February 3, 2022 — The state Department of Cannabis Control is proposing to adopt a conflict of interest code, in keeping with the Political Reform Act, which prohibits public officials and government employees from using their positios to influence policy decisions that could benefit them financially. The public comment period on the proposed code, which lays out disclosure categories for decision-making employees, opened last week and is open until March 15.
Genine Coleman is the Executive Director of the Origins Council, a statewide cannabis advocacy organization. She thinks the proposed code has a lot of potential for protecting professional reputations and engendering trust in an industry that’s still fraught with uncertainty.
In a parallel development this week, Mendocino County Cannabis Program Director Kristin Nevedal announced that she’d resigned from her volunteer positions at two advocacy organizations, one of which she co-founded. Though one of them is an industry association, Supervisor Ted Williams, who played an active role in bringing Nevedal to the county, said those positions were what assured him of her expertise in cannabis policy. The cannabis program had exhibited a failure to thrive in various county departments, under a string of unqualified people.
Nevedal made her announcement to the board of supervisors, after informing them that the state had just notified her that it was more than doubling the equity grant funding to the county.
