A budget compromise was struck Thursday evening, and the approximately $40 billion spending plan is expected to be passed by the House Friday afternoon.
House marijuana committee chairman Mark Cusack said Thursday that the marijuana talks wouldn’t go forward until the House and Senate finalized the annual budget.
Freeing up the budget logjam will allow the handful of Democratic leaders in the House and Senate who are authorized to make major deals focus on marijuana policy changes. Negotiations between the House and Senate on how to regulate and tax marijuana broke down this week, but lawmakers expect talks to resume in order to put a pot bill on Governor Charlie Baker’s desk soon.
Baker has been waiting for lawmakers to reach consensus on both the budget and marijuana. His usually calm attitude toward the legislature started to heat up Thursday.
“I don’t care how they do it, and frankly, I don’t think most people outside this building care much about how they do it either. I think most people would just like to see both of these issues put to bed so we can get on with implementing the marijuana law and get on with implementing the fiscal ’18 budget,” Baker told reporters.
House Speaker Robert DeLeo instructed House members to walk out on negotiations over cannabis Wednesday evening, arguing that the Senate was attempting to link negotiations between the two bills. Senate President Stan Rosenberg denied the issues were interfering with each other and quipped that the Senate could “walk and chew gum at the same time.”
Rosenberg issued a statement Wednesday accusing “mischief makers” of being behind the breakdown in negotiations. A spokesperson for Rosenberg later explained that the “mischief makers” the Senate president was referring to are officials with knowledge of the secret negotiations who are spreading falsehoods in the press. The State House News Service published a story Wednesday quoting a legislative source saying “the budget is all about marijuana right now,” and that the two bills are linked. Only three senators, three representatives, and legislative staff members from both chambers are privy to the details of the secret talks.
The resolution of the budget standoff means it’s likely a marijuana compromise will be released in the coming days.
“What I really want is a bill so we can start regulating this thing,” Baker said on WGBH’s Boston Public Radio Thursday.
Future marijuana tax revenue won’t have much effect on the current fiscal year, as pot shops and cultivators won’t be operational, and few taxes will be paid before sales begin. Marijuana revenues will have a far larger impact on next fiscal year, once sales are happening.
Since the beginning of Baker’s term, which started in 2015 when Rosenberg rose to lead the Senate, the relationship between Beacon Hill’s “Big Three” leaders has been marked by bonhomie and discretion. Baker rarely makes public his preferences for what the legislature sends to his desk, but Thursday morning, he said he just wants some progress on getting marijuana and budget bills to him and his staff.
“They need to get something to our desk so that we can review it and respond accordingly and get going,” Baker said.
If there’s no new marijuana law by September, the voter-approved version of the law could get underway, but the legislature hasn’t appropriated any funds for that to happen.
Under the current law, Treasurer Deborah Goldberg would have to name members of the Cannabis Control Commission, the panel overseeing the new industry, by September. Hiring will cost money that lawmakers have not yet appropriated to Goldberg to start building the team.
“As we await a resolution from the conference committee, we continue to have great concerns about the Commonwealth’s ability to meet currently prescribed deadlines. Additionally, as we have emphasized in the past, any implementation of the law would require immediate allocation of funding. Without it, our office has done everything we can,” Goldberg spokeswoman Chandra Allard said in a statement.
credit:news.wgbh.org
