Breaking News/06.18.2024
Boom lowered on troubled state pot agency: State Inspector General Jeffrey S. Shapiro calls for “rudderless” Cannabis Control Commission to be placed into receivership
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The dysfunction at the agency overseeing the Bay State’s budding marijuana industry has caught the attention of a state government watchdog charged with rooting out corruption and mismanagement.
In a sternly worded letter, Jeffrey S. Shapiro, the state’s inspector general, is calling upon legislative leaders on Beacon Hill to seize control of the struggling agency and appoint a receiver to manage its daily affairs.
“The Cannabis Control Commission is a rudderless agency without a clear indication of who is responsible for running its day-to-day operations,” Shapiro said in a press statement.
The IG’s move comes amid turmoil at an agency that, during its nearly seven years in existence, has earned a reputation for internal backbiting and palace coups.
The commission’s first chair, Steven Hoffman, abruptly resigned under mysterious circumstances, with the CCC even failing to announce his departure.
Brought in to try and reform a dysfunctional agency with a reputation for backbiting and mismanagement, Shannon O’Brien, a former Democratic nominee for governor, fared worse: she was suspended as chair last September over, among other things, flimsy allegations that she had made a racist remark.
Now Debbie Hilton-Creek, the commission’s acting executive director, is the latest to be ousted, with commissioners at the pot agency voting last week to relieve Hilton-Creek of her duties overseeing the agency, restricting her to her previous role as head of HR.
Amid the turmoil, the legal marijuana business has continued to grow, with sales hitting $1.8 billion last year in Massachusetts, putting it behind only California, Illinois and Michigan, according to the Cannabis Business Times.
Along with appointing a receiver, the Legislature should revise the governance structure of the cannabis agency, the IG contends. Under the current rules, it’s not clear whether the commission’s chair or its executive director is the one calling the shots, with tangled lines of authority.
For its part, the CCC has unable to resolve any of these issues on its own, according to Shapiro. The cannabis regulator has spent $160,000 on closed door mediation sessions over the past two years, aimed at hammering out governance and related issues, with little to show for it, noted the IG, whose office recently completed a review of the CCC’s structure.
“This is no way to operate a state agency, let alone one that was responsible for bringing in approximately $322 million in tax and non-tax revenue,” in 2023, the IG said in a statement.
The IG is not the only one on the case when it comes to investigating the CCC, though.
State Auditor Diana DiZoglio is probing allegations that CCC inspectors subjected pot entrepreneurs and businesses to draconian spot inspections and excessive fines.
Meanwhile, at least three former employees, all of them women, have filed complaints alleging abusive behavior by the commission’s now former communications chief, Cedric Sinclair, WBUR has reported.
“Perpetual scandal, mismanagement, and staffing issues have plagued the Cannabis Control Commission since day one. Seven years later, the CCC remains a black eye on the legal cannabis industry in Massachusetts,” said state Sen. Michael Moore (D-Millbury), a prominent critic of the agency.
A spokesperson for the CCC said the agency is reviewing the IG’s letter and “is ready to work with government partners to safely, effectively, and equitably regulate” the state’s cannabis industry.