Parson responds to claims governor’s office interfered with medical marijuana probe
Gov. Mike Parson disputed claims in a memo released Monday by counsel to the Missouri House Democratic Caucus that his administration interfered with an investigation into the state’s medical marijuana program.
Parson, who met with reporters on Tuesday in Kansas City after an appearance at downtown homelessness support shelter ReStart Inc., said the memo was the product of a House aide working with Democrats with an election fewer than two months away.
Parson, a Republican, is seeking a second term and faces a challenge from Missouri Auditor Nicole Galloway, a Democrat. The Cook Political Report, a politics analysis site, shifted its forecast of the Missouri Governor’s race Tuesday from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican,” citing strong fundraising from Galloway and miscues in Parson’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
“There’s absolutely no interference,” Parson said. “I don’t even know why some aide would be able to write a letter and all of a sudden that even becomes newsworthy. If we do that, we’ll be chasing stories from here ‘til Election Day on both sides of it. It’s ridiculous even to be repeated.”
It was the Parson administration’s first public response to the memo; The Star contacted the governor’s office on Monday to seek comment but did not receive a formal response.
The memo, written by House Democratic Caucus counsel Casey Millburg, said credible allegations of executive branch interference into the Special Committee on Government Oversight’s investigation of medical marijuana emerged in May.
The memo did not go into specifics, saying it would not disclose further information until the committee had an opportunity to discuss the allegations. But Millburg’s memo said the committee’s request on May 7 for thousands of pages of records from the Missouri Medical Marijuana Division “is allegedly a significant motivating factor for this behavior.”
The oversight committee sought records after several lawsuits were filed with the Missouri Administrative Hearing Commission by applicants who did not receive medical marijuana licenses that claimed irregularities in the evaluation and distribution of licenses.
A federal grand jury late in 2019 subpoenaed records from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services relating to four applicants, whose names were redacted from a copy of the subpoena obtained by The Star earlier this year.
The oversight committee has obtained thousands of records related to the state’s medical marijuana program, which voters approved as a constitutional amendment in 2018. Millburg’s memo draws upon the documents the committee received, as well as ones it didn’t.
The memo said DHSS did not provide numerous records that the committee requested and that the department did not provide an adequate explanation for the omission.
It also said that a consultant who was part of a joint venture hired to evaluate and rank applications for medical marijuana licenses may have had a consulting relationship with a marijuana client in Missouri, posing a potential undisclosed conflict of interest.
In addition to the unspecified allegations against the executive branch, Millburg’s memo said Parson’s office had two opportunities to influence rulemaking on the state’s medical marijuana program.
While acknowledging that it’s not unusual for the governor’s office to involve itself in rulemaking, Millburg’s memo said it was “an apparent deviation” from the Medical Marijuana Division’s practice of seeking input from a group of departments with relevant experience across the executive branch.
