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Cannabis board seeks new lab lease, flags revenue gap after excise-tax sunset
Summary
The Senate Appropriations Committee heard the Cannabis Control Board’s FY26 budget request, including a new 10-year lab lease in Colchester, an added lab director position, vehicle lease increases and a shortfall from the July 1 sunset of the cannabis excise-tax allocation to operations.
The Senate Appropriations Committee on Feb. 21 heard the Cannabis Control Board’s FY26 budget presentation, including plans to open a state-run quality-control laboratory, add an enforcement-focused lab director and absorb higher vehicle and lease costs.
The board told the committee it now has 25 staff and three board members and has just signed a 10-year lease for lab space in Colchester. Olga Fitch, executive director of the board, said the lab lease will cost “roughly between, you know, $90,000 to a hundred thousand a year.”
The lab is central to the board’s FY26 request, Fitch said, because existing private labs cannot absorb the frequency and timing of tests the agency expects to need. “We just can't rely on the two private labs to do that, because we need to kind of always skip to the head of the line when we have an initiative or an inspection,” Fitch said. The board budgeted about $100,000 in private lab services in previous years and added roughly $25,000 this year to cover transitional needs while the state lab comes online.
Nut graf: The request highlights both one-time startup costs for the lab and a structural…
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