When it comes to legalizing medical marijuana in Missouri, secrecy was always destined to be more of a feature than a bug.
Of the in some capacity, medical or recreational or both, several of them have laws that shroud information that would be public in nearly every other business venture in a cloud of obscurity.
In Illinois, for instance, lawmakers information about the individuals and companies who run and profit from the medical marijuana industry from the state’s Freedom of Information Act. In Colorado, state officials initially tried to keep similar information from the public before newspapers and others protested. Missouri, it seems, is going to learn this lesson the hard way.
The first week that businesses and individuals could start prefiling applications to potentially win a license to grow or dispense medical marijuana, fellow Post-Dispatch reporter Jack Suntrup and I submitted Sunshine Law requests to see who the potential future leaders of this fledgling business empire might be.
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The state Department of Health and Senior Services denied our requests. Further, state officials told us that there would be no time in the process that they would tell the public who was profiting from a business in which the state hands out the licenses.
This is a big problem.
Think back to the beginnings of Missouri’s casino industry. When there are a limited number of licenses offered for an industry that promises to bring in boatloads of cash, the potential for corruption is massive. In both Kansas City and ºüÀêÊÓƵ there were allegations of corruption related to the awarding of casino licenses, but the process was open enough that investigators, and the public, could connect the dots on who was trying to influence whom.
Or go back further, to the cable franchise debacle in the 1980s in ºüÀêÊÓƵ, in which several prominent politicians were indicted — and some convicted — in a scheme in which they traded ownership shares in a cable company for approval of a lucrative franchise.
When it comes to governments awarding business licenses, secrecy paves the way to scandal.
That’s one reason why against the state of Missouri, alleging violations of the state open records law in denying access to the prefiled applications for medical marijuana licenses. The lawsuit, filed by attorney Joseph Martineau of the Lewis Rice law firm, alleges that the state is wrongly interpreting a section of the new constitutional amendment that legalized medical marijuana.
“(T)he provision does not say that the Department ‘shall maintain the confidentiality of the applicant or licensee’ as well as the reports or other information obtained from the applicant or licensee,†Martineau wrote, adding that the state’s interpretation “is flawed, unsupported by the language of the provision, contrary to the provision’s intent, and disregards the important public policy that the process of applying for and awarding licenses to manufacture, distribute and dispense marijuana should be open and transparent.â€
The campaign manager for Amendment 2, John Payne, said that the organizers of the initiative had no intention of keeping the information secret: “We don’t see any reason the name of the applicants wouldn’t be public,†he told the Post-Dispatch.
But the spokesman and campaign consultant for that ballot initiative, Jack Cardetti, now works for the industry group lobbying the state over implementation of the new law. And that organization, the , supports the state’s restrictive reading of the amendment, he said.
“The department is simply implementing the language that 66 percent of Missourians approved at the ballot last November, while protecting patients and applicants against their personal information being mishandled.â€
It’s worth noting that the lobbyist for the trade group is Steve Tilley, a former speaker of the Missouri House who had been backing a different medical marijuana proposal. That effort, called Missourians for Patient Care, that its organizers bragged to donors that “no disclosure†would be required.
Tilley is a longtime ally, donor and adviser of Gov. Mike Parson, who has ultimate responsibility for the DHSS.
After the state denied my Sunshine Law request, I asked DHSS spokeswoman Lisa Cox if the state’s interpretation of the amendment was determined in consultation with the governor’s office.
“I am unable to provide you an answer due to attorney-client privilege,†she said.
The proverbial smoke-filled room leaves taxpayers in a haze.
The Post-Dispatch filed a lawsuit against the state Department of Health and Senior Services after the department repeatedly declined to relea…