How Did February 1st Become the COO Deadline? Unpacking the Last-Minute Change in SB 1635
Oklahoma cannabis operators have spent the last few months scrambling to make sense of one controversial date: February 1st, 2024. This is the compliance deadline OMMA is now using to potentially deny renewal applications that lack a Certificate of Occupancy but that date wasn’t in the original version of the law.
In this clip from The Green Brief Podcast, consultant Larissa Darnaby breaks down exactly how this deadline came to be, who was involved, and why the process surrounding SB 1635 is raising concerns about retroactive enforcement and intergovernmental miscommunication.
Larissa Darnaby:
And there's a lot of people that submitted after that February the first date. And I will tell you, there are very valid reasons for that. I don't believe that they're in the wrong for that. I think that February first date is an issue in and of itself. I was pretty heavily involved with Senate Bill 1635 — Jed with ORCA, myself.
And then Senator Coleman — he's actually the senator over a property that I use. I'm in his jurisdiction for commercial property. I have industrial property.
I think it's interesting to note: not only is it a retroactive date to February the 1st, it was literally the last week of session when that date was changed. I mean this — I remember talking with Jed like, “Man, I think this thing is actually going to pass.” This is going to do a lot of good. It moved it to November of 2024 — but that was a date in the future. That gave someone something to work toward. There was clarity. There was now.
I know what to expect — and managing expectations is really huge whenever you're providing a service as a state, or providing a service as a consultant, or providing a commodity like the businesses are. Like, we have to manage expectations, right? So that was exciting.
And then to hear that — you know, this is all hearsay obviously — but I’d heard that somebody from the OBNDD basically went down and they got it thrown into a committee. And then here we are, the last week of session, going back and forth.
I personally have emails back and forth with legislators. I had clients send emails. So the whole implementation of February the first date — that was signed into law on June the 14th — seems a little bit weird to me.
But what can we do going forward? Acknowledge that these are big issues.
I think that hiring attorneys and consultants that understand your end goal — that are aligned with you — is really important. I don’t think that anybody should be hiring consultants or attorneys that they’re having to fight an uphill battle to convince them that we’re working toward the same goal.
It’s crazy how much I see that. Like, I would never hire somebody that I’m having to fight. I’m paying you to fight against you? That’s a little crazy to me.
And then the documentation — you know, a lot of my work has been in writing case analysis. Now you guys have seen a few of those. I've shared clients with a lot of other attorneys and it’s establishing a history of what happened — like who we hired first, or when we submitted first.
I mean, let’s just talk about — you want to talk about impact on clients? I have clients that — they literally had to — I’ve got one that’s coming to mind right now — he had all of these buildings that were separated, and he had to build hallways and combine them. Like that’s not a small deal. That’s a big deal.
So yeah, let’s help the ALJ understand what we’ve gone through. And understand that, like, while I get that Senate Bill 1635 exists and this is the date — let’s look at what actually happened. While we understand that we have a state minimum standard of code, let’s talk about: hey, this is what my county commissioner said. This is what my locality advised me of.
These people are not just deciding to ignore rules and regulations — they truly had poor advisement. And I don’t blame the localities. I think that we have a major issue with intergovernmental communication of our departments. And whether that’s by design, or whether that is just a side effect of our legislation right now — which is a whole other issue in and of itself.
I mean, especially when it comes to land use and building codes. I mean, we are... we’re stacking — we’re accumulating regulations without ever getting to the nucleus of what we’re addressing and why.
