The internal strife at the Cannabis Control Commission was on full display Tuesday as the chairwoman and another commissioner called the agency’s executive director to the carpet over his handling of the punishment that commissioners doled out to a testing laboratory last summer.
The latest donnybrook deals with the August 2025 agreement that allowed Tyngsborough-based Assured Testing Laboratories to resume operations after having been shutdown by the CCC when an investigation found the company was not accurately reporting the results of tests for yeast and mold in cannabis. As part of that agreement, which was ratified on a 3-0 vote of CCC commissioners, Assured was to pay a $300,000 fine in three equal installments due in mid-October, mid-December and a final payment due Tuesday.
The first payment was made without issue. But as the second payment deadline approached and without first bringing it to the commissioners, CCC Executive Director Travis Ahern approved a request from the company to amend the agreement to allow Assured to make the second $100,000 payment by the same deadline as the third installment: Tuesday, Feb. 10. But as commissioners convened a meeting Tuesday, one of the items on the agenda was a request from Assured to pay just $100,000 on Tuesday with the promise of the final $100,000 coming in April.
O’Brien, whose repeated clashes with former Executive Director Shawn Collins were part of what led to her illegal two-year exile from the commission, began Tuesday’s meeting taking Ahern to task. She argued that Ahern overstepped his authority to make “ministerial” changes to the order and encroached on the decision-making authority of the commissioners.
“I have some serious concerns that we as a commission have not been properly following the statute. And we’ve seen, over the course of a number of years, a pattern of either executive directors — and that is plural — general counsel that apparently do not strictly follow the enumerated powers in” state law, O’Brien said.
She added, “I’ve seen multiple memos finding multiple choice ways to find implied power and assumed power that are not directly established in the statute. That is something, going forward, we have to see where the clearly enumerated powers are, and we need to stop arguing about the implied powers that allow other behaviors to happen that are not legitimate, not legal.”
Ahern argued that commissioners in 2020 delegated to the executive director the authority to “approve minor changes, and changes on an emergency basis,” and that he viewed the amendment moving Assured’s second payment deadline to the third payment deadline as minor because it did not affect the total amount to be collected or the date by which the final payment was to be received.
“I’m not sure what you’re looking for here. You can disagree with my decision, that’s fine. I kept it within the parameters,” he said during a particularly icy back-and-forth with O’Brien.
Ahern was hired as executive director and the agreement with Assured was ratified during the period when O’Brien was blocked from serving on the commission. The unclear division of powers between the CCC’s chairperson and the executive director hired by commissioners has been a point of tension for years. Bills approved by the House and Senate and currently in conference committee negotiations (H 4206 / S 2749) seek to clarify the roles of each. Those bills would also dissolve the current five-person CCC and strip appointment authority away from the treasurer, who under the current system names the commission chair.
During the course of the meeting Tuesday, O’Brien and Commissioner Kimberly Roy pressed Ahern to explain his thinking and read emails between him and an official at Assured into the public record. The tension between O’Brien and some on the CCC staff was apparent, particularly during a portion of the meeting when General Counsel Kajal Chattopadhyay repeatedly sought, but was denied, an opportunity to speak.
While O’Brien and Roy pressed the matter, the other two commissioners either said or suggested they did not view the issue the same way. Commissioner Bruce Stebbins, who voted to ratify the August agreement, largely avoided giving his opinion. Commissioner Carrie Benedon, who was appointed to the CCC in November, said she thinks the amendment Ahern made “is still very much in alignment with the decisions of my predecessors.”
Ultimately, the CCC voted 3-1 to specifically bar Ahern from “engaging in any offline or informal communications with licensees for the purpose of renegotiating, modify or otherwise altering” the terms of any order or agreement ratified by the commissioners. Stebbins, the lone ‘no’ vote, argued that it was improper to bring up such a vote without it having appeared on the meeting’s agenda.
After more than an hour of discussion of Ahern’s extension, the commission took up Assured’s latest request for more time to pay its penalty. An attorney for the company said Assured would pay at least $100,000 on Tuesday (it is required to be postmarked by Tuesday) and sought an extra 60 days to pay the last installment.
“I think what we are requesting here is a reasonable accommodation to allow Assured to continue to live up to its commitments … We’re hopeful that this request can be seen as a reasonable request to allow Assured to not only stay open, continue to employ its employees, but also live up to its requirements in the stipulated agreement,” Dan Glissman, an attorney from Prince Lobel who represents Assured, said.
Glissman emphasized: “I believe it’s critical, quite frankly, for the company to stay afloat to be permitted this.”
Commissioners agreed to grant an extension for Assured to pay the rest of its penalty and declared that there will be no further extensions. In doing so, the commissioners also increased the remaining fine amount to $110,000 and required that 25% of that amount be postmarked to the CCC by Feb. 27, March 13, March 27 and April 10.
Colin Young is the deputy editor for State House News Service and State Affairs Pro Massachusetts. Reach him at colin.young@statehousenews.com.
