Hearing for cannabis chief set to be private
Back and forth skirmish tied to suspension, reports could mark end of O’Brien’s tenure
The office of Treasurer Deborah Goldberg (left) said there is no timeline on Shannon O’Brien’s fate.
After months of sparring in courtrooms and the press, state Treasurer Deborah Goldberg and Shannon O’Brien this week will retreat behind closed doors, marking what could be the beginning of the end of O’Brien’s short tenure as the state’s top cannabis regulator.
O’Brien is scheduled to appear Wednesday and Thursday in a two-day administrative hearing on Beacon Hill, during which she can present witnesses and challenge Goldberg’s decision last fall to suspend her as chair of the Cannabis Control Commission. At some point after the sessions, Goldberg will decide whether to fire O’Brien less than two years after appointing her to the $196,551-a-year post.
The proceedings themselves, however, will not be open to the public, according to Goldberg’s office. Andrew Napolitano, a Goldberg spokesperson, said Monday that her office also will not provide a list of expected witnesses, nor is it releasing copies of reports submitted by outside investigators upon which Goldberg will rely as she makes her decision.
“This is a personnel matter, and as such any meetings will remain private,” Napolitano said. He also said there is “no timeline” for when Goldberg will decide whether to fire O’Brien. “Following [this week’s] meetings, she will review all the information before her to make an informed decision.”
The move to keep the sessions private adds to a strange, and often secretive, saga that’s drawn interest from federal prosecutors and upended a commission charged with overseeing the state’s $5 billion cannabis industry.
Goldberg abruptly susp e n d e d O’Brien in September after receiving an outside investigator’s report alleging that O’Brien made a series of racist and “culturally insensitive” remarks. O’Brien, a former state treasurer herself and the Democratic gubernatorial nominee in 2002, has denied the accusations, and sued Goldberg, charging that she was unlawfully removed from her position. She also pushed to alter the contours of the administrative hearing.
A state judge ultimately denied many of O’Brien’s arguments, including a demand to make the hearing public. An appellate court judge denied an appeal from O’Brien in February.
Under the court-approved protocol, O’Brien will be given two four-hour sessions starting Wednesday, during which her attorneys can cross-examine investigators and present witnesses on her behalf. Thomas Maffei, senior counsel at the firm Sherin and Lodgen, is slated to serve as the meeting’s “officiant,” though it’s Goldberg who will ultimately rule on whether O’Brien keeps her post.
Attorney General Andrea J. Campbell’s office, which represented Goldberg in the lawsuit, argued in court filings against holding a public administrative hearing, charging that O’Brien’s push for a public setting was an attempt to “embarrass Commission employees about matters they disclosed as part of a confidential internal investigation.” Assistant Attorney General John R. Hitt wrote in court documents that Goldberg’s decision on whether to fire O’Brien, including her reasons, will be made public.
“She seeks ‘political theatre,’” Hitt wrote of O’Brien.
Max Stern, one of O’Brien’s attorneys, said in a statement Monday that she has “always stated that a fair hearing requires a public hearing, and that has never changed.”
“Shannon O’Brien looks forward to clearing her good name,” Stern said.
The battle has already been long on drama. Among the allegations Goldberg cited in suspending O’Brien was an instance in which O’Brien made reference to “a person of Asian heritage” during a fall 2022 meeting, saying, “I guess you’re not allowed to say ‘yellow’ anymore.”
A spokesperson for O’Brien said she denied saying that, and O’Brien’s attorneys wrote in court filings that the investigator’s conclusion lacked crucial context. O’Brien said she repeated a conversation she had with an unidentified “well-known and respected African-American real estate developer,” who said a particular project would affect “black, brown, and yellow people.”
O’Brien’s fellow Commissioner Nurys Camargo also told investigators that O’Brien once commented that while she personally didn’t know state Senator Lydia Edwards, who is Black, she told Camargo that “you probably know her.”
Camargo, who is of Dominican and Colombian descent, inferred that O’Brien only made the comment because both women are people of color and that O’Brien “assum[es] all people of color know one another,” O’Brien wrote in a previous court filing. O’Brien has said that that’s not the case.
“There is nothing that is racially insensitive about thinking that they might know each other politically and professionally,” her attorneys wrote in court filings.
Goldberg has cited other reasons in her letter for suspending O’Brien. She pointed to a public incident in July, in which O’Brien surprised her fellow commissioners when she announced that the commission’s then-executive director, Shawn Collins, was planning to leave the agency. O’Brien also described the commission as being “in crisis.”
O’Brien later apologized for “any confusion I created.” Collins, who worked under Goldberg before joining the commission, resigned in early December.
The commission had launched a second investigation into O’Brien’s conduct toward Collins, the results of which Goldberg received months ago. O’Brien received a copy of the report on March 20, according to her lawyer.
Federal prosecutors, too, have sought similar records tied to O’Brien. The US attorney’s office last fall sent state officials a subpoena for documents, including O’Brien’s personnel file, the contents of her email account, and records about her suspension “from or by” the commission.
Prosecutors said the requests were part of a grand jury investigation, but the subpoena, which The Boston Globe obtained, did not specify who is the target of the investigation, nor did it disclose the scope of the probe.
For as public a spectacle as it’s become, the episode has been cloaked in secrecy at times, too. Goldberg’s office has repeatedly refused to release copies of either of the investigators’ reports, saying they are part of a personnel matter. Goldberg also declined for months to publicly detail the exact allegations behind O’Brien’s suspension.
Many of the allegations only became public when O’Brien herself included an October letter that Goldberg had sent her in court documents. Now, the hearing itself — scheduled to be held in a Treasury office — will play out privately.
Should Goldberg, as expected, move to fire O’Brien, the legal battle may continue. O’Brien could challenge her termination in court, something a state judge overseeing her initial lawsuit said was an option. Stern, O’Brien’s attorney, did not address whether she plans to sue if fired.