Chamber backs away from marijuana ballot proposal

The Greater Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce may back away from efforts to place an initiative on the ballot to ban medical marijuana dispensaries.

The chamber’s governmental affairs advisory board voted 5-4 Friday to recommend that the chamber stay out of efforts to get the initiative on the November ballot, especially since a group of residents is already leading the charge. The advisory group is recommending the chamber put on educational forums instead.

The chamber’s Board of Directors will consider the advisory group’s recommendation next week.

“Don’t let me give you any indication that they don’t believe (this issue) has a lot of implications for our community. They just felt like others had taken on the mantle,” Stephannie Finley, president of the chamber’s Governmental Affairs Division, said Monday.

“They also felt like we needed to be careful about our resources and the political capital that’s expended for different issues. We have a whole lot in front of us, including some November ballot initiatives that are pretty harmful to the business climate,” she said, referring to Amendment 60, Amendment 61 and Proposition 101, which opponents say would cripple state and local governments.

Only a few weeks ago, when the City Council was considering a registration process for dispensary owners, the chamber’s Ernest House urged council members to refer an initiative to the ballot to let voters decide whether dispensaries should be allowed.

Councilman Sean Paige, part of a task force that has been working for months on rules to regulate the industry, said the chamber had been silent on the issue until that day.

“I’m just surprised that they had so much of their rear-ends hanging out before they decided to pull up their pants,” he said.

“The fact that they stepped so far out on the issue initially and then went back to consult with their advisory board suggests to me that their internal process is flawed and that they’re getting bad advice, either internally or externally,” Paige said.

Finley said the chamber got involved at the urging of some of its members because the council had a quick turnaround on creating the registration process for dispensaries. But the chamber’s recommendation to council created a huge firestorm within chamber membership, she said.

The chamber’s advisory board on public policy issues met Friday morning to determine what role, if any, the chamber should have in getting an initiative on the ballot. People on both sides of the issue were invited to speak.

“It was a wild meeting,” Finley said. “This topic incites a lot of passion on both sides. It incites a lot of passion within our membership, too, and that’s why we even took on the issue in the first place.”

If the group trying to get the initiative on the ballot succeeds by collecting enough signatures, the chamber’s Board of Directors would take a formal position on the ballot question, she said.