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Thomas Akras -ATCC-: Up after the meeting.

James E. Hock Jr -State Police-: That’s fine.

Alan Silverstein: Where am I?

Alan Silverstein: lovely lovely

Alan Silverstein: Let me close.

Alan Silverstein: Wonderful executive your front door.

Alan Silverstein: another

Robert Poole: Alan Jeff good to see you guys.

Alan Silverstein: yes.

Alan Silverstein: Let’s see.

Alan Silverstein: What’s you in a minute? Let’s see.

Alan Silverstein: I think I’m back. Trendy too many.

Alan Silverstein: Come on.

Alan Silverstein: Yeah.

Alan Silverstein: Did I get again you?

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Yep.

Alan Silverstein: All right.

00:05:00

Alan Silverstein: Can anybody hear me? Okay. Thank you very much.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Yes.

Alan Silverstein: All right commission members, please announce that you’re here with us today. This is the April 18th. 2024, Maryland Alcohol Tobacco and cannabis commission meeting. Commissioner Silverstein is here.

Robert Poole: Robert Poole’s here

Alan Silverstein: We have more set. commissioner buck

Alan Silverstein: commissioner wall

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: just Chair it just to let you know we did have prior commitments from Commissioners buck and…

Alan Silverstein: if not Go ahead.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: wall just tried calling Kershaw hall went right to voicemail. We did not ever hear back from commissioner Morissette.

Alan Silverstein: okay, we’re going to begin the meeting and I wouldn’t ask for the executive directors report.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: So it’s our second month now without a quorum. So this will be an unofficial report and we know minutes made of this we’ll just combine it but what we did this month was because we didn’t have a quorum last month is we combined the numbers from our last actual meeting which was on February 15th. the numbers are pretty big but they’re not big because it’s two months worth. It’s big because we have a full staff of Agents now and they’re doing a lot of work. So for the last two months now they did 722 tobacco and 7 430 alcohol inspections and all the Cannabis inspections. They found 67 locations that had some type of product on scene that probably wouldn’t be authorized but for the injunction that we’re under right now. and then they found that in 67 different locations.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: And this is what’s kind of Staggering the volume of seizures and in the values the tax losses. From other tobacco products the seizure was 307,300 to individual Stakes of other. Tobacco products worth almost 215,000 of tax loss. It’s just under 1600 packs of cigarettes yielding a tax loss of over 12,000 or 58 bottles of spirits 48 cans of beer and these took place in 15 of our 25 jurisdictions 24 counties and then Baltimore City Allegheny and Arundel Baltimore Baltimore County Caroline Charles Dorchester Frederick Harford Montgomery Prince George’s Summit, Washington and blister County.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Jumping over to human resources on our staffing issue. We just completed at Friday our one vacancy, which was for our assistant director rather in charge of the regulatory administrative Services Bureau. we’ve winners this down from a large amount of people to the top. 18 and then from the 18 window down to 10 and just completed the last 10 so I expect By weeks after sooner. We will have made a selection from those final 10 candidates. So that will bring us to full Staffing at that moment.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: really the general assembly session since we last it ended last Monday. And from our perspective there were two bills. We were interested in one of them was our budget Bill and as we asked for it passed unscathed which is terrific. So not only gives us the money to operate for another year as we would but they added extra money in that we’d asked to make considerable technology improvements. So give us an extra 1.1 million dollars for these improvements which is huge for us. And what most of that money is going to be spent on is building out our licensing and permitting platform which we expect it to be able to

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Two things one is going to allow the applicant to go online through a portal and create an account and to all of their business with us from that portal and secondly be able to receive documentation back through all of it. So they’re going to enter in the information in the portal. They’re going to be able to make payment in the portal. Our team is going to make sure all the eyes are dotted the t’s are crossed and then once so, we’ll be able to issue The permits or licenses back to them and if all this works as well as we certainly hope it does we may next year to see about look for legislation that might allow us to issue electronic copies of licenses rather than hard copies, which will save us a ton in mailing and quite frankly. It’s how most people want to do business now, they don’t want to get the mailings. So that was big for us having our budget remain intact and it was the beefed up a little bit so that we could really have these advances and Technology.

00:10:00

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: The second bill that passed is this cannabis build this year that was really to correct the bill from last year and to make certain modifications and it was a big Bill but there were two areas that we were particularly interested in. One of them is one that’ll help us operationally currently when our agents find Cannabis violations are only recourse for placing charges is to get a funded application for statement of charges have a court commissioner issue the charge a summons or a warrant or whatever the appropriate. What we asked for because the three charges that we can charge for specifically are misdemeanors. We asked for the ability to charge one civil side on criminal citation rather as opposed to having to get a summons and the general somebody has approved that both Chambers did and it’s sitting on the governor’s desk be fully expected to sign that by April 25th.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Which if he does even better is it reduces our number of commission members from Seven back to five as you may recall when cannabis became legalized and they fought cannabis the whole Administration was going to be within our commission they added two new positions to account for that cannabis element. So our commission when it didn’t happen, we ended up with these two positions that understandably were never filled. But it left us with a new Quorum number. We had to make a four which is that we suffered last week and our last month rather and to some extent again this month. This should be our last month of that problem. as I expect the governor signs up Bill on April 25th, our core will be reduced to three we’ll have five members as we have currently. Actual sitting members and our Quorum will be reduced to three. So hopefully this is the last month we have an issue with Quorum moving With that Mr. Chair, I turned the floor back over to you. Thank you.

Alan Silverstein: Does anybody have any new business?

Alan Silverstein: if not I know we’re going to get a new member to the commission and look forward to having them join us. And I thank you all for your time and we’ll see you again next month. Thanks.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Thank you.

James E. Hock Jr -State Police-: Thank you.