DeLeo: Deb should pick pot panel chief
House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo says the state treasurer should appoint a point person to run the office of the commission that will be responsible for regulating Massachusetts’ new marijuana law, but she should hold off on appointing the panel itself.
In an interview yesterday on Herald Radio, DeLeo said Treasurer Deborah B. Goldberg should hire the panel’s head but delay appointing its three members until the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Marijuana Policy hears testimony and makes recommendations about how the law should be implemented.
“I think she has to do what she has to do, maybe in terms of at least hiring someone probably in charge more immediately,” DeLeo said.
“But on the other hand, I think that people on both sides of the question should give the committee their opinions, and I think we ought to hear from the committee before we make any final decisions. In terms of the commission, let’s see where we’re going with it.”
But in a separate Herald Radio interview, Goldberg said: “We can’t move forward because we have no resources to move forward. We need the Legislature to give us money because in order to issue all of this, we have to begin the appointment of the three commissioners, the executive director, the general counsel. We’re ready to pull the trigger.”
A spokesman for DeLeo said the House Committee on Ways and Means is at work on a supplemental budget to be debated Wednesday following the Baker administration’s bill. The administration’s original bill called for a reserve of about $300,000 — $200,000 less than what Goldberg has requested — to support costs associated with the regulation of the recreational marijuana law voters approved in November.
Jim Borghesani, spokesman for the Yes on 4 Coalition, which supported the ballot weed initiative, said that rather than the Legislature’s joint committee making recommendations to the commission, as DeLeo suggested, the commission should begin its work and then make recommendation to the committee.
“If the Legislature intends to respect the will of the voters,” Borghesani said, “that’s the process that should be followed.”