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Alan Silverstein: It’s three o’clock. We do not have a quorum but we’re going to start the meeting and if we get enough commissioners on we can go back and do the roll call and the approval of the minutes of August 15th. So, Mr. Eckris, you are leading the charge today for the executive director. I’ll let you get started, Mr. Poole welcome.

Robert Poole: Hey, thank you Sorry but I’m late. actually felt just one minute later apologize.

Thomas Akras -ATCC-: But thank you very…

Alan Silverstein: Go ahead, John.

Thomas Akras -ATCC-: Mr. Chair and good afternoon. Everybody just dumping into the Executive Director report wanted to highlight on an email was sent out prior to this meeting that the ATCC had restructured. Its organization recently as of effective as 9/11, 2024 over the last year, we’ve seen a lot of growth in our agency. We started out back in 2021 is an agency with, I think approximately 27 pins, we grew slowly but surely and in the last year, we added an additional approximately some odd positions. So we’re now an agency of about 60 to 65 persons. And in order to ensure that

Thomas Akras -ATCC-: We had an efficient and expeditious communication timely information. We created three divisions, we stalled the field enforcement division, that is our law enforcement division. We have the legal legislative division of, which I’m the director and we have the newly minted regulatory licensing and Administrative Services Division of which Andrew Waters who’s on the call. Now, has been named the director of so we essentially took a lot of the civilian positions outside of the law enforcement silo. And so now licensing and administrative services reports directly to the Executive Director Again this improves communication, this improves the flow of information and it allows the executive director to get that information a timely fashion. Get those decision points in a timely fashion and be able to pull the trigger with those informed decisions quickly. So that was something.

Thomas Akras -ATCC-: That we discussed last week was effective, 9/11 would be an organization chart that we post on our website, subsequent to this meeting. And with that I’ll take any questions and if there are no questions, I’ll move on to our report out for our various divisions.

Thomas Akras -ATCC-: All right, seeing no questions. Some highlights with the Field Enforcement Division for in this. If you recall, we change the way we recorded these statistics. Now we’re looking at full months, so this is September 19th. The information that I’m going to be giving you is for the month of August before we used to do, these kind of month to month the 15th or the 19th. And it was awkward timing. We’re just doing full months now. but this is the full month of August 2024. There were a hundred and thirty. Nine alcoholic beverage, inspections retail locations, 225 Tobacco, and inspections in 15. Cannabis advisories were issued if you recall. these are the pamphlets and the information the advisories in regards to who can and cannot sell cannabis. those were the 15 advisors that were talking about. So that’s all work up from the field.

Thomas Akras -ATCC-: Enforcement Division, reportable incidents. And these are from inspections from 21 reportable incidents and with seizures that occurred. And so I’m going to go over the amount and the number of tax loss. Associated with that amount, there were 54,953 sticks of other tobacco products yielding, a tax loss of 38,000 467.10, There were 600 84 packs of cigarettes yielding, a tax loss of 3,420 239, bottles of distilled, spirits confiscated, 255, containers of beer, into containers of wine. So those were the reportable incidents occurring across the state of Maryland and with this extra personnel that we have not only the cannabis enforcement that we’re doing but also you’re seeing these large upticks in tobacco cases as well. So

00:05:00

Thomas Akras -ATCC-: are really proud of our team going out there. Getting a lot of this work done. There are no questions. I’m going to hand the mic over to our newly minted director, Andrew Waters. So that he could provide a readout regarding the Regulatory Licensing and Administrative Services Division.

ANDREW WATERS -ATCC-: Thanks Tom. So we have two vacancies that we’re hoping to get filled very quickly interviews start next week for our fiscal services, supervisor and their main role is being responsible for analyzing and…

Alan Silverstein: Right.

ANDREW WATERS -ATCC-: preparing our budget and manage the agencies finances and the second being licensing unit supervisor, they of course, run the licensing unit and they both can’t get here soon enough as we enter our October renewal which is by far our biggest period,

ANDREW WATERS -ATCC-: roughly 5,000 permits that essentially a three-man team need to renew these include storage solicitors out of state. Suppliers on top of the 50,000 vehicle identification cards, which are issued to our alcohol transporters that come in and out of the state regularly throughout the year. Within the last month are very small. Team has issued and renewed, 510 licenses and permits. So we are very much in the full swing of our renewal period.

ANDREW WATERS -ATCC-: Compact.

Thomas Akras -ATCC-: Thank you very much and we’ll move over to the Legal and Legislative Division. Report want to bring everybody’s attention To September 12 2024. We were grateful and excited to host, the Senate Finance Committee at our location. We provided them a tour of our location to include our offices and as always to star of the show, really our storage unit where we secure a lot of Properties, kind of showing, members of the Finance Committee. Exactly. You know what we’re doing to support the legal markets that sell these products in the state of Maryland, and really wrap our arms around and address the illicit markets on that deal in alcohol, tobacco and unlicensed. Cannabis, we’re really excited to show the tour, give information.

Thomas Akras -ATCC-: members of the Senate Finance Committee as to the internal work that we’re doing or administrative processes our licensing. So on, and so forth. And actually want to, now take an opportunity and give the Chairman a couple of minutes to talk about his impressions of the Senate Finance Committee visit to our office.

Alan Silverstein: Thank you I had the opportunity to work with Senator Kramer before he sponsored the legislation that created ATC and then ATCC he seemed to be very pleased with the way the agency has evolved coming out of the controller’s office. There were a number of good questions for members of the Senate Finance Committee, many of whom really weren’t

Alan Silverstein: Knowledgeable about all of the working pieces and Jeff did a great job our executive director and outlining our responsibilities. And the things that we do to make sure that the system is being properly carried on from licensing, to inspections to enforcement and I think everybody always enjoys going down and seeing the product that has been seized, didn’t realize What a arduous product placement? It is, I had a chance to be on one of the busts that was made about a year and a half ago, and our agents were very courteous when they went in. But I didn’t realize that they had a

Alan Silverstein: Take a look at every illicit stick, mark them down. And then when we got back to the office, the same process was done again, when it went downstairs into the processing room. So that, we made sure that everything that was collected, was brought in an accounted for, and the fact is, if you’re going to court, you got to make sure you’ve got a chain of custody, and they did a great job doing that. Our office space is outstanding compared to where we had been previously and especially with the number of people that we currently have, and I would encourage anybody who was in the area to make a call and stop in and visit and learn a little bit more about our operations. Thank you.

00:10:00

Thomas Akras -ATCC-: Thank you Mr. And again we thank chair beitel and all the members of the Senate Finance Committee for coming and touring our location. And to echo the Chairman we would welcome. folks from around the state to come in and particularly, stakeholders involved with the work that we do to come in and take a look at our agency and things that we’re doing here. So, appreciate the words, Mr. Chair. I want to pivot to the work group that was held yesterday for Tobacconists. And I’ll get a little bit of background in history. So what we’re talking about Bill 244 was passed this past legislative session, and it did a number of things. It

Thomas Akras -ATCC-: First of all rp Do the Clean Indoor, Air Act, which prohibits smoking indoors, it included incorporated vaping into that. So now that you can’t vape in indoor public places.

Thomas Akras -ATCC-: the year was a military exemption, I think component to that as well. Whereas before, if you’re 18 to 21, if you had shown your military ID you can actually purchase tobacco products that in 2019, the Feds had raised the age to 21. Maryland law caught up last year and codified that restriction in this law as well. And then lastly and relevant to, this conversation was the work group which was created which studied tobacconists specifically tobacconists and tobacconists are licenses. We’re in over 70% of the product that they sell, our other tobacco products. So we’re talking, it’s more specifically about premium, cigars pipe tobacco, things of that nature, where there were tobacconists around the state who had been able to have beverage licenses issue to them, they’re about 13.

Thomas Akras -ATCC-: 14 Of these licensed holders in the state and at the time during the legislative session, there was concern that, first of all, how did these licenses get issued and the legislature thought it would be good to study this particular issue because there were counties I think the Senator Watson out of Prince George’s County had wanted to introduce a bill that would have allowed a cigarette lounge license to take effect. In Prince George’s County that legislation did not make it through the chamber and there was a moratorium put on any new Beverage licenses being issued to Tobacconists.

Thomas Akras -ATCC-: And as a result, there was a request to have a done a work group. Get together to study this particular issue yesterday, was the first meeting of the work group Senator Beidal was present Senator Watson. I was a online delegate parents was president on President Delegate Jackson was present online and there were representatives from Senator Lamb’s office as well. Among, various stakeholders representatives from the other Tobacco Products Association and health stakeholders who all met to discuss this issue. They’re going to be three more meetings. Held The goal is to get a study recommendations published by July 1st 2025. On this issue. I think it’s an important topic. It was a lively discussion and we’re going to be reporting back to the commission in the months to come once we have further meetings, and

Thomas Akras -ATCC-: more information, there’s a really good meeting but just wanted to kind of bring that to the attention of the commission because those are the things that were involved with that I want to turn the mic over to Mike win our communications officer to walk you through our new and improved website as well as our new footprint that we’re starting to the footprint we’re trying to establish in the social media world. So with that Mike you want to take it away.

MICHAEL NGUYEN -ATCC-: Hi, yeah, thanks Tom. And I appreciate the opportunity to talk about the things that we’re doing in communications at ATCC so Can you advance to next slide? Jessica

00:15:00

MICHAEL NGUYEN -ATCC-: So before I talked about the website, let’s just take a step back and for the fiscal year. 24, 25, these four? Items are key messaging goals that I’m looking to do diesel probably change year to year, but since we’re Fairly new and especially our communications department is new. These are the ones that I feel like the most important. So the first one is to clarify the atcc’s role. So when I got here I felt like there’s a lot of confusion of exactly what our agency does and especially coming from the comptrollers and we needed to define Exactly our responsibilities and how we regulate. And

MICHAEL NGUYEN -ATCC-: Are industries. Then next thing that we hear a lot about the three tier system as it’s referred to the alcohol, manufacturing distribution and retail area. So, I wanted to make sure we educate our stakeholders on that and then going back to ifying, our role because there’s confusion, what we do How We Relate to America, Maryland, Comptrollers and Maryland Campus Administration?

MICHAEL NGUYEN -ATCC-: Because we came from the Comptrollers. we want to tell How we separate and what we specifically do. how to controller collects taxes and then how a Maryland, can this administration regulates that industry then overall and this is probably a Central theme in DEFINITELY is advocate for responsible practices, where if it’s from manufacturing distribution and so Next slide.

MICHAEL NGUYEN -ATCC-: So yeah, so here’s our new website and I’ve been very careful to tell people internally. This is a update not exactly a new website because the biggest change is that we switched over to a new website platform and the reason why we needed to switch is because we are a small agency and we need to be able to respond to our stakeholders as quickly as possible. So this new platform, we switch over to WordPress. It’s a widely used platform and there’s a lot of versatility with it. So again, we needed to agility to be able to update our stakeholders. Quickly and specially that we’re doing all this house. we needed to have the tools available to build things that makes it easier for

MICHAEL NGUYEN -ATCC-: users get to what they need. So that guy relates to the next point where we’re improving to navigation and my goal for the front page is, like, When people come to our website, I want them to be able to find what they need as soon as possible. rather than just having a lot of Background information about ATCC because we already have a whole page in the website for that, but if you’re coming here, you need to Give information about alcohol tobacco cannabis. You have that right in front of you as soon as you log on. And then overall this is building the foundation for future growth. So we

MICHAEL NGUYEN -ATCC-: we have a lot of exciting things plan with most recently. We just relaunched our licensed database which we developed completely in-house. And we have similar tools that we’re going to provide to help not only Our stakeholders who visit our website, but help our processes internally behind the scenes as well. Next slide.

MICHAEL NGUYEN -ATCC-: so related to getting All of our stakeholders to understand what we do. We launched our newsletter. So we had our first issue last quarter so we just have our second issue this past summer just came out in the end of August. And our plan is to release a newsletter every quarter. and this issue we have a lot of interesting articles. We’re talking about how we’re working with local agencies, like Baltimore City, Police, to Baltimore Sheriff’s Office and the Boomer Liquor Board. In this specific instance, through focus on underage drinking. efforts to and then, we also

00:20:00

MICHAEL NGUYEN -ATCC-: a few months ago, we released a pamphlet to explore to explain the cannabis reform to act. And then we’re in this issue, we go a little bit deeper on that and then I also want to have people to get to know what the people. That works at the ATCC. So in this issue, we highlight the trade practices and give them an opportunity to talk about what they do, how they?

MICHAEL NGUYEN -ATCC-: how they are resource to the industry, to make sure the industries are operating, respoly responsibly plus just getting to know the people in the department as well. and finally, in this issue, we also recently launched our legislative manual, but in the newsletter we also Provided if you broke it down a little bit further to explain to new laws that came in effect on July 1st. Next slide.

MICHAEL NGUYEN -ATCC-: And then, literally last week, we launched the multiple social media platforms. and this was a process that we put a lot of thought in. So could have just as easily when I first started almost a year ago, just opened up a whole bunch of social media accounts but we wanted to be thoughtful of what we want to do. So we want to do that because we want it.

MICHAEL NGUYEN -ATCC-: Make sure that we’re not just opening accounts and it’s not doing anything for us and here and some of our goals that we were trying to do with our social media. We want people to really know about what what we do, and what our functions are at, the ATCC help businesses, and help the community, understands the rules regarding the three industries that we work in. Make sure we share clear and accurate information. Yeah, as they come and then most importantly, we want to build trust with the public and we do that by being open and consistent. So that’s why it was important that I not just open all these accounts and not have a consistent plan because we want to make sure that

MICHAEL NGUYEN -ATCC-: Where fulfilling our goals. so next,

MICHAEL NGUYEN -ATCC-: So, That’s basically our new communication products in nutshell, I happy to take questions and as you can see, we have our QR codes, just in case you want to follow us on social media. But if there’s any questions, I’m happy to take them now. If not, I’ll hand it back to Tom.

Thomas Akras -ATCC-: Mike, could you drop if you don’t mind maybe in the chat or maybe have Jessica dropped in the chat, the website links to, maybe the LinkedIn, the Instagram just, if you can as well. I love the QR codes but III sometimes am guilty of being a little bit less tech savvy than others. And so,…

MICHAEL NGUYEN -ATCC-: Okay.

Thomas Akras -ATCC-: if folks feel more comfortable, clicking on a link, they have that option.

MICHAEL NGUYEN -ATCC-: okay, I just dropped in just in case you’re not subscribed to our newsletter, the first link I put in is to subscribe to our newsletter and then As we wrap up, I’ll put into links to the rest of our social media. Okay.

Thomas Akras -ATCC-: And Mr. Chair just so that, we started with zero followers last week and are we at 99,000 Mike?

MICHAEL NGUYEN -ATCC-: Yeah, he keeps it up adding to extra K on it, but when I told him we gain followers in a matter of days, but that number is actually higher now. So we got about 126 last time I checked

00:25:00

Thomas Akras -ATCC-: Great work. Mike great work.

MICHAEL NGUYEN -ATCC-: All right.

Thomas Akras -ATCC-: And with that if nobody has any questions. I’ll touch on the last piece of our presentation with the Ola audit very quickly. The Ola audit team was here on site from early to mid June to let’s say mid to late August. They’ve made a couple of inquiries in regards to some of our inventory and some other records that they’ve asked for with the last week or so we’ve provided them with that information. So we believe that the end of the audit will be coming soon and we should have some kind of report out within the next week coming weeks. We’re not sure but we’ve fulfilled all of the requests as per the Ola audit and so just looking forward to closing that out shortly I believe with that that covers the agenda today. Mr. Chair I did see Eric Morrissette

Alan Silverstein: I did too.

Thomas Akras -ATCC-: Commissioner jump on to. So we may have a corn with Commissioner Morrissette is present.

Alan Silverstein: So it looks like we have Commissioner Poole the mission of Morrissette and myself which would be a quorum. And so I’m going to ask for an approval of the August 15th, 2024 meeting minutes, I need a motion All right, Commissioner Poole. Second.

Alan Silverstein: I’ll do the second all those in favor, signify by saying I have it so this is an official meeting and those minutes have been recorded and approved. There’s only new business. Than anybody has.

Alan Silverstein: okay, if not Commissioner Poole, you turn on your mic, Thank you. Good to hear you.

Robert Poole: Yes, sir.

Alan Silverstein: I need a motion to adjourn.

Robert Poole: I make a motion to adjourn.

Alan Silverstein: I’ll second the motion, all in favor I, Okay. And I see Commissioner Morrissette waving.

Robert Poole: All right.

Alan Silverstein: So I want to thank everybody for joining us today. I want to thank Mr. Eckris and our staff, for the information. They’ve given us, I think our website is really good and it’s only going to get better. So I wish everybody a great day and we’ll see you next month. Thank you.

Robert Poole: Great, thank you, sir.

James Hock -State Police-: Thank you.

Thomas Akras -ATCC-: Thank you.

Meeting ended after 00:36:57 👋

This editable transcript was computer generated and might contain errors.