The Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission is once again dealing with a controversy of its own making.
Multiple sources, including AMCC Chairman Sam Blakemore, told APR over the past three days that Executive Director John McMillan planned to step down at the commission’s October 29 meeting. McMillan has led the agency since its creation more than five years ago.
Blakemore and others said commissioners were selecting McMillan’s replacement, at least on an interim basis, and had identified the commission’s legal counsel, Justin Aday, as a likely candidate.
But in a phone interview Monday morning, McMillan told APR he had no plans to step down.
“Not me,” McMillan said when asked whether he planned to retire later this month. “There is still a lot of work to be done.”
When told that several people said he had told them he planned to retire, McMillan said, “You can let them know that you heard it straight from the horse’s mouth.”
Blakemore said that’s exactly where he heard the news.
“That’s what he told me,” Blakemore said when asked whether McMillan planned to retire.
Asked whether McMillan said when he would step down, Blakemore said, “He told me it was going to be at the October 29 meeting (of the AMCC).”
Is McMillan stepping down? Will Aday become executive director? Will the commission ever award integrated medical cannabis licenses?
Who knows?
If this is the end of McMillan’s tenure, the confusion would be a fitting conclusion. His time at the commission has been filled with snafus, questionable decisions, apparent corruption and bewildering stubbornness. Now comes more uncertainty at the worst possible time.
The AMCC is awaiting a recommendation from an administrative law judge who presided over a contested case hearing involving companies seeking one of five integrated licenses. That recommendation should be the next-to-last step, followed by the awarding of licenses, in a painfully slow, inept process that has stretched on for more than five years.
During that time, the AMCC has awarded licenses three times, only to rescind them each time after courts found that it had violated state law. Commission officials, including McMillan, have repeatedly blamed the litigation on “disgruntled failed applicants.” But each time, a judge, and sometimes multiple judges, agreed that the commission had broken the law.
Those violations involved the Alabama Administrative Procedure Act, the Alabama Open Meetings Act and the laws the Legislature established to govern licensing, among others.
The controversies appear far from over.
After the commission finally held a contested case hearing, which Alabama law requires when the state awards a limited number of licenses to competing applicants, sources told APR that commissioners were unsure whether they would follow the judge’s recommendations. They could instead reject those recommendations and award licenses as they see fit.
Alabama law allows that, but departing from the judge’s recommendations could undermine the process and invite more legal challenges.
Asked whether he thought commissioners would follow the recommendations, Blakemore was unsure.
“I would say that I think that’s the way we should go, because if you look at every judge’s ruling since we started this, we’ve always followed them,” Blakemore said. “I would hope that’s what would happen, but I’m only one person. And I expect that there are going to be disagreements and arguments. We’ve already had some just in discussing what (the ALJ recommendations) will be.”
Rejecting the recommendations could create another disaster for the AMCC, delaying licensing for months or years. It could also revive allegations that the commission favored certain integrated license applicants.
Those allegations began early in the licensing process, when the commission opened its application portal and applied different rules to different applicants.
The most controversial discrepancy involved a file size limit. Some applicants received a workaround that allowed them to submit longer, more detailed applications. Others repeatedly complained about the limit but were never told they could bypass it. Even after the workarounds became public, the commission’s legal counsel refused to offer other applicants the same opportunity.
During one of the many court hearings, Aday admitted under oath that he had allowed certain applicants to bypass the file size limit by submitting applications on thumb drives. Court proceedings also revealed that he had kept the portal open past the deadline for some applicants but not others.
Attorneys also accused Aday of being untruthful during his testimony. That allegation has neither been proven nor investigated.
Those actions and other problems helped invalidate the license awards the commission made in June 2023. Two sources close to the commission said those issues and “so many other things along the way” would make Aday’s selection as even interim executive director a problem.
Blakemore said Aday was one option. Later in the discussion, he said forming a transition committee to select the next executive director would likely be the better approach.
All of that depends on whether McMillan steps aside.
And whether the AMCC ever gets out of its own way.
