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Yahoo
04-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Massachusetts lawmakers poised to approve major cannabis bill on Wednesday
An expansive bill to restructure the embattled Cannabis Control Commission, regulate and tax hemp-based drinks and gummies that have proliferated in convenience stores, and open the door to retail-only medical marijuana businesses will go before the House of Representatives on Wednesday, having now cleared two committees without opposition. Frustration with the CCC's slow pace of regulatory changes, headline-grabbing internal conflicts and a plea from the inspector general for the Legislature to intervene at the 'rudderless agency' and revisit its 'unclear and self-contradictory' 2017 enabling statute combined last summer to get lawmakers thinking more seriously about a response. The House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday reported out the bill (H 4160) that last week unanimously cleared the Cannabis Policy Committee, and officials said Ways and Means made no substantive changes. 'This legislation not only makes needed changes to the structure of the Cannabis Control Commission, it's also representative of the House's commitment to ensuring that the cannabis industry in Massachusetts is regulated in a manner that bolsters economic opportunity, especially for communities that were disproportionately impacted by the criminalization of marijuana,' House Speaker Ronald Mariano said. 'I look forward to hearing more from my colleagues in the House about this issue, and to ultimately voting to pass these critical reforms tomorrow.' Created by the Legislature in 2017 after voters legalized non-medical marijuana in 2016, the CCC is a five-commissioner independent body, with appointments made singularly and jointly by the governor, attorney general and treasurer, with the treasurer selecting the chair. Under the bill the House will debate Wednesday, the CCC would be consolidated entirely under the governor. The state's executive would appoint all three commissioners and select one of them to serve as chair (who would be the only full-time commissioner). The CCC would be 'subject to the laws applicable to agencies under the control of the governor.' The chair would serve conterminously with the governor, according to the bill, and the other two commissioners would each serve terms of four years, or until a successor is appointed. The bill extends beyond cannabis products that are already under the CCC's purview to address intoxicating hemp-based products that largely fall into a gray area of the law and between the regulatory cracks. Since hemp-based gummies, energy shot-like drink bottles and seltzers became ubiquitous across Massachusetts convenience store checkout counters and social media feeds in recent years, lawmakers and regulators have flagged the need to straighten out what is and is not cannabis, and how it should all be regulated. The committee bill would ban the sale of hemp-based beverages and consumable CBD products unless the product is registered with the CCC and complies with regulations that the CCC would be required to promulgate to deal with things like product testing, labeling requirements and more. Those products would also be subject to a new tax (5.35% for CBD consumables and $4.05 per gallon for hemp-based drinks). The bill adjusts the existing cap on retail licenses any one operator can hold. The current limit is three, but some business owners have said the cap prevents them from selling their businesses. Under the bill advancing towards the House, the cap on retail licenses would be raised to six over a three-year period (increasing first to four, a year later to five and finally to six), and the existing three-license caps would remain in place for cultivation and manufacturing. Opponents, including Equitable Opportunities Now and the Massachusetts Cannabis Equity Council, have warned that multistate operators are able to spend heavily to increase their market share and that allowing them to grow even more will hurt small and equity-owned businesses. 'This bill is a gift to corporate cannabis and a death sentence for local and social equity businesses. How is someone with one, two, or three stores supposed to compete with someone buying for six or more stores?' EON co-founder Shanel Lindsay said. 'It will undermine everything Massachusetts has worked so hard to achieve in building the most equitable cannabis industry in the country.' The bill also contemplates the possibility that Massachusetts might want to cap the total number of licenses granted by the CCC. It would require the CCC to conduct an economic analysis of the entire cannabis industry and gives the CCC the power to limit the total number of licenses issued based on that study. EON pointed to a number of the bill's provisions that it views as positive steps for the industry, including medical vertical deintegration and increasing the daily purchase limit to two ounces, but the group said it would prefer no legislative action to 'a flawed bill that gives control of the market and policymaking to the largest, most profitable businesses.' 'We appreciate action on medical deintegration, enforcing ownership limits, and other overdue reforms — but handing more power to big cannabis and gutting the CCC's independence are poison pills,' EON Deputy Director Kevin Gilnack said. 'Most cannabis businesses would be better off if the Legislature did nothing.' On the medical side of the legal marijuana world, the bill eliminates the requirement that medical marijuana businesses be 'vertically integrated,' meaning they must grow and process all the marijuana they sell. Patients and advocates have been calling for that change for years, saying the medical-only options have become scarce across Massachusetts since cannabis was legalized for non-medical use. It includes language that would let the CCC 'establish and provide for issuance of additional types or classes of licenses to operate medical use of marijuana-related businesses' and would change the standard terminology in state law from 'medical marijuana treatment center' to 'medical marijuana establishment.' Medical marijuana retail licenses would be available exclusively to social equity applicants for at least the first three years they are available. The House Ways and Means Committee advanced the bill with 23 Democrats in support, no committee members opposed, eight Republicans electing to essentially abstain from the committee vote, and five Boston Democrats taking no action on the committee poll. Asked about the Cannabis Policy Committee's bill last week, House Ways and Means Committee Chair Aaron Michlewitz said he was 'hopeful to do it soon' and that the House would 'make it a priority to kind of get through it as quickly as we can.' Top Senate Democrats haven't expressed the same sense of urgency on the CCC. 'I will talk to senators and the chair of the Cannabis Committee, and we'll see. We'll take a look at whatever the House sends over, of course,' Senate President Karen Spilka said Thursday. Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch Boston 25 News NOW
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
House poised to approve major cannabis bill on Wednesday
BOSTON (SHNS) – An expansive bill to restructure the embattled Cannabis Control Commission, regulate and tax hemp-based drinks and gummies that have proliferated in convenience stores, and open the door to retail-only medical marijuana businesses will go before the House of Representatives on Wednesday, having now cleared two committees without opposition. Frustration with the CCC's slow pace of regulatory changes, headline-grabbing internal conflicts and a plea from the inspector general for the Legislature to intervene at the 'rudderless agency' and revisit its 'unclear and self-contradictory' 2017 enabling statute combined last summer to get lawmakers thinking more seriously about a response. The House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday reported out the bill (H 4160) that last week unanimously cleared the Cannabis Policy Committee, and officials said Ways and Means made no substantive changes. 'This legislation not only makes needed changes to the structure of the Cannabis Control Commission, it's also representative of the House's commitment to ensuring that the cannabis industry in Massachusetts is regulated in a manner that bolsters economic opportunity, especially for communities that were disproportionately impacted by the criminalization of marijuana,' House Speaker Ronald Mariano said. 'I look forward to hearing more from my colleagues in the House about this issue, and to ultimately voting to pass these critical reforms tomorrow.' Created by the Legislature in 2017 after voters legalized non-medical marijuana in 2016, the CCC is a five-commissioner independent body, with appointments made singularly and jointly by the governor, attorney general and treasurer, with the treasurer selecting the chair. Under the bill the House will debate Wednesday, the CCC would be consolidated entirely under the governor. The state's executive would appoint all three commissioners and select one of them to serve as chair (who would be the only full-time commissioner). The CCC would be 'subject to the laws applicable to agencies under the control of the governor.' The chair would serve conterminously with the governor, according to the bill, and the other two commissioners would each serve terms of four years, or until a successor is appointed. The bill extends beyond cannabis products that are already under the CCC's purview to address intoxicating hemp-based products that largely fall into a gray area of the law and between the regulatory cracks. Since hemp-based gummies, energy shot-like drink bottles and seltzers became ubiquitous across Massachusetts convenience store checkout counters and social media feeds in recent years, lawmakers and regulators have flagged the need to straighten out what is and is not cannabis, and how it should all be regulated. The committee bill would ban the sale of hemp-based beverages and consumable CBD products unless the product is registered with the CCC and complies with regulations that the CCC would be required to promulgate to deal with things like product testing, labeling requirements and more. Those products would also be subject to a new tax (5.35% for CBD consumables and $4.05 per gallon for hemp-based drinks). The bill adjusts the existing cap on retail licenses any one operator can hold. The current limit is three, but some business owners have said the cap prevents them from selling their businesses. Under the bill advancing towards the House, the cap on retail licenses would be raised to six over a three-year period (increasing first to four, a year later to five and finally to six), and the existing three-license caps would remain in place for cultivation and manufacturing. Opponents, including Equitable Opportunities Now and the Massachusetts Cannabis Equity Council, have warned that multistate operators are able to spend heavily to increase their market share and that allowing them to grow even more will hurt small and equity-owned businesses. 'This bill is a gift to corporate cannabis and a death sentence for local and social equity businesses. How is someone with one, two, or three stores supposed to compete with someone buying for six or more stores?' EON co-founder Shanel Lindsay said. 'It will undermine everything Massachusetts has worked so hard to achieve in building the most equitable cannabis industry in the country.' The bill also contemplates the possibility that Massachusetts might want to cap the total number of licenses granted by the CCC. It would require the CCC to conduct an economic analysis of the entire cannabis industry and gives the CCC the power to limit the total number of licenses issued based on that study. EON pointed to a number of the bill's provisions that it views as positive steps for the industry, including medical vertical deintegration and increasing the daily purchase limit to two ounces, but the group said it would prefer no legislative action to 'a flawed bill that gives control of the market and policymaking to the largest, most profitable businesses.' 'We appreciate action on medical deintegration, enforcing ownership limits, and other overdue reforms — but handing more power to big cannabis and gutting the CCC's independence are poison pills,' EON Deputy Director Kevin Gilnack said. 'Most cannabis businesses would be better off if the Legislature did nothing.' On the medical side of the legal marijuana world, the bill eliminates the requirement that medical marijuana businesses be 'vertically integrated,' meaning they must grow and process all the marijuana they sell. Patients and advocates have been calling for that change for years, saying the medical-only options have become scarce across Massachusetts since cannabis was legalized for non-medical use. It includes language that would let the CCC 'establish and provide for issuance of additional types or classes of licenses to operate medical use of marijuana-related businesses' and would change the standard terminology in state law from 'medical marijuana treatment center' to 'medical marijuana establishment.' Medical marijuana retail licenses would be available exclusively to social equity applicants for at least the first three years they are available. The House Ways and Means Committee advanced the bill with 23 Democrats in support, no committee members opposed, eight Republicans electing to essentially abstain from the committee vote, and five Boston Democrats taking no action on the committee poll. Asked about the Cannabis Policy Committee's bill last week, House Ways and Means Committee Chair Aaron Michlewitz said he was 'hopeful to do it soon' and that the House would 'make it a priority to kind of get through it as quickly as we can.' Top Senate Democrats haven't expressed the same sense of urgency on the CCC. 'I will talk to senators and the chair of the Cannabis Committee, and we'll see. We'll take a look at whatever the House sends over, of course,' Senate President Karen Spilka said Thursday. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Senators target MBTA housing law with amendments
BOSTON (SHNS) – Senators came up with 317 ways in which they'd like to amend the Senate Ways and Means Committee's nearly $1.3 billion transportation and education spending bill this week, and the MBTA zoning law is once again a popular target. The committee's supplemental budget (S 2512) backed by mostly excess income surtax revenues is on the Senate Calendar for debate Thursday. The package directs $613 million to education and $670 million to transportation. The $370 million billed for the MBTA is expected to be a common point of debate given the committee's divergence from the roughly $790 million the House approved to go toward helping the T replenish its depleted deficiency fund and maintain service gains. Senators from both parties want to make the debate also about the MBTA Communities Act, a 2021 law that passed without much fanfare at the time but has since become one of the tensest topics in state government. The law, which requires cities and towns with or near MBTA service to zone for multi-family housing by right in at least one reasonably sized district, was designed to help address the state's housing supply shortage. Much of the public concern surrounding the law has revolved around Milton, a town deemed a 'rapid transit community' because it hosts the light-rail Mattapan trolley, which some have argued is not equivalent to the rest of the T's core transit system. House Speaker Ronald Mariano said last month the town had a point about 'this crazy little trolley car,' but said he wasn't open to legislative action to change the situation. Democrat Sen. William Driscoll of Milton will try to convince the Senate that some legislative action should be taken. His amendment #308 would amend the MBTA Communities Act to declare that the 'Mattapan High Speed Line shall not be considered a rapid transit modality,' which could affect Milton's requirement's under the law. Republican Sen. Kelly Dooner of Taunton filed a small handful of MBTA Communities-related amendments, including one (#76) to exclude municipalities that have no MBTA service but are currently subject to the zoning law as 'adjacent' communities from the law. A number of communities in her district are considered 'adjacent' towns, including Seekonk, Rehoboth, Berkley, Raynham, Carver and Wareham. Dooner is also seeking (#77) to give 'adjacent' towns two extra years to come into compliance and (#78) to create five exemptions from the MBTA Communities Act, including if a community's population is fewer than 8,000 people or if the town 'lacks basic infrastructure or sufficient state funding for infrastructure improvements.' Minority Leader Bruce Tarr filed an amendment (#183) that would remove compliance with the MBTA Communities Act from the criteria that makes a city or town eligible for certain grant funding. The Senate supplemental budget also attracted amendments that contemplate an expansion of MBTA service. Sen. Dylan Fernandes is pitching the idea (#163) of giving the T $25,000 specifically so it can 'perform a feasibility study of the cost of upgrades required for extending commuter rail service to Buzzards Bay station.' Fernandes backed the rail expansion idea as a member of the House in 2023. Sen. Michael Rush of West Roxbury is proposing (#132) to give the T $100,000 to study the feasibility of extending the Orange Line from its current terminus at Forest Hills Station to the existing Roslindale Village commuter rail station about 1.5 miles away. Given that the supplemental budget is spending surtax revenue that must be used for education and transportation investments, many of the 317 amendments seek earmarks for specific local projects and needs. Others seek to boost state aid across the board, like a proposal (#3) from Tarr to create a $50 million Supplemental Local School District Grant Program to provide additional aid to school districts that are eligible for the minimum per-pupil aid from the state, and Republican Sen. Peter Durant of Spencer is looking to add $15 million for regional school transportation reimbursement (#87) and to add $50 million in supplemental Chapter 90 roadwork funding (#93). President Donald Trump's tariffs could become a talking point in Thursday's debate. Sen. Michael Moore is proposing (#1) to require the attorney general to issue regulations declaring it to be an 'unfair and deceptive practice' for any company to misrepresent or fail to disclose 'the nature, purpose, and amount of any import fees, import charges, or other import duties that would be imposed on the transaction due to the purchase' in Massachusetts. When the House debated its version of the surtax supplemental budget last month, House Speaker Ronald Mariano got a $25 million earmark for a parking garage at a medical facility in his Quincy hometown. For that earmark to become reality, it will need to either be added to the Senate plan or survive House-Senate negotiations over a compromise version. Local News Headlines WWLP-22News, an NBC affiliate, began broadcasting in March 1953 to provide local news, network, syndicated, and local programming to western Massachusetts. Watch the 22News Digital Edition weekdays at 4 p.m. on Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WWLP.
Yahoo
21-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
House seeking 60-day limit to put 'pressure' on committees
BOSTON (SHNS) – Top House Democrats hope to avoid another end-of-session 'logjam' by overhauling how joint committees operate, they told reporters Thursday, with an eye toward shifting decisions to the committee chairs, moving more bills on a faster timeline, and shying away from omnibus-style legislating. House Speaker Ronald Mariano acknowledged two trends that have generated frustration among the rank and file in recent years when he and Majority Leader Michael Moran spoke to the press after sharing a brief summary of their 2025-2026 rules proposal. The Quincy Democrat said the ideas are meant to address the centralization of power at the top of each chamber and the move towards mega-bills packed with a variety of policies. The full text of the draft rules is set to be filed Monday, the speaker's office said, ahead of debate at Tuesday's formal session. Joint committees would have just 60 days to consider the fate of a bill after giving it a hearing, and would not be able to seek bill extensions past March of the term's second year. Joint committees often send a bill for a layover in the House or Senate Ways and Means Committee, from which it may not emerge by the end of the term. Ways and Means committees would not be subject to the same 60-day clock. The House's tweaks follow the Senate's Feb. 13 proposal which also addressed committee work and transparency-related measures. It's 'all in an attempt to kind of push things through the process and stop some of the logjam,' Moran said Thursday in the corridor outside the speaker's office. The proposal would effectively scrap the so-called Joint Rule 10 Day deadline that committees have faced for years as a blanket target for shipping out legislation. For timely-filed bills heard in the spring of Year 1, committees currently have nearly a year — until February of Year 2 — to recommend passage or rejection. Under the Mariano-Moran proposal, committees would have 60 days from holding a hearing on a bill to take action on it, with a possible 30-day extension. Committees would have rolling deadlines based on their hearing schedules and the newly-established March date would be what Mariano called a 'drop-dead date.' The March date would come into play for the final bills that don't get heard until later in the session, and for late-filed petitions. Senators also voted to adjust the committee-reporting deadline, proposing to move the current Joint Rule 10 deadline two months earlier, to December of Year 1. The speaker said the House's proposed move would result in devolving more responsibility to the committee level. 'My feeling is, by keeping this deadline of 60 days, we put pressure on our chairmen,' Mariano said. 'We want our chairmen to make decisions [about] what bills are going to come up, what bills are important. This is to empower the members and have them involved in the decision-making, rather than taking it all out of the speaker's office. And now it goes back into the chairmen's bailiwick.' The speaker's office did not publish a complete draft of the rules proposals being teed up for debate Tuesday, but did provide a topline summary of some reforms that Democrats plan to bring to the floor. Under the 'new setup,' they said, the committee co-chairs' offices would handle preparation of bill summaries, a departure from the Senate's proposal that bill sponsors file summaries alongside their legislation. House staff would handle the summaries for the House bills, and the Senate co-chair's staff would compose the Senate bill summaries. 'We're not going to have members do it, because members are going to go to the advocates, they're going to go to lobbyists. We want to make sure our members are getting accurate information from the staff,' Mariano told reporters. After joint hearings, House and Senate co-chairs would poll the members of their own branch on their own branch's bills, similar to the approach sought by the Senate. 'So every senator that sits on a committee is now going to have to take a vote on a poll to get that Senate bill out of the committee. So we're empowering a lot of the legislators in these rules,' Moran said. 'They're going to have to respond, and they're going to have to put their best foot forward in a way that they hadn't before. But since I've been here, this is a big change in the rules.' And there is a focus on attendance at hearings. Under the proposal, representatives and senators would only be able to participate in committee hearings physically at the State House. Remote participation would still be allowed for members of the public. Lawmakers' committee votes would be posted online — something long sought by transparency advocates — published along with their attendance record for participation in hearings. The 30 or so joint committees often schedule hearings at conflicting times. The proposal to publish how each lawmaker votes on committee polls, key decisions on whether bills advance in the legislative process or stall out, reflects a major shift for House Democrats. For several terms, the Senate has sought to require joint committees to make clear how lawmakers vote in internal polls. The speaker told reporters he was aiming to have the 194th General Court feature more individual bills and less omnibus legislation. 'One of the things that was frustrating last July was the bills were too big,' Mariano said. 'And if you take my health care stuff, I was trying to negotiate a hospital bill with a pharmacy bill. It just didn't work. So what we want to do is we want to keep these things moving so that there's no temptation to sort of pile them all into one big bill and get it through at the end. We're hoping that we can deal with these things as they come up.' In recent terms, the July 31 end of formal business has evolved into all-night wait-and-see sessions as negotiators struggle to reach agreement on mammoth omnibus bills. Last year, lawmakers were unable to strike agreements by the July 31 deadline on a number of large bills including packages on hospital oversight, prescription drug pricing, the long-term care industry, economic development, the opioid crisis, and clean energy siting and climate policy. Later on in the availability, the Quincy Democrat repeated: 'The bills are getting too big.' The draft rules are a work in progress. As of now, there is no change to the July 31 end of formal sessions, something which is set by the rules and not by the Constitution or statute. Mariano said that is currently under discussion and could be subject to change before Monday. 'I guess for the first time in a while, there's some agreement and understanding between us and the Senate that we want to make some changes,' Mariano said, adding that he was 'cautiously optimistic' about advancing areas of common ground with the Senate. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
05-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
House Democrats restrict Massachusetts emergency shelter eligibility in $425M bill
The $425 million emergency shelter system bill that the House will vote on Thursday features temporary reforms including 'stricter eligibility requirements, along with increased security measures' that House Speaker Ronald Mariano said could ensure the program can endure financially in the long term. The House Ways and Means Committee was polling its latest draft of Gov. Maura Healey's mid-year spending proposal Wednesday morning, teeing it up for debate in a Thursday formal session. Mariano's office said the committee bill adopts the administration's recommendation around so-called presumptive eligibility by allowing the state to verify eligibility for shelter benefits during the application process by 'requiring applicants to prove Massachusetts residency and an intent to stay in Massachusetts by providing certain documentation.' It also gives the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities the authority to 'require benefits to be provided only to families who are residents of Massachusetts and who are United States citizens; persons lawfully admitted for permanent residence; or otherwise permanently residing under the color of law in the U.S.,' the speaker's office said, but also requires that temporary respite sites be made available to non-eligible families for up to 30 days upon arrival in Massachusetts. There are also measures to reduce the maximum length in an EA shelter from nine to six consecutive months, and to remove the availability of two 90-day extensions for certain situations. EOHLC would be allowed, under the House bill, to deem families that have income exceeding 200% of the Federal Poverty Level for three consecutive months to be no longer eligible for shelter benefits. 'Over the past several years, as the population of the emergency shelter system has grown, the House has attempted to uphold the Commonwealth's right to shelter law while also being mindful of the long-term fiscal sustainability of the program,' House Ways and Means Chairman Aaron Michlewitz said. 'The reforms contained in this proposal will ensure that right to shelter is maintained by further capping the length of stay and verifying eligibility, while also enacting stricter background checks on those who enter the shelter system to better protect the families who need these services the most.' On the safety front, the House bill proposes to require that each individual adult applicant or beneficiary in the EA system disclose all prior criminal convictions in Massachusetts and any other jurisdiction, except for convictions that are sealed or were expunged. It also would require CORI background checks for each individual adult applicant or beneficiary prior to shelter placement. The last line of the House bill would impose a rigid cap on the number of families served by the EA system at 4,000 for 2026. There were 6,012 families enrolled in the EA system as of Jan. 30. Ways and Means Committee members were given until 10:45 a.m. to vote on Michlewitz's recommendation to report the draft favorably. The House is expected to debate it in a formal session Thursday. Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch Boston 25 News NOW
