Erika McConnell is an Anchorage resident who wears glasses and a toothy smile. She enjoys reading, the outdoors and caramels.<\/p>\n
On March 20, she\u2019ll chew on something new: a job as the state\u2019s top regulator for alcohol and marijuana.<\/p>\n
She said her approach to the job will be simple: \u201cMy approach is to implement the laws that are in place \u2026 to implement them fairly and consistently so that there\u2019s an even playing field.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s something she\u2019s already done: She\u2019s spent 14 years as a planner for the Municipality of Anchorage and for the past 18 months has been what the Alaska Journal of Commerce called \u201cAnchorage\u2019s marijuana whip,\u201d coordinating all questions about Alaska\u2019s new industry and directing city authorities in responses to those questions.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think my experience both content-wise and sort of process-wise makes me a good fit,\u201d McConnell said.<\/p>\n
McConnell hailed as tough, detail-oriented<\/span><\/p>\n Anchorage has been slow to welcome the marijuana industry when compared to Fairbanks, Valdez and Juneau. Its stores opened later, after overcoming more regulatory hurdles than their counterparts elsewhere.<\/p>\n The owners of those stores said those issues weren\u2019t McConnell\u2019s fault. In fact, they probably would have been worse without her.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I heard her name, I thought, wow, we couldn\u2019t have asked for a better person,\u201d said Bryant Thorp, owner of Arctic Herbery, the first marijuana retail shop to open in Anchorage.<\/p>\n Anchorage attorney Jana Weltzin represents several marijuana businesses in Anchorage and has dealt with McConnell repeatedly.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s not going to be fabulous for the industry. She\u2019s going to be tough on the industry. She\u2019s more detail-oriented. She wants more clarity,\u201d Weltzin said.<\/p>\n She might be tough, but it\u2019s a good kind of toughness, she added.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s not going to be this \u2018anything flows\u2019 for the industry,\u201d Weltzin said. \u201cA mature and smart industry will respect that because that is how we keep our industry safe from federal intervention.\u201d<\/p>\n That federal intervention may be the key issue of McConnell\u2019s tenure. In the same week the Alaska Department of Commerce announced McConnell\u2019s appointment, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer warned that the Trump administration might soon abandon the hands-off approach of the Obama administration when it comes to recreational marijuana.<\/p>\n Though nine states have legalized the production, sale and use of recreational marijuana, it remains illegal at a federal level.<\/p>\n Fred Parady, the state\u2019s assistant commerce commissioner, praised McConnell\u2019s thoughtfulness on regulations, calling her \u201ceven-handed, steady and unbiased.\u201d<\/p>\n He admitted, however, that McConnell was picked for her ability to cope with complicated state regulations, and the issue of the federal government \u201cwas not a central concern\u201d during the interview process.<\/p>\n Tourist trip led to life in Alaska<\/span><\/p>\n McConnell grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland, and attended St. John\u2019s College in that state.<\/p>\n After she graduated in 1993, she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area.<\/p>\n A vacation to visit a cousin brought her to Alaska for the first time. Like many transplants, a tourist trip inspired something.<\/p>\n She worked in a Bristol Bay cannery for a summer, then shifted to Anchorage full-time in 1995, working first at Title Wave Books. That was followed by a yearlong stint with the Alaska Center for the Environment, and her experience there inspired her to pursue a master\u2019s degree in planning \u2500 something she hadn\u2019t considered before.<\/p>\n \u201cIt seemed a great way to both foster development, yet protect those areas one loves or are important for other reasons,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n McConnell is open about her love for Anchorage as a place.<\/p>\n \u201cI love what lots of us love: That there\u2019s so much natural, wild beauty that is so accessible,\u201d she said. \u201cYou can live in a city, but you can also get into the wilderness.\u201d<\/p>\n She attended a program in Massachusetts, then returned to Alaska to work in the Legislature for a session, for Gov. Tony Knowles, and for the state\u2019s coastal management program. In 2003, she joined the Municipality of Anchorage as an associate planner. She stayed with the planning department for the next 12 years, switching to marijuana planning in 2015.<\/p>\n \u2018Passionate about government\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n McConnell represents a switch from the past two directors of the Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office. Shirley Cot\u00e9 was a longtime police officer in Anchorage and on the Kenai Peninsula before she was named director of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board in 2008.<\/p>\n Cot\u00e9 resigned in 2014 and was replaced by Cynthia Franklin, an Anchorage prosecutor who became ABC\u2019s director a month and a half before Alaskans approved Ballot Measure 2 and legalized recreational marijuana here.<\/p>\n Franklin left her job in January after overseeing every step of the marijuana industry\u2019s formation from the ballot box to the first store opening, which happened in the last days of October 2015.<\/p>\n McConnell, it\u2019s clear, views public service as a calling.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m passionate about government,\u201d she said. \u201cI think there\u2019s a wonderful role for government in trying to help people and trying to make people\u2019s lives better.\u201d<\/p>\n McConnell\u2019s last boss in Anchorage was Chris Schutte, director of economic development for the city.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s got a wicked sharp mind. She\u2019s able to retain, know or find vast amounts of information,\u201d he said of McConnell. \u201cShe was the planning staff person who fully embraced the changes coming with the legalization of marijuana and really dove into that subject matter head-first.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Contact reporter James Brooks at james.k.brooks@juneauempire.com or call 419-7732.<\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Erika McConnell is an Anchorage resident who wears glasses and a toothy smile. She enjoys reading, the outdoors and caramels. On March 20, she\u2019ll chew on something new: a job as the state\u2019s top regulator for alcohol and marijuana. She said her approach to the job will be simple: \u201cMy approach is to implement the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":426,"featured_media":15551,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[249,225,230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-15550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-marijuana","tag-politics","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/426"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15550"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=15550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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