On December 27 the Globe’s Stephanie Ebbert wrote a fascinating piece about dark money practitioner Eugene McCain’s conversion from front for suspect gambling interests to upright small town weed dealer. What could go wrong, right Holyoke and Lee?
To boil down Ms. Ebbert’s story, McCain is seeking pot licenses to operate in Lee and Holyoke from the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission, and has received local permits. But … uh … the state authorities can consider piddling details like honesty, character, and criminal connections, and these are the points on which the McCain proposals may falter.
McCain was a dark money beard in 2016 for a gambling ballot question because the true interests had to remain hidden. Offshore money and corruption and past criminal issues, you know. Stuff happens. The Office of Campaign and Political Finance forced McCain’s committee to disclose its true contributors, pay a hefty fine, and disband. It turns out that there was shaky offshore funding and the OCPF disclosures never got to the real funder, but Ms. Ebbert does. It was Shawn Scott, who has good reasons to remain hidden from state regulators. Among the reasons are that Scott has been denied a license to operate a gambling facility in Maine due to “a history of lawsuits, financial mismanagement, and a partner who had a criminal background. But McCain denied those men were involved until days before the election.”
Again, stuff happens. But Scott was back at it again in Maine in 2017 with another gambling scam. He was trying to hide behind his sister Lisa Scott in a bid to pass a ballot measure allowing a new gambling facility in York County. Scott used his sister and several corporate entities, which also were contributors to McCain’s efforts to place a slot parlor in Revere. After an investigation by the Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices of the State of Maine, guess what? State record fines were issued against the entities involved in Scott’s scheme. The Commission found that “The harm to the public during 2016 and early 2017 resulting from the late campaign finance disclosures was significant.”
(Here is a funny part, at least to me. Scott’s defense before the Ethics Commission was that even though he tried to remain hidden the Portland Press-Herald as paper of record in Maine kept publishing stories that he was the real money behind the ballot question. So everyone knew! But back here in the capitol of New England, the Boston Globe mostly ignored the dark money pouring into the 2016 ballot questions, so there was no paper of record on money. Same on Question 1 of 2018, covered in detail by my colleague Professor Duquette. So if you want to know the real money interests on a question, your paper of record is MassPoliticsProfs.org.)
Back to the local governments involved in the pot licensing. Ms. Ebbert writes that “In Holyoke, where Mayor Alex Morse is courting marijuana businesses for vacant mill spaces — he says he hopes to turn his “ ‘Paper City’ to the rolling paper city”— city councilors were advised that it’s not their job to monitor applicants’ suitability.” And in Lee, again related by Ms. Ebbert via a Berkshire Eagle story, selectwoman chair Patricia Carlino said of McCain’s dark money violations “It didn’t seem like it was anything big. I was under the impression he wasn’t charged with anything.”
Nothing big? Holyoke councilors and Lee selectmen and women, McCain didn’t file the paperwork after the deadline. He actively subverted democracy.
I apologize (a bit) for the title. I don’t want to be too hard on overworked and decent local officials, but it is kind of their job to safeguard their communities. They can’t leave it all up to the Cannabis Control Commission, but that body now has its own credibility at stake in this fiasco.
Sure, a guy who paid a near state record fine on behalf of a hidden dark money offshore investor with a partner with a criminal background who paid a state record fine in another state about hidden gambling stakes. Who better to run weed in Western Mass.?
The Washington Post recently adopted a new slogan: “Democracy dies in darkness.” I agree.
[Full disclosure: as an educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money (and other things). I don’t write about marijuana policy.]