During these unprecedented and uncertain times, and thank you to the industry for your support and your continued support and for coming out with your questions and being certainly engaged in this process. So first i want to thank our esteemed guests today. We have treasury fiona mah. We have state senator scott weiner and Senior Advisor to the governor, nicole eliot, and i will briefly read their bios for you and then we are going to sort of jump into it. I know we have about an hour. I want to make sure that we use our time wisely. Im marissa rodriguez, the director of the office of cannabis. We also have eugene hillsman, Deputy Director of the office of cannabis and Jeremy Schwartz who is a permanent analyst with the office of cannabis as well. So fiona mah was elected to serve as californias 34th states treasurer. The state Treasurers Office provides financing for schools, roads, housing and other Critical Infrastructure projects that better the lives of californians. Previously treasurer mah was a member of the state assembly from 2006 to 2012 and prior to serving there, the treasurer served on the San Francisco board of supervisors from 2002 to 2006, representing district 4. Thank you, treasurer mah for being here. Its so nice to have you and its so nice to have one of our own as everyone on this call today. So if youd like to take this time to share with our community your thoughts on whats happening right now and any support for the Cannabis Community that youd like to share. Sure. Can you hear me . Our own, everyone on this call today. So if youd like take this time to share with our community your thoughts on whats happening right now and any support for the Cannabis Community that youd like to share. Sure. Can you hear and see me . I can. Thank you. All right. There i am. Thank you, marissa, for pulling us all together and for everyone whos on the call who has been staying in touch and keeping in touch and very, very frustrated during this time where the federal government is helping most everybody else except if youre in the cannabis industry, which is not very fair, as we all know. Over a year ago i testified in congress on the bill, the safe banking act as some of you remember. It finally did have a hearing earlier. I think it was was it when the democrats took over congress again and it got through the lower house, but it is, once again, stuck in the senate. I know that some have been trying to get cannabis in some of the stimulus packages or assistance, however, because cannabis is still a schedule 1 drug, they are not eligible for many of the assistive programs that are coming out of the federal government. However, california is a little different, as we all know. Not only in california can you deduct your ordinary and necessary business expenses against your income, unlike at the federal level, but we have really tried to move this Industry Forward the best that we can, at least here in california. So many of you, all of you, should be paying your tax, your sales taxings to the California Department of Fee Administration. There was a 90day deferral on paying and filing your First Quarter sales tax return. In addition, if you do need working capital, you may qualify to take a 50,000 loan and defer payment on a year. Your annual Sales Revenues have to be less than 5 million, so that may not pertain to some of the bigger companies, but some of the Smaller Companies may be able to take advantage of this. And you need to call the California Department of tax and Fee Administration and register for this program. Again, it is interest free, 50,000 loan for up to a year, and you need to call sdtfa to figure out and sign up for their instalment plan. So unfortunately thats kind of the only program that is related to some sort of relief for the cannabis industry. The ibank also has put money into a loan loss reserve for [indiscernible] however, the only way you will be eligible for that money is if your bank is accepting cannabis clients, and i know theres probably close to two dozen banks now in california that have legally applied to take cannabis clients on, so you all know who you are out there. But definitely check your the ibank. Ca. Gov and see whether your participating lender participates in that and you may be eligible and qualify to get certain loans from the ibank. So thats about all i have to report right now, and i will be here for the duration to answer any questions you may all have. Thank you, fiona. We certainly appreciate your leadership, your unwavering support of the cannabis industry. You were instrumental in this webinar happening, so i thank you for that. We are live here at the Emergency Operating Center for the city as we put this webinar out to our community. Again thank you everyone for tuning in. Next we have our senator, state senator scott weiner who was elected in november 2016, senator scott weiner represents district 11 in the california state senate. District 11 includes all of San Francisco, broadmoor, daily city and portions of south San Francisco. The senator helped to champion compassionate cannabis care programs by introducing senate bill 34 which was approved by the governor in 2019. Prior to his election to the state senate, he served on the board of supervisors representing district 8. Thank you and happy to have you on the call, senator. Thank you very much for excuse me, for having me, and hello remotely to treasurer ma and to nicole. And hello, im sorry to be here by phone, but i hope you can hear me okay. Hello to the entire Cannabis Community. Were going through some really hard times right now as a community, and we all need to look to the light at the end of the tunnel. We are going to get through this, and our goal needs to be that when we do get through it we can get both individuals and businesses back up on their feet, and so a lot of the work that were doing right now is just to try to preserve the status quo, to keep renters stable in their homes so we dont have mass evictions, either now or after the worst of the emergency when people have massive back rents that they are expected to pay right away. We dont want that. We want to make sure that were stabilizing people, and we want to make sure that were stabilizing businesses in their spaces, and nonprofits, so that we dont see permanent mass closure of Small Businesses and nonprofits, and so were working on a few pieces of legislation. On the residential side im working with someone on legislation to protect renters and im also offering legislation thats 939 to try to stabilize Small Businesses and nonprofits in their retail and Office Spaces by saying no moratoriums or no evictions, and were going to have to deal with how we look at back rent. And then were going to have to particularly for hospitality businesses, like restaurants and bars, that when they do reopen we will be required legally to have much lower capacity so that their Business Model no longer matches up with the rent in their lease, and were going to need to address that as well. So we are working on these issues. Specific to cannabis, we all advocated successfully in San Francisco, and i know in other places it happened not everywhere to classify cannabis as an essential business, and that was a real win. And im glad that it happened. But i know that the industry is really struggling right now, like all Small Businesses are. And in particular not being eligible for the federal Small Business loan, forgivable loan program. I know thats a huge hit and just one more example of the irrationality of our federal law. Cant get any of these benefits. Its not okay. In terms of the legislature this year, we are going back into session. Weve been in recess for about six weeks due to the pandemic. The assembly returns to session on monday. The Senate Returns the following monday, on may 11, and we will be pursuing a more limited policy agenda this year around covid19, of course, but also around some of the highest priority areas, like housing and homelessness and mental health, addiction, wildfires and so forth. And so were all reducing the number of bills that we have and making them much more focused. I dont know that this year is going to be a big year for cannabis. I know there are some bills that have been introduced, and im sure that some things will happen, but i was hoping that this year we would be able to, you know, finally pass the tax reductions, you know, the tax the state taxes are too high and are i think really stifling the industry and encouraging the elicit market. So thats something we have to address. Werent able to get it done last year. And then we have to deal with the issues of cities just effectively banning cannabis, and big swaths of california where its effectively illegal, and so but im not confident that either of those are going to get resolved this year because just of everything thats happening. But stay tuned. Well keep working, and again, thank you to everyone for all you do. Thank you, senator. We really appreciate that, and we certainly appreciate your continued support of the industry as well. Certainly difficult times, unprecedented times. There is no one whos immune to this, and we certainly appreciate that, and also appreciate the fact that we are deemed essential during these times. But you know, still, theres a huge impact and we want to see what ways and how we can support the industry to get through this. So thank you and we appreciate having you on this call. Next we have Senior Advisor on cannabis to the governor, nicole eliot. We know nicole very well, and we are so appreciative that you could take this call today. Ms. Eliot serves as governors Senior Advisor on cannabis. Prior to her current post, she was appointed San Franciscos first director of the San Francisco office of cannabis where she helped to set up cannabiss Regulatory Framework and permitting process. She has worked in a number of capacities with city and county with the city and county of San Francisco, including stints as a deputy board liaison and director of legislative and Government Affairs in the mayors administration. Thank you for being here. This community really values you and appreciates that you are willing to talk to us during these hard times. Sure, always happy to have these conversations, and really happy to be back with my bay area family. Thank you for putting this together and for treasurer ma as well, for facilitating the creation of this. A lot has happened since ive left. First and foremost, i had a baby. Congratulations. Thank you my first day back was the first week of the shutdown, so its been a really interesting transition back to the work environment, but we really hit the ground running starting with obviously deeming cannabis commercial cannabis as essential for the state of california, and since then have really been working with our licensing agencies, our partner agencies, like the treasurer, like cdtfa and others in trying to determine what we can do within the current framework and our current constraints to provide support for the industry, whether that be from a tax relief standpoint, which the treasurer really outlined in her opening comments, as well as from regulatory standpoint, and im sure some of you are very familiar with some of the regulatory relief that has been extended by your licensing agencies. So trying to figure out what we can do to be as helpful as we can sort of in the immediate term and figuring out what we can do in the long term to support what will be recovery, but i will quote the governor when i say that these are very sobering and challenging times. We started this year with a multibillion dollar surplus, and as he stated in his press conference today, we will enter the may revised with multibillion, tens of billions of dollars to cuts. So its a tough time for everyone. I think senator wiener really expressed the challenges that the legislature will be faced with when working through the budget, that there are a lot of priorities that we really sought to tackle this year, and on the cannabis side you guys are all familiar with those priorities, tax simplification. The governor clearly indicated a willingness to talk about the structure of tax and whether or not there should be a reduction, either permanently or temporarily, as well as consolidation. And so thats all being impacted by the environment that we find ourselves in now. So i look forward to addressing your guyss questions today. Again, im really happy to be here and happy to chat with you guys, and of course this is always an ongoing conversation. Thank you, ms. Elliot. I appreciate that. I want to jump in because i want to be cognizant of time here. I want to let folks know that, one, first of all, thank you for emailing in with your questions. They are really thoughtful, and they they are thoughtful and they span a lot of different categories, and so we broke them down by way of taxes, regulatory structure, compassion, unregulated market, the pandemic and banking. We have some general questions, we have some local questions. Because i have the privilege of being able to be in touch with our community more regularly, i will leave the local questions to the end. If we have time, we will address them. Otherwise we will send them out in a response separately. But we are going to start now, and the members of our team will take each section and questions just to keep it a little bit more lively so youre not just listening to me the entire time. Again, we are reporting we are live here from the Emergency Operating Center here in San Francisco where City Employees in San Francisco are keeping the lights on during this unprecedented time. And id like to start with the first question, and all three of you, feel free to answer this one. With the current lack of banking, covid relief opportunities for the cannabis industry are severely limited at the federal, state and local levels. While we recognize the legislature is tasked with the Economic Health of california, we would like you to talk about efforts under way by the legislature that would specifically address Economic Relief for the cannabis industry and the likelihood of those efforts being realized in the short term. Well start with the first section of this question, which is what is being done at the state level to move forward equality for cannabis businesses, specifically in regards to access to covid stimulus relief, lowering the overall tax burden, access to banking, and market rate commercial loans . And i know that the three of you did touch on some of this in your opening remarks, but if you could again just kind of share with our Community Just your thoughts and your feelings on this point. We can start with fiona ma pardon me, treasurer ma. Thats okay, call me fiona. Anyway, as you know, this has been a big priority for me, trying to get banking access since i was on the state board of equalization. Im glad to report that there are more and more banks that are willing to take on cannabisrelated clients. Of course they want to maintain some sort of balance, so many of them will have a certain amount of cultivators, distributors, maybe put folks in test, and they are also looking for other private equity folks who are investing. So they really wanted to diversify their portfolio and risk a little more, but every day more and more banks are willing and open to taking more cannabis clients. But it is slow, and i think this covid19 crisis has shown how important it is, right, with all of the social distancing and not wanting to touch surfaces, that dealing in cash is more and more probably even maybe a contributor to the covid19 spreading. So i think folks are realizing that it is so important that we try to bank this industry as soon as possible. However, we are still always stuck in the senate because the senate is republican controlled, and that is going to be the first step in november, if we really want to see changes to cannabis, we all need to figure out how to, you know, take back the senate in november. Thank you, fiona. With that, does anyone else want to respond . Well, ill speak to a couple of those points. Obviously on the federal advocacy side, our federal liaisons are doing quite a bit as behindthescenes advocacy in d. C. Around the stimulus funding to try to get cannabis involved in that and supporting the efforts of, you know, certain representatives who are pushing clarity via bills to incorporate cannabis as well. To the treasurers point, it is a big challenge to get the senate there, but weve seen a number of senators engage, including our state senator, kamala harris, our state senator, i should say, and kamala harris, who has really engaged in that space as well. So grateful for those efforts, but do know that we are definitely working on that in d. C. And then beyond that, on the taxes, i think, you know, obviously you heard earlier that the state has done quite a bit around taxes now, not speaking necessarily to changes to the overall cannabis tax structure, but really looking at the sales and use tax deferral, which the state, you know, believes applies to an extraordinary number of cannabis businesses if they are paying, if they are annual taxable sales, for instance, Something Like 77 of our retailer