Governor Rauner directed his legal team to conduct a comprehensive review of the evaluation and selection process that the Quinn administration used to recommend applicants for licensure in the State’s Medical Cannabis Pilot Program. His request was threefold. First, determine whether the process used by the Quinn administration followed the law. Second, share their findings with the Attorney General and determine what, if any, corrective actions need to be taken for any failures to fully comply with the law. Finally, recommend a plan of action that corrects any deficiencies and fully adheres to the spirit and letter of the law. They recently completed legal review identified four potential problem areas:

• The review teams imposed certain arbitrary scoring “cut-offs” that were not expressly contemplated or provided by law that effectively eliminated certain applicants from consideration;
• The agencies conducted a character and fitness review of the applicants after the blind scoring process had been completed;
• As part of the character and fitness review, several applicants were disqualified without clear procedures and standards for disqualification and without offering the prospective applicants an opportunity to respond to the information that was relied upon to make the disqualification decisions; and
• Despite seemingly contradictory language in the rules promulgated by the Illinois Department of Agriculture, the prior administration decided to award no more than one cultivation center license to applicants who were the high point scorers in more than one district.

These actions may result in some additional minimal delay in a limited number of districts and for that we apologize to the patient community. The Governor has requested that this process must be deliberate, fair, and fully comply with the law.