of receivership
Inspector General Jeffrey S. Shapiro made headlines back in July.
That’s when Shapiro called upon the Legislature to seize control of the wayward Cannabis Control Commission and appoint a receiver to run it.
We caught up with Shapiro the other day; let’s just say he remains very concerned about the ongoing dysfunction at the Cannabis Control Commission.
So much so, in fact, that the IG remains convinced that the best way forward for the struggling pot regulator is to put it into receivership, Shapiro tells Contrarian Boston.
“Here we are in November. If I had to write another letter like the one I wrote in July, I would probably write it again,” Shapiro said in a recent interview.
The IG’s comments might come as a surprise to some.
The CCC is in the process of hiring a new executive director, who is slated to start in January. And, after spending more than $160,000 over two years on mediation sessions, the commission is poised to make changes to a governance structure widely criticized for breeding chronic infighting and power struggles among the pot commission’s leaders.
In fact, a spokesperson for the CCC cited the executive director hiring and the reported progress on revamping the regulator’s governance structure in response to Shapiro’s ongoing critique.
But Shapiro, in his letter to the Legislature back in July, noted that any governance changes announced by the CCC would not have the force of law and could be interpreted by the CCC’s top leaders in whatever way suited them.
The only real solution would be for the Legislature to appoint a receiver to govern the agency while lawmakers revised the CCC’s governance structure in order to create clear lines of authority, he argued.
Shapiro stands by that assessment, with some of the stories since then about the pot commission only bearing out his concerns.
“The stories and things that have happened since I testified in July, you can count them on more than one hand,” the IG said.
While Shapiro did not get into specifics, August brought revelations that the commission had failed to collect at least half a million dollars in licensing fees.
Then, in September, state Treasurer Deb Goldberg went ahead and officially fired CCC chair Shannon O’Brien, former head of the Boston-area Girl Scouts chapter and a veteran of state Democratic politics, over flimsy allegations that she had made racially insensitive comments.
O’Brien’s lawyers have argued that staff at the CCC, and at least one of the agency’s commissioners as well, had developed a “playbook” on how to force out unwanted bosses with a fusillade of spurious HR allegations.
In fact, CCC insiders boasted they had used these tactics to oust the previous commission chair, Steve Hoffman.
Ironically, it was Goldberg who back in 2022 brought in O’Brien, the first woman to be nominated for governor by a major political party in Massachusetts, to fix the mess at the CCC and get it functioning like a proper regulatory agency.
“There are a lot of questions and it’s a several billion dollar industry in its infancy,” Shapiro said. “I haven’t seen much change yet.”
That assessment was echoed by a cannabis industry dealmaker long frustrated with the chaos at the CCC.
“It’s still crazy as hell over there,” the insider told Contrarian Boston.
How dare they leave: Boston Globe plays up regrets of now former Mass. residents who bailed on our blue state paradise
Journalism or just shameless local boosterism?
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Contrarian Boston to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.