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Committee advances technical fixes to cannabis expungement law, narrows scope after amendment
Summary
House File 10‑94, addressing technical omissions and court-order issues in the Cannabis Expungement Board's mandate, was moved forward after the committee adopted an amendment narrowing the board's authority in multi-count cases; BCA had identified roughly 98,000 potential cases for review.
Representative Hollins presented House File 10‑94, a technical bill for the Cannabis Expungement Board (CEB), and the committee moved the measure to the general register after adopting amendments that narrowed the board's authority over multi‑count cases.
The bill seeks to correct drafting oversights from the 2023 cannabis legalization package so cases the legislature intended to be reviewed are not excluded. Deputy Director Mark Hazy of the Cannabis Expungement Board described three problems the bill addresses: adding omitted cannabis offenses (for example, certain sales offenses), capturing historic cannabis offenses predating a statutory cutoff, and resolving a judicial administrative-order interpretation that prevented sealing or expunging individual eligible counts in multi‑count cases.
Hazy explained the administrative‑order impact: if a single court case contains multiple counts and a dismissed count remains part of the public record, courts have been reluctant to expunge only the cannabis conviction because the case record is organized by case rather than by count. The A1 amendment (to the A25‑seventeen amendment) removed broader language that would have given the CEB expanded authority over non‑cannabis counts and returned the bill closer to the original statutory intent. Representative Hollins said she intends to keep working with stakeholders to refine scope.
Bureau of Criminal Apprehension staff have flagged an estimated 98,000 cases for CEB review. CEB testimony noted current processing at roughly 100 cases per month with nine staff; CEB intends to scale hiring (targeting roughly 25 legal staff) and process changes to increase throughput.
The committee adopted the amendment suite and recommended the bill be placed on the general register.
Ending: The bill advances with narrowed scope; committee members urged continued negotiation to ensure the CEB can efficiently implement the expungement process while avoiding unintended authority over unrelated charges.
