Collective bargaining front and center

Hello everyone!

We’ve got a lot to cover when it comes to the ins and outs of how the industry is reckoning with the fight for unions, municipal corruption allegations and what residents want to see from a commission that represents different things to different demographics.

We’ll get to it here as is our duty.

As always, I hope you enjoy the issue.

Take care and until next time…

— Jelani Gibson

Collective bargaining and potential move to weaken the CRC

By now all of you are in the know are aware that our previous publisher Enrique Lavin has moved up in the chain. So, here’s what I slacked my new boss, Statehouse Editor Tom Martello after Thursday’s CRC meeting. Also say hello to Tom everyone.

“Meeting and interviews just ended. The executive session lasted hours.I’m getting food right now because I haven’t eaten all day.

Long story short The CRC approved some licenses they did not want to approve because they felt like they weren’t complying with the collective bargaining agreements. The legal concern that has been raised amongst some observers is that since collective bargaining is handled by the National Labor Relations Board, they’re wondering whether or not the commission has the authority to take large companies to task for it due to federal preemption.

The caveat to that is since cannabis is already legalized and challenges federal illegality, it’s not clear whether or not federal preemption could be realistically applied to a legalization scheme.

The chair’s workaround for that was harkening back to the Jake Honig act, which apparently has provisions in it that say a collective bargaining agreement must be met within a certain amount of days, but it only applies to medicinal dispensaries. It apparently has a stronger provision the commission can fall back on that’s not present in CREAMMA.

Since most of the large companies started off as medicinal and that’s where the majority of the collective bargaining complaints are coming from, that’s the additional law she is going to attempt to enforce under.

For now they have their licenses, but she wants to give general counsel more time to investigate and massage so that they don’t get bigfooted like last time with the whole Curaleaf saga.

Additionally, they passed down another fine to TerrAscend which Jeff Brown disagreed with, so that’s where the Senate President comes into play when he says the commission has a history of deviating from staff recommendations.

The caveat to this however, The front line investigator can also make a recommendation. What’s happening in some instances is that Jeff Brown is overruling the front line investigator and the CRC is overruling Brown in favor of the front line investigator recommendation.

Meanwhile, the ACLU was outside taking the legislation to task for the revisions on OPRA and some of the underage provisions in the cannabis bill, where they want to institute more penalties. Their political director also vowed to fight Scutari if he officially tries any moves against the CRC. They didn’t say what that wouldn’t entail yet.”

By the end of that explanation, I realized I just voice typed roughly 500 words. (the joys of technology).

Sources tell us that Senate President Nicholas Scutari, D-Union, is interested in weakening the commission. This comes after Sen. Vin Gopal proposed eliminating the CRC, and NJCTA pitched the same thing in an August Philadelphia Inquirer article.

But Scutari’s possible move isn’t set in stone. “It’s gonna be tough,” said a source with knowledge of the situation.

So what else does this mean?

Here’s a couple of factors to keep in mind.

Lame Duck

The lame duck legislative session (which ends at noon Jan. 9 when the new Legislature takes over) has a reputation for being the season when politicians pass legislation they know won’t make it under more watchful eyes. It’s the holidays and a lot of the public is focused on burning those vacation days (including me).

That same session is coming under fire from a legal advocates worried about about a bill they say would gut the state’s open records law and make it harder to get public information.

The ACLU was outside the Statehouse Thursday taking the legislature to task and pushing its list of social justice bills that they’ve been after lawmakers to pass all year long.

The juxtaposition here is an interesting one. While the cannabis commission was taking controversial actions on collective bargaining that some believe stand on the premise of social justice, activists were outside of the Statehouse criticizing the legislature for doing the opposite.

Different things to different people

The commission may find its decisions at loggerheads with Scutari and occasionally its executive director Jeff Brown, but there’s more to it.

What makes this commission unique from other government entities is that it’s brand new. And by marketing itself as a government agency dedicated to healing the harm from the War on Drugs, the CRC is in the unusual position of acknowledging its existence is built in part as a reaction to bad action by the government.

In addition, its staffing isn’t typical. There are both experienced bureaucrats and others who aren’t state agency veterans.

From staffers, I’ve learned that some came from other government agencies, disenchanted by the status quo and hoping the CRC will be different. Other people joined from outside the government and have been skeptical of government and other institutions.

I’ve been told by people inside and outside the agency that the traditional bureaucratic view can bump up against the others listed above.

Another debate taking place is the morally complex and nuanced question: What exactly is a government agency supposed to be?

This seemingly simple question brings a variety of different ideological and generational viewpoints. As the commission forges its identity, its members will find themselves dealing with this question as other parts of government work under a status quo consensus forged a long time ago.

Municipalities

You know it’s not an entry of mine without talking at least a bit about municipalities. The commission chair noted that the majority of licenses, close to 70%, were still requesting extensions on applications due to lack of municipal approval.

The commission singled out Newark and Jersey City as some of the cities experiencing the largest delays. This is important, because they are New Jersey’s most populous cities and were arguably ground zero for the War on Drugs. They also consistently ranked among the highest when it came to civil asset forfeiture, a large portion of which was based on drug enforcement.

This trend does not show signs of declining and in our previous interviews with former state Attorney General John Farmer, he’s told me he believes that if things like this aren’t fixed soon, the entire state runs the risk of being disenchanted by the entire idea of legal cannabis.

Farmer proposed giving the commission more power, in contrast to the Senate President who’s floated the idea of giving them less power.

Meanwhile, the governor’s office has been “no comment” on the matter.

Those factors alone have political ramifications for a soon-to-be majority minority state. The Democratic Party pitched the legal cannabis law as one of its most comprehensive acts of social justice. How voters respond to this could have an effect far beyond the cannabis industry.

— Jelani Gibson

The contentious battle over Story Dispensary in Hoboken is one step closer to ending after the proposed cannabis store was approved by the city planning board again this week, three months after a settlement was reached.

The proposed recreational cannabis facility in the family-friendly northeast corner of the city has been met with resistance from the start over accusations of misleading presentations and political favoritism. The debate over the Story application sparked more fierce ones over other cannabis store locations in the Mile Square City.

The planning board hearing Tuesday night came after the settlement was reached between Story and the condo association at Hudson and 14th streets, where the business would be located, after the association filed lawsuits to stop it from opening.

Jaclyn Fulop, wife of Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, and Drew Nussbaum, her business partner at Exchange Physical Therapy, purchased the ground-floor unit that was previously the Hudson Tavern.

It is their lease deal with Story Dispensary that upset the condo association, which has alleged Fulop and Nussbaum told them they planned to use the unit for their physical therapy business.

Story will now only need approval from the state Cannabis Regulatory Commission to open, according to Story attorney Lee Vartan, adding that it is going to “move expeditiously toward opening in the spring.”

How much the settlement changes Story’s plans for the site is a mystery to the public. Vartan said the changes approved at the hearing included no armed guards and new hours of operation from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. An Open Public Records Act request by The Jersey Journal for a copy of the settlement agreement was denied.

Story had initially been approved by the planning board just over a year ago, but the condo association had filed a lawsuit against the applicant and the planning board over the approval. The settlement agreement led to Tuesday night’s “Whispering Woods” hearing, where the public was to hear the terms.

Councilwoman Tiffanie Fisher, who represents the Second Ward where Story will be located and is one of its most vocal critics, took issue with the public being kept in the dark on the settlement.

“Everyone in the neighborhood (was deprived),” she said. “But in particular, the people that live adjacent to the (former) Hudson Tavern on the other side, they may have said ‘I can get comfortable with this’, but they weren’t given the opportunity to have the full analysis.”

In March the business agreed to move the front entrance from 14th Street to Hudson Street, increase the reception area and lobby, and reduce the sales floor.

Story’s approval comes at a time when other proposed dispensaries in the city have faced setbacks from a combination of community backlash, other litigation or alleged financial problems.

So far, The Station, located near the Hoboken Terminal in southeast Hoboken, is the only legal marijuana business open, albeit for medical sales only. However, the store, part of Colorado-based company Terrapin, is expected to receive state approval to expand to adult-use sales Thursday.

Mark Koosau | Jersey Journal (It’s paywalled on NJ.com, and we know not all of you subscribe to NJ.com, so we put it here where NJCI subscribers can get it. Thank you for the support)

• Six Governors Push Biden To Ensure Marijuana Is Rescheduled By The End Of This Year by Marijuana Moment’s Ben Adlin: The governors of six U.S. states — Colorado, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Louisiana—sent a letter to President Joe Biden on Tuesday urging the administration to reschedule marijuana to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act by the end of this year. The move, they say, will provide economic and tax benefits for cannabis businesses, protect public health and more closely align government policy with public opinion.
• NJ legal weed is flying off the shelves — but there’s a catch by Mike Davis’ Asbury Park Press: Increasing adult use cannabis sales at the expense of medical marijuana sales aren’t surprising. The adult use market has grown by about 10% each quarter this year, while the number of medical marijuana patients has plummeted to less than 94,000, down from an all-time high of more than 128,000 in April 2022.
• Legal weed takes effect in Ohio as lawmakers scramble to change voter-passed law by Politico’s Mona Zhang: The Senate proposal would halve the number of plants allowed for home grow, increase the excise tax to 15 percent and allow medical marijuana dispensaries to start serving the adult-use market immediately. It would require expungements upon request and scrap the social equity and jobs program. Instead, the tax revenues would go towards law enforcement training, substance abuse treatment and the state’s general fund.
• Ohio Congressman To File Federal Cannabis Legalization Bill by High Times’ A.J. Herrington: If passed, the legislation would remove cannabis from Schedule l of the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA). However, cannabis products that are grown or manufactured outside of a state-regulated market would remain illegal under federal law, allowing states that do not want to legalize marijuana a way to maintain prohibition within their jurisdictions.

For cannabis recruitment solutions please contact Deneen Wright, dwright@njadvancemedia.com or call 201-324-5092.