Michel contested two ballot questions<\/a> \u2014 one pertaining to the 5% tax on retail marijuana sales and another that put a 5% excise tax on the first sale or transfer of unprocessed retail marijuana by a cultivation facility. Both passed in November 2018.<\/p>\nMichel challenged the voter-approved taxes by claiming the ballot questions contained misleading information that failed to accurately state certain financial information and the fiscal impact of the taxes.<\/p>\n
Reached over the phone, Michel, general counsel for IgadI, a marijuana dispensary in Tabernash, didn\u2019t want to comment on the case.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe judge\u2019s opinion speaks for itself,\u201d he said in response to questions about judge\u2019s ruling.<\/p>\n
Michel emphasized that he filed on his own behalf, as a county voter, and he said the lawsuit has nothing to do with IgadI, which boasts having \u201cthe largest observable marijuana grow in the world,\u201d in addition to its retail sales floor and product sales through the dispensary and its \u201cdispensing partners around the state.\u201d<\/p>\n
In places, the county sought to defeat Michel’s suit by beating him on procedure and technicalities, including a rather dubious claim that he failed to properly identify the commission in his complaint against \u201cThe Grand County Board of County Commissioners.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another misstep might have come up when Michel served the commissioners instead of the clerk, as he was supposed to do, but that fact by itself was not enough to convince Hoak to discard the lawsuit. Instead, the judge granted the commissioners\u2019 request to dismiss based on how she interpreted the merits of Michel\u2019s case. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe court, therefore, finds that even if Michel is correct that the BOCC provided inaccurate or misleading fiscal information, such fact does not state a claim for relief because the BOCC is not required to provide any fiscal information at all under section 1-7-902 and Michel has not cited any other statue requiring such information,\u201d Hoak wrote before explaining that Michel\u2019s attempt to argue the lawsuit on another precedent set by the Colorado Supreme Court was just as futile.<\/p>\n
In the ruling, Judge Hoak explained that the Supreme Court case Michel cited involved an initiative petition to amend the Colorado Constitution, and a board composed of the secretary of state, director of the legislative drafting office and attorney general was required to prepare a summary of the proposed amendment. The summary they crafted included language about the \u201cfiscal impact,\u201d and that formed the basis of the dispute, Hoak added. <\/p>\n
\u201cUltimately, the Colorado Supreme Court found the fiscal impact was \u2018without an adequate basis\u2019 and reversed the board\u2019s decision to include it in the summary,\u201d the judge summarized.<\/p>\n
But in Michel\u2019s case, the judge found he didn\u2019t demonstrate the \u201cfiscal impact\u201d described in the Supreme Court case was the same as the \u201cfiscal information\u201d at the heart of his lawsuit against the county commissioners and dismissed the lawsuit.<\/p>\n
In response to Michel\u2019s accusations the ballot questions contained false or misleading information, Grand County Commissioner Rich Cimino defended the information presented to voters in November 2018.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will stand by the estimates we provided were the best available based on the info we were able to gather,\u201d Cimino said. \u201cWe respect the judge\u2019s decision, and we are happy to move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n