Brooks’ handling of pot permits has a bad smell
There’s something funky about how the Oakland City Council — and Councilwoman Desley Brooks, in particular — has handled the city’s pot-business permit system. It doesn’t smell right. There has been delay after delay after delay in the establishment of a solid permitting system that will allow more than 100 marijuana businesses in Oakland to emerge from the shadows, go legit and pay taxes to the city.
Each and every time, it’s been Brooks who has derailed the process. Why? What’s her motive? She insists it’s about equity, reparations for people of color disproportionately affected by marijuana arrests and convictions. I agree something needs to be done so black and brown people aren’t excluded from the multibillion-dollar industry. And you would be hard-pressed to find anyone in Oakland who would argue that this isn’t a noble and worthy cause.
But Brooks hasn’t explained how black and brown people will actually benefit, long term, from her plan. (I’d like to ask her many questions, but she doesn’t return my calls.)
Instead, she has managed to toss up roadblocks to the city’s permitting system — and her colleagues on the council have allowed her to do it.
Why isn’t anybody willing to stand up to Brooks?
In May, the council unanimously supported Brooks’ plan to set aside half the city’s pot permits for people who were either jailed on marijuana convictions in Oakland within the past 10 years or who had lived for at least two years in a designated East Oakland neighborhood with high marijuana arrests in 2013.
Because a general pot permit could be issued only for every equity permit, a lot of nonequity businesses would be stuck waiting in line.
Only after the council approved the plan did some members begin having second thoughts.
In September, Brooks, along with council members Reid and Noel Gallo, proposed an amendment that required every cannabis business to fork over 25 percent of its profits and at least one seat on its board of directors to the city. In return for a permit, the city would set aside a third of the revenue it collected to three community jobtraining programs.
In late October, Brooks requested that the city’s Department of Race and Equity conduct a thorough analysis of the laws the council passed in May, a report she knew could take months to prepare. It was released in March.
In November, a plan that would force large-scale businesses to pay back taxes, plus interest, and $10,000-a-day fines for every day they have operated was actually floated.
The latest roadblock is a residency requirement. This one — slipped in at the last minute — was approved unanimously by the council last week, along with other changes to the pot-permit ordinance. It means applicants for either an equity or general permit will have to prove they live in Oakland — and have lived in the city for the past three years.
That puts businesses like Dark Heart Nursery, which produces premium clones, in a pinch. Dark Heart, which is run out of an East Oakland warehouse by a San Leandro resident, has been operating for more than a decade. It has 60 employees and has paid millions in taxes to the city, but now Dark Heart might have to move.
Oakland is considered a cultural hub for cannabis because of the work put in by businesses like Dark Heart — businesses that, as of now, aren’t ensured a permit. And that stinks.
The 1-to-1 ratio will end once an equity-assistance program, funded by cannabis tax revenue, reaches $3.4 million. And though the qualifying equity neighborhoods have been expanded, applicants are now required to have lived in one of the neighborhoods for 10 of the past 20 years. Also: The applicant’s current income must be below 80 percent of the city’s average median income, another wrinkle to an already obscure profile.
I’m having trouble buying that Brooks is doing all of this for selfless reasons.
Because right now, it seems that the only thing she has accomplished is to stall the permitting process and discourage existing businesses from staying in Oakland.
And why would she want to do that?