New faces give oomph to legal weed plans

It’s high time for New York to get the ball rolling on legal weed.

The state Senate late Wednesday confirmed a former Brooklyn assemblywoman and a prominent recreational marijuana advocate to lead the agencies that will regulate cannabis sales in New York, giving a major boost to the pot legalization process after exGov. Andrew Cuomo held it up for months.

Tremaine Wright, a Democrat who lost her seat in last year’s primaries, earned confirmation as chairwoman of the Cannabis Control Board and the Office of Cannabis Management, which were formed as part of a bill that legalized recreational use of marijuana in New York this spring.

Chris Alexander, policy manager of Canada-based cannabis company Vill LLC, got the Senate’s thumbs up to serve as the executive director of the agencies alongside her.

Wright and Alexander were nominated to the pot posts by Gov. Hochul, who called the legislature back for a special session Wednesday to deal with the weed vacancies and the state’s expiring eviction moratorium.

Cuomo never nominated anyone to the weed agencies even though the state legalized marijuana in March.

Critics said the ex-gov held up the process because he was trying to persuade the Senate to make the cannabis appointments contingent on also approving his proposed tweaks to the leadership structure of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

In announcing the special session Tuesday night, Hochul took a veiled jab at her predecessor over the delay. “There is no reason why simple announcements in terms of who the executive director is and who the chairperson is were not done in time, but I’m going to make up for that lost time,” she said.

The selection of Wright as the chairwoman of the cannabis agencies could be politically salient for Hochul.

Wright, who used to represent a portion of Brooklyn that includes Bedford-Stuyvesant, has plenty of political clout.