The Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission’s embattled chair, Shannon O’Brien claims in a lawsuit that she was improperly suspended from her post amid a long-standing power struggle within the commission. Following the legal challenge, Treasurer Deborah Goldberg agreed to give O’Brien a formal administrative hearing next month.
Goldberg suspended O’Brien from her post on Sept. 14, shortly after O’Brien announced that CCC Executive Director Shawn Collins would no longer be working for the agency.
In the complaint she filed on Sept. 28 in Suffolk Superior Court, O’Brien said that she received no justification for her suspension. Four days after her suspension, the CCC voted to make Commissioner Ava Callender Concepcion the acting chair on the eve of a week-long process discussing and voting to approve new regulations.
Goldberg has not appointed an interim chair or given an official reason for O’Brien’s suspension. State law only allows five scenarios for a commissioner to be removed: being found guilty of malfeasance, substantially neglecting their duties as commissioner, being unable to discharge the duties of office, gross misconduct or a felony conviction.
In her lawsuit, O’Brien contends that she was denied due process.
“Treasurer Goldberg removed Chair O’Brien without notice, without articulated reason, and without any opportunity to be heard, all of which is required by the clear and unambiguous provisions of Massachusetts Law,” said the complaint.
O’Brien added that the removal harms her professionally and defames her, while undermining the general public’s trust in the CCC.
O’Brien is a veteran of state politics. She served as a state representative for six years, a state senator for two, followed by a single four-year term as state treasurer from 1999 to 2003. O’Brien was officially sworn in as CCC chair on Sept. 1, 2022.
“Treasurer Goldberg specifically appointed Chair O’Brien because of her leadership style and the imperative need to right the flailing CCC that had failed to meet its statutory requirements to promote equity in the cannabis industry and had been subject to negative news reports about its internal ineffectiveness and external overreach,” said the complaint.
O’Brien claims that when she started at the CCC, Collins rebuffed her attempts to schedule in-person meetings to get up to speed on the commission’s work. O’Brien said that she came into the commission while it was already mired in internal conflict. The commission began to regularly meet in executive sessions that were closed to the public in March 2022. These meetings involved mediation to determine the CCC’s structure of governance.
O’Brien also claims that the commission’s chief communications officer, Cedric Sinclair, bragged about pressuring previous Chair Steven Hoffman to resign after filing a complaint against him. Sinclair, who has been filling Collins’ role in monthly CCC meetings, did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
After reaching out to Sinclair, a spokesperson from the CCC provided a general statement on behalf of the agency.
“The Cannabis Control Commission cannot comment on any questions that pertain to pending litigation,” they said.
O’Brien claimed that her suspension was a “removal” for an indefinite duration, barring O’Brien from entering CCC offices or doing any work on behalf of the CCC. She also claims that her removal was done without a proper process.
“Rather than support Chair O’Brien in her mission, Treasurer Goldberg has willfully side-stepped both Massachusetts law and any process at all, let alone due process, by removing Chair O’Brien while deceptively attempting to label her action as merely a ‘suspension,'” said the complaint.
O’Brien also argued that Goldberg originally charged her with cleaning up the internal culture at the CCC, before punishing her for attempting to do just that.
“Treasurer Goldberg did so after appointing Chair O’Brien to be a change agent at the CCC, an agency which is widely recognized to be broken and failing to serve the public interest, and the interests of disadvantaged communities in particular, because of an entrenched bureaucracy and infighting,” said the lawsuit. “The very same entrenched bureaucracy successfully rid itself of the prior CCC Chair through the making of false allegations against him.”
Hoffman abruptly resigned in May 2022, a few months shy of the end of his term. Hoffman never publicly gave a reason for his premature departure, other than telling the Boston Globe that he felt that the commission had reached “a natural inflection point when the time is right for a transition in leadership.”
“At least one CCC employee, after her appointment, informed Chair O’Brien that she would be ‘Hoffman 2.0,'” O’Brien claimed in the complaint.
Hoffman did not respond to an emailed request for comment on O’Brien’s lawsuit.
Goldberg has yet to file a response to the lawsuit, but her office did agree to give O’Brien a formal hearing in regards to her suspension on Nov. 7. An Oct. 6 court hearing for an order to reinstate her as board chair was postponed in favor of the November administrative hearing.
