Trutanich Probes Pot Backer Duncan

Having done little homework, the City Council prepares to approve a medical pot law

Comments (0) By Patrick Range McDonald Wednesday, Dec 2 2009

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The map would allow the city to more easily shut down nonpermitted pot shops in inappropriate areas, Reyes says. Lacking this basic zoning blueprint just when the council is moving toward adopting a law means “we’re really guessing,” Reyes says. “And we shouldn’t be guessing with people’s lives.”

But the zoning map isn’t the only missing piece. In a situation similar to City Hall’s “inspection program” for L.A.’s estimated 4,000 illegal billboards — a program still frozen in place after years of inaction — the council members, mayor’s office and city managers have spent virtually no time determining how to inspect medical pot stores to ensure that, as required by state law, dispensaries take no profit.

Gregory Bojorquez

At L.A. City Hall, Richard Eastman (center), a longtime AIDS and medical marijuana activist, listens to debate over the city’s proposed pot law.

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Reyes and Garcetti are only now, four years after the council first grappled with medical pot, suggesting that the Department of Building and Safety, Chief Legislative Analyst Gerry Miller and the LAPD devise a “proactive” inspection program — and they’re in no hurry, asking for a “report back” by March 2010.

“We have to be careful to not provide any loopholes,” Councilman Jose Huizar has warned — the very problem that has prevented City Hall’s inspection of billboards.

And as the Weekly also reported last week, Reyes and Garcetti failed to contact leaders of any major California cities where medical marijuana rules have prevented proliferation of weed outlets. Reyes instead asked local medical weed advocates how other big cities were handling things.

Council members Janice Hahn, Paul Koretz, Bill Rosendahl and Reyes have emerged as supporters of the most lax pot regulations. Koretz wants to allow pot stores within about 300 feet of schools — 500 feet with a 20 percent “deviation” — the least restrictive school buffer for any major California city. Hahn, meanwhile, argued that councilman Richard Alarcon’s suggestion of barring purportedly nonprofit weed stores from paying employees more than $100,000 a year is “not our business.”

Appearing to support tougher rules are Huizar, Greig Smith, Bernard Parks and Alarcon, who could not prevent a nonpermitted pot outlet from opening during the moratorium — in a storefront underneath his own Sylmar council district office at 13517 Hubbard St. Alarcon said last week with frustration, “The fact that there’s been a proliferation of these establishments cannot go unnoticed!”

Huizar has suggested a cap of about 70 pot dispensaries, which would, in effect, outlaw about 475 of those now operating.

Villaraigosa, who broke years of silence on medical pot hours after the Weekly’s November 23 story, has plainly stated that it is illegal for dispensaries to make any profit — the position also taken by Attorney General Jerry Brown.

But bowing to medical pot advocates, Garcetti backs less precise language that allows “cash contributions” and “reimbursements” — and may set up a showdown between Villaraigosa, Trutanich and the City Council.

Tibby Rothman contributed to this report.