Sacramento County supervisors reject legal cannabis sales in rural, unincorporated areas

A plan that could have led to the opening of marijuana dispensaries in unincorporated parts of Sacramento County is dead.

While three of the five Sacramento County Board of Supervisors voted in favor of the plan that could have seen dispensaries opening, four affirmative votes were needed during the Tuesday board session.

The plan involved putting on the ballot in November an authorization that would allow marijuana businesses to be taxed.

Then, if voters on Nov. 8 agreed to the taxes, the supervisors were expected to hold a second vote to potentially approve a regulatory framework to allow the legal sale of cannabis.

The two dissenting supervisors, Chairman Don Nottoli and Sue Frost, expressed concern that the tax referendum would be voted on by all residents of Sacramento County, including those living in the city of Sacramento, where dispensaries are already legal.

“It’s a matter of fairness,” said Frost, who represents a district that includes Antelope, Orangevale and Rio Linda.

She said the votes of the 600,000 residents of the unincorporated parts of Sacramento County would be mixed in with the residents of Sacramento and other cities in Sacramento County. The city of Sacramento has a population of 524,000.

Nottoli, who represents a district that includes Elk Grove, Rancho Cordova and Galt, said he wasn’t convinced that dispensaries should be located in unincorporated rural and suburban areas of Sacramento County.

A county commissioned study has concluded that the county could reap between $5.8 and $8.8 million from taxes on cannabis businesses.

“It’s not always about the money,” Nottoli said.

But Supervisor Rich Desmond said Sacramento County should welcome responsible cannabis dispensary owners. He noted that delivery services from Sacramento were already delivering cannabis to unincorporated parts of Sacramento County, and that all the tax revenue was all going to the city of Sacramento.

“At the end of the day, I’m really a free-market person who wants to support small businesses,” he said. “And I frankly look forward to finding a responsible way that we can lure businesses. away from the city of Sacramento and make the county a much more competitive place to do business.”

Desmond was joined by Supervisors Phil Serna and Patrick Kennedy in voting in favor of putting the marijuana taxation issue on the ballot in November.

Unlike the county, the city of Sacramento has allowed legalized cannabis sales since the state allowed communities to authorize the sale of recreational marijuana beginning in 2018.

Even before Tuesday’s vote by the supervisors, there was a debate as to where the new marijuana tax money would go if the sale of cannabis became legal in unincorporated parts of the county.

Advocates for youth and civil rights group called on the supervisors to direct any new cannabis tax revenue to efforts to steer minors away from smoking marijuana.

The same groups have been pressuring Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg and other city council members to allocate some of the more than $20 million the city collects from taxes on cannabis businesses to youth education programs and other efforts discouraging the smoking of marijuana.

The effort appears to be working.

A spokesman for Steinberg said Tuesday that the mayor will propose at next Tuesday’s City Council meeting that the council approve a ballot measure for November 2023 that would direct 40% of the marijuana tax money to the youth programs.

This story was originally published July 12, 2022 at 8:25 PM.