When Connecticut legalized the sale of recreational cannabis use, lawmakers set out to make sure the state was doing it equitably. So far, it’s been rocky.
WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Mark Pazniokas to discuss his article, “CT confronts controversy over cannabis cash and social equity,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short. You can read his story here.
WSHU: Hello, Mark. What is the controversy over the distribution of state funds generated from the licensing of cannabis? We were told that Connecticut would be a national leader in community reinvestment from cannabis funds. What went wrong?
MP: Well, a lot seems to have gone wrong, or at least there is the implication that it has gone wrong. There are a number of questions that have been raised. Some are fairly high-minded policy decisions about the money that is being reinvested. The grants have gone out, using cannabis licensing funds, to various nonprofits all around the state. There have been 152 grants distributed totaling $5.2 million. And there are questions of local politics you hear all the time, you know, who got the money, who didn’t get the money? How did they get the money? What exactly are they going to do with it?
And you know, unfortunately, there are no clear answers to a lot of these questions. The way the system works is, there’s something called the Social Equity Council, which has responsibility for distributing these community reinvestment funds. There is somewhere north of $40 million, and they did a pilot program where they took $6 million and gave a million dollars to each of six nonprofit grant writers, each responsible for a region, and they determined where this money would go. And now there are complaints about who got it and who didn’t. And more broadly, was there a plan?
WSHU: So the controversy is not even over the spending of the overall money? Is it just the pilot program that has resulted in controversy?
MP: The questions are, you know, what were the metrics for giving the money out? What are the metrics for judging what Connecticut and these disproportionately impacted areas are? That’s the term of art under the law. These are census tracts that have both poverty, and also higher conviction rates for drug crimes. This is trying to make amends for the war on drugs, which I think most people now agree was ill-considered in many ways.
WSHU: And that’s why the Black and Puerto Rican caucus is specifically interested in this and how this money is spent.
MP: Yes. And some of it, you know, is everybody knows somebody who has a program. And so there is, like I said, it’s old as retail politics, which can be especially intense in urban districts, but also in suburban districts as well. There’s always a question of our money being equitably distributed. Now, I will say, relatively speaking, this is not a lot of money. If you look at other grant programs, the state has something called the Community Investment Program. Over a five-year period, that’s going to cost $875 million, not $30 or $40 million, and that was an interesting program in that there were standards set. There is a very defined process about putting the grants out.
And with the Social Equity Council, it’s been a little bit done on the fly. They outsourced the grantmaking to six regional nonprofit grantmakers, they basically divided up the state into six regions, and each one got a million bucks for this first round. And, you know, they were, I think, well-regarded nonprofits that were doing this. But the question is, how are those decisions made? And that’s not crystal clear. They relied on community input and community evaluation panels, either formally or informally. I will say I had quite a struggle to try to get more information about how some of these selections were made.
Now, there’s also, at the very least, a whiff of potential wrongdoing or perhaps conflicts. The executive director of the Social Equity Council is a woman named Ginne-Rae Clay. She lives in Waterbury. She’s involved in a church called Grace Baptist, which is a Black church that is a political player in Waterbury. You know, I think there’s a lot of organization that goes on there. They got a small grant of $15,000. But obviously, you know, people kind of raised their eyebrows about how that came to be. The optics are not great. And then there’s also a claim that an applicant for a license was told by Clay to that church that they needed money for a new freezer for, you know, food insecurity program.
WSHU: And the reason they asked, because the applicant went to Clay, is that the Social Equity Council is also involved in the licensing of marijuana business of cannabis businesses, right?
MP: So the Department of Consumer Protection ultimately issues the license, but the Social Equity Council plays an important role. You cannot get a license without having a social equity plan that says, ‘What are you going to do for the community to get the license?’ And it’s up to the Social Equity Council, particularly the executive director, to approve it. There have been complaints that the standards for that are unclear and that some of these applications are held up for a long time. The question is, you know, is the council acting in an efficient, logical way in which the standards are transparent?
WSHU: Okay, so these questions were raised. What has been done about it? I know that the governor feels that there should be some oversight over this. The chair is the governor’s appointee. Andréa Comer is the chair of the Social Equity Council. What has her role been in all of this?
MP: Well, she was the chair initially, but she is the chief of staff for the state treasurer. And she wanted to step back from this role. So she remained as a member, but not as chair. The governor’s office prevailed on her a few months ago to go back as chair because they have confidence in her. And so now this has been part of her job to try to, again, figure out what’s been going on. Now the legislature, the Black and Puerto Rican caucus, right before the session ended in May, they were able to get language inserted into a budget bill that imposed some clear standards and a great deal of oversight. The executive director now has to write monthly reports to the council and to the Black and Puerto Rican caucus, as well as quarterly reports to the governor’s legislative leaders. So they’re kind of on a short leash right now.
There are reports due in July that may shed more light on exactly how this grant money is being spent. On top of that, the governor asked the comptroller’s office, run by Sean Scanlon, to do a program review and audit of everything that’s been going on. So that’s underway as well. So there was a period of a couple of years where there really was not a lot of oversight from either the Lamont administration or the General Assembly, and all of a sudden, they’re getting plenty of oversight.
WSHU: In the meantime, when is the rest of the money going to go out? And how much of an impact will this money make in the scheme of things?
MP: Well, okay, those are good questions. So, as far as when, nobody knows how long this audit is going to take. There have been nonprofits that have asked the governor and the council to hasten this, so the money goes out. But what you get for it, that’s always the question with these grant programs. And there was an expectation among many lawmakers that a lot of it would go to economic development, in the hopes of taking a small amount of money to connect to seed money that perhaps would help job creation and other things that would have a lasting impact on these census tracts.
When you look at the list of recipients, you will see that many of them are well-established. And I think well-regarded service agencies and you know, they’re doing youth intervention work reentry work for people getting out of prison. So, as Senator Patricia Billie Miller said, she’s the head of the Black and Puerto Rican caucus, it’s not a question of saying all this money is being wasted; it’s a question of, is there a strategic plan? Do these grants fit into some larger plan that’s going to have a lasting impact, as opposed to doing perhaps some good work for a short period of time?
WSHU: So it should be more strategically targeted. And it should be part of a larger economic plan for these census tracts.
MP: That is the hope, and that has certainly been Governor Lamont’s approach to grant-making in general. And that’s how the Community Investment Fund came to pass. The legislature was unhappy with the Lamont administration, which was being pretty tight-fisted on approving bonding that goes to local projects. That community investment program was really kind of a compromise set up, that there would be a commitment of $175 million a year to the community projects and community investment. The Department of Economic and Community Development would develop a vetting process, which is getting good reviews, that it’s not just who you know, you have to come in, you have to show that there is local money, private or public, being put into whatever project is before them. And you also have to demonstrate significant community support. So you know, that has not been a perfect process.
I think there’s some grants that people question if it’s really worthy. But most of them, you know, there seems to be a sense that this is a sensible way to approach this. There were some questions about whether the Social Equity Council had really kind of mimicked that, but they went their own way. And then there’s another question as to the standards where the money goes, I mean, they set up their own metrics in the legislature about what are the districts most impacted by the war on drugs, as opposed to using other standards that are already existing. Connecticut’s distressed municipalities are eligible for some grants; regarding school systems, there are things called Alliance Districts that are eligible for significant grants. So, you know, there was a little bit of grumbling, like, do we really need to invent, you know, yet a new way of doing it, but that was the decision that was made in the General Assembly and, and now that and I think a lot of other decisions are being reexamined.
WSHU: In the meantime, this close to $40 million, that still needs to go out?
MP: Well, it’s really more like 34 million, because the 6 million is already out. And then the governor’s office has convinced the Social Equity Council to take a portion of that to look at priorities that are broader, you know, homelessness, and the availability of daycare. So I mean, the council has kind of compromised with that, you know, there was about $12 million that they have said, yeah, they can put that money into those areas. So immediately, there’s a question of really probably $20 to $23 million that nonprofits were expecting to be available this summer, and that’s not the case.
H/T: CTMirror.org
You can view the whole article at this link PODCAST: CT cannabis equity program hits road bumps
