COLUMBUS, Ohio — A consultant hired to score medical marijuana license applications worked for businesses owned by a company awarded one of the state’s 12 large marijuana grow licenses.
Keoki Wing, chief financial officer for Arizona-based firm Meade & Wing, LLC, worked for Nature Med Inc. and AOW Management, until July 2016, according to his LinkedIn profile. The two medical marijuana businesses are or were owned by the president and CEO of Arizona-based Harvest, whose Ohio subsidiary Harvest Grows, LLC was the 12th business awarded an Ohio “level I” cultivation license late last month.
Wing’s time working for the businesses overlapped with his work as a consultant at Meade & Wing, according to his profile.
Meade & Wing principal Jason Meade wrote in its application for the consulting contract that the firm helped a troubled grower and dispensary in Marana, Arizona, as evidence it met the department’s requirements for scoring consultants. Nature Med was the only grower and dispensary registered in Marana at the time, according to Arizona records.
The Ohio Department of Commerce, which oversees the growing, processing and testing parts of Ohio’s medical marijuana program, required reviewers to self-disclose any current or future relationships with applicants for medical marijuana licenses, a spokeswoman said Monday.
The spokeswoman did not answer questions about whether the department knew of Meade & Wing’s ties to Harvest Grows.
The department hired Meade & Wing and two other consultants earlier this year to assist in scoring license applications. Each would be paid up to $150,000 for its services.
Meade & Wing has been paid $43,971 from the department this year, according to state expenditure records.
The department said last week it did not know another consultant, Trevor Bozeman of iCann Consulting, LLC, had a felony marijuana conviction in 2005. The same offense would have barred Bozeman from working in Ohio’s medical marijuana industry.
Department said it “vetted” conflicts of interest
Justin Hunt, chief operating officer for the Ohio Medical Marijuana Control Program, said in June that the department vetted each consultant to make sure there was no conflict of interest prior to the application review process.
“To the best of the department’s knowledge, the contractors that will be reviewing and scoring the cultivator applications do not have a conflict of interest,” Hunt told the Ohio Controlling Board on June 12, when the department was collecting cultivator applications.
Hunt said the department would do the “same vetting process” moving forward if any potential conflicts of interest arose. Hunt said in July that the department did not plan to use a third consultant hired to help process applications, Illinois-based B&B Grow, to score cultivators because the department “only needed two.”
Late Monday, a department spokeswoman said B&B was not used because it self-identified a conflict of interest with an applicant.
Department spokeswoman Kerry Francis said they anticipated reviewers would know applicants because legal marijuana is “a small, emerging industry.”
“Tracking down every possible past relationship would be impossible and would ultimately prevent us from hiring virtually anyone,” Francis said.
Francis said that’s why the more than 20 reviewers worked on teams of three and identifiable information was excluded from applications.
“The scoring process anticipated conflicts of interest by shielding applicants’ names from reviewers,” Francis said. “Reviewers and applicants were both put on notice in advance that inappropriate final relationships could jeopardize payments and licenses.”
However, Wing and Meade were on the same team of three reviewers looking at applicants’ operations plans, according to information obtained from the department through a public records request.
And despite the “blind” application process, cleveland.com was able to identify owners, companies and states involved in some applications because of the details included. In some cases, biographies for owners and employees were paraphrased or copied from their business websites.
Business ties
Wing lists work as general manager of Nature Med from September 2013 to June 2015 and horticulture director from October 2015 to July 2016 on his LinkedIn profile.
Wing was quoted in a September 2014 Tuscon Weekly article as the manager of Nature Med’s dispensary.
Harvest CEO Steve White is also president of Nature Med, according to Arizona business incorporation records.
Wing’s LinkedIn profile also lists work as an operations specialist for AOW Management from May 2015 to July 2016 and facility operations manager of Cottonwood Agricultural Services from June to November 2015.
Touraj Jason Vedadi is registered as the manager of both marijuana cultivation companies. AOW Management registered as a principal of Nature Med in August 2015.
White and Vedadi merged their companies under the Harvest banner earlier this year, announced in a July press release from the company. Harvest claims to have 30 medical marijuana licenses in five states.
Ohio winner
White serves as the CEO of Harvest Grows, LLC, an Ohio company that applied to grow medical marijuana at sites in Cleveland and Lawrence County. White incorporated the Ohio company in June, according to state records.
The company’s application listed Ariane Kirkpatrick, an African-American woman from Northeast Ohio who owns construction company AKA Team, as the company’s majority owner. The rest of the company owners and officers work for the Arizona company, according to the company’s application. Kirkpatrick owns 51 percent of the company, according to the application. That’s the minimum required to apply the state’s definition of minority-owned.
Harvest Grows’ application scored 142.04 points — the 29th highest score out of 98 applicants. But the Department of Commerce awarded a license to Harvest Grows and another minority-owned company, Parma Wellness, to satisfy the law’s requirement that 15 percent of all marijuana business licenses go to minorities.
Consultant group
Meade & Wing, LLC is composed of Jason Meade, his wife, Mindy Meade, and Keoki Wing and based out of Tuscon, Arizona, according to documents filed with the state. The three all worked for The Green Halo dispensary in Tuscon in 2013, according to their LinkedIn resumes and a resume posted to a profile for Mindy Meade on a marijuana job website.
Meade & Wing said it had assisted medical marijuana companies in several states since 2011 in its May 2017 cover letter for the Ohio consulting bid, which was obtained through a public records request. In the same bid response, Meade & Wing stated the company had been in service for four years.
Arizona business records show the company was incorporated in June 2014.
credit:cleveland.com
