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It is a secret wrapped in a conundrum folded into a riddle. Has Shawn Collins, the first and only executive director of Massachusetts’s Cannabis Control Commission, in fact resigned? That’s what he ostensibly told Commission chair Shannon O’Brien, who interrupted the regular order of business during Friday’s live online meeting to recount a series of conversations she says she had with Collins starting a few months ago.
“At the second May meeting of the Commission,” explained O’Brien, “the executive director said to me, ‘Today, I am going to announce that I am leaving at the end of the year, and that I intend to take my family leave – having just had a new baby – in September. I’d like to take my 10 weeks starting in September, and, I believe, after the regulatory process is done.’
“I asked him not to announce it on that day,” continued O’Brien. “It was a little bit out of the blue. I wasn’t sure. I said, ‘I would ask that you wait. We’re in the process of hiring a new chief people officer or hiring a new general counsel. We are depleted in terms of some of our top management and staff to help us not only get through regulatory writing, but to exercise the important responsibilities that we have.”
O’Brien further explained that the announcement was “new business not anticipated at time of posting, because I am sensitive to the need for people to get this work done. And again, my apologies. This was something that was planned for me back in June, before our deadlines were moved, because we hadn’t gotten the work done. Anyway, I had a conversation with the executive director yesterday, who again indicated to me that he was about to announce yesterday, which is why I called on him to announce his plans to leave. He further indicated to me that he planned on taking his family leave beginning on Monday. I have consulted with labor attorneys, and employees shall give no less than 30 days’ notice to their employer of the anticipated start date of family or medical leave. Notice shall be provided as soon as practicable unless a delay is beyond an employee’s control.”
But O’Brien was not finished with her remarks. “Because I will not be able to address this at the end of the meeting, I wanted to address it here,” she said. “I would like to say that … we need to do this with respect to the legal rights of all employees to fully enjoy their family leave. We are in crisis right now as a Commission. We need to make sure that we know how to manage through this regulatory process, and we need to understand… again, back in May, I had actually begun making some inquiries. Are there people out there who might necessarily want to apply for this position?
“I did not want to announce this in May,” she continued. “Please. I did not want to announce this in May because I wanted to make sure that we got our chief people officer in place, we were doing a search for general counsel, we were in the throes of regulatory writing. So, to that extent, I just want to notify my fellow Commissioners, I want to protect the rights of all employees at the commission, but I want to have a conversation with my fellow Commissioners to discuss this, to discuss the leave, and to do it in a way where we have time to prepare, where we properly notify the employee about how we will have this conversation, and that it may require us to protect his rights to go into executive session.” [Italics added]
At the conclusion of Friday’s hearing, after O’Brien had left early, remaining commissioners commented on the “inappropriate” nature of O’Brien’s comments. Commissioner Ava Callender Concepcion added late Friday, “I want to make sure that the executive director has the ability to give his statements, any perspective that he wants to offer, and also just clarify that there is no official statement there that was given, both to the public or to myself. But I also want to make sure that it’s really clear that I do, I find it a bit inappropriate to discuss personal matters both to the press and at a public meeting setting.”
Monday has arrived, of course, but despite O’Brien’s specificity, the Commission still will not confirm whether Collins has in fact resigned, much less why. In response to an email directed to Shawn Collins’s work address, a spokesperson replied today with the same response they issued Friday: “The Cannabis Control Commission (Commission) cannot confirm whether Executive Director Collins is stepping down. In general, the agency cannot comment on personnel matters.”
O’Brien, however, did reply today to an email seeking comment about Collins’s resignation as well as her use of “crisis” to describe the state of the Commission. Unfortunately, she could not clarify her earlier remarks. “I am working on ensuring I protect both the interests of the Commission while also protecting Shawn’s rights to privacy,” she told CBE. She said she will likely not be able to respond to specific questions immediately, but added, “If I am able to do so, I will, but [I] need a little more time to make sure I am handling things properly.”
Hopefully, O’Brien will be able to reply in detail to the questions left hanging following her comments Friday, which for all intents and purposes – and probably unwittingly – ripped a small tear in the opaque façade of the Cannabis Control Commission, which it is already trying to repair by framing the conversation surrounding Collins as an HR issue. But as much as the Commission may want to cast it that way or avert the public’s attention away from any problems that may exist within the Commission, what that tear exposed looks far more significant than just a personnel problem.
Indeed, the Commission today announced with pride the approval of draft regulations to “Increase Equity in the Adult- and Medical-Use Marijuana Industry in Massachusetts,” the very work it was finalizing Friday. It was the culmination of months of work that will now move on to a public comment period.
As much of an achievement as it may be, however, the draft regulations cannot erase O’Brien’s comments from the record. They need to be addressed because neither her narrative surrounding Collins’s comments to her – nor the Commission’s and the individual commissioners’ responses to it – make much sense if you take them at face value. Simply put, if Collins told O’Brien he wanted to announce his resignation in May, how can his privacy be threatened by confirming his resignation now? If his privacy is threatened, let him explain how, because using privacy as a reason to shy away from the subject at this point in the story line only raises red flags.
Additionally, to ignore or push away as inappropriate what O’Brien said happened is the same as contradicting or denying what she said happened. But why bother? People quit their jobs every day. It’s not a problem unless it’s a problem, and in this case, when O’Brien used the word “crisis” in relation to this resignation, it suggested a problem lurks somewhere, and it really does demand some clarification, which we have respectfully asked for and are waiting to receive.
Part 2 of our look at the state of the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission will include commentary from licensees in the state whose experience with the CCC has become increasingly problematic as they seek answers from the Commission to questions they believe are necessary for the operation of a cannabis program that prioritizes the health and safety of consumers.
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