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Missouri marijuana expungements drag on past deadline

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IRONTON — Sammye White balanced carefully on a stepladder as she pulled a hefty box marked “1993” off the top shelf.White, the elected circuit clerk for Iron County in southeast Missouri, was searching for an old marijuana case.The small storage room near her office is packed with faded ledgers indexing criminal cases by year, along with the cardboard boxes containing the case files.When White learned in November 2022 that her team had one year to review every marijuana case in the county — going back to at least the 1970s — to determine it needed to be expunged under a new state cannabis law, she slightly panicked.Aside from the work, her only two clerks were both about to retire.“I thought, ‘How in the world are we going to accomplish this?’” White remembers.Thankfully one of the clerks, Denise Anderson, agreed “out of the goodness of her heart,” White said, to continue on part-time to help get through the list of potential eligible cases.It’s a tedious process, she said, that took Anderson more than a year to review about 500 cases, leading to about 100 expungements.Circuit clerks across the state are going through the same balancing act and hurricane of work as White.Under the 2022 constitution amendment that legalized marijuana, courts were required to complete misdemeanors by last June and felonies by last December. Those deadlines came and went, and many counties are still months or more away from completing the task.While clerks were given lists from the Office of State Administrator and Highway Patrol for digital records that might qualify, it was just a starting point.The real tedious work is still ahead for many of them — going through the paper records. For these records, court clerks have to read summaries for every single criminal record. There’s no way to run a report to search certain criminal codes.Paper files largely end in the early 2000s, and the first marijuana-related drug statutes are from 1971, according to information the state administrator provided to court clerks.In Iron County, White is on the 1993 files.As courts statewide rushed to meet the constitutional deadlines, establishing a systematic method to track their work fell by the wayside for many of them.Now it’s hard to say how many cases have been reviewed — and impossible to say how many more are left to go, court officials said.The Independent requested data for every county on how many cases they reviewed and how many were expunged. According to numbers compiled by the Missouri Supreme Court, about 123,000 marijuana cases have been expunged as of mid-May.That number is the easiest to count because expungement orders are approved by a judge and processed the same way statewide.The mystery is how many cases clerks have looked through. The Supreme Court estimates that about 273,000 cases have been reviewed, which would mean courts are expunging 45% of the cases they reviewed.But this estimate does not include the paper records.Aside from this, spokeswoman Beth Riggert for the Missouri Supreme Court said the clerks’ daily work continues with more than 1.38 million new case filings.“As the chief justice has said consistently, the front-line workers are the heroes of our courts,” Riggert said. “They deserve our ongoing gratitude for everything they do to serve their local communities.”Counting the paper recordsLike White, Nodaway County Circuit Clerk Elaine Wilson had no idea how her team of three clerks was going to complete all the marijuana expungements in general — but particularly in a rush.Wilson said she was fortunate that one of her clerks, Melissa Kohlleppel, volunteered to take on the project.“She just dived right in it,” Wilson said. “I didn’t have to ask. She just took it all on herself and just did it.”
For Wilson, each step of the process is important, she said, and she’d only trust an experienced clerk to do it.Kohlleppel said she’s gone through the three different lists of potential digital files, and now she’s looking through all the paper records. She hopes to be done by the end of the year.“It’s been awful,” she said. “I just don’t think they realized what was going into this whenever they passed it,” referring to the tight deadline.According to the state numbers, Nodaway County has expunged 100% of the 535 cases reviewed.But that’s not accurate, Kohlleppel said. She didn’t realize there’s a special code for the cases she reviewed but didn’t expunge.After the constitutional amendment was approved by voters in November 2022, a state court committee quickly came up with a code for “reviewed but deemed ineligible” for clerks to input in the system.Problem is, some circuit courts didn’t know the code existed — and still don’t. The only way the Supreme Court can track how many cases have been reviewed is by running a report on this code.The code was a small piece in a mountain of information clerks had to quickly digest in webinars and onlines resources that court officials rushed to get out in December 2022.White kept a binder of all that information, and it’s at least 200 pages.“It was an incredible undertaking for court staff to implement in a short amount of time,” Riggert said, “all while ensuring the ordinary business of the courts continued.”And even with the code, that report won’t include the number of paper records courts have reviewed. Clerks must create a digital “shell case” to mark that a paper case is expunged, but state officials are not requiring this for cases that are reviewed but not expunged.Riggert said state officials appreciate how hard the courts are working on the expungements and did not want to give clerks additional “unnecessary duties.”“The number of cases expunged is likely to be only a fraction of the total cases reviewed,” Riggert said. “…we have no centralized mechanism for tracking the thousands of non-electronic cases our local courts are reviewing.”The state clerk told lawmakers in January that she estimated about 10% of the cases the clerks review are eligible for expungement.Yet according to the data, the average is about 45%.In 26 out or 115 counties, nearly every record — 80% or more — that clerks reviewed resulted in an expungement, according to the state’s numbers. Only five counties were 15% or less.

Rebecca Rivas

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Missouri Independent Iron County Circuit Clerk Sammye White searches for marijuana cases in the office storage room in Ironton.

‘Many unknowns’In St. Louis city, archived cases are stored in the old Globe Democrat building on Tucker Boulevard several blocks north of the court.“For the ones at the Globe, our staffers have been retrieving them by van, bringing them back to the courthouse where clerks go through them by hand,” said Joel Currier, spokesman for the 22nd Circuit Court.The court has relied on state “special assistance funding” to hire part-time clerks, many of them former retired court clerks with experience, to work on these expungements, he said.These funds come from the revenues of recreational marijuana sales.To expunge a case, court clerks write an order for a judge. After approval, clerks email all law enforcement agencies to instruct them to clear the case from their records. Then, they mail the person whose case was expunged.The most challenging ones are where it’s not the only charge in the case — clerks have to redact only the marijuana charge information from the records.Christian County Circuit Clerk Barb Stillings has a leg up compared to other courts who are going through paper records. About 12 years ago, Stillings applied for special assistance funding from the state to digitize their paper files.On the plus side, it means her team doesn’t have to move around heavy boxes. Sadly, Stillings didn’t have enough money to make the records searchable by criminal charge. So her team still has to go through every single record to check for marijuana offenses.Her team printed the case indexes on 25,000 cases going back to the 1970s, and like St. Louis, she has a team of part-time workers looking through those summaries the special funds are paying for.When the funds became available in the fall of 2023, Christian County asked for one of the higher amounts, about $380,000, to pay for overtime and part time employees to work on the expungements. Stillings ended up only using $23,000 of that.“Just because I’ve asked for all this money, do I have enough people to work on it?” Stillings told The Independent in February. “It’s so many unknowns.”She understands why some other counties used very little of the funds or didn’t ask for any at all.“Some counties didn’t have anybody who could come work part time, or staff that wanted to work overtime,” she said.Iron County requested $22,500 but spent less than $4,000. That number will definitely increase in the coming months, White said.When Iron County made it through all the digital records this spring, White had a short-lived moment of relief. Recently, White found another substantial report of digital cases she didn’t know was available to her.“I almost feel like we’re starting over again,” she said. “But it is what it is, and we will work on it as hard as we can.”This story was originally published by the Missouri Independent.

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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.

Dilpreet Raju

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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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