If you’re confused about what’s going on with all these marijuana reform bills in Olympia, you’re not alone. Even the people the city pays to follow bills down there—and lobby on them—don’t seem to know what’s happening.
In a city council briefing this morning, the city’s lobbying team—four people from the Office of Intergovernmental Relations—updated the council on the status of a handful of bills they’re following in Olympia. Then, Council Member Sally Bagshaw asked them what was up with all these pot bills, especially the two competing proposals from Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D-Seattle) and Sen. Ann Rivers (R-La Center). Those two have been jockeying to fix the disconnect between the highly regulated just-for-fun pot system and the long unregulated medical marijuana market.
At first, there was one significant difference between those two bills: Rivers wanted to keep medical pot in its own regulatory framework, licensed and overseen separately from the recreational market. Kohl-Welles wanted to fold the two together, shutting down dispensaries unless they got licensed the way recreational stores do.
But that changed in a huge way in late January when the Rivers bill started moving quickly—she’s a Republican and Republicans control the state senate—and was amended to combine the two systems, just like Kohl-Welles bill did.
This is all apparently news to Scott Plusquellec, a lobbyist in city’s Office of Intergovernmental Relations, who told Bagshaw that the main difference between the two bills is that Rivers’ “continues to have two separate systems.” Nope. That hasn’t been the case since January 29.
No one at the table corrected him. Not the other lobbyists or the director of his office, and not Council Member Bruce Harrell who had just finished telling his fellow council members about how, while recently down in Olympia, he’d “sat through all of the marijuana legislation and the different issues that are presented there.”
Jesus, guys.
I know this stuff is complicated, but whatever happens in this session has the potential to be—aside from legalization itself—the biggest change we’ve ever seen to the way marijuana sales work in this state. And it was one of the city’s priorities in its 2015 legislative agenda. Please pay attention. Maybe, I don’t know, read The Stranger.
Nick Harper, director of the Office of Intergovernmental Relations, told me in a phone call after the meeting that Plusquellec “did misspeak. I recognized it right away.” But he didn’t correct Plusquellec, he said, because he wants to send a clarification e-mail to the council instead.
“I find it most effective and transparent to communicate via e-mail,” he said.
Because open public meetings streamed live on the Seattle Channel aren’t transparent enough? Uh. Okay…
The city’s team of lobbyists all work on all of the city’s priorities, according to Harper, so it’s not like Plusquellec is the city’s designated pot lobbyist. A guy makes a mistake, his boss issues a correction—that doesn’t seem so bad.
But Harper also says, “It’s one of the city’s highest priorities to have the state act this year and to make sure there’s a clear regulatory framework [for marijuana businesses].”
If that’s the case, our lobbyists should be better versed in the issue. Or at least catch up on what happened in meetings last month.
