As Mr. Eakins has recently reported in the Press-Telegram, the esteemed members of our City Council’s Economic Development and Finance Committee (EDFC) will be discussing two issues today that are of great interest to many in our community and have direct and indirect bearing upon our personal and collective liberty.
1st District Councilmember Robert Garcia proposes that the City adopt an Equal Benefits Ordinance (EBO) that would “(require) contractors doing business with the City demonstrate they provide benefits for registered domestic partners that are equal to those provided by married spouses”. 7th District Councilwoman Tonia Reyes-Uranga asks that the Council “Direct the City Manager and request the City Attorney and City Prosecutor to develop specific standards and criteria relating to the licensing of medical marijuana dispensaries under the provisions of Title 5 of the Long Beach Municipal Code pertaining to the regulation of Businesses, Trades and Professions”.
8th District Councilwoman Rae Gabelich, 3rd District Councilman Gary DeLong and 7th District Councilwoman Tonia Reyes-Uranga will be revisiting the discussion on both of these public policy proposals at 5:30 this afternoon in the Council Chamber at City Hall. I strongly encourage our readers to attend and participate if possible.
I’ve previously offered a column on the EBO proposal here and have commented extensively on our community’s Medical Marijuana challenge in lbpost.com colleague Greggory Moore’s excellent column here and elsewhere, but I think it’s important to continue to discuss both of these as they make their methodical way through our local legislative process.
Equal Benefits Ordinances
In my opinion, the true intent of EBO’s is to circumvent the intent of Proposition 8; the ill-advised legislation of last year that amended our State Constitution to prohibit gay marriage in California. But like it or not -and I didn’t and still don’t- Prop. 8 passed and because of it an entire class of committed and consenting adults (“LGBT’s”) are now deprived of the State-recognized marital benefits that another class of committed and consenting adults (“Straights”) are allowed to enjoy. In my view, Prop 8 was patently discriminatory and I greatly hope we overturn or reverse it as soon as possible.
Although EBO’s only address registered domestic partnership, had Prop 8 not passed, EBO’s would be largely unnecessary, since I believe the vast majority of committed and consenting gay couples would much prefer the full legal status of marriage to the “separate but equal” status of registered domestic partnership. When I made this assertion during a “Beer & Politics” public forum on this topic, Councilmember Garcia, who also attended spoke to the topic, readily agreed.
If the intent of Prop 8 is to deny rights and privileges to committed gay couples then the intent of EBO’s is to deny rights and privileges to contractors who are operating in full compliance with our current and duly-enacted local, State and federal laws.
Put simply, an EBO is just as discriminatory in one way as Prop 8 was in another. Both seek to employ the law to deprive people of government-extended rights and privileges and both are wrong.
The right way to correct the error we made through Prop 8 is to repeal Prop 8, not to pass subservient legislation that conflict with the intent of Prop 8.
As a City, we borrow a lot of trouble with the passage of an EBO: We unnecessarily expose ourselves to costly litigation. Many jurisdictions that have passed EBO’s have been challenged in Court. Some of these jurisdictions have prevailed and some have not but defending ourselves against such litigation will be very costly either way. Through an EBO we enact legislation that prevents companies that are operating lawfully from doing business with the City even though they may meet our current “lowest responsible bidder” standard for awarding City contracts. This means that even though a given bid might actually save our City -and therefore local taxpayers- money, we will not award a contract to that bidder because they do not offer benefits parity to their registered domestic partners…something no local State or federal law requires them to do.
I think there are several better options for addressing this challenge at the local level: We could offer preference points through our City’s existing Diversity Outreach Program just as we currently offer to local businesses. Or we, as a City, could do nothing but continue to adhere to our own current, more fiscally responsible “lowest responsible bidder” standard. Bidders that offer RDP benefits parity simply need to assure that their bids are always the lowest responsible bids. The City will then award the contract accordingly and our preference to only do business with contractors that offer RDP benefits parity is met while maintaining the more fiscally conservative integrity of our bidding process.
Medical Marijuana
The City has been wrestling with the medpot issue for at least two years that I know of. To date our Council has done little but talk about it and otherwise turn a blind eye to the subsequent explosion of medpot Cooperatives, Collectives and Dispensaries throughout our community. To date, none of these operations is licensed to operate in our City while all other lawful businesses have been required to be. None of them have been inspected by public health or safety personnel while all other lawful businesses have been required to be. None are paying fees or taxes while all other lawful businesses in our city have been required to.
In short, all of these Cooperatives, Collectives and Dispensaries have been operating in direct defiance of our City’s business licensing law and they have, to date, been allowed to do so by the very people we have elected to represent us and in whom we have invested the authority to assure that our City’s laws are fully and fairly enforced.
Some, like my lbpost.com colleague Greggory Moore, have argued that these operations are unlicensed only because the City has so far refused to issue the licenses, as if this somehow excuses them. Try that argument with a cop sometime…
Unlicensed Driver: ”Gee officer, I applied to the State for a driver license and they wouldn’t issue me one but I decided to drive anyway so, really, it’s the State’s fault”
Officer: “Sign here, sir. Press hard, three copies and please collect your personal items, I’ll be impounding your car as well”
The bottom line is that the City has declined to issue licenses to these sorts of operations and, so, when any of them operated in our City anyway, they chose to do so *unlawfully*. In a well-ordered and civil society, there must exist fair and reasonable consequences for unlawful behavior.
This agenda item is our City’s attempt to finally get its legislative and regulatory act together on this important public policy challenge.
In my opinion, the best way to do that is to clean the proverbial slate: To start fresh and to manage this correctly from the beginning. The City must, therefore, close down every single medpot Collective, Cooperative and Dispensary in the city. I know this isn’t going to be a popular approach, but please hear me out.
The City can lawfully do this because none of these businesses are properly licensed. This comprehensive closure is necessary because there is just no fair and equal way to determine which of them should be allowed to remain open and which should not.
None of them has been properly inspected and we cannot allow any of them to continue to operate under those circumstances, not and properly meet our public policy mandate to assure public health and safety within our jurisdiction. None of them should be allowed to continue to operate, even while awaiting inspection, because this, in essence, rewards them for conducting operations in defiance of our business licensing laws to begin with. Being closed down, even temporarily, must be seen as a fair and just consequence for violating our City’s laws.
While all of these unlawful operations are being closed our elected officials must craft the necessary legislation to properly, fairly, effectively and efficiently regulate these types of operations. Our elected and appointed City officials must decide how these businesses are going to be inspected, by whom and according to what standards and they must determine how many such businesses are going to be allowed to operate in our city and where. I suggest no more than three per Council District.
Once all of the appropriate legislation, policies and procedures are in place, then and only then should Co-ops and Collectives (not Dispensaries) be allowed to apply for and be issued business licenses in our City. Because of the nature of these businesses, their regulation and control must be closely monitored and strictly enforced within our jurisdiction and the only way to do that is to start from scratch and do it correctly from the beginning.
Marijuana is considered a mild hallucinogen. Because of this I just don’t see it ever being legalized outright. Alcohol, while having similar effects, is considered a mild CNS Depressant, rather than a hallucinogen, so arguments that the two substances should be regulated in the same manner are, to me, erroneous.
But while our local regulatory efforts are ongoing we must also re-double our efforts to lobby our Federal Government to transfer Marijuana from Federal Drug Schedule 1. Accomplishing this will then permit State licensed medical professionals to legally *prescribe* marijuana to their legitimate patients (rather than simply “recommend” it as is currently the case) and will permit State licensed pharmacies to legally dispense it.
Until the Fed gets its own act together on this, however, Long Beach should do what it can under existing law to better insure public health and safety while trying to meet the needs of legitimate medpot patients within our jurisdiction.
I very much welcome your questions and your comments!
Disclosure: The lbpost.com has sponsorship relationships with medical marijuana dispensaries.
Click here to read our policy on covering the Long Beach City Council.