Good afternoon Chair postively members, guaranteed volunteer office staff and guess bodies are open according.
Thanks, Dustin, will convene the executive management team meeting for May 8 2024. We're gonna have a few more of the management team joining us in their bond campus for Public Service Recognition. We're so happy Public Service Recognition Week, we recognize all your public servants. Thank you. And birthday for Shawn DUAC. So happy birthday genre. Thank you. Then with that, we will start with Marc Webster, our Director of Legislative relations at Marc. Luke.
Good afternoon, chair, postman and members during the volunteer. We are in the throes of implementing all of the work that the legislature gave us this past session, including a lot of rulemaking work on the 2023 legislation, specifically the THC bill in social equity, that you'll hear about from Justin that you've been hearing about at board meetings. One of the specific things that we do each year is to summarize the bill that get passed to get our view of what the law chains really mean and how we're going to implement them. These are called the legislative fact sheets, kind of simple one, two page summaries of bills impacting the LCD. And I'll show one of them here, in part because I'm gonna remind you of the look and feel. And when Brian gets here, he can come update you on when they're gonna be posted. But I'm told it's imminently like today or tomorrow. And then also to take this opportunity to remind you about the medical cannabis excise tax exemption. So Dustin, I don't know if you have that documented and share that. Thank you. So we talked about it on Tuesday caucus and Justin talked about it at this morning's board meeting. But to ensure that we comply with what we'll call the frost rule and mentioned it seven times in seven different ways. Let's do it again. So again, the exemption only applies when each of three conditions are met. For the first of the store offering the exemption must be medically endorsed. Second, that the purchaser must be in the Department of Health's registry, they must be a color card holding patient with a qualifying condition. And third, that the product they bind must be medically compliant per the Department of Health. And we've got the the whack referenced in the text that you see on the screen. So it must have undergone the additional testing that that the Department of Health requires. We'll just know that this is different from the way and we talked about this on Tuesday. This is different from the way that the Department of Health and Department of Revenue implemented the sales tax exemption for medical cannabis. So this is going to be a little bit different. So again, more to come on this topic as we try to ensure that patients know how this will work. And that retailers know how it works. So they don't have expensive tax bills down the road if they do it wrong. And as you may know, the state's revenue forecasters have been looking into this topic and tried to anticipate what kind of revenue impact it will have on the dedicated cannabis account. And their best estimates are a part of the budget outlook that the economic and revenue forecast Council just adopted in late April. Of course, we can't focus solely on implementation, we need to be getting ready for 2025. And you can stop sharing now. The divisions that started that work, and of course, we're going to be hearing from legislators about ideas for next session, including, you know, I think a number of things that were introduced but didn't pass in 2024. Director Lukela and I are hoping to get out and meet with members of the legislature. And we can bring back to you some of the ideas that they're mulling over. We can also convey messages about what's important to you as a board and where you're going to be putting your effort in the coming session. We have plenty of time this point to develop ideas, but it's sadly not unlimited. The governor's office has deadlines, and there's a lot of process steps to move through. If we want to go down the path of agency request legislation. We're going to be able to flush that timeline out throughout the summer, and CFO Rachel Swanner. and I are trying as best we can to kind of align the timelines for both agency request legislation and budget requests as much as we can, knowing that a couple of those things are gonna be in both buckets. Right? If there's an agency request a proposal that has a fiscal impact, it's going to be both a decision package and a bill. So we really need to hear from you. What are you hearing about what do you think we should step up and advocate for? I'm going to try to schedule meetings to discuss this with you in the short term. And again, bring what we're hearing from our industry partners, or public health partners, and more to try to shape our 2025 agenda. That's all I have for now and I'd be happy to answer any questions. Have
any questions for?
I don't have any questions, but I do. Well, I guess I do have a question. So given the fact that this is a year in which we're going to have a transition of governors, I'm just wondering how loud- I've not been at a state agency when there's been a transition of Governor's and thinking about decision packages to go forward thinking about budget proposals that go forward. And I'm just wondering if anybody can talk a little bit about that process? And what are some special considerations, or things that happen, or we should be considering? Given the potential team? Well, not the potential but the change of a pending change?
Yeah, that's a great question. And, of course, Governor Inslee will have the opportunity to put forward his last biennial budget proposal. I know, Will and and chair postmen have been involved in some of the discussions around the transition. I think we're going to be hearing from the transition team, once we have somebody who's been voted in. I don't know if we'll learn more. David, you want to talk more about what that would have been?
Yeah. And I think it's worth a conversation and another point to it. But we'll and I just think that was last week? Well, we're meeting with a, they split the cabinet up in a couple of groups to talk about just this question. And, you know, we will one, we have a somewhat unique position. And in that the board is confirmed by the legislature for a term that doesn't correspond with the governor's necessarily, and will is appointed by the board. And so luckily, for us, you know, because there's a lot of, you know, change that will come at the cabinet level around, say, government, and we don't have to worry about that, which is nice. But a lot of the discussion, Jim was just that, what do we do? How do we position ourselves? And you know, and I would say, in short, and will should add to this, but I think that the governor's governor Inslee's preference right now is that we just go forward like we would anytime, because as Mark says, he has to write a budget. And the new governor will, you know, make it their own in some fashion as as Inslee did, but I think they really would like us to sort of go about budiness as normal. And, you know, we have and Brian and Tony worked on this as well. But you know, we've we've prepared one short kind of transition, sort of, here's what's on our radar for the cabinet. And we're going to have a new one coming, I think, soon, they're going to ask us for another type of document. That'll be brief. They said maybe a couple of pages, they called it a one pager and then admitted it wasn't going to be one page. So you know, but a brief thing where we can talk about what are big issues are, what we expect to happen. And then that would go then to the Governor Inslee, his transition team, who will be the point of contact for maybe even campaigns for governor, but certainly the transition team don't know, you know, make the information and briefings available. So for us, I think we just want to have.
Great, thank you. That's helpful.
Yeah, Will, anything to add to that?
No, I think you hit all the high points. Thank you.
And when we get to that next report, which I don't think they've sort of formally written to ask us to do yet we'll make sure everyone has a chance to look at that and see what the output of that. In fact, I don't know whether the other board members have seen the one page thing we did earlier, but we'll make sure someone sends that to it. Very brief, feel safe. But okay. The questions from our Thank you, Mark. And I see Becky Smith are licensed in the regulation director for licensing update.
So good afternoon, Chairman, postman board members, Garin Bollinger off and Happy Birthday director wax. So with that, you know, with the changing season, I love the sunny weather and I also cringe a little bit, because I know that for workload is going to increase as soon as the weather gets nice. And that's because of all of our special license or special occasion, events that in one one day, we received 100 applications. And so it's you know, that we, we go from 300 a month to sometimes 100 a day. And on top of that for our customer service folks. They're also you know, having to it's permitting time for renewal. So we have to do 100% of all of our renewals are done not electronically by by hand. And so a lot of work for those folks, you know that that. So just something for you to keep in mind, I also had the opportunity to sit through my division results session a couple of weeks ago. And, you know, knowing how busy everyone is, it's always surprising, and it gives me a lot of happiness to know that when it comes to timeframes, we're so medium, and doing well. And getting back to folks. So with our customer service staff, they're still issuing all those special occasion licenses. Prior to the 45 days, it's usually within 30 days. And sometimes, of course, people have an event that they that they forgot to send us a application for. And we do that quickly. And you know that, of course, we always have to, you know, to notify the local authorities. So sometimes that's done really quickly, that also with some of the information that staff shared is that were able to really issue most of our licenses within on the liquor side within 60 days. And the ones that are still in pilot within 45 days, what we found, and that's 80% of the time, those are issued in that timeframe, that the ones that are issued in that timeframes are because of permitting problems, or paperwork not being received, that they really need to build out before they issue. You know, the before we issue a license, the same goes for cannabis, that cannabis numbers have drastically improved, improved in the last few things last quarter, that has had to do also with the fact that we're fully staffed to get in cannabis. And so we you know, that that our investigators have about 22 files apiece, and they're able to get those licenses also issued in 60 days, that there's always outliers. And there's always going to be the outliers. And again, those have to do with permitting, that folks not being able to get their permits issued in order to do their build out or the changes that they want to do. And of course, it's paperwork as well. So great members, that we're still continuing to do surveys. And I you know that the surveys aren't just done by email. And you know, because we all give a little survey doubt that they're also done the cup for cannabis and for liquor they make phone calls, the supervisors are reaching out to the applicants to find out how how they're doing, how was there, you know, that that? How was the process? Is there something we can do better? Is there a way we can prove it? That, you know, that I think I've shared with with, with folks that I've been reaching out my team, my management team has been reaching out to on the liquor side to some of the association, some of the folks that we work directly with that, to see how we're doing and how we can improve? Are there things that are there things that we can make changes in licensing, that'll improve the process, which, where we don't have to do a rule change, maybe it's a process change. And we've heard from folks that there are a couple of things that they'd like to see us do differently. And so we're, we're going to be meeting with folks a little bit more and kind of flushing, you know, that flushing that out to, to see what that looks like. And also, you know, are there are there areas to have conversations about different, you know, different license types or, you know, what are they thinking about, for this next session? You know, are there things that again, that we could do by rule, and make making some of those changes, it's been a, it was really good to hear the good things that were that folks saw about licensing staff and how responsive they are. I mean, it's so positive, to hear that that feedback. And again, we want to hear the good and the bad. We want to know where there's areas that we have, where we can improve as well. With that, I also will share that we recently went off site with the enforcement education team. So the licensing leadership team and the enforcement leadership team, that we got to sit down and share our accomplishments. So the things that we accomplished since last time we met and I say we and I'm talking about our staff, and I think that directs Durex will share as well but this is our staff working together that were my staff have been going on ride alongs it's important for them to see what their licensing, right that and it's important to find out if they're Questions by our enforcement officers or the consultants, that we're also meeting that with M IW. And our enforcement side. So to make sure that you know, to see again, there's those are always a difficult files are usually when it's around around breweries and wineries, there's always a lot of questions around breweries and wineries, sometimes as distributors as well. So they're meeting, having conversations, that anytime we have a challenge, I see challenging application, and challenging as it being something that we haven't done before, or something that we haven't seen. It's not like it's not doable, but we sometimes we have to set eyes on things and understand what that what the applicant is looking for, what the you know, what they're thinking about. And so we sit down with enforcement, we sit down with our team, and have those discussions. But really, really good work going on out there. One last thing I do want to share, as you know, we've had lots of changes in licensing, that, that with change comes opportunity. And we as you know, with the change with Nicola Reed and Caitlin Baba, you know that, that moving to the deputy positions that, that open up opportunity for new hires, and so we have three new people starting to outside folks and one internal that, that I talked about the changes with Caitlin and Nicola, but also Beth Lehman has been in customer service for as long as she's been at LCB. And so we have asked her to take on the new task of leading the s&p four licensing division. And so you know, that nobody better she knows, she knows all of the different licenses, do you know that, that the processes that I think she'll be a great fit there temporarily, as she keeps saying that temporarily. And so we've hired Eugene, and I'm not gonna give out his last name, because I don't want people start calling him. But Eugene starts on the 16th. And he comes from the Department of Licensing, with a lot of experience that, you know, that that really knows how to build teams, but also how to work with change. And so I think that he'll be a nice addition to our team, as well as Deseret, Deseret also comes from state service, but she's going to be doing policy and education, she'll be leading that team, and then are on Sarah Davis, will be taking on the new role of adjudications, and the adjudications team. And those will all be effective on 16th. Of this month. So lots of change happening. And with that, we also have everything that's going on with s&p. So with all the great members, I have to mention s&p, because I want to make sure that, that folks understand that that's a huge workpiece for the licensing staff right now that they're in meetings, looking at our new system, that, that working on user stories, and this is going to probably go on for the next three to six months. So a lot of work. They're doing their jobs, as well as making sure that we have the best system that or a system better than what we have now. So I will stop and see if you have questions.
Any questions on license right? Now? Okay, thank you. Director wax for enforcement education update.
Good afternoon. So I'm trying to manage my time to Good afternoon. Thanks for having me. And it's always exciting for me to come brag about the great work of the enforcement, education division and hear about all the other work across the agency. Good stuff. We'll go ahead and get started. We start with just a summary of the licenses that we're managing and a brief look at the changes we see. I will say that always go to the licensing division for an up to date poll on this. This is really just so I can get a glance at exactly what our numbers are. So I have a frame of reference as I'm looking at percentages. If we go ahead and start out by looking at the number of complaints per unit, specifically, I'm looking at April but I compare it to march and February as well. You can see that liquor stayed pretty average over the last three months. There is a decreased number of complaints and cannabis consultants, we're using the word complaints but it's really just cases referred to them to deal with as education in rather than forcement and then tobacco and vapor. Because the board has asked me previously, I will go ahead and share that 59% of the complaints out of the cannabis unit this month were internal. And this is reflective of a partnership with the finance division where we've been looking at back taxes. And so going in there and following up with licensees to help them get back in compliance as it relates to taxes. When we look at complaints overall, in 2024, you'll see that these percentages stay fairly consistent when it comes to what percentage of them are related directly to our public safety violations. Moving on to look at the comparison between education and violations data for the last this year and the previous two years, you'll see that our cannabis folks there in the middle on the right, continue to use anti seize or notice to correct as an aided education tool. And so that is great news and exactly what we want to see as we're looking at those tools that are new to our people. Just looking at the total number of contacts for the first and second quarter of 2024. As it relates to licensee education, we'll see that we remained consistent in these areas. When we break down education, by industry for the past year, two and almost a half years, you'll see liquor, cannabis and tobacco are following a very clear track. But when you look at the consultants now that we've broken them out, they're definitely on track to exceed last year's numbers, which is great news, we're seeing the benefit of that increased education and having those employees. And again, when we break those down and look further at those by month, February, March and April, you see some pretty consistent numbers there. So we're settling in as to the education that we're delivering to our licensees. Taking a look at the topics that are out there. Sometimes this helps the board, be aware of some things that are going on in the industry. So if we look at the topics, you'll see advertising made the top five there it is the fifth one, but you'll see it made the top five and those were that's related to retailers questions. Specifically, we had a cannabis holiday last month for 20. And so we actually, we provide an education to over 15% of the real retailers in Washington state about the 420 events
in response to their questions.
Yes.
Okay, great.
Of course, we did put some information out in partnership with our communications division. Thank you very much for your help. But that was just in response to their inquiries. And we have to assume that 100% of our licensees read the notices that Brian puts out, so let's look specifically at those notices to correct for April of 2024. Just to take a look at the topics. You'll see there a consistent message from our taxes, which is from our taxes from our data, you'll see number two is notices to correct about those unpaid taxes. So that again, is that partnership with finance that we talked about. Next, we'll take a look at violations year to date 2024, you'll see liquors comparison is pretty standard to what we're used to seeing. But what I see when I look at this slide is a real education first approach. If we look specifically at cannabis, you'll see that we have 357 and TCS and 35 at the ends, that's a one to 10 relationship between Avians and NPCs. And I don't want to imply here that one of every NTC becomes an avian, I'm just looking at the data. And then if we were to throw education in there, we see over 3500 Education contacts in the same period of time. So that's a one to 100 relationship between ABMS and education contacts. So that's exactly what we want to see in line with our mission education first help licensees get in compliance and move to enforcement when compliance can't be achieved. So if we look at a V NS administrative violation notices, specifically for April of 2024, you'll see again, this is about youth access for the most part. And I just want to point out here that we've been working with public health and the research team and other state agencies. We've kind of built a little green grassroots committee here at LCB, to find other ways that we can impact youth access in Washington State as opposed to the work we're already doing. And I'll talk more about that when we get to the compliance rates. Warning topics for April of 2024. Not a lot of change here. If you look over on the right side, you will see that our numbers are driven by specific industries. So right now we're doing lots of assigner Check. So you see that that master sales agreement, those warnings are number one at 28. But you can also see our follow up work on folks that aren't entering in traceability is showing up here at number two completely different units, completely different work and trends, but also driving our data. So it's good to see that work showing up in numbers. No significant change in our data on Alternative Dispute Resolutions. As you know, this is another part of our attempt to resolve issues or to gain compliance at the lowest level possible. So this is negotiating with licensees to gain compliance after an ABN has been issued. Specifically, I'd like to share that over the past couple of months, we've partnered with the policy and rules team to update update the mitigating circumstances document, as you know, and then we're working on a reviewed procedure in this area out of the enforcement division as well. So lots of work going into this. And now we get to talk about compliance rates. So first step is liquor compliance. And so we're averaging staying right there in that mid 70s. range. And I'm I just don't feel like that's something to brag about. And so that's one of the reasons why we're working with board member volun draft and our public health and research members and members from enforcement. It's clear that we're doing the top two things that research says impacts youth access and brings those rates up. But there are other things so what else can we be doing just so you know, those top two things are actually completing compliance checks. And the second is immediate and severe fines is what the research calls it, but having consequences for violating is what's important. And so we're doing to those two things. But what else could we do? And potentially, that's education in partnership with the Department of Health or other types of things that we are looking closely at what that is.
You could do more of part two, we could be more, I don't know if it'd be more immediate, but they certainly be more severe?
Well, you could absolutely, the board could and that's one of the reasons why we're looking at it so that we can bring our findings or conclusions and hopefully recommendations to you. When we look at this next slide, we'll be talking about delivery, curbside pickup compliance rates, I have to celebrate success, and we see it. And so I want to say that we did 12 delivery checks in April and had zero sales. So we're in the process of looking up what company that was, so we can reach out and let them know or what companies that were at was so we can reach out and let them know and celebrate that success. But if you remember, this has been a struggle and an area of concern for us. And so I just want to celebrate that the law changes and the compliance checks, as you know that a lot of work goes into this for from the enforcement division. So I'm happy to see that we're seeing great results from that. And then when we look at cannabis compliance, I would typically just say that we're continuing to see results in the 90 percentile, which is great. But I also want to continue to give that industry kudos where kudos are due, this is clearly an area that is important to this industry, and they put the work in to make this happen. Tobacco and vapor is one that is very consistent. You can see the high number of checks that were completed last month, we're still working on those signer checks. 199 of these are sign our checks contracts with the department. And they have 38 of those left for the year. So they're always running against the clock to get those done by the end of June. But that's a pretty consistent number that we see. And I would like to see that higher when we start talking about premise checks. So one of the things I really want to focus on as these middle two numbers, while liquors numbers are high and tobacco vapor numbers are high, and I continue to be impressed, especially liquor they have such a large number of licensees that they have such an impact in our licensee community, our cannabis officers in combination with the use of consultants and how they're planning to get out to places instead of doing double dipping on their work. We're seeing a great increase up to 68% already for the year in the number of our licensees that they've seen. So that's a great shout out to our cannabis unit overall, thank you very much. ID checks youth access. I wanted to watch these numbers for a while because in my mind, I think checking people's IDs when we're out and about should have an impact on youth access. So I've just kind of been watching and there just continues to be a decline in the number of IDs we're checking when we're out in the field. And then of course, our cry unit who does all the background checks for the Agency for hiring for licensing and Then, of course, for enforcement as well, there is a great amount of work that comes out of this unit, and we couldn't survive without them. And they just plug along pretty quietly behind the scenes. So it's two people that does all that work. I began tracking our examiner work because I wanted to see more field work and more of a partnership with the officers that work inside of the cannabis unit. And we're seeing that we've got 141 requests by officers, it is the top request, you probably don't recall. But when we first moved this unit into the enforcement division, it was way at the bottom as a lowest request. So we are seeing that change and CCRS has moved down to the third number of requested activity. So we're seeing that work level out a little bit. And then if we look at our advertising unit, the top requests for a barrel, shockingly, was General ads, cannabis. So it's always good to see that our data stories are consistent throughout the report and the data polls. And so that, again, is from for 20 in April. And then I want to brag on our FDA unit, part of our data sharing agreement is that we don't clump this data in with our tobacco and vapor units. These are FDA employees that do FDA work across the state of Washington. But I do want to point out through that partnership, that that's an additional 257 inspections 216 compliance checks. Also, though, that compliance rate is one that we watch, because it stays right at the mid 80%. Just like ours, they're never very far off. So um, it would definitely be a signal to us if for some reason the two units were getting different compliance, right. But that is that is consistent. And then because we believe in transparency, even in our own business, we have two ongoing officer complaints that we are currently investigating and no change this month and findings or resolutions. hiring and recruiting pretty soon you will be seeing 66 buses in King County with photos of our LCV employees on the side of it for recruiting purposes. And you'll see much more work like that coming out of our team, we're trying to think outside of the box and recruit people that from different walks of life, we just hired a young lady who was a bartender for 12 years, and now works for the LCB. So we're really excited to continue our recruiting efforts, you'll see that we have eight in the Academy right now. So eight new people will be signed off and joining our team soon. And then of those 11 applicants shown in the background process, eight of those are in the very final stages, so close to finishing and coming on board. Lots of great work coming out of training. I've always been impressed by the Training Unit ever since I came here, lots of professional, current standard training going on. And then just to talk about partnerships, really quick check in my time, I will like Becky highlight the enforcement and licensing off site. It's funny because Becky calls it the licensing and enforcement off site, and I call it the enforcement and licensing off site. We're getting along so well. We agree on everything. And I just want to echo that it was great. I have to say I was a little discouraged driving there. Because so much has happened in the last year that I was feeling like much of the work we did at the last get away at our last off site work group. I had lost momentum on and I just hadn't been able to keep up because there had been so much going on. And I felt like you know how you feel like when you have to write a paper all over, I kind of felt like that, like, Oh, we're gonna have to restart this work. And I just want to say that I got there. And within 30 minutes, it was really clear to me that the work we had started had been picked up and carried on by our leadership team. And it is so impressive. So we worked on a plan, we identified a whole bunch of things that we could do better, right after we talked about all the things that we do well. And then we worked on some cooperative ideas for legislation. We talked about getting some supervisory work groups together so we can include our supervisors in the work instead of just our managers. And then we identified some additional opportunities for collaboration, including you've heard about licensing going on ride alongs with enforcement, but we recognize the need to reciprocate that as well. And when people are getting hired or getting trained, getting them to sit side see with someone in licensing so they get a perspective of what it's like. It's not just when you go out into the field, how come licensing made this decision, but also like what is it like to make that decision without being physically in a location and so just recognizing some of those things, and then I have to report that after hours we went to an arcade and I beat back yet racecar driving so I say That's an important. I think that's an important thing to note. In addition, you heard about our work with finance on the unpaid taxes project, our work with communications. And also I do want to highlight the newsletters that communications puts out, because our staff put a lot of work into those. So there's a lot of good information there. So please make sure you check that out. And then I want to give a shout out to your team Brian's work on the plain language stuff and leading on leading us and getting that done, because I know my division could not do it without Julie's leadership. And then, of course, we've been working with Department of Health and Public Health and research on looking taking a look at compliance and a whole bunch of other great stuff that our teams do on a daily basis with other law enforcement agencies and government entities and licensees. Any questions?
Myself, I do have a question. And just going back to the FDA compliance trends that you mentioned. Are those include those? So to be clear, those are in addition to the compliance checks that our staff do, correct?
Yes. And that's through a contract. That's a contract we have with the FDA. And so we have staff that carry a FDA commission. Go ahead.
Also, there are staff who do it, but they're under the FDA. So my my basic question was those sitea somebody is bound to be out of compliance. And we are issuing some type of finding, if they have one, that it's a second violation, for example, and it's our person versus FDA, they're still they they're their cumulative, still.
That's separate through the FDA, we wouldn't then hold them accountable and use the FDA as violation as cumulative.
So if they had a second violation, and we found one, it would still be under our representative first violation.
Yeah,
they've had an FDA one.
Yes.
And that's a problem that I find that problem having. So
let's talk more about that.
Okay, where should we do that?
Well, I can pull up this specific answer for you. But it's part of the agreement we have with the FDA. That's a completely separate unit, and it's under contract.
Well, and you'd said when you're showing them, you know, we're not supposed to lump those in with ours, which I get for reporting. But is there anything in that agreement that contract that would prohibit us from saying, we're going to check FDA compliance records for our lifestyle?
That's the language that I need to research to look up. I want to say that it's pretty clear that everything is separate. But I need to look specifically to see if there's anything that prohibits us from saying, well, we want to look at that
peak over here.
I would I would guess that there's a reason we haven't done that historically. But I will check.
It seems disingenuous to me if we're saying that they've had a violation over here under a contract that we have. And then they've had a second violation over here that we counted as their first violation just based on jurisdiction.
Yeah, I absolutely understand and hear you. And I will write that down as my takeaway and follow up from today's meeting. Finished.
Okay, great. We will move to just ignored Boehner policy and External Affairs Director.
Definitely. So I won't cover a lot of the stuff that we've already done in caucus and board meeting earlier. But I do want to highlight a couple of other road projects just for some awareness around those. So we've got, I'll start with the medical cannabis. Excise tax, again, not to cover the whole thing, but we have been in discussions with Department of Health to make sure that we're aligned on a couple of the issues. And so there's been some additional confusion I believe, among the inju- industry on can product that is currently been tested and in the possession of the producers processors can be tested for the heavy metals to become medically compliant product. And it appears is that is an acceptable approach which will be much more fair for the sun growers because they typically only have the one fall harvest, and so they would be using last year's or they would have to wait until this next year. If it was different. We used to have it slightly different. And then when we did some kind of deeper dive analysis in there appears it must have changed a couple of years ago. So there's a little bit more flexibility. So what we'll anticipate seeing is a number of producers and processors, trying to get some of the product tested to become medically compliant. And so we're walking folks through, you know what that means, what that looks like on the packaging and light limit and etc. So I think that's a positive towards the medical cannabis area, because we're having some producers now express more interest in them. And so we'll kind of have to see how that plays out the testing standards between DOH and LCB, that are slightly different, because if you remember, we raised the lot sizes up to 50 pounds and doh under the medically compliant product doesn't have that same testing size, lots. And so I don't know if they'll be discussing that in their open rule development or not, but that could create some, you know, some other areas of confusion or limitations for some licensees. So just something to be aware of if folks are reaching out, you know, to, to any of our team, the THC bill is moving along, we've had a number of stakeholder engagements. This is a really complex bill. And we're getting ready to bring it forward in the near future to the board. But the some of the issues and brainstorming we've been trying to do don't always pan out to being viable. Particularly, you know, we need to make sure everything is legally defensible that we put into the regulations. And based on how the statute ended up with what was left in the language that was left again, it has created some, some challenges. And so when we're talking about total THC concentration, I think one of the things that I wanted to highlight is the fact that we're going to be focusing on keeping all of the THC concentrations listed, but separate. So we're not going to cumulatively combined delta H delta 10 with Delta nine as far as a cumulative total, because you have different strengths. So delta eight is commonly referred to as light or half strength. You also have things like THCV, which technically isn't tetrahydrocannabinol, but it is an isomer. So, you know, we're trying to separate that one out, because it doesn't have the impairing effects, and potentially could have some mitigation to the impairing effects. And so to build all those together as a cumulative number is really not a good approach. And so the consumer deserves to know what's in the product. And so we're trying to develop this, that those other types of THC would be captured and identified and keeping the serving size focused on the Delta nine, because what we're what we're really going to see realistically is very low levels of anything else. And that's what we see on CoA is right now. And so we're trying to gear it up around what what the common practices are within the industry, because what we're also trying to do is mitigate additional costs for businesses, the bill that we introduced initially did not get the whole point, that bill was to kind of dry up the unregulated market of Delta eight that was being sold openly and to all ages. It wasn't to add extra burdens on the regulated industry. And so we're really trying to be mindful to make sure that as this continues to develop, we can mitigate those types of areas and the impacts. And so if you're hearing from folks, let us know. But that's kind of one of the challenges that that we're, we're working towards. And we've been having a lot of good conversations behind the scenes on that. So hopefully, when the next iteration comes out, and that might be the one or two that you all see, we'll have some of that in a much better place. But it's taken a long time to get there. The let's see here. So next week, you heard about the social equity stakeholder meetings that will be starting on the 15th. I'll be leading the next two stakeholder meetings. So one on the 15th and one on 22nd. We're going to be doing it pretty methodically, I think, just to make sure that we can try to encourage the constructive feedback on the actual rule language instead of a broader, you know, policy areas that may not impact how the language is being crafted and developed. So we really want to have feedback on does this, like on the rubric for example, does this parameter work? Does it make sense and if not, why, and how can it be improved? And we're gonna go one by one through these things, so we don't have to get into a whole bunch of side conversations because we really have a limited amount of time to try to get this feedback. And so our plan right now is to go through the hybrid, and then I'm sorry, the virtual and then the hybrid, and then we're gonna follow up with a survey. So people will still have opportunities, and we're going to stress and nothing is set in stone until the end of the CR-103. So even after the CR-102 gets filed those are proposed rules, and we still get to hear feedback from stakeholders. So we're finding the same thing in the THC bill where people have so is this the way it's going to be? Well, we don't know yet. You know, because we're developing the rules and trying to develop what are those impacts? And so, you know, it's, it's kind of that iterative process, but we're experiencing the same thing, multiple, multiple rule projects on where that confusion builds up on, we see some language and this must be the end result. And it's really not it's, you know, how does this fit? Does it work? Does it not work? And what kind of suggestions can people provide to make it better? So that'll be happening. As you heard next week, we've also have a policy statement that I'll be trained to help create crap. So licensing has some some good stuff gaps between the time of implementation on June 6, and when the rules will be done for the emergency permit. So we had a good discussion earlier today with licensing that brought some really good points on how we can make sure that we're supporting businesses in these areas. And so I think what we'll do is we'll develop a policy statement, because it's not going to be the top priority rule to push through however, I think we can meet the needs and meet the criteria of the legislation with that in the interim, and so I think that'll be a good move forward. And hopefully, by the beginning of July, the systems will be in place where we can take that. So it's not all hand PAPER stuff, but it's effective on six. So we'll we'll work with that if that happens. But again, these are emergency permits for those types of natural disasters, if you were licensees can't get to their businesses. And so how do we how do we help them sustain their business by letting them open or sell with another already licensed business, and there's some some dynamics on on, you know, the parent, or the permanent license types and privileges. And so we're going to try to work some of that out. And we'll be starting to talk to some stakeholders as we develop this, but that'll be something that you'll be seeing coming up. And so we'll get that also, with the other division, so licensing and finance and enforcement, we'll have an opportunity to, to make sure this will work for them. Though, we also have
just a quick update, I don't have a lot of details on this. But all I can share that we are making progress on the evaluation on the number of premises checks in different areas, and the frequency. So we've been able to work with enforcement to break down a lot of the fields and work through the duplicates, because when we do collect data around compliance checks, staff will go in and they mark everything that they've done. So whether it's education, or it's a compliance check with a premises check, or it's a complete check with the premises check. And they may be looking for, you know, a mastiff or Kaizen, depending on how it all gets entered, we may have multiple things that they've done, but only one visit. And so what we're trying to do is really focus down on Okay, how many times did we have staff in the business, and if they did a whole bunch of stuff, you know, that's great. But, you know, we want to count how many times they're actually in their business. So we have been narrowing that down. And we should be able to have something to report a little bit more tangibly. In the near future. Some of the preliminary charts have only been from a broad base statewide level that I've seen. And so it really doesn't get to the, to the issues, because it's going to compare grocery stores with, you know, nightclubs, basically. And that's not really a good comparable. So we're still continuing to work on that. I have another research staff member starting next week. So we're really excited, that'll be full staff for research. So that'll help pick this up. Our team member that's coming on is really good with data. And so we're really excited to have him come and join the team on this. We will be also developing. So big shout out to Mallory Hayes, who's been working with us on developing some tracking in the regulatory area or the rulemaking area, if you will. One of the things that we've had some discussions internally for last couple years? And we haven't really had a good answer for so. So the questions around how do we how do we present internal suggestions for rules? We have a process for external rules, suggestions. So the internal ones, we're setting up a program within Microsoft lists, I believe it is. And so kind of a rudimentary right now. But what we're going to be able to do is staff members will be able to go into that area and enter in a form the ideas on what you know, what is it that you're hoping to see? What is the regulation that you would like to see why is this important, and then it'll kind of be put into, you know, the list or the queue. And it also have kind of, I don't know, what I would call it a kind of a social platform engagement for internal folks where they can go in, and if they see somebody came up with a suggestion, they can either like it or dislike it. And so we can actually see, you know, if there's broad based support for something, we'll be able to look at that. And that can potentially come into play in the evaluation on priorities. And so we'll have some automation, or at least we're planning on having automation, that people will be able to get feedback that their suggestion has been received. And also, if it gets moved into the rulemaking queue, for actual projects, then they'll also get messaging indicating that that's been happening, or that's going to happen. And so we're trying to build that feedback loop in there, as well as a method that internal folks can actually raise stuff up. And we can keep track of it in a in a productive manner. That's kind of a standardized, consistent framework for all the divisions. And so we're really excited to see that. We're also looking at dashboards around what real projects are in play potential timelines around those. So there'll be easy at a glance, look, and so that's still a little bit out. But I know that says time flies it'll be up before you know it. So those are those are some of the things that we've been working on around the policy area. And happy to answer your questions, for example.
The questions on policy. Okay, thanks, Justin. Bryan Smith, communications director,
chair, postman and members Garrett and Bolander off. Good to see you again. Sorry, I was late. I was had some responsibilities up at Public Service Recognition Week up on Capitol campus. LCB was well represented again with Well, lots of people there. Shout out to director William Keller, his special assistant Gloria Hahn, who led everything this year was support from us. It was great. Yeah, a lot of people a lot of interaction with folks came up a lot of people from LCB attended to weather weather cooperated this year. It was great. It was great. So jumping into some of the media things, you know, since we last met some of these day back, but I think you all probably saw the story that came in the Associated Press that was carried widely by Gene Johnson of the AP, as I said, Ali and Becky had done interviews with the AP on that several months ago. And for various reasons that got pushed out all the way until this April 20 story, which wasn't planned. But I thought the story turned out fairly well. It was widely carried a good interaction on it. And so that story originated with us. And so I think that was good to interact with him and talked about some of the things that we did. And so there we go. And then recently with the rescheduling talk at the federal government level, we'd had some conversations internally, David had pulled some together, folks from our agency and others to talk through some things. He and the director of Cal and I sort of coordinated on a statement that we issued, I didn't get a whole lot of press calls on this. I did issue the statement to the folks I talked to as well as kind of talked on background to a couple of them spokesman review, the other one being reporter at The Washington State standard that's kind of picking up cannabis related things and among other things that have been reported for us to do now. And then I continue to sort of coordinate media things for the national organization camera and planning for the upcoming meeting that those are going to have in early January, early June. So we're in good shape there. You've heard me talk if you remember always ago that we had two major projects which are now underway, which is the website replacement and and SharePoint Online, which transitioned SharePoint, which was our agency intranet, they both launched at the same time can't be helped. So it's so hard to get your brain around to sort of electronic planning design programs that are going back and forth every day. But we are now in the mix of that. So on the website, storyline, we contracted with a company out of San Francisco called chapter three, they rose to the top of 43 bids that were put in. And first class pros, I think this this is what they do is they work in content management, particularly Drupal, which is the platform that our website runs on. The move from seven to 10 is kind of a complex move, it's basically going to be a rebuild on the other side of the bridge, so to speak, you know about the bridge. And they know how they've done many of these. They're good at it. They're pros, but they're also going to keep us on a schedule, which is what I like. And they have demands and timelines, milestones that they want to build to hit. And we're now underway with that Cisco require a big push from my team. I've reached out to a couple of divisions that I think we're going to need for their help on the front end for design, what can we get rid of what can we move, so just know that that is underway, the schedule for that is to be done by roughly mid August. So there we go, on the other side on the intranet that's been done in house. So that's it working with my team, and going division by division, so it's going to be a little bit clunky. Whereas we're going to have our current intranet, but we're going to be designing different division pages as we go. So you're gonna have kind of two internets, till we can get the whole thing moved over. And, you know, we talked about waiting and doing all at once, which is what we did last time. But SharePoint 13, the platform we're on is coming to an end of life, and there's no way around it. So we will try and be as communicative as we can throughout this. We have a lot to learn on SharePoint Online ourselves. But we're going to get there and share what we can, in conjunction with our IT team. As we go forward. There's that. And then you heard Shonda just mentioned the plain language piece. What that is, is the executive order that was issued late last year from Governor Inslee, and it's requiring agencies to use plain language, he probably might be familiar with a plain talk initiative that had been around with previous governors. This is a renewed push for this and some expectations on agencies, Julie Graham on my team. She loves this stuff. It's striper alley. So the little 1/3 of her time, wherever the small bit of our time that she's able to focus away from SMP, she's headed up the she headed up this one of the two things he had to do first was develop a plan, which she has and worked with Jessica Dang. And to develop the policy. That policy was presented to the management team recently, and is out now for the roof. So once that's done, that will begin across the agency and said, you'll hear more things, its ways how we communicate. I think we're in a decent spot already. Because anything that goes to an external audience, which is way that this executive order is written, comes through our office anyway. And we're sort of versed in these types of methodologies. And we we want to communicate anyway. So I think we're okay there. So big shout out to Julie for her work on that. Those are the main stuff. It's very much what we're focused. Is there. Are there any questions? Thank you. Thank you.
Tony. Good. Our deputy director for general agency update.
Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair postman and members volunteer off. And Garrett. Yes, today, it was a great day over on Capitol campus. We had wonderful weather and shout out to Gloria, I agree for organizing our PSR W we did have a lot of staff there. There were staff working at our booth, but also staff just walking around and enjoying the activities. That was great. And Brian and his staff also help out they always have to update our display. With information about where we spend money, you always have people looking at that to see where the tax revenue goes. So that's always good. And people do some people just come by to pick up the swag but some people do ask questions and keep our staff is is there to answer questions as well. So that was good people there from enforcement and all different areas of the division of the agency. And so next I'm going to go to SMP and I do have a slide here. I think that's it has it for me. Yay. Thank you. So this is a timeline slide for SMP. As you may remember, the first thing we did with SMP in this on on Phase Two was we transitioned over to laser fish, as our storage, basically our new place to keep all of our materials index our documents. And we did that first, then we had our first release with the portal. And that included the banquet requests and the public disclosure requests. And one other type of permit that was that home, I can't remember what it's called. But it's one that's rarely used, there was one other type of alcohol permit that you could get through the new portal. So we went live, the bottom line is the most recent line and the most relevant right now for this timeframe. It has our new go live date of March of next year, the team worked really, really hard to do an integrated schedule, come to an agreement with Accenture on all the work. And the very, very detailed schedule led us to the March 31 date. As you can see, we're going to be building the system all the way until September of 2024. We began testing a little bit before we finished the build. The testing is very, very extensive on our side and Accenture side, that the testing goes all the way till the end. And then the training begins at the end of September. And we will be training internally, we will be particularly preparing lots of training materials or rather guides for our external partners. And we will also be having people within LCB who have not been exposed to the system at all who have not been part of the project team will have them look at the portal and help us figure out what needs to be improved, or what we could potentially add to regarding training, or what we need to add to regarding external guides. For example, if someone who's an LCBO employee doesn't have any experience with SMP and hasn't been working on the project goes in there and looks at the new portal. And they see one area is difficult to follow, we can add that material to our external guidelines that we'll be giving out to members of the public. So we're excited about that piece. This is an extremely tight timeline. I call it I say that we have very slim margins. We we are under a lot of pressure right now, staff is feeling the pressure. So I'm trying to find ways to mitigate that. I'm working with Becky and with George, and with our project managers to figure out ways to mitigate some of the stress that they're feeling because the timeline is so tight. But it is a workable timeline. We are meeting with Accenture every single Monday to see if they're on track with our with their work, and whether any slippage is that they might have are going to affect the end March date. And so far, we're doing fine. But we have to monitor that every week to make sure we stay on track. At the same time, we are continuing to develop requirements for phase three. And that work continues to go on as it has for many months. Are there any questions about SMP? No. Yep, that's it for SMP. And that's the only slide I have, thank you Dustin. Budget report the budget proposals for the 2025 2027 biennial budget were due to Rachel's area, to Finance, on Friday. And so the directors had the opportunity to submit what I call a long wish list of things that they'd like to see in the next biennial budget. And they ended up with approximately 20 requests. Those were requests either for for money with FTEs or money for- Without FTEs. They did they're all the divisions did their explanation for their budget proposals. We haven't really had a time to take a deep dive into them because they were some of them actually came in on Monday. But Rachel did compile a nice chart for us. And she did some preliminary work regarding what which one of these requests could be bundled together in a decision package that would be logical to bundle together. So we'll be spending the next couple of weeks really diving into this and figuring out should we go forward with some of these all of these or How should we proceed strategically, there are a lot of requests for a number of additional FTEs in this wish list. So we have to think strategically about how this will be perceived at OFM. How it will be taken in. And so we obviously need to prioritize these requests. They're all great requests. And if we could magically get them all that would be fabulous. But we need to certainly look at them with a critical eye. So we'll be doing that. We're also looking at, along with decision packages, along with what should be put in the biennium budget, we're looking at what should go in to the supplemental year, which would be the following year. And strategically, we have to decide what is likely to be granted in a supplemental year, and what is not likely to be granted. And looking at basically it three, four year long timeframe to figure out how the money coming to us can work with all of the projects that we'd like to do. And make sure that our technology, that the technology component doesn't conflict with another project. So we're trying to map out the three four year plan and making sure for all the possible contingencies. But obviously, we want to keep everything moving as much as we can. The last thing I have is I did hear about Mallory Hayes and the tracking system that she developed for Justin's group, and the tracking system does feed into a dashboard. So I did ask Mallory Hayes works for Jessica Dang. In the director's office. I asked Jessica to have Mallory give will and I a little presentation on that, because I think it might be a tool we can use in other places. She's quite savvy at that stuff and likes to dive right in. So I think that's something we can take advantage of. So unless there any questions, that's all I have.
Thank you. And our last last agenda item is directors comments. I was trying to make that all one word somehow. Well, sir.
Well, you almost succeeded. Good afternoon Chair Paulson, the board members, Garin on the run off and Happy Birthday director wax. You've heard about all the work the project staff are engaged in. As you can see, staff continues to be really busy. Special thanks to all the director personnel, ECB staff for all their continued hard work and dedication. Just a couple things I'll highlight the initial phase of the Washington equity program ended in April 2024. There are numerous Washington, state agencies participated in the project. The goal of the program was to develop structures across Washington state agencies, in collaboration with community members to establish a unified vision strategy and commitments that include concrete next steps to advance equity and justice for all. Washington State was a great project to be a part of. The facilitators are in the process of collecting all the information from each of the workgroups. They broke us into five separate workgroups, and more to come on that. Special thanks to Jim Weatherly, who participated in this project with me and represented the LCB. Representatives from Licensing, Policy, and Research met with representatives from the State of New York. We were able to provide some information on LCB's cannabis licensing regulatory framework, and Washington State's markets assessment. And they seemed very happy to be able to be engaged in those conversations. Continual meetings with cannabis and liquor industry stakeholders discussing and collaborating on various topics, some of them potential legislation for the upcoming session, and some pain points that are going on across the industry and the agencies moving forward with strategic portfolio management. We're getting to be neck deep and I'd say we're wasting a minute right now. And it's going to help us to select Primary times and resource management. As we move LCP four material has been already talked about the governor's transition and the last thing I had on my list was rescheduling and we already covered that so there's no need to go back through that. Anybody have any questions?
Thank you well. Any other team updates that we missed or anybody any directors have anything to add for last call?
Yeah, I guess I'll throw in one more thing that I forgot I had a note set aside. In a couple of weeks, we're working with Dustin to schedule a presentation at the board meeting for the Lummi compact. So we have come to agreement. Were received the paperwork back in the lemons and we're able to move forward. So that is a significant accomplishment. So wanted to share that today. Yeah,
nice work. Thank you. Any final board comments? No, then we are adjourned.
