» Legislative panel rips state agency over medical pot rules,

Lawmakers angry at being snubbed over info requests.

TALLAHASSEE — A joint legislative oversight committee delivered a public shaming to Florida pot czar Christian Bax on Monday, repeatedly chiding the state health official and others as they sat silently while the panel shredded regulations intended to carry out a constitutional amendment that broadly legalized medical marijuana.

In four separate unanimous votes, the Joint Administrative Procedures Committee objected to a litany of elements included in rules issued by the Office of Medical Marijuana Use, which Bax heads.

The items under scrutiny ranged from identification cards for caregivers of sick patients to a provision banning applicants seeking medical-marijuana licenses from amending their applications. The prohibition conflicts with state law requiring state agencies to give applicants time to correct errors or provide additional information.

Sen. Kevin Rader, a Delray Beach Democrat who is a chairman of the committee, and other lawmakers are angry that Bax and Department of Health lawyers refused to respond to more than a dozen letters from the committee over the past four months identifying concerns with the rules, which went into effect late last year.

Rader also appeared especially incensed by a letter sent to the committee on Friday by Department of Health General Counsel Nichole Geary, the first response from the agency since the committee began demanding answers in October. Geary said changes sought by the oversight committee “will cause further delay of the next application cycle” and will “delay development of the general patient safety regulatory scheme” related to items such as edible marijuana and pesticides.

“Frankly, I find these comments to be disingenuous and insulting to the committee,” Rader said at the outset of Monday’s meeting.

The Health Department was aware of the committee’s concerns for months, Rader said.

“And then has the audacity to blame the committee and our staff for delaying the process,” the senator continued, condemning the Health Department for adopting a strategy of blaming delays in the rollout of the regulations “on anything but itself.”

Health officials had blamed delays on a lawsuit challenging a provision of a 2017 law that requires one of 10 new marijuana licenses to go to a black farmer who meets certain conditions. A Tallahassee judge recently blocked that portion of the law from going into effect. Bax’s office also said Hurricane Irma caused other delays in the rollout of the rules.

“At some point, I would hope the department would stop looking for a scapegoat and just do its job,” Rader said.

Before each of four votes incorporating a total of 17 objections to items in the rules, Rader asked whether anyone from the Health Department or the Office of Medical Marijuana Use wanted to respond. Bax, Geary and a handful of other health department officials remained silent.

Bax did make a presentation at the end of the meeting, as he said he had been invited to do. Bax said his office is holding workshops in March to assist in developing rule language on issues such as edibles, dosing and laboratory testing.

Bax, appointed to the post more than two years ago, also said his office is changing the way it is crafting the rules, based on input from the Legislature.

“We have heard you. We respect that position,” Bax, a lawyer, told the committee.

In the four decades since the creation of the joint committee — which oversees whether state agencies have correctly implemented state laws — an agency or department has never ignored requests for information, according to committee coordinator Ken Plante.

Many of the problems identified by Plante and other committee staff were characterized as an unauthorized regulation that “enlarges, modifies or contravenes” the law passed last year aimed at implementing the constitutional amendment approved by voters in 2016.