CCC hiring for new eyes and ears on Beacon Hill
Photo | Flickr | Ajay Suresh
The Massachusetts State House
The Cannabis Control Commission will soon have a new liaison to policymakers on Beacon Hill and local leaders in communities around the state.
Commissioners on Thursday approved the job description for a new director of government affairs and policy, and it's a slightly different role than the one former government affairs director David Lakemen recently left to return to his home state of Illinois.
The new job will involve more policy work, officials said.
"With this vacancy, we've examined the role and decided that this does present us an opportunity to expand the scope of the role as well as bring in an expertise," CCC Executive Director Shawn Collins said. "As we work through the regulatory process, [we] realized that it would be important to have a point person on a number of policy initiatives and someone that can lead those discussions along with commissioners and serve as a helping hand in addition to serving as our liaison to all levels of government be it local, state or federal."
The CCC is in the final days of wrapping up its third major round of rule-making since its inception three years ago and is preparing to begin overseeing new aspects of the relatively young legal industry. The agency will soon begin licensing delivery-only businesses, plans to change aspects of the medical marijuana caregiver system, is working to establish a structure for social consumption locations, and has been busy with its first-in-the-nation social equity program.
Collins said the CCC will post the job internally before opening it up to the broader public. He said the CCC hopes to move fairly quickly to hire a new government affairs director. Thursday's CCC meeting featured a packed agenda for marijuana regulators.
"We've got a large number of licensing actions to take, including three changes of ownership, six changes of location, 11 final licenses, 65 renewals, 55 provisionals and a couple of responsible vendor training applications," CCC Chairman Steven Hoffman said at the start of the meeting. "I will note that we have a very large number of renewals versus our historical pattern and that's due to the fact that, as you all recall, when the governor through his executive order in the spring caused the shutdown of the adult-use industry we extended the time-frame for those licenses to reflect the fact that they were unable to operate for several months. And that's now catching up to us, which is why we have the large number of renewals."
WBJ Web Partners
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments