By Joanne Degnan, The Packet Group
UPPER FREEHOLD The Township Committee is calling for an investigation into how the state selected the nonprofit operators of medical marijuana farms, alleging that one provided “fraudulent” information on its application.
The Township Committee, which recently adopted an ordinance to foil Breakwater Alternative Treatment Center’s plan to build marijuana greenhouses in Upper Freehold, agreed on Jan. 5 to send a letter to Gov. Chris Christie and other state officials calling for the entire medical marijuana program to be suspended.
”This committee has questioned the representations that were made as part of Breakwater’s application process,” Deputy Mayor Steve Alexander said.
An attorney for Breakwater, Jonathan Fisher, said on Monday that the Township Committee’s accusation was “actionable slander.”
The Township Committee voted 5-0 to approve Mr. Alexander’s motion to have special counsel Eric Bernstein, who has been handling the medical marijuana issue for the township, prepare the letters for the committee members to sign.
Mr. Alexander said the governor and commissioner of the Department of Health and Senior Services should suspend the medical marijuana program until a “thorough investigation is done into the application process … and how someone is able to get by without meeting the requirements for receiving a license.”
Donna Leusner, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Health and Senior Services, which oversees the medical marijuana program, said Monday that no licenses or permits have been granted yet to the six alternative treatment centers selected by the state to grow marijuana. Ms. Leusner said that Breakwater and the other five other nonprofits chosen from a pool of 35 applicants last March are “successful bidders” that are still in the process of obtaining state permits.
”No alternative treatment center will be given a permit until it satisfies all of the requirements,” Ms. Leusner said. She added that in the 11 months since the initial applications were approved by the state, “some of their plans may have changed” and that operating permits would be issued based on current information.
The latest salvo fired by Upper Freehold was apparently sparked by the public comments made by Hisham Moharram at a Dec. 28 public hearing in Plumsted Township when an identical ordinance was adopted aimed at preventing a medical marijuana operation from being established in Plumsted. Upper Freehold Mayor LoriSue Mount and Mr. Alexander both attended the Plumsted meeting.
Dr. Moharram, the founder and CEO of a 55-acre organic farm on Jacobstown Road, told the Plumsted Committee that Breakwater’s Feb. 11 application to the state misrepresented the facts when it identified him as part of Breakwater’s management team and his farm as Breakwater’s planned cultivation site. Dr. Moharram said the state should have double-checked the information in the application.
”I have to ask how diligently they vetted these applications,” Dr. Moharram said on Dec. 28, calling Breakwaters statements about him a “host of lies.”
Dr. Moharram said he committed only to bring Breakwater’s business proposition to the farm’s attorney and its management committee comprised of the farm’s various investors. The management committee denied Breakwater’s request on March 3, he said.
Mr. Fisher on Tuesday disputed Dr. Moharram’s version of events. He said it was Breakwater that walked away form the deal to lease land from The Good Tree Farm because Dr. Moharram sent the company a draft lease that would have charged Breakwater “eight to 10 times the going market rate” for farmland.
”It was incredibly expensive what he was asking and as a nonprofit we couldn’t pay that,” Mr. Fisher said.
Mr. Fisher points to the Feb. 11 letter signed by Dr. Moharram on Good Tree Farm stationery as evidence that Dr. Moharram “wanted to be involved.”
The letter (Appendix B-1) in the application, states that Good Tree Farm LLC “has decided to make an “initial commitment” (the word “initial” is underlined) to lease acreage to Breakwater for producing medical marijuana subject to attorney and investors’ review of “various pros/cons and legal exposure and liability issues…”
Dr. Moharram, when contacted Saturday, said he’d sent a letter of complaint about the Breakwater application to the governor, attorney general and the director of the state’s medical marijuana program. He said that on the advice of his attorney he would not release a copy of that correspondence to the media until later this month in order to give state officials time to respond to his letter.
Mr. Alexander and Mrs. Mount have also taken issue with statements on pages 6 and 24 of Breakwater’s application implying that former Plumsted Mayor Ron Dancer supported making the Good Tree Farm a medical marijuana cultivation site. Mr. Dancer, who as a state assemblyman voted against the NJ Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act, says that is “absolutely false.”
Mr. Fisher said Tuesday that the references to Mr. Dancer in the application were based on representations that Dr. Moharram had made to Breakwater.
Mayor Mount told the Township Committee on Jan. 5 that when she told the governor’s staff about Dr. Moharram and Assemblyman Dancer’s statements about Breakwater’s application, the governor’s office offered to have her meet with the state agency overseeing the medical marijuana program.
”I said it seems to me that they’re part of the problem because if they approved an application with what could be seen as fraudulent or erroneous information, I don’t think they’re necessarily the people who should be having the oversight as to where this is going,” Mrs. Mount said.
Mayor Mount noted that Upper Freehold has incurred $10,000 in legal bills associated with the Breakwater issue and those costs will rise substantially if Breakwater opts to challenge Upper Freehold’s new ordinance in court.
The ordinance bans zoning approvals for any business whose activities violate federal law. The federal government classifies marijuana as an illegal drug and makes no exemptions for compassionate medical use as 16 states do. The current U.S. attorney general, however, has said the federal government will not prosecute medical marijuana facilities that operate in compliance with state laws.
Mr. Fisher said his company is still contemplating whether to file a lawsuit to challenge the Upper Freehold ordinance, especially if more and more municipalities continue to pass ordinances aimed at usurping the state medical marijuana law. In addition to Upper Freehold and Plumsted, Howell Township adopted an identical ordinance on Jan. 3.
”A municipality cannot pass an ordinance pre-empting a state law,” Mr. Fisher said.
Mrs. Mount blamed the state medical marijuana program for putting rural farming communities like Upper Freehold in a precarious financial predicament. At last week’s Township Committee meeting, the Republican mayor took the gloves off and expressed her frustration with the GOP governor, whom she said she has been trying to talk to for weeks, but to no avail.
”My patience run to the end … I think it’s time for the governor to come back to New Jersey,” Mrs. Mount said in an apparent reference to the Gov. Christie’s recent out-of-state trips to campaign for Mitt Romney, who Gov. Christie endorsed after squashing speculation about his own presidential aspirations.
”He chose not to run, he told us that his work was in New Jersey, and I think he needs to come back and start recognizing his constituents that put him in office,” Mrs. Mount said.
