A conflict of interest is the reason for a new vacancy in the office of Oregon’s secretary of state.
The former occupant of the office, Shemia Fagan, stepped down on May 1 after a bipartisan call from the state legislature demanding her resignation once news broke that Fagan had a questionable affiliation. She’d worked for two months early this year as a paid business consultant to Veriede Holding LLC, which is tied to LaMota, one of the biggest cannabis firms in Oregon.
Not a good look.
From the Cannabis Business Times:
At the same time, the Secretary of State’s office was finishing work on an audit of the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission, which oversees the licensed cannabis industry. Fagan had recused herself from the audit, but not before she’d urged her office “to incorporate La Mota CEO Rosa Cazares’s [business] concerns into their work and after the audit was all but finished,” as Willamette Week first reported.
