Senate President Stan Rosenberg on Wednesday joined his House counterpart in questioning whether the treasurer’s office should retain full control over the regulatory body that will enforce legalized marijuana sales.
Rosenberg told Boston Herald Radio that the Committee on Marijuana Policy, which is working towards a June deadline on an omnibus bill, will make recommendations on the form of the state’s marijuana industry oversight bureaucracy.
“The committee is going to make recommendations on governance. It’s a fair question to raise and ask: Is this the right structure that was in the bill?” Rosenberg said. “But the treasurer’s office, they have so much knowledge and so much capacity here, I can’t imagine that they won’t be playing a role in this.”
Treasurer Deborah Goldberg on Monday told the committee that “if it leaves the treasurer’s office I think, candidly, the deadlines cannot be met.”
The November ballot law established a three-person Cannabis Control Commission appointed by the treasurer, whose office has researched the issue for more than a year. House Speaker Robert DeLeo said last week that it has “not been decided” whether the commission would be under the treasurer’s jurisdiction.
Rosenberg on Wednesday said the legislative committee “could propose to add another one or two” members to the commission and said it could be modeled like the Gaming Commission where members have specific areas of expertise.
The ballot law directs Goldberg to appoint commissioners “based on their experience or expertise in public health, law enforcement, social justice, the regulation and business of consumer commodities and the production and distribution of marijuana and marijuana products.”
The medical marijuana industry, legalized under another ballot law, is regulated by the state Department of Public Health.
In a roughly half-hour interview, the Senate president shared his perspective on the 2018 elections for governor and U.S. senator, the Senate’s plans for responding to the Trump administration, and the pace of legislative business this session, where the only major law has been a pay raise for elected officials.
The full-time Legislature, which barely managed to pass a handful of high-profile bills during a frenzied finish to formal sessions last July, has been largley dormant for eight straight months. Sponsors of thousands of bills are waiting for committees to schedule public hearings on their proposals.
After lawmakers in December delayed by six months deadlines for the state to implement retail marijuana, Rosenberg said there would be no further delays to the law, and he said establishments could receive licenses sooner than the new deadline of July 2018.
“We made a commitment. We said we would not delay more than the six months, and by the way there’s nothing that says they can’t open sooner if the work is finished sooner,” Rosenberg said.