Politics
Cairo shows opening grocery stores alone doesn’t solve food deserts

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This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Capitol News Illinois. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published. More than 100 people congregated in the parking lot of Rise Community Market on its opening day a little over a year ago. As they listened to celebratory speeches, the audience erupted into joyful exclamations: “Mercy!” “Wonderful!” “Wow!” “All right!” Colorful homemade signs raised by local leaders beckoned the crowd to join in: “We!” “Are!” “No!” “Longer!” “A!” “Food!” “Desert!”For most American cities, the opening of a new grocery store barely warrants a mention. But in Cairo, the government seat of Illinois’ poorest county and the fastest-shrinking one in America, business openings are rare. And for residents who for years had to travel long distances to buy food, it was a magical moment.“Access to healthy foods and fresh produce is not just about groceries. It’s about justice,” declared Juliana Stratton, Illinois’ lieutenant governor, to the cheering crowd that gathered in Illinois’ southernmost city.Cairo, she said, had set the stage for what was to come as Illinois embarked on its new grocery store initiative — a $30 million endeavor to build and sustain new food businesses in distressed small towns and urban neighborhoods. Stratton had assisted Cairo leaders in securing state funds from another source because Rise came before the launch of the grocery program, and she told the crowd it would serve as a beacon: “I want you to know, Cairo, Illinois, this is only the beginning, and you are leading the way.”
Julia Rendleman
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ProPublica and Capitol News Illinois Clarissa Dossie, 32, checks out a customer using a gift certificate in November.
Within months, however, the store fell on hard times. Rise struggled to compete with national chains on pricing and then faced additional challenges when a walk-in cooler broke a few months later, making it impossible to keep perishables on the shelves between orders. Although sales were initially strong, they slumped as residents fell back into old shopping patterns, patronizing the two nearby Dollar General stores or traveling to Walmart and other supermarkets at least 30 miles outside of town. As fewer customers came in, the store had less money to restock its most popular items. Shelves grew emptier.Clarissa Dossie, a cashier at Rise since its opening, said that during the worst months, people would come in, look around and say, “Dang, where the groceries at?”By December, six months after it opened, Rise was in peril.
Julia Rendleman
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ProPublica and Capitol News IllinoisIn early February, shelves were nearly empty. Without enough revenue to stock the shelves, managers were in a tough spot.
Over the past decade, state and federal governments have invested millions of dollars in creating grocery stores in food deserts — defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as any low-income urban neighborhoods without a grocery store within a mile, and any rural communities without one within 10 miles. These programs continue to expand.Established in 2011 during Barack Obama’s presidency, the Healthy Food Financing Initiative marked the federal government’s first coordinated effort to tackle the grocery gap. Since then, Congress has allocated an average of $28 million annually across three federal agencies responsible for its administration. Then in 2021, the program received an unprecedented funding surge to $183 million, boosted by federal pandemic recovery funds to the USDA.In addition to Illinois, numerous states, including Pennsylvania, New York, California, Ohio, Minnesota and Kansas, have implemented programs of their own, as have several municipalities, including New Orleans and Houston.The concept appears straightforward: Use government funds to help build stores, shorten the trek for fresh food, and in the process, make people healthier and bolster the local economy. In distressed communities, grocery stores have been shown to anchor business development, help grow the tax base and even boost home values, according to one study of Pennsylvania’s program. The converse is also true: “Without the grocery store, communities just have a really hard time succeeding economically,” said Christopher Jones, a senior vice president with the National Grocers Association.But the way Rise Community Market has struggled in Cairo illustrates how these programs fall short. Because what happens after a store opens is just as important — and despite the up-front financial investments, that hasn’t been solved at all.When subsidies aren’t enoughMany stores that receive subsidies shutter their doors soon after opening or fail to open at all. Capitol News Illinois and ProPublica examined 24 stores across 18 states, each of them either newly established, preparing to open or less than five years old when they received funding through the federal USDA Healthy Food Financing Initiative in 2020 and 2021. As of June, five of these stores had already ceased operations; another six have yet to open, citing a variety of challenges including difficulties finding a suitable location and limited access to capital.Illinois’ record is similarly disappointing. In 2018, Illinois officials highlighted the opening of six grocery stores that had received startup funds over several years from a $13.5 million grocery initiative of former Gov. Pat Quinn’s. Four of them have closed.Despite the expansion of USDA’s program, the federal agency has not studied how long the grocery stores it helps to open actually stay in business or why some of them close. Illinois never did a comprehensive review of its prior program either but as part of its new effort has funded a study of what’s causing food deserts, including the challenges facing independent grocers.
Julia Rendleman
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ProPublica and Capitol News Illinois Cairo sits between the Ohio River, left, and the Mississippi, right, at the southernmost tip of Illinois.
Emerging stores struggle for many reasons. Food deserts are, by definition, areas with depressed economies and often declining populations, but certain problems repeatedly bubble to the top.“The main concern with them is prices,” said Dossie, explaining why some Cairo residents haven’t done much shopping at Rise. The 32-year-old mother of five was unemployed before she became one of the store’s first employees. She shops there to support Rise and because she doesn’t have a car, but she wishes it could offer discounts like chain grocers. “I know, me personally, I have a big family and I need to be able to get bulk for a cheaper amount.”Her concerns are backed up by an emerging body of academic research suggesting that the conventional wisdom about how to overcome food deserts — building stores in underserved areas — overlooks the fact that prices matter as much as proximity. For all the benefits the opening of a store can bring to a community, if it can’t compete on pricing, it will struggle to survive.However, it’s exceedingly difficult for independent stores to compete on pricing because they must pay more than national chains to stock their shelves. Although the price differences for shoppers may be only nominal for most individual items, they can add up on a full cart.Until 40 years ago, the federal government actively tried to help with this: Competition regulators rigorously monitored mergers and enforced the Robinson-Patman Act, a 1930s-era law intended to prevent suppliers from offering better pricing to big retailers than to independent stores. By the 1980s, however, some economists argued that allowing big retailers to expand and negotiate favorable deals would bring lower prices for all. The Robinson-Patman Act, and an underlying desire to protect small businesses, remained popular with the public, so Congress never moved to repeal it, but regulators increasingly stopped enforcing it. This era gave rise to a rash of consolidations and a huge building boom by the likes of Walmart and Kroger. And as the power of retail chains grew, more small businesses folded.A 2023 USDA report shows that four grocery chains now capture a third of U.S. food sales, marking a major shift in how people buy their food. Rural areas have even fewer choices. In more than 200 regional markets, most of them across the Midwest and South, Walmart and Sam’s Club claim at least 50% of grocery sales, according to an analysis by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, which advocates for reversing corporate concentration to strengthen communities. Walmart-owned stores claim 60% of grocery sales in the three-county market that includes Cairo.
Julia Rendleman
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ProPublica and Capitol News Illinois Theresa Delsoin, left, a member of the co-op-style grocery, checks out with store employee Gita Martin. Delsoin has changed her shopping habits to support the store.
Places like Cairo, population 1,600, have paid the price: Its residents have spent more money on gas and rides, or settled for less nutritious options at dollar stores. About 17% of Cairo families don’t have a car, according to USDA’s food atlas. The town saw little economic benefit from the estimated $6.4 million annually Cairo spent in recent years on groceries, most purchased out of state. (Cairo is a short drive from both Missouri and Kentucky.)Now, the pendulum appears to be swinging back amid the shock of rising grocery prices. In a 2021 speech, President Joe Biden declared, “We’re now 40 years into the experiment of letting giant corporations accumulate more and more power. … I believe the experiment failed.” Biden has appointed anti-monopoly advocates, including Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, who contend that lax enforcement has proven harmful to small businesses, workers, communities and consumers paying higher prices in places where most competitors have been driven out.Stacy Mitchell, co-executive director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, said government funding for grocery stores is important to overcoming high startup costs, but without broader solutions to keep these stores open, “we’re throwing money away.”“We have to level the playing field,” Mitchell said. “If we don’t have the enforcement of fair competition, these stores are going to be squeezed out the same way that many independent grocery stores have been squeezed out.”
Julia Rendleman
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ProPublica and Capitol News IllinoisThe 83-year-old Delsoin prepares salmon croquettes with groceries she purchased at Rise Community Market. She said the store “is important because it belongs to us.
“Lettuce, oh my goodness”It was the arrival of fresh produce that marked a turning point for Steven Tarver, a longtime resident of Cairo.“We started getting beautiful things — lettuce, oh my goodness,” said Tarver, a friendly community organizer with diamond-studded ears and a hint of a swagger, who helped lead efforts early on to culminate community support behind the idea of opening a co-op.“Can you imagine at home on a Tuesday, with your skillet going good and that ground beef getting all brown and then you skim all that and you put your McCormick’s in there. And then you got your cheese already sitting over there and you got some salsa and you look in the vegetable box and there’s no lettuce.“And you think, ‘Man, I can’t go around the corner. I gotta go to Walmart — 35 miles away.’”
Julia Rendleman
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ProPublica and Capitol News IllinoisRise board member Steven Tarver facilitates a community engagement forum on housing and other social issues at Cairo’s Junior/Senior High School in April.
Tarver’s obsession with the lettuce became an inside joke among his neighbors who joined him in developing the store. But for him, it was about way more than tacos. The lettuce symbolized a chance for better health in a county where premature deaths are far more common as in other parts of Illinois. And it served as a salve for the despair that had gripped the town for years.“Now,” he says, “I am lettuce full. I buy lettuce when I don’t need it. Because this has been a hot commodity in my world.”More than 3 million Illinoisans — more than a quarter of the state’s population — live in food deserts. People of color are far more likely to live far from a traditional grocery store — the result of complex and sometimes racist practices, including unfair lending and persistent financial neglect from both public and private sectors. That’s why some advocates resist the “food desert” phrase: They say the situation is not a naturally occurring phenomenon but the result of deliberate policies; they call it “food apartheid.”Many of those dynamics were at play in Cairo, positioned at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and, at one time, a thriving transportation hub. It drew people from across the region to its entertainment venues and retail shops, including dozens of food markets— one on nearly every corner.Yet the town’s fortunes dwindled as river ports were replaced by trains and then interstates elsewhere. The Civil Rights era inflicted particularly severe wounds upon Cairo’s Black community as white business owners, refusing integration, abandoned the town.Like much of rural America, Cairo continued to shrink. But it managed to hang on to a grocery store until 2015, when its last independent store, Wonder Market, closed its doors in the middle of town, not far from where Rise is today.
Julia Rendleman
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ProPublica and Capitol News IllinoisWork crews were invited to harvest what they could from the remains of Wonder Market, Cairo’s last independent grocery store, which closed in 2015, to be used in the new co-op grocery store. Because the store had limited startup funds, it relied on used and borrowed equipment and some donated labor.
Then, in the second half of the decade, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development stepped in and demolished several public housing complexes, displacing hundreds of people. Speaking to a congressional panel in 2017, then-HUD Secretary Ben Carson described the community as “dying.”The negativity infuriated people like Tarver. It also fueled them. They courted housing developers and prospective business owners to invest in the town. Some made commitments — one even posted a sign announcing plans for a new grocery store. But all the deals eventually fell through or were short-lived.When hope of a grocery store evaporated, U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth’s office reached out to Dollar General on behalf of Cairo officials in 2018 to request the addition of produce at its stores. A corporate spokesperson said that Dollar General informed Duckworth’s office at the time that it did not have plans to add produce to either store but would keep the request in mind for the future. Town officials said they didn’t hear anything more from Dollar General in the years that followed.Finally, in late 2021, a team of rural development experts from the University of Illinois Extension and Western Illinois University suggested they could build a cooperative grocery store, a local ownership model that some distressed towns are trying out.By then, it felt urgent. The town needed a lifeline.After 18 months of planning, in June 2023, the store opened — with balloons, signs and cheers. The team had raised $750,000 in private donations and government grants to support the store, including $186,000 in state funding from a program to help disadvantaged communities, funded by marijuana sales.For Tarver, it was also validation that their efforts had paid off and could again.“It means a lot because it was going to be able to show others that’s been talking and downplaying Cairo and saying that ‘we don’t have’ and ‘we can’t do’ that we can if we’re given the opportunity,” Tarver said. “Now, we could talk about housing, we could talk about a hospital, we could talk about other things and meet some voids.”The downturnThe frustrations started immediately.Just before the grand opening of Rise, the two Dollar Generals that had rebuffed requests to add fresh foods to their shelves reopened after renovations, stocked with expanded freezer and refrigerator sections. One of the stores even added an entire row of fresh produce.A Dollar General spokesperson said in a statement this week that the company made the decision to remodel its two Cairo stores in the fall of 2022 as part of an ongoing, nationwide store improvement program. “We were unaware of any planned grocery co-op when those decisions were made,” the company said.Robert Edwards, Rise’s manager, said over the last year he’s done his best to keep prices competitive. He even goes into Dollar General and the out-of-state Walmart people most frequent to check what competitors are offering. He works with a wholesaler out of Indiana that purchases in bulk for multiple independent stores, an attempt to leverage the lowest prices they can.But there are some deals that the store just can’t afford to match. “There are things I can go to Walmart and buy cheaper than I can get from my wholesaler,” Edwards said, though supplier contracts don’t allow him to do that.
Julia Rendleman
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ProPublica and Capitol News IllinoisRise manager Robert Edwards sits at the Rise cafe, which closed in October because of low sales; it later reopened as a deli, which costs less to run.
He also said some suppliers simply won’t mess with a small store. For months, Edwards watched in frustration from the parking lot as a Frito-Lay truck made deliveries at the Dollar Generals just to the north and south of Rise while it refused to stop at the co-op.He and others stress to residents that the spending at the co-op benefits the community and that the cost of gas to travel 30 miles makes up much of the difference in prices. But the reality is that people, especially large families, are continuing to leave town for most of their shopping.The store experienced other problems as well. Eager to fill a void in this one-restaurant town, the co-op board members opened an adjacent cafe that sold hot pizza, fried chicken and sides. But it didn’t bring in customers like they’d hoped and bled thousands of dollars instead, forcing its closure in October. It also drained what savings the store had.
Julia Rendleman
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ProPublica and Capitol News IllinoisEdwards closes up after receiving a weekly shipment of groceries.
Around the same time, the walk-in cooler that the store had purchased secondhand to save money broke, taking with it about $2,000 worth of meat, produce and dairy products it contained. Without the cooler, the store could keep only about 16 gallons of milk on its shelves — a major issue since milk is a key product that brings people into grocery stores.The store leadership started a GoFundMe, but it raised only about $1,600, a fraction of the $55,000 sought to help replace the cooler and other equipment as well as to restock the store.Rise was on the brink of closure as bills went unpaid and food orders were skipped.During a reporter’s visit in late December, there was very little fresh meat or produce on the shelves: a few pieces of chicken in the meat cabinet, a handful of brown bananas in the produce section, gallons of milk set to expire in the next day or two. And only a few heads of wilting lettuce. People began to lose confidence in the store, driving more customers away.Workers and community leaders pleaded with people to do what shopping they could there. Theresa Delsoin, an 83-year-old author, teacher and retired Peace Corps volunteer, wanted to set an example: She spent more than $500 at the store between Thanksgiving and Christmas.“I could go on Amazon and buy a jar of honey from anywhere in the world. But I don’t. Because I want to support our store,” she said as she prepared salmon croquettes and a few side dishes in her home from food purchased at Rise.Dossie, the clerk, said people told her she should start looking for a new job. She told them she wasn’t giving up and that they shouldn’t either: “I’m not jumping ship because we hit a rough patch.”The store tried to entice people in with coupons and special deals. It brought Santa in for the kids. But not enough people were filling up carts. Grocery stores bank on the holidays to carry them through the slower months that tend to follow. That clearly wasn’t going to happen at Rise.A few days before Christmas, Edwards sat in his office at the back of the store and wondered how he’d make payroll for his seven employees. In the end, he delayed his own paycheck so that others could receive theirs on time.
Julia Rendleman
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ProPublica and Capitol News Illinois A Dollar General at the edge of Cairo’s city limits began selling fresh fruits, vegetables and meats the same month Rise Community Market opened.
Crucial stores, hard answersState Rep. Mary Beth Canty, who lives near Chicago and sponsored the bill that became Illinois’ grocery initiative, has seen evidence that the investment might not be effective on its own. Last year, to research solutions to food deserts, Canty visited a small supermarket in the tiny town of Winchester, about 50 miles west of the state capital in Springfield, that had been hailed as a success story.John Paul Coonrod, the store’s board president and chair, said he told Canty during her visit that the state’s initiative amounted to a “drop in the bucket” for what small grocers need to survive.Great Scott! Community Market did well at first, but it later lost customers to a Walmart and then a new Dollar General that included a grocery market. It was hard to compete, and the store closed just a few months after Canty’s visit — five years after it opened.
Julia Rendleman
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ProPublica and Capitol News Illinois Some Cairo residents opt for the one-hour round-trip drive to a Walmart Supercenter in Sikeston, Missouri.
John Shadowens, an economic development educator at the University of Illinois Extension, is part of the state-funded group surveying grocery stores across Illinois to identify their main obstacles to staying in business. At seven forums in recent months, Shadowens heard store owners voice consistent concerns about increasing costs of supplies, utilities and labor due to Illinois’ rising minimum wage. However, their primary obstacle, he noted, is their inability to procure food at prices that are competitive enough to attract the customers they need to stay in business.There aren’t any easy answers. The renewed push for more aggressive antitrust action on grocery pricing remains a contentious proposal. And even if it’s successful, it’s not a fast-acting solution.A USDA Rural Development spokesperson said the Healthy Food Financing Initiative is helping; in addition to new stores, it has funded farmers markets, delivery services and community groups. For instance, the program recently awarded $1 million to a partnership in southern Illinois working to improve grocery stores’ access to low-cost loans.Illinois’ new program has partnered with university experts to assist startups and focuses solely on small, independent stores, unlike the previous one, which also supported the development of discount chain Save A Lot stores, an Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity spokesperson said.And for the first time, government-owned stores in Illinois are eligible to apply for state aid. Chicago is the first major city in the nation to consider this option, though underwriting losses with taxpayer funds is controversial.Reflecting on discussions with grocery store operators during the research team’s travels to various locations across Illinois, Shadowens said he remains hopeful, though he finds it increasingly hard to do so: “We have hours behind the windshield to talk about this: Are we truly helping, or are we providing an autopsy on a patient that’s just not dead yet?”For now, Cairo’s store is hanging on. In June, the festive balloon arch that punctuated the store’s opening reappeared to mark its one-year anniversary. Edwards, the store manager, said at the member meeting that followed that Rise had received the second half of a philanthropic grant earlier this year, allowing the store to pay off debt, resume regular food shipments and replenish its shelves.There have been other changes as well. For instance, to replace the shuttered cafe, which required a cook and clerk, the store opened a made-to-order deli at the beginning of the year, which has been more popular among the lunchtime crowd and requires only one employee. In March, after months of waiting, the store was approved to accept government food benefits given to low-income pregnant women and families with young children, commonly known as WIC, which has boosted sales by more than $1,500 monthly.
Julia Rendleman
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ProPublica and Capitol News IllinoisEdwards talks to co-op members at a meeting during the one-year anniversary celebration of the grocery store in June. “I work for you. Each and every one of you are an owner,” he said, encouraging the group to provide feedback on what he keeps in stock.
But sales remain well below where they need to be for the store’s long-term sustainability. It takes about $70,000 a month in sales to break even; Rise has averaged less than half of that in the first six months of this year. When you add up the money spent by Cairo citizens everywhere they shop, they’re spending an estimated $530,000 monthly on groceries, based on sales data for recent years. (This estimate is derived from overall sales data in a three-county region, adjusted for Cairo.) That means that they are spending only about 5% at Rise, when they’d need to spend at least 13%.Edwards said he’s hopeful the store can reach that point within another year because he understands its importance goes beyond the critical food it provides. It’s also a job and economy creator, a hub of community life and a beacon of hope. It’s crucial to the identity of a place teetering on the brink. In the first few months it was open, Rise hosted a wedding reception, food tasting event, health care expo, a pumpkin carving contest and, for several Wednesdays, a mobile food pantry organized by a local nonprofit. He gave away just-expired food to people stretched out in a line in the store’s parking lot.“Kroger would never let a food pantry set out in their parking lot giving out free food because it’s going to hurt their sales. It did hurt sales on those days,” Edwards said. “But we’re here to serve the community.”
Julia Rendleman
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ProPublica and Capitol News IllinoisCharmaine Crismon, an employee at Rise Community Market, delivers milk to a mobile food pantry operating from a van in the store’s parking lot in September. Arrowleaf, a local nonprofit, used the parking lot while its nearby food pantry underwent renovations.
Julia Rendleman
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ProPublica and Capitol News Illinois Bre’Anna Puckett and her children attend the one-year anniversary celebration for Rise Community Market on June 17.
Julia Rendleman
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ProPublica and Capitol News IllinoisRise Community Market board member Steven Tarver does some dinnertime shopping in December.
A portion of the reporting in Alexander County is supported by funding from the Pulitzer Center. Alex Abbeduto, formerly of Capitol News Illinois, contributed reporting. Photo editing by Peter DiCampo.
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Poll: Support for Missouri abortion rights amendment growing

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A proposed constitutional amendment legalizing abortion in Missouri received support from more than half of respondents in a new poll from St. Louis University and YouGov.That’s a boost from a poll earlier this year, which could mean what’s known as Amendment 3 is in a solid position to pass in November.SLU/YouGov’s poll of 900 likely Missouri voters from Aug. 8-16 found that 52% of respondents would vote for Amendment 3, which would place constitutional protections for abortion up to fetal viability. Thirty-four percent would vote against the measure, while 14% aren’t sure.By comparison, the SLU/YouGov poll from February found that 44% of voters would back the abortion legalization amendment.St. Louis University political science professor Steven Rogers said 32% of Republicans and 53% of independents would vote for the amendment. That’s in addition to nearly 80% of Democratic respondents who would approve the measure. In the previous poll, 24% of Republicans supported the amendment.Rogers noted that neither Amendment 3 nor a separate ballot item raising the state’s minimum wage is helping Democratic candidates. GOP contenders for U.S. Senate, governor, lieutenant governor, treasurer and secretary of state all hold comfortable leads.“We are seeing this kind of crossover voting, a little bit, where there are voters who are basically saying, ‘I am going to the polls and I’m going to support a Republican candidate, but I’m also going to go to the polls and then I’m also going to try to expand abortion access and then raise the minimum wage,’” Rogers said.Republican gubernatorial nominee Mike Kehoe has a 51%-41% lead over Democrat Crystal Quade. And U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley is leading Democrat Lucas Kunce by 53% to 42%. Some GOP candidates for attorney general, secretary of state and treasurer have even larger leads over their Democratic rivals.
Brian Munoz
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St. Louis Public RadioHundreds of demonstrators pack into a parking lot at Planned Parenthood of St. Louis and Southwest Missouri on June 24, 2022, during a demonstration following the Supreme Court’s reversal of a case that guaranteed the constitutional right to an abortion.
One of the biggest challenges for foes of Amendment 3 could be financial.Typically, Missouri ballot initiatives with well-funded and well-organized campaigns have a better chance of passing — especially if the opposition is underfunded and disorganized. Since the end of July, the campaign committee formed to pass Amendment 3 received more than $3 million in donations of $5,000 or more.That money could be used for television advertisements to improve the proposal’s standing further, Rogers said, as well as point out that Missouri’s current abortion ban doesn’t allow the procedure in the case of rape or incest.“Meanwhile, the anti side won’t have those resources to kind of try to make that counter argument as strongly, and they don’t have public opinion as strongly on their side,” Rogers said.There is precedent of a well-funded initiative almost failing due to opposition from socially conservative voters.In 2006, a measure providing constitutional protections for embryonic stem cell research nearly failed — even though a campaign committee aimed at passing it had a commanding financial advantage.Former state Sen. Bob Onder was part of the opposition campaign to that measure. He said earlier this month it is possible to create a similar dynamic in 2024 against Amendment 3, if social conservatives who oppose abortion rights can band together.“This is not about reproductive rights or care for miscarriages or IVF or anything else,” said Onder, the GOP nominee for Missouri’s 3rd Congressional District seat. “Missourians will learn that out-of-state special interests and dark money from out of state is lying to them and they will reject this amendment.”Quade said earlier this month that Missourians of all political ideologies are ready to roll back the state’s abortion ban.“Regardless of political party, we hear from folks who are tired of politicians being in their doctor’s offices,” Quade said. “They want politicians to mind their own business. So this is going to excite folks all across the political spectrum.”
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Democrat Mark Osmack makes his case for Missouri treasurer

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Mark Osmack has been out of the electoral fray for awhile, but he never completely abandoned his passion for Missouri politics.Osmack, a Valley Park native and U.S. Army veteran, previously ran for Missouri’s 2nd Congressional District seat and for state Senate. Now he’s the Democratic nominee for state treasurer after receiving a phone call from Missouri Democratic Party Chairman Russ Carnahan asking him to run.“There’s a lot of decision making and processing and evaluation that goes into it, which is something I am very passionate and interested in,” Osmack said this week on an episode of Politically Speaking.Osmack is squaring off against state Treasurer Vivek Malek, who was able to easily win a crowded GOP primary against several veteran lawmakers including House Budget Chairman Cody Smith and state Sen. Andrew Koenig.While Malek was able to attract big donations to his political action committee and pour his own money into the campaign, Osmack isn’t worried that he won’t be able to compete in November. Since Malek was appointed to his post, Osmack contends he hasn’t proven that he’s a formidable opponent in a general election.“His actions and his decision making so far in his roughly two year tenure in that office have been questionable,” Osmack said.Among other things, Osmack was critical of Malek for placing unclaimed property notices on video gaming machines which are usually found in gas stations or convenience stores. The legality of the machines has been questioned for some time.As Malek explained on his own episode of Politically Speaking, he wanted to make sure the unclaimed property program was as widely advertised as possible. But he acknowledged it was a mistake to put the decals close to the machines and ultimately decided to remove them.Osmack said: “This doesn’t even pass the common sense sniff test of, ‘Hey, should I put state stickers claiming you might have a billion dollars on a gambling machine that is not registered with the state of Missouri?’ If we’re gonna give kudos for him acknowledging the wrong thing, it never should have been done in the first place.”Osmack’s platform includes supporting programs providing school meals using Missouri agriculture products and making child care more accessible for the working class.He said the fact that Missouri has such a large surplus shows that it’s possible to create programs to make child care within reach for parents.“It is quite audacious for [Republicans] to brag about $8 billion, with a B, dollars in state surplus, while we offer next to no social services to include pre-K, daycare, or child care,” Osmack said.Here’s are some other topics Osmack discussed on the show:How he would handle managing the state’s pension systems and approving low-income housing tax credits. The state treasurer’s office is on boards overseeing both of those programs.Malek’s decision to cut off investments from Chinese companies. Osmack said that Missouri needs to be cautious about abandoning China as a business partner, especially since they’re a major consumer of the state’s agriculture products. “There’s a way to make this work where we are not supporting communist nations to the detriment of the United States or our allies, while also maintaining strong economic ties that benefit Missouri farmers,” he said.What it was like to witness the skirmish at the Missouri State Fair between U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley and Democratic challenger Lucas Kunce.Whether Kunce can get the support of influential groups like the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which often channels money and staff to states with competitive Senate elections.
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As Illinois receives praise for its cannabis equity efforts, stakeholders work on system’s flaws

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Medical marijuana patients can now purchase cannabis grown by small businesses as part of their allotment, Illinois’ top cannabis regulator said, but smaller, newly licensed cannabis growers are still seeking greater access to the state’s medical marijuana customers.Illinois legalized medicinal marijuana beginning in 2014, then legalized it for recreational use in 2020. While the 2020 law legalized cannabis use for any adult age 21 or older, it did not expand licensing for medical dispensaries.Patients can purchase marijuana as part of the medical cannabis program at dual-purpose dispensaries, which are licensed to serve both medical and recreational customers. But dual-purpose dispensaries are greatly outnumbered by dispensaries only licensed to sell recreationally, and there are no medical-only dispensaries in the state.As another part of the adult-use legalization law, lawmakers created a “craft grow” license category that was designed to give more opportunities to Illinoisans hoping to legally grow and sell marijuana. The smaller-scale grow operations were part of the 2020 law’s efforts to diversify the cannabis industry in Illinois.Prior to that, all cultivation centers in Illinois were large-scale operations dominated by large multi-state operators. The existing cultivators, mostly in operation since 2014, were allowed to grow recreational cannabis beginning in 2019.Until recently, dual-purpose dispensaries have been unsure as to whether craft-grown products, made by social equity licensees — those who have lived in a disproportionately impacted area or have been historically impacted by the war on drugs — can be sold medicinally as part of a patient’s medical allotment.Erin Johnson, the state’s cannabis regulation oversight officer, told Capitol News Illinois last month that her office has “been telling dispensaries, as they have been asking us” they can now sell craft-grown products to medical patients.“There was just a track and trace issue on our end, but never anything statutorily,” she said.
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Capitol News IllinoisThe graphic shows how cannabis grown in Illinois gets from cultivation centers to customers.
No notice has been posted, but Johnson’s verbal guidance comes almost two years after the first craft grow business went online in Illinois.It allows roughly 150,000 medical patients, who dispensary owners say are the most consistent purchasers of marijuana, to buy products made by social equity businesses without paying recreational taxes. However — even as more dispensaries open — the number available to medical patients has not increased since 2018, something the Cannabis Regulation Oversight Office “desperately” wants to see changed. Johnson said Illinois is a limited license state, meaning “there are caps on everything” to help control the relatively new market.Berwyn Thompkins, who operates two cannabis businesses, said the rules limited options for patients and small businesses.“It’s about access,” Thompkins said. “Why wouldn’t we want all the patients — which the (adult-use) program was initially built around — why wouldn’t we want them to have access? They should have access to any dispensary.”Customers with a medical marijuana card pay a 1% tax on all marijuana products, whereas recreational customers pay retail taxes between roughly 20 and 40% on a given cannabis product, when accounting for local taxes.While Illinois has received praise for its equity-focused cannabis law, including through an independent study that showed more people of color own cannabis licenses than in any other state, some industry operators say they’ve experienced many unnecessary hurdles getting their businesses up and running.The state, in fact, announced last month that it had opened its 100th social equity dispensary.But Steve Olson, purchasing manager at a pair of dispensaries (including one dual-purpose dispensary) near Rockford, said small specialty license holders have been left in the lurch since the first craft grower opened in October 2022.“You would think that this would be something they’re (the government) trying to help out these social equity companies with, but they’re putting handcuffs on them in so many different spots,” he said. “One of them being this medical thing.”Olson said he contacted state agencies, including the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, months ago about whether craft products can be sold to medical patients at their retail tax rate, but only heard one response: “They all say it was an oversight.”This potentially hurt social equity companies because they sell wholesale to dispensaries and may have been missing out on a consistent customer base through those medical dispensaries.Olson said the state’s attempts to provide licensees with a path to a successful business over the years, such as with corrective lotteries that granted more social equity licenses, have come up short.“It’s like they almost set up the social equity thing to fail so the big guys could come in and swoop up all these licenses,” Olson said. “I hate to feel like that but, if you look at it, it’s pretty black and white.”Olson said craft companies benefit from any type of retail sale.“If we sell it to medical patients or not, it’s a matter of, ‘Are we collecting the proper taxes?’ That’s all it is,” he said.State revenue from cannabis taxes, licensing costs and other fees goes into the Cannabis Regulation Fund, which is used to fund a host of programs, including cannabis offense expungement, the general revenue fund, and the R3 campaign aiming to uplift disinvested communities.For fiscal year 2024, nearly $256 million was paid out from Cannabis Regulation Fund for related initiatives, which includes almost $89 million transferred to the state’s general revenue fund and more than $20 million distributed to local governments, according to the Illinois Department of Revenue.Medical access still limitedThe state’s 55 medical dispensaries that predate the 2020 legalization law, mostly owned by publicly traded multistate operators that had been operating in Illinois since 2014 under the state’s medical marijuana program, were automatically granted a right to licenses to sell recreationally in January 2020. That gave them a dual-purpose license that no new entrants into the market can receive under current law.Since expanding their clientele in 2020, Illinois dispensaries have sold more than $6 billion worth of cannabis products through recreational transactions alone.Nearly two-thirds of dispensaries licensed to sell to medical patients are in the northeast counties of Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake and Will. Dual-purpose dispensaries only represent about 20 percent of the state’s dispensaries.While the state began offering recreational dispensary licenses since the adult-use legalization law passed, it has not granted a new medical dispensary license since 2018. That has allowed the established players to continue to corner the market on the state’s nearly 150,000 medical marijuana patients.But social equity licensees and advocates say there are more ways to level the playing field, including expanding access to medical sales.Johnson, who became the state’s top cannabis regulator in late 2022, expressed hope for movement during the fall veto session on House Bill 2911, which would expand medical access to all Illinois dispensaries.“We would like every single dispensary in Illinois to be able to serve medical patients,” Johnson said. “It’s something that medical patients have been asking for, for years.”Johnson said the bill would benefit patients and small businesses.“It’s something we desperately want to happen as a state system, because we want to make sure that medical patients are able to easily access what they need,” she said. “We also think it’s good for our social equity dispensaries, as they’re opening, to be able to serve medical patients.”Rep. Bob Morgan, D-Deerfield, who was the first statewide project coordinator for Illinois’ medical cannabis program prior to joining the legislature, wrote in an email to Capitol News Illinois that the state needs to be doing more for its patients.“Illinois is failing the state’s 150,000 medical cannabis patients with debilitating conditions. Too many are still denied the patient protections they deserve, including access to their medicine,” Morgan wrote, adding he would continue to work with stakeholders on further legislation.Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government. It is distributed to hundreds of newspapers, radio and TV stations statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, along with major contributions from the Illinois Broadcasters Foundation and Southern Illinois Editorial Association.
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