The sale of legal, recreational cannabis is big business in Michigan. But as the pot business grows, should a bureaucracy grow alongside it? In each community?

The Kalamazoo City Commission will vote Monday on whether to create a "cannabis coordinator" job, at a cost of roughly $83,000 per year.

The pot business in Kalamazoo is growing like weeds, MLive reports: 

In 2022, the city has 21 cannabis businesses with 40 licenses. In 2023, there are 22 potential new businesses with 36 potential new licenses. That could add up to a possible new total of 41 potential businesses with 76 potential licenses that all require annual renewal, the city said.

The Community Planning and Development Department is asking for approval of the position. The city employee would be responsible for coordinating a network of consultants, cannabis stakeholders, downtown stakeholders and entrepreneurship support organizations for the purposes of enhancing engagement that leads to advancing the city’s mission of shared economic prosperity, the city agenda packet states.

Today, Kalamazoo wants to hire one cannabis coordinator. How long before that coordinator needs help? How long before a coordinator births an entire department? 

After Michigan voters approved medical marijuana in Nov. 2008, a state bureaucracy sprang up to coordinate. After Michigan voters legalized recreational pot in Nov. 2018, the marijuana bureaucracy continued to grow.

In Kalamazoo, we see the beginnings of a new pot bureaucracy. What's happening in your town?

A state agency’s response to an open records request raises questions of how and when government offices can withhold information from the public.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer attempted in October 2021 to reinstate a prevailing wage requirement through a press release, offering no official directives or public documents. The Mackinac Center for Public Policy responding by asking for relevant communications between Whitmer and the Department of Technology, Management, and Budget, using the Freedom of Information Act. Its request called for the state to release the wage requirements companies would have to follow, the text of any executive directive requiring the department to implement the rule, and documents on enforcing the requirements.

The state included in its response a document with several redactions, even though the same document is publicly available without the redactions.

“This is yet another example of FOIA being applied improperly and inconsistently. The records produced in response to this request were available online, and in entirely unredacted form," says Steve Delie, director of labor policy at the Mackinac Center. “It is unclear whether these redactions were legally permissible, but it is clear is that public bodies are not applying FOIA in a way that encourages openness and transparency.”

Whitmer’s office did not respond to an email seeking comment.

Under the prevailing wage requirement, which the Legislature repealed in 2018, the state told companies how much they must pay their employees if they wanted to obtain a state contract.