The City Council's 2007 decision to put a moratorium on openings of new Medical Marijuana Dispensaries has come back to haunt them. The Council is trying to deal with the rush of "hardship exemption" filings as included in the Moratorium called the"ICO," the "Interim Control Ordinance." There is a link to the ICO-related "Frequently Asked Questions" attached (a .PDF file). http://la.curbed.com/uploads/marijuana.pdf The item also includes a proposed ordinance yet-to-be-approved to handle the situation. Note that the dates on all of these papers is either March 2009 and February 2009- this year, not 2007 or 2008. Looks like they just got around to dealing with this.
That information came from the blog, "Curbed L.A." [this blog earlier was misidentified as "L.A. Observed." Ed.] with their posting today, "Illegal Pot Dispensaries Are the New Billboard," by Dakota, http://la.curbed.com/archives/2009/05/you_may_not_be_able.php The posting mention there that the Building & Safety inspectors are on the job now but you still have a condition that going to remain a problem until all the needed versions of the law are approved, still a ways down the road. The Building & Safety inspectors were supposed to be on their job, citing illegal billboards and especially important since the moratorium on new ones last year. That remains out of control with B&S overwhelmed with that task late last year with just identifying which city billboards were authorized and legal and which were illegal and should not be up.
The L.A. Times has another story today that addresses the City Council's dilemma, "L.A.'s medical pot dispensary moratorium led to a boom instead; A ban meant to prevent new dispensaries from opening included a loophole that entrepreneurs have exploited. Where four years ago there were only a handful, now there may be 600 dispensaries," By John Hoeffel, June 3, 2009. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-medical-marijuana3-2009jun03,0,6866563,full.story Since CM Huizar announced his motion to eliminate the "Hardship Exemption" there has been a river, if not a flood, of applications made. That was not a result that was anticipated and surely not desired by CM Huizar and the PLUM committee or City Council.
The PLUM committee, "Plannning and Land Use Management," chaired by Ed Reyes (CD-1), is composed of Council members Jack Weiss (CD-5), and Jose Huizar (CD-14)- the mixture of membership I'd say was enough to mishandle this condition by that fact alone. The Times' story has Ed Reyes saying that they will be handling the processing of Hardship Exemptions, but a report of the meeting with PLUM committee members related that the "Committee" rejected CM Huizar's request to begin handling the processing with some intensity to reduce the backlog. Publicity might be what changed Reyes' tune, but the CM, a seasoned politician, will no doubt rationalize-out any inconcistencies in his statements with self-serving clarifications. They all do that.
The L.A. Times' story also noted that Reyes earlier considered hearings would be unnecessary because the exemptions would become moot upon enactment of the permanent ordinance. I would like to hear his analysis of the situation to cause him to arrive at that conclusion, but it's not apparent to me that an outcome like that would happen. There were zero exemptions heard up to this date since 2007 by the PLUM committee. Don't expect Jack Weiss to put in much time now. Since Jack lost the election to Trutanich for City Attorney (a Just and Proper result for the City's benefit), he's not likely to want to start anything he didn't start on this in the last year and a half. Jack will be out of office as CM on July 1, when a new CD-5 CM Paul Koretz takes office.
This topic also made the blod, "the LAist" http://laist.com/ as a posting, "Loophole in Medical Marijuana Dispensary Ban Nearing Closure," http://laist.com/2009/06/02/loophole_in_medical_marijuana_dispe.php that has the text of the motion introduced by CM Jose Huizar (the frame may or may not display readily- click around to display the text). After the ordinance takes effect, there's still all those filings to go through. The change only stops NEW filings of exemption applications, and the old ones continue under the law as it was.
SEE THE VIDEO ON KCET: - http://kcet.org/socal/2009/05/marijuana-clinics-up-in-smoke.html- as referenced in my earlier posting on this blog recently at http://lincolnquicknotes.blogspot.com/2009/05/kcet-on-mmds-medical-marijuana.html if you haven't already viewed it.
The video may open your eyes to a couple of things: how the MMDs have taken off as a commercial, for-profit enterprise (but aren't "co-ops", or "cooperatives" supposed to be "not profit making activities" to benefit co-op members?); and, how the City Council handles things so poorly as it can be handled- and waiting only until strong complaints from a neighborhood council were ultimately made about the numbers of MMDs setting up in the area. The city process didn't even charge for applying to open an MMD. Nor did it charge for any licensing fee to actually operate an MMD. See the information in the video that's just over 11 minutes long and packed with information.
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