Licensees brace for change request fee
The Department of Health and Senior Services is requiring any licensed or certified cultivation, dispensary, manufacturing, testing, and transportation facilities wanting to make changes to their company’s operation plan to obtain approval from the Department, and pay a $2,000 fee upon their request to change something from their application.
Please note, Greenway Media recommends all licensees consult with legal counsel regarding change and variance requests. They are not the same.
The first point listed in the rules is any licensee that is “wanting to assign, sell, give, lease, sublicense, or otherwise transfer its license to any other entity” must pay this $2,000 request fee. The fee does not guarantee approval of the request, but is used as an administrative fee. More information on details surrounding commencement will be released at the upcoming mandatory welcome meeting for licensees held by DHSS.
As you continue reading the rules it appears that any change needing to be made within the facility’s operation plan has to be approved by the Department and paid for by that company requesting the change for each request and each license impacted.
For example, if a licensee is wanting to make a physical design or material changes to the location of their facility, they can do so only after the Department approves it and they shell out $2,000. If it impacts both cultivation and manufacturing, the request doubles to $4,000. If it’s multiple licenses for each, the math continues.
The Department will also require the facility to submit updated “descriptions, schematics, or blueprints for the facility”, as well as “an attestation that the proposed changes to the facility comply with the facility location requirements of subsection (4)(B) of this rule or 19 CSR 30-95.100(2)(C) and any facility location requirements of the local government.”
Further, if the town, city, or county has zoning restrictions that will affect the facility, they are required to submit “text of the restrictions and a description of how the changes to the facility comply with those restrictions.”
Those licensees who are trying to change the location of their facility must provide an explanation to the Department as to why their original location is not suitable.
Other change requests needing approval from the Department and subject to the $2,000 fee include: licensed facilities wanting to combine at a single location, changing owners and the new owner not being initially approved with the group during the application approval process, and beginning construction somewhere other than the facility the licensee had on their approved license.
The $2,000 fee is subject to “increase or decrease each year by the percentage of increase or decrease from the end of the previous calendar year of the Consumer Price Index…”
This emergency rules, published in November, has been relayed to multiple licensees over the past weeks as they prepare for build-out and inspection. Licensees will visit Jefferson City after MoCannBizCon for department-led mandatory welcome meetings. Each licensee may bring two people to represent their license at the meeting. Inspections cannot be scheduled until after the welcome meetings.