“The funds available for the ultimate beneficiaries of the cannabis regulatory program continue to outpace expectations.”

By Rebecca Rivas, Missouri Independent

As Missouri lawmakers debate the $47.9 billion state budget, they are also deciding how to spend an unexpectedly large chunk of cash from sales taxes collected from marijuana dispensaries.

The nearly $86 million paid by recreational cannabis users is constitutionally required to be divided up evenly between funds benefiting veterans, public defenders and programs that prevent substance use disorders.

“Due to a strong cannabis market and effective, efficient regulation of that market,” Amy Moore, director of the Missouri Division of Cannabis Regulation, told The Independent this week, “the funds available for the ultimate beneficiaries of the cannabis regulatory program continue to outpace expectations.”

In February, Moore told the House budget committee that each fund could receive $28.6 million in the various budget bills debated this spring.

So far, the full $28.6 million has made it into budget legislation for both veterans and substance use disorder programs. Part of it will help fund new partnerships with the state courts, public schools and other providers to support children’s mental health.

The Missouri Veterans Commission will receive an additional $13 million from medical marijuana money as well, and its total $41.6 million will go towards the operational needs and potential repairs for the state’s seven veterans homes.

However, the House has approved only $15.3 million for the public defenders system so far.

State lawmakers have the authority to decide whether to withhold the money, even though they can’t spend it anywhere else.

The public defender’s office, for example, had hoped to use some of the cannabis money to increase their attorneys’ starting pay from $65,000 per year to $70,000. That would align the salary with the attorney general’s office entry-level pay.

“There’s a huge cost to employee turnover,” said Mary Fox, director of the Office of Public Defender, during a budget committee hearing last month, “and where we see that employee turnover is in years one through three, which is why that is where I would like to bring them in line with the attorney general salary.”

That $2.5 million request was shot down in the House, despite the funds being available. During a budget committee hearing, she also asked for $4 million to hire 45 full-time social workers to expand the agency’s holistic defense program, which employs social workers to connect clients with community resources.

For several years, the system suffered from having long waitlists to get legal representation, which resulted in a successful lawsuit against the state.

State Rep. John Voss, a Republican from Cape Girardeau and a budget committee member, pushed to add $1.6 million for pay raises and $1.2 million to hire 20 social workers.

The $1.2 million was added, but the pay raises were not.

“These attorneys represent the poor in our state, and they deserve the best representation that we can provide to them,” said Voss, during a budget committee meeting last month. “In terms of the holistic defense mitigation specialists, I believe that we’re actually investing in ways to prevent people from becoming incarcerated again, and we will wind up saving money across the entire state budget.”

Overall, Voss said part of the reason the public defenders’ total allocation is less than the two other funds is because about $11.7 million was included in budget legislation that required the funds to be spent by June—and the public defenders weren’t poised to do that.

That money goes back to a fund in the Missouri Treasury to be appropriated to the public defenders in pending legislation, Senate Committee on Appropriations Chair Lincoln Hough told Independent last month.

“The money isn’t reallocated,” he said. “It stays dedicated to the public defender. The money is still sitting there and will be allocated in the operating bills.”

After the House votes to approve the bills, likely next week, Hough’s committee will debate them. While the House may not have included the public defenders’ requests for salary raises, the Senate has the ability to add more money back in before May.

“The public defender will be taken care of in the operating bills,” Hough said. “It generally takes right up until the constitutional deadline to get these things done. And so we’ll have plenty of discussion on this.”

This story was first published by Missouri Independent.

States Collected More Than $9.7 Billion In Marijuana Tax Revenue Since Mid-2021, Federal Census Bureau Reports