The search is on — again — for a person to be the lead marijuana regulator in Minnesota after Gov. Tim Walz’s first pick for the job resigned late Friday over problems uncovered with businesses she ran.
On Saturday, Walz took responsibility for a flawed vetting process of the choice he made to hire Erin DuPree as the first director of the state’s new Office of Cannabis Management, but he didn’t explain how the mistakes happened or how he intends to avoid similar errors in the future.
“Not the finest hour,” is how Walz described the series of events at a MinnPost event Saturday. “Look, one of the responsibilities — and I take it and the buck stops with me — is the appointments of literally thousands of people, whether it's to positions of judges, or senior Cabinet positions, or to boards, many of you serve on some of those. And in this case, the process did not work.”
When pressed by MinnPost reporter Peter Callaghan about how vetting failed to find problems with DuPree’s background, Walz didn’t offer a direct answer.
“I was under the impression that the system up until this point — 2,699 times — had worked right,” the governor said. “It didn’t this time. So I'm going to go back and ask again, how do these things fall through the cracks? How do we get this right?”
DuPree was a true outsider — a person without government experience who wasn’t intimately involved in the effort to legalize recreational marijuana. When she was appointed last Thursday, DuPree and the governor’s office touted her business acumen as the founder of several startups, including a CBD shop in Apple Valley.
On Friday, DuPree released a statement saying she didn’t knowingly violate any laws regarding potency of hemp-derived products at her stores and that she stepped aside to avoid becoming a distraction.
Despite exchanging text messages over the weekend, DuPree wasn’t available for an interview with MPR News.
On Facebook, she expressed dismay over the scrutiny, writing that she was “criticized for being human” and “wasn’t the hero in everyone’s story.”
The Office of Cannabis Management has the responsibility of regulating and enforcing cannabis and hemp product potency going forward, so having a top regulator who might have broken the rules in the past would have been a problem. The office will go through rulemaking and ultimately issue licenses to people who want to grow, transport or sell cannabis products. And it’ll be the one overseeing testing to make sure adults 21 and over can trust potency and quality of the legal items they’re buying.
As for DuPree’s financial issues, MPR News spoke to people who interacted with her as a business leader and said she wasn’t trustworthy, didn’t follow through on promises and basically ignored court orders to pay them after they sued.
DuPree was one of 150 applicants for the cannabis management director job and somehow rose to the top of the list. The law required a background check and a Walz spokesperson said one was done.
Walz said he still wants to find an executive director with experience or at least expertise in the industry as well as managerial qualities. In the interim, Charlene Briner will remain in the role. She’s been getting the agency off the ground pending an appointment of a permanent leader.
The new director will have to move fast to build up a staff of around 150. Applications are already being fielded for many key positions.