A move for the Cannabis Control Commission to shore up nearly all of the votes it took during the two years that Chairwoman Shannon O’Brien was deposed failed Wednesday.
O’Brien previously raised questions about the process by which other commissioners were named acting chair of the CCC after she was unlawfully suspended and then fired by Treasurer Deborah Goldberg in September 2023. When O’Brien was first removed from the CCC, Commissioner Kimberly Roy chaired the next meeting and said she had been “designated as chair.” At subsequent meetings, commissioners voted to make others the acting chair. O’Brien contended that only the chair can designate an acting chair, and that her designation of Roy as acting chair the day before her suspension was ignored.
The CCC on Wednesday began its meeting with a discussion of the steps necessary to reaffirm votes taken during O’Brien’s two-year exile, a step she said would shield the commission should anyone seek to challenge its actions in court because they were taken without “a properly delegated chair.”
“Judge Gordon rendered whatever had happened to me in terms of suspension and firing was illegal. So all of the sort of subsequent appointments, votes, designations, whatever are moot from the beginning. So what I’m trying to do right now is to protect the commission,” O’Brien said.
O’Brien said she would be seeking a vote to reaffirm all the votes taken by the CCC during her absence with the exception of seven votes — six in which commissioners delegated an acting chair and one in which commissioners stripped the acting executive director of certain powers. O’Brien and a CCC attorney said those votes violated state law because they exercised powers CCC commissioners do not have.
She said she wanted the CCC to “confirm the legal validity of all of the votes” minus the handful she has other issues with, and said those other votes would be reviewed and addressed by the end of the year.
“I believe this, A) protects the licensees from any sort of question about the validity of any actions that we took and B) it protects the commission from any future potential lawsuits,” O’Brien said.
When the motion was brought to a vote after more than an hour of consideration, Commissioner Bruce Stebbins voted against it while O’Brien and Commissioner Kimberly Roy were in favor.
Because only three of the CCC’s five commissioners are active, all votes of the body must be unanimous in order for them to carry.
This story was updated from a previous version to include the results of the CCC’s vote.
