The state may have to delay rolling out a legal marijuana market, lawmakers say, because Gov. Phil Scott is running behind on appointing a cannabis regulatory panel to oversee the new industry.
Scott will ultimately decide who sits on the board, but a nominating committee of lawmakers and state officials has been whittling down nearly 50 suggestions it received earlier this month from the governor’s office for the three-member Cannabis Control Board. The governor will then choose from the committee’s shortlist.
But the hiring process is behind schedule. According to the statute that established Vermont’s legal cannabis market, the governor was supposed to send the committee a list of candidates to vet in early November and select board members on Jan. 8. The Vermont Senate was supposed to confirm the members on Jan. 15.
The slow pace could delay rollout of the state’s marijuana market by eight to 12 months, says Rep. Sarah Copeland-Hanzas, D-Bradford, chair of the House Government Operations Committee.
The Cannabis Control Board is supposed to make recommendations to the Legislature this April on several matters, including its annual budget, environmental and land use requirements for cannabis establishments, and proposed cannabis fees.
But Copeland-Hanzas said the board may not have time to deliver those recommendations before the Legislature adjournsin early May.
“At this point, if we don’t speed up the process a little bit, it could be the middle of March before the board members are appointed, and then they need to hire an executive director and get started on the work that they need to do,” Copeland-Hanzas said.
“And I don’t know how they could hire an executive director and report back to the Legislature before adjournment,” she said.
Under the current timeline, marijuana retail stores would be allowed to open up in Vermont as soon as October 2022. And the state’s existing medical dispensaries could start selling marijuana to the general public as soon as May 2022.
Rep. John Gannon, D-Wilmington, a member of the nominating committee, agreed with Copeland-Hanzas that there could be a significant delay in standing up the new market.
He said lawmakers may have to adjust the timelines in the law, which took effect in October.
“We’re going to have to tweak the law, unless things quickly accelerate,” Gannon said. “But I don’t see that.”
Had the marijuana bill passed in a typical session, when new legislation becomes law in the spring or early summer, the governor would have had much more time to put together a list of names for the nominating board, said Brittney Wilson, Scott’s deputy chief of staff.
However, because the Legislature had an extended session amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the bill didn’t become law until October, giving Scott less than a month to appoint a nominating committee and send it a list of applicants from whom to choose.
“Our timeline was significantly crunched from having more than six months to go through the process to just a few,” Wilson said, and meanwhile the governor was also working to respond to Covid-19 and prepare a state budget.
“It was a little bit slower than I would have liked, but given the pandemic and the busy time of year that we’re in, we did it just as quickly as we could,” she said.
Wilson said the state is “only 10 days behind the process,” referring to the date the board was supposed to be confirmed by the Senate: Jan. 15. ” I don’t know that that would result in an eight- to 12-month delay on the other side,” she said.
Wilson said the administration will strive to meet the existing timeline for rolling out the market.
Sen. Jeanette White, D-Windham, chair of the Senate Government Operations Committee and a member of the control board’s nominating committee, said she hopes board members could be confirmed within a few weeks, but the late start in appointing the board could push back the timeline of rolling out the marketplace to some extent.
“It will delay, but how much it delays, I wouldn’t even dare to make a guess. We might find that whoever is chosen for the board is right on top of it,” White said.
“The people that have applied are people who are, for the most part, pretty knowledgeable about the issues,” she said. “And so maybe they’ve already done a lot of research on it and they can act quickly. I honestly don’t know.”