So, the Medical Marijuana Shadow Money Group Won in the Court of Appeals – Now What?

The marijuana industry in Michigan is a multi-million-dollar conglomerate. During fiscal 2021, its reported sales were more than $1.1 billion. https://tinyurl.com/MI-Treasury-Marijuana-Payments. It’s no surprise, then, that the industry would pay solicitors to get signatures on a one-sided petition that probably no one who signed it actually read and then marshal its state-wide litigation corps to defeat the city in two courts and get this on the ballot to force the city to license marijuana dispensaries without any supervision or regulation.

Well, now that the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled against Clarkston, we are going to have the “opportunity” to vote on whether (at least) two medical marijuana dispensaries will be in the City of the Village of Clarkston. I wrote about the questionable activities of the secretly organized funding group behind the Clarkston proposal as well as other, similar proposals across the state here: https://tinyurl.com/Clarkston-Secrets. It’s worth a read so you can rate the proponents of this proposal on your own personal sleaze meter. I’ve also linked to the Court of Appeals decision here: https://tinyurl.com/Court-of-appeals-decision. (Side note to the Clarkston city council and the city attorney – How does it feel to have a circuit court judge decide your case on personal feelings, and then have a court of appeals panel ignore the law so that your opponent can win? Yeah, welcome to my FOIA case – because that’s exactly what happened before the Michigan Supreme Court set things right.)

As I explained in my last post, the organization named “Clarkston Cares 2022” (the group behind the proposal we’ll be voting on), along with the groups named “Oakland Cares” and “Oakland Cares Coalition,” are all funded by one shadowy 501(c)(3) organization. As you know, these organizations don’t have to disclose their donors, so we have no idea who is pushing the many marijuana proposals across the state. But we do know there’s big money in marijuana sales and these folks are probably not grass roots individuals who just want to make sure granny gets her needed medicine.

Based on correspondence from our clerk attached to the court filings that I included with my previous post, 88 of our Clarkston neighbors signed a petition to get this proposal on the ballot. You might be surprised to know that were more Independence Township neighbors who signed this proposal to put dispensaries in Clarkston than there were Clarkston voters signing it. If I may summarize some of the comments I saw on social media, your Independence Township neighbors apparently want a more convenient place to buy recreational marijuana, so if you all in Clarkston have to deal with medical marijuana dispensaries in your residential neighborhood that have flashing signs and are open seven days a week and twelve hours a day, you shouldn’t complain. After all, you wouldn’t want your Independence Township buddies to have to drive too far to buy their weed, would you? (They’re apparently too far gone to realize that this charter amendment is limited to medical marijuana and that requires a prescription.) Gosh, I wonder why the Independence Township people signing the Clarkston petition haven’t approached their own government about adopting this totally awesome ballot proposal. Better us than them I guess, huh?

Petitions are public documents, so if you’d like to know who the signers are so you can ask them why they feel this way, you can make a FOIA request to Clarkston for that information. Who knows, maybe they’ll change your mind and convince you that the proposal is a good idea, and frankly, we should never be afraid of civil dialogue on important issues.

Oh, what the heck – maybe I’ll make the request and publish the petitions so that every Clarkston voter has the opportunity to review them to see if their names are on there. Do you think your name won’t be on the petition because you know you didn’t sign it? I wouldn’t be so sure. Even though the campaign finance filing indicates that the Clarkston Cares 2022 ballot committee used a different professional signature gathering company, Oakland Cares and Clarkston Cares Coalition recently used a guy who has a history of pleading guilty to two counts of election fraud(!!) to solicit signatures for marijuana-related proposals. And oh yeah – this is the same guy who owns the company accused of fraudulently collecting signatures in connection with this year’s governor’s race, and also the same guy whose home was raided in June under a subpoena from the Michigan Attorney General (https://tinyurl.com/Detroit-News-Raid.) The signature company used by Clarkston Cares 2022 is headquartered in Florida, so I think it’s fair to ask if they subcontracted any signature work to this election fraudster. It’s not far-fetched to wonder about that, since that’s what former gubernatorial candidate/City of Detroit Chief of Police James Craig alleges in his lawsuit over the fraudulent signatures that cost him a place in the Republican primary in August.

So, what’s next? Well, in the short-term, the city is hoping to get some ballot language together before the ballots are printed early this month. There is a special meeting scheduled for Wednesday, September 6^th, at 6:00 at city hall. Here are the instructions for dialing in to the meeting:

You may join the meeting from your computer, tablet or smartphone using the following link: https://meet.goto.com/217706277 Or you may call in using the following phone number and access code: (646) 749-3122, Access Code: 217-706-277

I would encourage the city attorney/city council to contact the Village of Leonard and the attorney handling a recent Oakland Cares Coalition case over ballot language before the September 6^th meeting. The Village of Leonard wanted to put truthful language on the ballot so that their voters would at least know that the marijuana proposal would trump zoning ordinances. In case you don’t know, zoning ordinances protect you by keeping this kind of crap out of our residential neighborhoods and away from our kids and by regulating parking and the kind of signs that they can use. So, of course the Oakland Cares Coalition sued because we don’t want people to know what they’re actually voting on! They tried to argue that they didn’t really mean what they said in the petition language. (Yeah right, of course they didn’t mean it.) This shadow group has at least three law firms at their disposal as well as independent attorneys representing them in the bazillion lawsuits they’ve filed. Newsflash – they meant to say exactly what they said, and as everyone knows, the written word prevails over any “gosh, we didn’t really mean it” claims. They lost because it was too late for the court to consider their challenge to the ballot language. They’re appealing because hope springs eternal, I guess. (I’ve attached a transcript of the circuit court hearing in the Village of Leonard case here – 20220824 – Oakland Cares Coalition-Leonard transcript.)

I think it’s important for Clarkston voters to know what a “yes” vote on this proposal will give us:

• • It’s an amendment to the charter, which means that any current or future city ordinance that conflicts with the medical marijuana charter amendment is invalid.
  • It ties your elected and appointed city officials’ hands because:
    • They can’t “undo” any negative effects of the medical marijuana charter amendment.
    • They can’t add local licensing requirements to the state licensing requirements.
    • They must authorize two medical marijuana provisioning centers immediately.
    • They’re forced to create any “necessary” ordinances and resolutions for the medical marijuana facilities within 30 days.
    • They must begin accepting applications for medical marijuana facilities within ten days after the medical marijuana charter provisions take effect for a ten-day period.
    • If they don’t create an application form, they’re forced to accept any old self-created form from applicants that includes the title and information in the medical marijuana charter amendment.
    • The fee they can charge for licenses is limited.
    • They have to run a lottery if there’s a tie.
    • They must award two licenses within 30 days after the application period ends after applying a complicated point system.
    • If they make a mistake and don’t award the licenses within 30 days, then every single effing applicant gets a provisional medical marijuana license. (Yay!)
    • They have to set up an appeals process with a hearing officer, so disappointed pot seller wannabes can take up city officials’ time arguing about why the city should have made a different decision.
  • Lawsuits
    • People who are disappointed in the results of the appeals process can sue. (Clarkston taxpayers will of course have to pay to defend these lawsuits.)
    • If anyone wants to sue over the validity of the charter proposal, the Clarkston taxpayers will also have to pay a lawyer to defend the medical marijuana charter amendment.
  • It’s a medical marijuana licensee’s bill of rights!
    • Their facilities can be open seven days a week from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.
    • They can locate their stores anywhere there is a building structure on a parcel of land, and no city regulation, resolution, or ordinance that conflicts with the marijuana charter language can be applied. (This means that they could buy the house next door to you and run their medical marijuana business seven days a week, twelve hours a day, and announce the location with a flashing neon sign on the roof.)
    • They can relocate their business to a new place, and the city must respond to the transfer request within five days. Zoning ordinances apply to transfer requests only.
    • They can transfer their medical marijuana license to anyone. They have to notify the city, but the city is required to rubber stamp the transfer.
    • No matter how awful they behave, they can’t lose their local Clarkston license unless the State of Michigan revokes their license (but they could transfer their license to someone else before that happens).
    • Their licenses renew every year – forever and ever and ever.
    • They have a “vested property right” in their Clarkston licenses, so even if Clarkston residents decided to change their minds about medical marijuana, that’s too bad. Once these shadow groups get a toehold, they’re here forever whether we like it or not.

(Here is a full copy of the charter proposal with highlights: Clarkston Cares ballot proposal.)

Assuming that the Village of Leonard proposal is similar to the Clarkston proposal, it shouldn’t be at all surprising that the Oakland Cares Coalition is fighting against providing truthful information to the voters. Better to keep them uninformed and believe that it’s all about “caring.” It’s even in their name, so it must be true!

I would urge the Planning Commission and City Council to work on an ordinance for recreational marijuana. This ordinance could honor all of the city’s other ordinances, including the zoning ordinance, and could limit the number of facilities to one. The council could even make passage of the ordinance contingent on voter approval if they wanted. They also aren’t required to give any priority to businesses holding medical marijuana licenses, and if the medical marijuana license holders aren’t selected, it’s fairly certain they will go out of business – because why do you want to bother with the time and expense to get a prescription for medical marijuana when you can just walk into a recreational seller and buy marijuana without the hassle? That’s exactly what just happened in Detroit, so perhaps a conversation between our city attorney and the the City of Detroit Corporation Counsel might be instructive regarding how to fashion the ordinance: https://tinyurl.com/Free-Press-article.

And in the meantime, you should expect this shadowy group to advertise like crazy. I wouldn’t be surprised to see full-page ads in the Clarkston News and mailers going to every home in the city, perhaps with garbage ads like this:

After all, these shadow groups are only interested in making wheelchair-bound grandmas smile, right? 🙄 If you’ve gotten this far, then you know the answer to the question is “hell to the no.” FYI, I took this ad from an article discussing how these shady groups with secret donors are gaming the system to get marijuana proposals on the ballot in Michigan. The article, which also discusses “Oakland Cares” and the “Oakland Cares Coalition,” can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/WKAR-News.

As I said in my last post, I don’t care if people use marijuana. I voted to legalize it. I also don’t care if there’s a tasteful recreational marijuana business in Clarkston, as long as the parking issues are addressed and it’s not in the residential areas of the city. I do care about sneaky, undisclosed groups using a ton of lawyers and coming into my city to screw around with my city’s charter and forcing us to live with them forever, whether we like it or not.

Don’t just vote no. Vote HELL NO.