Lawmakers eye incentives for cities, towns to OK pot shops
Senate President Stanley C. Rosenberg says the Legislature is looking to provide incentives to cities and towns that will allow the sale of recreational marijuana within their borders as the July 1 deadline for putting a bill on Gov. Charlie Baker’s desk draws near.
“Believe me, I am sweating this one out because we cannot do another extension,” Rosenberg said yesterday on Boston Herald Radio’s “Morning Meeting” program. “We have committed to making sure what we are doing in this bill is improving the bill without throwing out all the fundamentals the voters supported by voting for this.”
The bicameral committee charged with revising the marijuana ballot question that voters passed last fall have said they ideally would like an omnibus bill that tackles the many different impacts the legal sale of marijuana will have on the Bay State. The sale of recreational pot is set to begin July 1 next year.
Mayor Martin J. Walsh, a staunch opponent of last year’s ballot question, has expressed concerns about communities voting to keep pot shops out of their cities or towns turning the Hub into a so-called “pot capital.”
Rosenberg stressed that there “is a way to incentivize communities to say ‘yes’ so (pot shops) don’t get concentrated in too few communities.”
The ballot question allows for marijuana stores in any city or town in the state, unless the community holds a referendum to ban them. As dozens of communities explore banning pot shops, Walsh has urged the Legislature to take steps to ensures people from the suburbs aren’t flooding into Boston looking to buy marijuana.
Rosenberg is also recommending that the government fund the communities that have pot shops by taxing local sales in order to ensure they have enough money to cover the ancillary costs of having marijuana sold in their municipalities.
“The way I think about it at the state level is first you need the money to stand up the agency, enforce the regulations, etc.,” he said. “Second, you need money for public health and public safety and third is what do you do with any money that’s left over once buckets one and two are funded.
“We need to make sure they’ve got enough money to do everything they need to do locally,” the Amherst Democrat added, noting money would be available at the state level to help cities and towns provide services related to the sale of marijuana, even if they don’t have any pot shops of their own.