Pubdate: Sat, 26 Apr 2014
Source: Seattle Times (WA)
Copyright: 2014 The Seattle Times Company
Contact:  http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/409
Author: Gene Johnson, The Associated Press
Page: B1

SOME SAY STATE'S POT LOTTERY PROBLEMATIC, NOT PLAYING FAIR

Cite Mistaken Decisions, Flawed Appeal Process

Licensing Officials Defend Their Methods

(AP) - Andrew Elliott is hoping to score one of the golden tickets of
Washington's legal-marijuana industry: a license to sell pot, granted
in part in a series of high-tech lotteries held this week.

He almost didn't get a shot. Just days before the lotteries began, the
state's Liquor Control Board informed him he had been disqualified
because his proposed pot shop in Seattle's Queen Anne neighborhood was
too close to an area frequented by children - a game arcade, which, it
turns out, doesn't exist.

Thanks to quick work by his lawyer, Stephanie Boehl, the board agreed
at the last minute to put Elliott back in the Seattle lottery. But
some others disqualified haven't been so lucky.

Interviews with applicants and their attorneys detail a number of
reported problems, from one rejection based on a typo to potential
issues with the state's software to technicalities that torpedoed what
might otherwise have been strong applications.

Most troubling, they say, is that some people weren't informed until
this week after the lotteries had started that they'd been
disqualified, leaving them no meaningful way to appeal what might have
been mistaken decisions by the board.

A Cowlitz County Superior Court judge on Thursday halted the lottery
for marijuana retail licenses in Longview until a hearing set for May
7. An applicant there, attorney Liz Hallock, sought the order, arguing
that the board's reason for disqualifying one of her applications was
vague.

In an interview Friday, Alan Rathbun, the board's licensing director,
and Becky Smith, its marijuana program manager, said they were
confident the board had treated all applicants fairly, and that they
had even erred on the side of including people in the lottery.

Three people, including Elliott, who quickly pointed out errors in the
board's decision to reject them were reinstated in time for the
lottery, they noted. They said the board so far has received fewer
than 10 requests for an appeal of lottery rejections.

Rathbun said there would be an appeal process, but he and Smith
acknowledged they don't know what the remedy would be for applicants
who win their appeals. By that point, the lottery will have taken
place without them.

"We couldn't delay the lottery to wait for all potential appeals to
come through," Rathbun said.

The board is pushing to have pot shops open by early summer. It is
initially limiting the number of stores statewide to 334, but it
received more than 2,100 applications for licenses.

It hired Washington State University to hold lotteries this week, with
randomly generated numbers assigned to applicants, for 78 cities and
counties where there were more applicants than there will be licenses
awarded.

Those who score a low number in the lottery get first crack at being
approved for a license.

Beginning in late February, applicants had a month to submit five
pieces of information, including their criminal history and a lease or
signed "letter of intent" from a landlord indicating they had a valid
location for a pot shop, to be cleared for the lottery.

For weeks, the board has warned of a high rate of failure.

Many of those who completed their applications still faced
disqualification if their proposed location was within 1,000 feet of a
school, day care, game arcade or other venue frequented by children,
or if their criminal history was problematic.

Ultimately, 1,170 qualified for the lottery. The fact that so many did
suggests the lottery is working, board officials said.

An attorney who represents marijuana businesses, Hilary Bricken, said
one client learned he was disqualified this week because the liquor
board had made a typo in the address of his proposed store, putting it
too close to a school.

Another lawyer, Rachel Kurtz, said one of her clients had two
applications withdrawn: One was supposedly too close to a school, the
other to a day care. But Kurtz said she'd been unable to find any
nearby schools or day cares.

Several of those rejected said they still don't understand why they
were, and they wished the board had given them a chance to correct
shortcomings.

Derek Anderson lost out on three well-financed applications - in
Bellevue, Tacoma and Marysville - because he didn't realize the
letters of intent he had received from a commercial real-estate firm
weren't signed.

"All they had to do was say, 'Hey, Derek, did you realize these
letters aren't signed?' " he said.

But Rathbun said there was no way the board could review all
applications as they were submitted, so the fair thing was not to
review any until the application window had closed. By then it was too
late for any fixes, and it was the responsibility of the applicant to
get their documents in order.

Hallock, who obtained the court order in Longview, said she suspected
her application was denied because the board might not have been using
the most up-to-date software, and thus might not have been able to
view all the documents she submitted.

Pete O'Neil, who runs a medical-marijuana shop in Seattle, was told
two of his three retail applications had been denied because in the
computer system the state used to accept applications, he left some
fields blank. But screen shots of his application proved otherwise,
and the board put him back in the lottery this week after his lawyer
threatened to go to court.

Robert Flatt had no such success overcoming computer issues for the
retail lottery in Vancouver. An investigator with the board emailed
him to say she could see the documents he uploaded, but that he hadn't
officially submitted them.

Flatt said he still doesn't understand how the board received his
documents if he didn't submit them.

"I'm not some monkey who can't read a document and send it in," he
said.
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