It was revealed in the past month via the Chicago Sun Times that Texas was investing in the legalization of cannabis in Illinois via the Texas Permanent School Fund (PSF) and Innovative Industrial Properties (IIPR).
“the pioneering real estate investment trust for the medical-use cannabis industry…the first publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: IIPR) to provide real estate capital to the medical-use cannabis industry.”
This is striking a chord with Texas as the past legislative session saw the Lt. Governor single-handedly kill a cannabis criminal justice reform bill and a medical cannabis bill in the Senate, by either not allowing it to be assigned to committee or assigning it to committee without enough time to get a hearing. The Lt Governor’s office has released statements in the past that he is against both types of bills being advanced through the process, and that anything being done must originate in the House of Representatives.
The issue now that comes up, is how much influence does the state legislature have on this investment?
The Texas Permanent School fund was created with a $2,000,000 appropriation by the Texas Legislature in 1854, expressly for the benefit of the public schools of Texas. Per the Current Investment Policy page on the Texas Education Agency (TEA) website,
“The State Board of Education (SBOE) has adopted the Statement of Investment Objectives, Policies and Guidelines, Texas Administrative Code Title 19 Part 2 Chapter 33 (TAC), which sets forth the prudent objective standards for the investment and administration of the Texas Permanent School Fund (Fund). The statement:
- addresses the needs of the fund
- establishes criteria for manager performance measurement
- communicates the statement to all parties
- serves as a review document for compliance
- demonstrates that the Board is in compliance with its responsibility of managing the investments of the fund
- documents compliance with the appropriate governing laws
See Texas Education Code Chapter 33, Statement of Investment Objectives, Policies and Guidelines, for more information.”
It’s possible that most people do not have an issue with the TEA/State Board of Education investing in cannabis to raise money for schools in Texas. The hypocrisy with that, would be that school districts and the TEA have taken zero tolerance policies and have included cannabis as a disciplinary code in Appendix E of the Texas Student Data System. So they support cannabis elsewhere, but write code against it here in Texas.
As well, the Texas Education Code Chapter 33, ethics section states the following, which may raise some suspicion as to who may be illegally benefiting from this investment.
“(3) SBOE Members and PSF Service Providers shall be loyal to the interests of the PSF to the extent that such loyalty is not in conflict with other duties, which legally have priority. SBOE Members and PSF Service Providers shall avoid personal, employment, or business relationships that create conflicts of interest as defined in subsection (i)(1) of this section.”
There are so many people involved that it would be rather difficult to single out any one person that may have also invested money in this trust. They could be banking on the sales in Illinois not only making them money, but the fact that the State Board of Education invested an undisclosed amount of money to this trust, therefore boosting their stock value at some point. Is somebody in this legislature or even the Lt Gov an owner of a share? Is it possible that somebody in the TEA or the PSF has shares? Transparency is needed here.
So now we ask ourselves if the legislature may need to pass a resolution to open an investigation into this issue, as we do not have a Secretary of State that would oversee and start a possibly needed investigation outside of the legislature.
