Reversing decision, Missouri commission awards marijuana license to jilted applicant | KCUR 89.3

In a uncommon transfer, a Missouri fee granted a medical marijuana license to an applicant after discovering irregularities with how state regulators evaluated purposes.

The Missouri Division of Well being and Senior Companies (DHSS) determined to forgo interesting the ruling, asserting Tuesday that it had reached a settlement with the jilted applicant to finish the litigation.

The Missouri Administrative Listening to Fee on Dec. 28 granted NWGMO LLC a license to function a marijuana cultivation facility. The fee’s choice got here after testimony and proof portrayed Missouri’s system for deciding who will get medical marijuana licenses as a rushed course of knowledgeable by “deliberately obscure steerage,” with no alternatives to evaluate the work for issues.

The fee’s choice, reported for the primary time by The Missouri Impartial and the Midwest Newsroom, surfaced new criticisms of how DHSS and a contractor it employed dealt with the scoring of greater than a thousand medical marijuana license purposes.

Competitors for licenses turned fierce when the state capped the variety of purposes it might approve, and the NWGMO choice provides uncommon public perception into how the decision-making course of performed out.

A rushed and spotty course of

A whole lot of candidates have complained concerning the state’s analysis course of. There are greater than 500 pending appeals of rejected licenses with many specializing in the work executed by Smart Well being Options, the agency DHSS picked to outsource the scoring of purposes. Smart Well being Options is a three way partnership of Nevada-based Veracious Compliance Options and Oaksterdam College, an unaccredited faculty that claims to be the primary establishment in america that teaches cannabis-based curriculum.

To this point, Smart Well being Options has been paid greater than $2 million by the state. NGWMO argues that what Missouri received for that cash was a rushed and spotty analysis course of.

DHSS rejected NWGMO’s software in 2019 after Smart Well being Resolution’s analysis didn’t rating the corporate’s proposal excessive sufficient to obtain one the 60 cultivation licenses that Missouri would permit. A lot of NGWMO’s attraction was primarily based on the truth that it submitted two licenses with equivalent solutions to questions that also obtained completely different scores, although Smart Well being Options’ personal coaching handbook mentioned such an occasion ought to by no means occur.

NWGMO is affiliated with Nature’s Grace and Wellness, whose web site says it has operated a medical marijuana enterprise in Illinois since 2014. Its attraction gathered testimony from prime officers from DHSS and Smart Well being Options, in addition to a former contractor concerned within the scoring course of.

No notes required

Christopher Jacobson was employed by Smart Well being as a contractor to assist consider purposes, trying over greater than 1,000 between October 2019 and January 2020.

He testified in a sworn declaration that his supervisor typically pushed him to fulfill deadlines, and that though the method known as for him to have the ability to evaluate his work for errors, that by no means occurred.

Jacobson admits making errors in reviewing NGWMO’s software when he scored the identical solutions in another way. Requested about giving almost equivalent solutions a “10” on one software and a “seven” on one other, Jacobson mentioned: “If I had been requested, after submitting/importing the scores, to self-correct the inconsistent scores as to those solutions, I’d have given each respective solutions a ten.”

Jacobson took no notes to elucidate the discrepancies in his scores. That jibes with the coaching handbook created by Smart Well being that explicitly discouraged scorers from taking notes, with the caveat, “notes will not be required (and never suggested) except you’re feeling you need to ‘clarify’ an outlier or a redaction.”

The executive listening to fee’s ruling famous that “not one of the people scoring NGWMO’s cultivation purposes made any substantive notes concerning the small print of their particular scoring standards.”

The coaching handbook additionally says it’s of “utmost significance” that purposes be scored constantly and that a number of purposes containing the identical reply ought to by no means obtain a special rating.

Dale Sky Jones of Oaksterdam testified that Smart Well being didn’t second-guess the people tasked with scoring purposes, saying there wasn’t a lot room to return and verify for consistency as a result of the corporate was below a “time crunch.”

Requested throughout a sworn deposition why a evaluate of scores wasn’t carried out to extend the probabilities a scorer would catch and proper inconsistencies, Jones replied: “You’d need to ask the state that.”

Amy Moore, deputy director of the medical marijuana program, testified that the state left scoring completely as much as Smart Well being. The state didn’t evaluate Smart’s scoring, Moore testified, with the intention to guarantee impartiality and confidentiality in its scoring system.

Moore contends that altering inconsistent scores by itself, “would have simply utterly destroyed half of the system if we determined to use our personal judgment and something that’s influencing us.”

As a substitute, the executive listening to fee concluded, the state “accepted Smart’s scoring as correct and carried out no evaluate of the scores for variances.”

Below questioning, Jacobson couldn’t articulate an goal metric that he used to attain purposes, the executive listening to fee decided.

“All I keep in mind, it was an general,” Jacobson testified. “Sort of an general image of every little thing they had been doing mixed and, you realize, with their – I feel it was a safety query or one thing like that.”

“Unsurprisingly, Jacobson couldn’t articulate a inflexible system to ascribe to his grading standards,” the executive listening to fee mentioned in its ruling. “And we suspect he by no means may, even whereas he was performing scoring. He utilized his personal subjective expertise and did his finest to be constant whereas performing the immense job of scoring over 1,000 purposes with deliberately obscure steerage.”

The state tried to argue Jacobson’s testimony was not credible. However the administrative listening to fee roundly rejected that declare, noting that state regulators selected Smart Well being to carry out its scoring and admitted Jacobson had the experience wanted to grade purposes.

“That is the system the division created,” the fee’s ruling concluded. “And it can’t say now that Jacobson isn’t credible.”

Lisa Cox, spokeswoman for DHSS, mentioned she couldn’t touch upon the fee’s Dec. 28 ruling as a result of the “matter isn’t last.”

She mentioned that there have been initially 857 appeals filed with the executive listening to fee over rejected medical marijuana licenses, with 529 nonetheless pending.

“The discount by greater than 300 is primarily because of instances being resolved in favor of the division, both by favorable choice upholding the denial of licenses or by dismissal by petitioners,” she mentioned.

Below scrutiny

The executive listening to fee has beforehand solely overruled DHSS and awarded licenses on three events.

Final yr, the fee awarded Heya LLC two cultivation licenses for Kirksville and Excello on the grounds of scoring errors within the authentic software course of. The state appealed the choice, however finally settled and issued Heya two licenses.

“Within the 5 situations the (administrative listening to fee) awarded licenses, the division, by good religion discussions with these petitioners, settled the issues and can work with every of them to operationalize their amenities as quickly as attainable,” Cox mentioned in an e-mail.

Smart Well being Options has beforehand been scrutinized for its work in Missouri. Different spurned candidates have alleged that companions with Smart Well being Options had been consulting with candidates earlier than DHSS employed the corporate to assist regulate license purposes.

One firm, GMT Consulting, sued Smart Well being Options, accusing it of negligence in its work with DHSS. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported last year that GMT Consulting received an arbitration award of $28 million. GMT Consulting is now suing Smart Well being Options’ insurer to have it pay the award.

In 2020, counsel for Missouri Home Democrats wrote a memo that claimed Smart Well being Options had conflicts of curiosity, and went additional to accuse DHSS and the workplace of Gov. Mike Parson of improperly influencing the medical marijuana program. Parson denied the allegations.

This story is co-published with the Missouri Independent, a nonpartisan, nonprofit information group masking state authorities, politics and coverage.

The Midwest Newsroom is an investigative journalism collaboration together with KCUR 89.3, St. Louis Public Radio, Iowa Public Radio, Nebraska Public Media and NPR.