Alaska's marijuana board will decide whether to erase a violation against its chair's own store

When the Alaska Marijuana Control Board meets in Anchorage on Sept. 2, one of the four disciplinary cases in front of it belongs to the woman who chairs it. The state's own regulators are asking the board to erase the violation.

Bailey Stuart is the designated licensee of Green Jar, a marijuana store in Wasilla, and she holds the board's industry seat, which the Legislature built for someone who holds a marijuana license. That makes the overlap structural rather than accidental. Under the state ethics act she would have to declare the conflict on the public record, and because the conflicted member is the chair, the rest of the five-member board decides whether she can take part.

The violation is small. An inspector came through on July 15 and found a garage door at the back of the building with nothing to lock it. Manager John Osborne said it may have been that way since concrete work in early June, then drove to a store, bought a lock and put it on. The notice cited one rule, which requires commercial-grade locks on exterior doors, and carried a $100 fine.

The contractor took the blame in writing that afternoon, saying he had used the overhead doors to get his concrete work done and "forgot to lock them both" on his way out. Green Jar's response argued the door sits behind commercial shelving and functions as a wall, and that door sensors and interior motion detectors stayed live the whole time. Stuart, who is also the store's chief operations officer, called it "one time human error by the landlord" and asked for the notice to be downgraded.

Green Jar has two older notices on file, one from February 2017 that cited five rules at once and one from October 2021 over advertising.

After an informal conference on July 29, AMCO Director Kevin Richard recommended the board vacate the notice and replace it with an advisory that stays in the store's file. It is the only vacatur recommendation among the four disciplinary items on the agenda; the other three, all Anchorage licensees, are looking at fines, suspended penalties or dismissal. The board is free to ignore the recommendation and could uphold the notice or press for a suspension.