Jack Scrantom
Yesterday, January 13, 2023, the Washington State Liquor and Hashish Board (“LCB”) launched an interactive mapping instrument for figuring out whether or not folks meet have lived in Disproportionately Impacted Areas (“DIA”)–one among three eligibility standards for the forthcoming Social Fairness in Hashish (“SEIC”) program licensing. The map might be discovered by a hyperlink on the LCB’s web site, or here.
Washington Social Fairness in Hashish Program
As we wrote about here, the SEIC program, slated to be rolled out someday this 12 months, will re-purpose round 40 retail hashish dispensary licenses which were revoked or deserted and reissue them to qualifying candidates. To qualify, a WA resident should maintain at the very least 51% of every social fairness retail license applicant and the particular person or individuals making up the applicant should meet at the very least two of the next {qualifications}:
- the applicant has lived in a Disproportionately Influence Space (“DIA”) in WA for no less than 5 years between 1980 and 2010;
- the applicant or a member of the family of the applicant has been arrested or convicted of a hashish offense; or
- the applicant’s family revenue within the 12 months previous to submitting the appliance was lower than the median family revenue throughout the state of Washington.
What are “Disproportionately Impacted Areas”?
DIA’s have been conceptualized and outlined by the WA legislature. To qualify as a DIA, a person census tract should be within the “prime 20% on all the following indicators:
- excessive poverty price;
- excessive price of participation in income-based federal applications;
- Excessive price of unemployment; and
- Excessive price of convictions.”
When utilizing the mapping instrument, you will need to maintain the eligibility standards in thoughts: an applicant should have lived in a DIA for at the very least 5 years between 1980 and 2010. The mapping instrument tells customers whether or not a specific census tract qualifies as a DIA for the next particular person years —1980, 1990, 2000, and 2010. The LCB’s web site states “To satisfy this qualification, you should have resided within the space on the time it was thought of a disproportionately impacted space for no less than 5 years.” Sadly, the mapping instrument doesn’t inform us for a way lengthy after one of many supplied years any given census tract remained a DIA.
Figuring out eligibility; points with the mapping instrument
As a result of it’s removed from clear, are candidates to deduce that if a census tract is proven to have been a DIA in 1980 and 1990, that it remained a DIA for all the intervening years as properly? As famous above, the mapping instrument solely states whether or not or not a census tract was a DIA within the particular person years listed. This raises a number of questions on applicant eligibility beneath totally different circumstances however all we all know right now is that when functions are submitted, “The third-party contractor will use this map and the knowledge supplied by candidates to find out in the event you lived in a disproportionately impacted space and for a way lengthy.”
Take into account if an applicant lived in a census tract proven to be a DIA in 1990 by the mapping instrument from January 1990 to December 1995, however the mapping instrument reveals that the census tract was not a DIA in 2000. The 5 12 months minimal eligibility interval could be clearly established in that case. However, as a result of the mapping instrument doesn’t inform us for a way lengthy between 1990 and 2000 the census tract was a DIA, we’re left not figuring out whether or not the standards is happy with any certainty.
Many candidates counting on DIA eligibility as one among their three eligibility standards for an SEIC license is not going to know whether or not they qualify till the third-party contractor responds to the appliance. That is only a easy instance to indicate the problems with the mapping instrument and the necessity for steering from the LCB. Individuals’s lives are not often as neat and easy as the instance above and the mapping instrument’s efficacy for serving to folks decide DIA eligibility is proscribed at greatest.
Strive it out and call the LCB
Potential SEIC candidates ought to use the instrument to at the very least get a way for whether or not they qualify based mostly on the place they lived throughout 1980 and 2010, regardless of the mapping instrument’s points. If it isn’t clear whether or not you qualify, the perfect plan of action could be to contact the LCB with the query and request steering. We’ll be following developments in Washington’s SEIC program and writing about them right here.
