BUDDING MARI-WANNABES
Candidates nominate themselves for posts on Bay State pot panel
Stop us if you’ve heard this one, but a city councilor, a lawyer and an Obama appointee walk into a marijuana dispensary ...
No, it’s not a joke, it’s the goal of a handful of the three dozen members of a motley crew who’ve sought a place on the state’s fledgling Cannabis Control Commission.
Since the ballot passed last November legalizing recreational marijuana, state Treasurer Deborah B. Goldberg’s office has fielded resumes, recommendations, emails and calls — all unsolicited — from people expressing interest in serving a role on the commission. The first came just two days after the Nov. 8 vote, and since, the roster has stretched to 34 names, according to records provided to the Herald through a public records request.
Treasury officials emphasize that they don’t consider it a list of candidates, nor have they launched any formal application process. (The commission, for one, could be plucked from Goldberg’s office, an option lawmakers have openly discussed.) But it’s a reflection of the interest the newfound industry has sparked in some vastly different corners of the state. Among the names submitted: • Daniel Rourke, a Lowell city councilor whose name was floated to Goldberg by Lowell state Sen. Eileen Donoghue.
Donoghue, in a Dec. 19 letter to Goldberg, lauded Rourke’s background as a “behavioral health counselor,” probation officer and public official, calling him a “leading voice in Lowell’s efforts to combat the opioid epidemic.” It’s that experience, she wrote, that makes him “uniquely qualified to respond to the criminal justice and public health implications of the state’s marijuana law.”
Reached by phone, Donoghue said she submitted the recommendation at Rourke’s request.
Rourke, Lowell’s assistant chief probation officer, said: “Regardless of it’s the treasurer or the legislature (who ultimately oversees it), whoever I can talk to about it, I think I can bring a unique skill set.”
• John S. Scheft, a lawyer who actually argued against the ballot question before the Supreme Judicial Court last year. Scheft’s name was submitted twice, including in November by state Rep. Denise Garlick, who said his experience, including in police training, would help the “discussion on the intended and unintended consequences of the referendum language.” Neither Scheft nor Garlick responded to requests for comment Friday.
• Jon Niedzielski, who served more than three years under President Obama as the Massachusetts state director for the USDA Farm Service Agency. Niedzielski said his interest in the commission is rooted (our pun intended) in developing an industrial hemp industry in the state.
“Running a profitable farm in New England is not easy,” he wrote in an email to the Herald. “Hemp is a drought resistant, rotational crop that could be highly profitable for farmers.”
Others who’ve contacted Goldberg’s office cover a range of areas: a lawyer who helped push the state’s ballot question, a doctor who heads a company pitching a type of marijuana Breathalyzer substitute and a Central Mass. hospitality professional.
It also includes a former statewide political candidate from a different state who told Goldberg’s office she was moving to Boston. Reached by phone, the former Republican pol said she didn’t realize her submission would be public record and that she is currently employed elsewhere.
“It’s not something I would want to chit-chat about in the Boston Herald,” she told a reporter.
Reinforcements
Suspended Suffolk Register of Probate Felix D. Arroyo’s very public battle against the Trial Court is now getting help from some notable Boston pols.
State Sens. Linda Dorcena Forry and Sonia Chang-Diaz, as well as City Council President Michelle Wu, have all donated money in recent weeks to the legal defense fund he set up to pay for his pricey Prince Lobel representation.
Forry, according to finance records, gave $1,000. Wu also chipped in $1,000, while Chang-Diaz gave $500, according to a political aide to Arroyo.
“We want to make sure he has ample representation and that he goes through this process fairly,” Forry told the Herald. “This is an office that has been in turmoil for several years before he even got there, and for them to saddle him with all of that dysfunction is disturbing.
“He was elected by the people,” she added, “and for him to be removed without a process is just absurd.”
Arroyo was suspended in early February, and Trial Court officials have since charged that he was running a badly mismanaged office choked by hundreds of thousands of dollars in unprocessed checks and bins of court cases, some dating back a year, scattered throughout the office.
He, in turn, has claimed he’s the victim of racist and sexist employees who have tried to sabotage him.