Massachusetts Cannabis Regulators Acknowledge Failure To Collect More Than $500,000 In Licensing Fees

“This unrelenting effort to negate or minimize the accomplishments of this agency is not cool.”

By Bhaamati Borkhetaria, CommonWealth Beacon

The Cannabis Control Commission says it failed to collect more than $500,000 in licensing fees from applicants over the last two years, but officials insist no money was stolen.

The situation is the latest example of dysfunction at the commission, whose chairman is suspended and whose executive director has left and not been replaced yet.

In an email, a spokesperson for the agency said a license renewal extension fee was implemented in August 2022 to give applicants for cannabis licenses more time to file them. Extensions were granted to 161 applicants, the email said, but the fees were never collected by commission staff. The total amount owed in licensing fees was $555,671, according to the email.

The commission offered no explanation for the failure to collect the fees or why the error went unnoticed for two years. However, it said the commission is in the process of collecting the unpaid fees and implementing procedures to make sure the funds are collected in the future.

The first public hint of a problem surfaced in mid-July when Grant Smith-Ellis alleged in a story for the Cannabis Law Report that missing fees may have been stolen. Deborah Hilton Creek, the acting executive director of the agency, denied the allegation at the commission’s July 19 public meeting.

“I can no longer remain silent about the unconscionable treatment of our staff at the commission, and the egregious allegations that employees are stealing is equally unconscionable,” Creek said. “This unrelenting effort to negate or minimize the accomplishments of this agency is not cool.”

Subsequent reports, including by Scott Van Voorhis on July 29, writing at Contrarian Boston, have suggested millions of dollars had gone missing at the same time the agency’s licensing chief was out on leave.

In the emailed statement on July 30, the commission spokesperson said “the agency is alarmed to see that private information regarding commission personnel is once again in the public domain. Concerning unsupported allegations of misconduct, there is currently no evidence that suggests staff have stolen state funds.”

Inspector General Jeffrey Shapiro has recommended that the Cannabis Control Commission be put under a receivership partly because the staff at the agency has a lack of clarity on whom they report to and what the chain of command is. Recently, the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Cannabis Policy chose not to follow Shapiro’s recommendation. Instead, legislators plan to hold public hearings this fall to discuss issues of governance at the state agency.

This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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