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Alan Silverstein: Can you hear me now? Perfect. Thank you, very

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Loud and clear. Did you type your name in your names in there already. Did you take your name in on that site or?

Alan Silverstein: I’m sorry, what’d you say?

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Your name is in there. Did you have to type it in or did it auto populate for you?

Alan Silverstein: not Auto populates

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Great. Terrific.

Alan Silverstein: Okay.

Alan Silverstein: White is interesting.

Alan Silverstein: James how are you today?

James E. Hock Jr -State Police-: I’m fine. We are in month two of our renovation and…

Alan Silverstein: That’s good.

James E. Hock Jr -State Police-: third floor of the State Police Executive building. So it’s been quitting mentioned It’s been an adventure.

Alan Silverstein: That sounds like fun.

Alan Silverstein: fun fun

James E. Hock Jr -State Police-: I’ve stopped cleaning dust off my furniture. Just I’m gonna wait till they’re done. I keep my desk there. Everything else is as defend for itself till they’re done. I’m not bringing any more shop vacs in for a while. I thought I had it all cleaned up. I went on vacation came back and somebody left my door open. It was a mess.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: It’s a surprise.

Alan Silverstein: We have eight town home units finally being built behind our house after 19 years and needless to say my car is being washed every day.

James E. Hock Jr -State Police-: how I think we’re in spring now, but it’s a tough time of year. I’ve watched more cars and in the past, I guess month and I’ve ever having them birds and everything else seem to be very active this time of year.

Alan Silverstein: Yeah. Yeah, I have one of those monthly plans that unlimited plans trust me. They’re going to look at the numbers this month and go holy macro. What’s this guy doing?

James E. Hock Jr -State Police-: There is a place by me that has that. I probably should consider.

Robert Poole: So James Utopia washing cars, isn’t that community service for the state police?

Alan Silverstein: maybe you

James E. Hock Jr -State Police-: We used to have people do that stuff for us. Which have court workers doing you don’t see that anymore.

James E. Hock Jr -State Police-: Plus, I’m at the headquarters compound. We don’t have anything here. There’s way to wash a car. No court workers or anything.

Alan Silverstein: Yeah, I tell my wife I’m going to watch the car in about an hour and a half later. I come back and she said where have you been I said long line.

James E. Hock Jr -State Police-: At the risk of getting into too much detail. I’ve got a bluebird box out back for some bluebirds and they decided to fight with the mirrors on my cars. These say I came a vacation with a mess and they attacked my son’s car this past weekend it was there so I droved around back and turned the hose on to clean it off. And of course now, we’ve got all this Frost I expect to go back and see a bus that I was building in the back so

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Geez.

Alan Silverstein: Yeah.

Alan Silverstein: What channel we got?

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: here 302

Alan Silverstein: The 303 302 god, let’s see. Do we have our other members of the commission on yet?

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: before

Alan Silverstein: Okay, two of us.

Jessica Honeycutt -ATCC-: Eric said he was maybe going to be a few minutes late because he had another meeting. That he was here.

Alan Silverstein: So we’re waiting for them Barbara and Betty and we’ll get started.

Alan Silverstein: Okay.

Alan Silverstein: one more

00:05:00

Alan Silverstein: I’ll tell you what, let’s We’ll start with the executive director’s report. And then when we get a quorum we can cover the approval minutes. Go from there. All right. Mr. Kelly

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Yes service chair. Thank you very much. we are mentioned before we’re fully staffed on our agents and generally when I report out on some of the work we’ve done reporting out on a couple of hundred inspections, maybe and It doesn’t or so significant incidents. So starting with the enforcement activity, we conducted 277 alcohol inspections last month. 436 tobacco inspections and 436

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: cannabis THC inspections and they’re going to be identical almost always now from now on and I just want to explain that for a moment when we do an alcohol inspection or tobacco inspection. We’re target-driven because we know those places possess licenses, we have a list of those licenses and we go and visit them the idea behind the Cannabis inspections is these are places except for those that are licensed by MCA. They’re not licensed. And so we don’t know where they are. We don’t have it. We know what the target is to find them but we find quite often there are at many of the places that sell tobacco products as well. So when we do it Tobacco inspection, we do the very obvious inspection of the macro products we see and then we do a further inspection just to see if there are cannabis products in those locations most times. They’re not always check anyway, and we record that as an inspection for cannabis, but all of those cannabis inspections we conducted within the last

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Month in 38 places. We did find the Cannabis products. And in that we are still restricted from what type of enforcement action we could take we still are educating. So at those 38 locations, we left behind the advisory that we published a few months back to let them know what the law is what the temporary injunction is currently and that’s something to change and their obligations to stay in tune with what might be happening. But that’s what we have. So other 436 38 locations had some type of cannabis product and we left the appropriate training documentation behind.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: I mentioned about the reportable incidents of all those inspections 41 of them wearing this period of time from that one that 731 individual pieces of other tobacco products were seized the tax loss relative to that was 125,000. 125,516.20. We recovered 1,718 packs of unstamped cigarettes yielding attacks loss of 6,442.25 and I’m just going to add into that something we’re starting to see with more regularity is not just the unstamped cigarettes where they’re stem from another state or have no stamp on them, but we’re starting to find some now with regularity where the stamps are Maryland appear to be Maryland, but they are truly counterfeit stamps, which is not something over the years and I’ve been doing this for 21 years not over the years.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: We didn’t have a lot of fraudulent stamps but recently. They’re starting to come in as fraudulent stamps as well. So it’s just an interesting little side we

Robert Poole: What’s the Maryland statute on that Jeff?

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: It’s the fact that their counterfeit isn’t what we act going. It’s the fact that they’re unstamped cigarettes. And so possession is a possession of 30 or less 30 or fewer cartons is something we can issue by way of citation. But if it’s more than that, it’s a felony charge of ing. without licenses to do such so it varies and it depends on the quantity as well. But where we really kind of get caught is where I guess it hurts is it’s the loss of the product from the store and then the subsequent fine if you’re transporting is $150 a carton the first time and three hundred dollars a carton for any second and subsequent offense and that’s really pretty significant. But here it’s possession maybe sell or try to sell without it’s a relatively minor charge these so they hit really gets to be financially.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Anything with our alcohol inspections. We took seven containers of distilled spirits and 48 containers of beer and I like to always go down and give you a sense of just how broadly we are able to take these enforcement actions across the state. So these took place in Baltimore City and Arundel Baltimore Caroline Charles Dorchester Frederick Harford Montgomery Prince George’s Somerset, Talbot, Washington and Worcester County. So again, very broadly across the state that we’re finding these violations. It’s not just in one place. Give you an update on our human resources and Staffing positions. We did fill our policy annals, which was the last position that we had when we became the atcc from additional pins. we filled that position on the 13th of March.

00:10:00

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: And we do have one additional vacancy from an existing employee who retired in December. We conducted the first round of pre-screening interviews by way of telephone. So to narrow the list out a little bit. We just completed that on Tuesday and we’ll be starting the in-person interviews to make our final selection the first week of April. So hopefully by our next meeting we will have a selection made and somebody on board or very close to onboard but Where virtual we have one vacancy, which is really outstanding and we did get some Kudos from the general assembly for having only one vacancy at this point. Legislatively speaking. We had both of our hearings for the senate in the house for our budget. They went extremely well again, the committee’s commented on the enthusiasm and the very positive culture that we maintain here at the atcc they commented on our work to keep vacancies down to work with replacing these positions as quickly as possible and about a week ago the Senate issue their report in passing.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: The budget from their perspective and they’re the ones who are moving the budget this year. They take turns each year this year. It’s the Senate next year to be the house. And the senate in his comments while they did strike money because there is a deficit this year. They did strike money from many different agencies for a variety of reasons. They took zero from us the recommendations to cut us at all and to fund us fully. And very happy to say that the house hearing I believe was yesterday or today on their budget and same thing while they had some changes to make and some cuts to make Zero from us leaving our budget entirely intact the two budgets are slightly different. So we’ll go to conference to iron out those differences but regarding our element of both buds be our left hole. So really happy to say that is one of the big elements. We certainly hope. It passes through James expect the will now one of the big elements is some Modern organization in our licensing platform our system, it’ll be bringing us into the 21st century, which will be

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Be terrific and I see commissioner all is coming on board now, Mr. Chairs. Just to make that note.

Alan Silverstein: Okay.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: It’s 3:10. and the second point that I bring up is one of the handful of lawsuits that are against us currently. we refer to as the Furlong case, it’s a Maryland residence and a Washington State Brewery who are suing us for not allowing them to Direct ship that Washington State Brewers product to consumers in Maryland. during under executive order and then immediately after covid and up till June this June 30th legislatively Maryland manufacturers were given a privilege of being able to sell directly to Consumers that ends June 30th, unless the general assembly does something else with it that ends it’s a sunset. So it ends just by operation of law. This lawsuit is suing me in the governor and all of you. For not issuing the license or allowing us out of State Brewery to ship directly into the state.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: The Attorney General who’s representing us at the time filed two motions one just to dismiss the case and the second one was to remove the commissioner saying that the Commissioners don’t have the specific licensing Authority and shouldn’t be held liable and I just got word minutes ago that the judge Rule and that element the case is going to still move forward. But on the element of you having to be defendants in this case you have been removed. So that’s good news is The case against each of you has been dismissed.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: And lastly just a point of our organization as you know, the Maryland Department of Health has an ex-officio position here and have been Dana Moncrief. Mdh. It’s a little Elizabeth Crum who is our representative? I haven’t had the opportunity to meet Elizabeth yet in great detail. But if Elizabeth I saw you were here. If you’d like to come on Cameron introduce yourself, that would be terrific.

Elizabeth Kromm -MDH-: Thank you so much. So, my name is Elizabeth crom. I’m the director of the prevention health promotion Administration within the Maryland Department of Health. And so that’s the areas of cancer and chronic disease which includes tobacco and cannabis and Maternal Child environmental health infectious disease both the epidemiology and outbreak response side as well as the prevention side. grateful to be here and I see Dana’s still on and Dana’s your expert in all things tobacco, and we’ll continue to be so.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: And as usual Elizabeth, I think we have met before but it’s been virtual. It’s not In person okay and we were looking to have an in-person meeting just to explain that we were looking at but it kind of didn’t work. We’re gonna have that many people so we consulted with the chair and made an executive decision to push that off. We still have these regularly scheduled for the court the third meeting of each quarter and if it works out for us it does it’s fine. If not, that’s okay too. So Mr. Chair with that that finishes my report and turn it back over to you.

00:15:00

Alan Silverstein: Elizabeth welcome. I look forward to hearing from you in the future. you say Vice chair Barbara wall is on.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Come on, I thought I saw her name flash up.

Alan Silverstein: I saw Barbara aid…

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: So I believe she …

Alan Silverstein: but not a Barbara Dougie.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: you know what? Yes. Yeah.

Barbara a: me I’m here.

Alan Silverstein: Okay. We need four members to have a quorum. Is that not correct? at this current time

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: is That is correct. And so in that you

Alan Silverstein: Right because electrician added two more people and the governor’s not appoint anybody. So we’re not going to be able to approve the minutes of February 15th will do that at our next meeting. Okay, is there any new business?

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Mr. Chair, I’ll just add to that if I might very quickly do about the two extra positions. there is a corrective bill in this year for cannabis to just do a whole bunch of different things. Our two parts of it are one to let us write citations tickets for violations since they are misdemeanors. So that’s part of that corrective bill in the second part is to bring us back to five appointed members from which we will have our quarmed far those are active and are moving well and I expect that so this may be a problem that fixes itself wants to build passes and becomes long

Alan Silverstein: Okay, anybody else have anything that? If not, I’m going to join the meeting and we’ll see you next month. Thank you.

Jeffrey Kelly -ATCC-: Thank you.

James E. Hock Jr -State Police-: Hi, everybody. See you next month.

Dr. Toyin Opesanmi: Are we having a meeting?

00:20:00

Aisha Abdul-Samad: The meeting ended you guys.

Dr. Toyin Opesanmi: Thank you.