UPDATE 2:00pm Thursday | I think perhaps someone in the City Attorney’s office shows the good taste of reading me (I love to think of Mr. Shannon and Mr. Mais sitting together at a desk reading my Burning Man column. You guys should totally come next year! We’ll dance the nights away!), because Shannon and co. had a response at the ready when I raised the above-discussed issue during Tuesday’s Council meeting. After politely hearing my concerns5, Mr. Foster turned the matter over to Mr. Shannon, who immediately passed it to Mr. Mais, who had his answer prepared. “Mr. Moore is correct,” he said, going on to explain that he was immediately informed of his error by Deputy City Attorney Cristyl Myers (who he said drafted the “initial ordinance that was presented”), and that he followed up with Ms. Gabelich regarding his error, who was satisfied not to pursue the matter further—even though there’s no indication that they provided her with the answer to her question.
See, for all their readiness, on Tuesday the City Attorney’s office couldn’t or wouldn’t tell us exactly where they came up with “4 or more.” “It is our belief that the […] number that is currently in our ordinance actually came from the ordinance—at least came partially from the ordinance—that was introduced and ultimately passed by the City of L.A.,” said Mais. “So that’s where that number came from.” “So you’re not sure where that number came from?” I asked, puzzled by Mais’s use of “belief.” “The point is,” Shannon jumped in, “that the misinformation was immediately corrected to the person who asked the question. And the only person apparently interested in the issue, Councilmember Gabelich, was immediately advised that information was incorrect. If she wished to pursue it further, she could have—and she indicated that she didn’t wish to.”
That wasn’t my point, of course, and so the next day I attempted to follow up with the boys, posing four questions:
- Since Mr. Mais stated that Ms. Myers immediately informed Mr. Mais of his error, did Mr. Mais not inform Mr. Shannon of said error [i.e., since on June 15 Shannon evinced no cognizance of said error’s having been made]?
- Did Mr. Shannon fail to realize that Mr. Mais’s May 18 assertion was erroneous (whether initially or on June 15 when I informed the Council of said error)?
- On May 18 and June 15, where did Mr. Shannon believe the figure “4 or more” had come from?
- Can either Mr. Mais or Mr. Shannon at this point definitively say where the City Attorney’s office came up with the figure “4 or more”?
The e-mail response from Mr. Shannon: “We have nothing further to offer with regard to the issue you raise in today’s e-mail, beyond the explanation offered at the City Council meeting last night, and therefore will not be responding to your questions.” Never mind that said explanation offered no definitive explanation about the origin of the figure “4 or more”—which is the question by Gabelich that started this whole business.
But Shannon’s unwillingness to offer further response/explanation makes a kind of sense, since it has to be the case that either a) Shannon did not know Mais was in error when Mais made his initial assertion, which would mean that our City Attorney had an inaccurate grasp of the law on this point despite our State Attorney General’s having been crystal clear that “California law does not define collectives”; or b) Shannon did know Mais was in error but failed to offer a correction even when I raised the issue a month later, which would mean at that time he chose knowingly to offer a false assertion that his office had not provided any erroneous information. In light of this, it is not inconceivable that he finds “no comment” less problematic than being forthcoming6.
Whatever the case, though, Mais’s admission moots his entire line of argument that we stick with “4 or more” because it comports with state law. So perhaps the City Attorney’s office retracts its recommendation of defining collectives as “4 or more?” Somehow I doubt it.
But is Mr. Shannon right: Is Gabelich “the only person apparently interested in the issue?” He is certainly correct in spirit about at least one thing: It is for Gabelich & Co.—i.e., the Council in general—to ask for the issue to be revisited.
Since there has been plenty of the talk on the Council about revisiting the ordinance should any issues arise, perhaps this incident gives them the perfect opportunity to walk that walk.
Councilmember Gabelich has been out of town all of this week. I have a call in to her, and I hope to speak with her about all of this and provide one more update to this story upon her return.
*
9:30am Wednesday | Long Beach allows medical-marijuana collectives to operate within city limits. For a very heavy price. If I’m not mistaken, the heaviest price in the country.
Ironically, the price is heaviest on the smallest collectives. In fiscal terms, our City treats collectives with as few as four (4) members exactly the same as a collective with 500 members.
Why such a heavy burden on such small collectives? From whence this definition of collectives as being “four (4) or more Qualified Patients and their designated Primary Caregivers (LBMC § 5.87.015(I))?” That’s exactly what Councilmember Rae Gabelich wanted to know at the May 18 City Council meeting. Here’s exactly what she was told by Assistant City Attorney Mike Mais: “We came to that number because that’s what the state, the Compassionate Use Act, defines a collective as: four or more.” One minute later, in response to Gabelich’s inquiry into the possibility of raising the figure, Mais replied, “Since we did follow the state law, which defines a collective as four or fewer [sic; he meant to say “more”], I would suggest that we stay with that for the purposes of regulation.”
Trouble is, what Mais said is completely false. State law does not define collectives, period. Consider the following:
- The word ‘collective’ does not appear in the Compassionate Use Act (1996), nor does any synonym for ‘collective.’1
- In the Medical Marijuana Program Act (2003), the word ‘collective’ and its synonyms appear only as adjectives. No number of patients, members, etc., is associated with their usage nor anywhere discussed.2
- In State Attorney General Jerry Brown’s August 2008 guidelines regarding medical marijuana, he notes that “California law does not define collectives” (IV.A.2).3
Being that the City Attorney’s office explicitly referred to all three of these documents numerous times during the process of crafting our medpot guidelines, it is (to put it politely) puzzling why they would provide such erroneous legal counsel. Worse, the City has made policy in part based on this erroneous counsel.
Am I the only one who thinks that the City Attorney’s office providing erroneous counsel and the City Council making policy based on that erroneous counsel is cause for concern—and that it’s an issue that transcends the specific context in which it occurred?
During public comment on non-agenda items at the June 15 City Council meeting, I pointed out all of this4. City Attorney Robert Shannon replied that he did not believe his office had provided any erroneous information but that he’d be happy to look into it, and Mayor Bob Foster request that Shannon provide the Council with a memo on where this figure “4 or more” comes from.
It’s three months since then, and to my knowledge this memo has never materialized. But I’m going to the September 21 City Council meeting to find out. I’ll let you know what happens.
Footnotes
1See www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/MMP/Pages/CompassionateUseact.aspx.
2See www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/03-04/bill/sen/sb_0401-0450/sb_420_bill_20031012_chaptered.html.
3See www.ag.ca.gov/cms_attachments/press/pdfs/n1601_medicalmarijuanaguidelines.pdf.
4Prior to this Mais did not respond to my attempts to contact him about his claim.
5Along with my admission that I meant “adverb” when I wrote “adjective” regarding the Medical Marijuana Program Act.
6I would argue that government officials ought to put transparency above saving face, but…
Click here to read our policy on covering the Long Beach City Council.