Pot licenses stalled again as gov vows to ‘get ... it right’
A day after giving losing applicants a second chance to qualify for a lottery to determine the winners of the next round of pot shop licenses, Gov. J.B. Pritzker declined Tuesday to give a date when the permits would be issued, only saying it would happen “this fall.”
Under heavy fire from scorned hopefuls and lawmakers, Pritzker on Monday announced that candidates who didn’t receive perfect scores would be able to revise their applications and challenge the grades they received from the state. Only 21 of more than 900 applicants had advanced to the next round.
However, Pritzker wouldn’t provide a firm timeline for when the licenses will be issued during Tuesday’s news conference at the Thompson Center, saying only that his administration believes the process could be completed sometime in the fall. The 75 new dispensary licenses were initially going to be issued by May 1, but the process was delayed by the pandemic.
“Working quickly is important, but getting it right is also important,” Pritzker said, adding that the new review process will ensure there are “as many people in that final lottery as deserve to be there.”
Pritzker also vowed to work with lawmakers to make changes to ensure that similar problems don’t emerge when future weed licenses are issued, like allowing applicants to move on to lottery rounds without earning a perfect score and capping the number of applications that each group can submit.
Pritzker’s mea culpa came after weeks of administration officials touting the diversity of the firms that were initially included in the lottery.
But on Tuesday, Pritzker’s key pot adviser, Toi Hutchinson, conceded that officials are “laser-focused” on investigating whether the initial applicants included in the lottery — many of which include clouted and deep-pocketed individuals — aren’t merely front groups.
Hutchinson said the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation “will be in charge of oversight, so we can make sure that we’re watching this review very, very finely before we make any of those other, additional announcements.”