Newly released termination file from case between Massachusetts Treasurer Goldberg and Shannon O’Brien details “bullying” and irreconcilable differences from start of tenure
If you thought the drama between Massachusetts Treasurer Deb Goldberg and ousted Cannabis Control Commission Chair Shannon O’Brien was over, then you must be smoking top-shelf product. Maybe in your dreams it’s buttoned up, but in real life, the back-and-forth fury goes on and on. And on …
In the wake of a judge informing both parties to hurry the hell up and wrap the embarrassing saga which commenced in some form all the way back in 2022, last week State House News Service reported on “a five-volume administrative record of the case [filed] with the court.” “The first volume consists of the redacted version of the 83-page explanation Goldberg wrote of her decision to fire O’Brien.”
Colin A. Young, who has led coverage of this war, further reported, “The treasurer asked the judge to impound the four remaining volumes, which are thought to contain transcripts of testimony given in closed-door hearings, investigative reports, emails detailing employee complaints at the CCC, written testimony submitted in connection with the hearings, and more.”
In a comment to the News Service, “A spokesman for O’Brien said Goldberg’s attempt to keep thousands of pages of information related to O’Brien’s firing private ‘is making a mockery of the public’s right to know.’” There is, however, lots to review in the latest addition to the administrative record in Suffolk Superior Court, where the case file for O’Brien v. Goldberg must be close to taking up as much space as the archives from the multiple trials against Sean Ellis.
We pulled the following excerpts from the September 2024 decision, in which the treasurer wrote, “I am removing Chair O’Brien as a Commissioner because the sum and totality of her conduct described below amounts to gross misconduct, and because many of the instances described below individually constitute gross misconduct. Chair O’Brien … has demonstrated through her actions that she is unable to discharge the powers and duties of a commissioner.”
Problems from the very start
According to the background information in Goldberg’s decision, “cross-complaints” were made between O’Brien and colleagues going back as far as late 2022—just months after her being sworn in that September!
Race-related comments at the center of the removal decision
As has been reported extensively for more than a year, charges of racial insensitivity were central to many complaints made against the ex-chair by former CCC colleagues. The 80-page report is full of documentation to that effect. Goldberg wrote: “The results of the investigations were troubling. For example, the First Report concluded, among other things, that Chair O’Brien ‘made racially, ethnically, culturally insensitive statements, and also engaged in professionally inappropriate conduct in the workplace in her generally rude and disrespectful statements and interactions with agency staff and colleagues.’”
“Another example [of an insensitive statement] included in the First Report is Chair O’Brien’s ‘volunteer[ing]’ about a Black staff member: ‘I think she’s first generation because she doesn’t have a trace of an accent. She told me where her family came from, so I’m not sure if she was born here [in the United States].’ … Chair O’Brien testified during the meeting that she has no recollection of making the statement and contended that the First Investigator made it up.”
Just, wow
At one point, one of O’Brien’s attorneys misspoke his own client’s name, so one of his colleagues “offered a correction: ‘Shannon. Shannon O’Brien.’” But “Before Chair O’Brien’s counsel could resume his questioning, Chair O’Brien blurted out, ‘You’re getting all us Irish people mixed up.’” Goldberg opined: “Chair O’Brien’s ethnicity-focused interjection in the context of a meeting to address, among other things, whether Chair O’Brien has been insensitive about such matters, was shocking.”
The other big allegation is “bullying”
“The Second Report concluded, among other things, that Chair O’Brien threatened, intimidated, bullied, and humiliated, and interfered with the leave right of [REDACTED]. It further concluded she failed to conduct herself professionally as the Commission’s leader in handling a disagreement with [REDACTED].”
Parental leave
A lot of the termination findings pertain to the situation around O’Brien’s public comments in 2023 about then-Exec. Director Shawn Collins and his employment status at the time. One of the main contentions between them was around parental leave time. The following is from a section addressing O’Brien’s comments and behavior regarding that topic …
“Chair O’Brien’s actions caused [REDACTED] to question—in an email to the Commission’s Acting CPO—whether [REDACTED] could take leave without consequence, thereby hindering [REDACTED] attempt to exercise [REDACTED] rights. Her actions also would have caused any reasonable person to question whether they could take protected leave without consequence. And, while it is difficult to know, the public nature of her statements potentially caused other employees of the Commission, and potentially members of the public who have viewed or may in the future view the Chair’s conduct at the public meeting, to question whether they can and should take protected leave without consequence.”
Testimonies from former and current commissioners
According to the termination document, “Chair O’Brien also called current CCC Commissioner Kimberly Roy as a witness, and Chair O’Brien’s council examined Commissioner Roy.” And at the “final meeting session … on June 17th, 2024. … Chair O’Brien [also] presented former CCC chair Steven Hoffman as a witness.”
The commission’s “change agent”
Goldberg wrote: “In responding to the reasons for her potential removal, Chair O’Brien’s mantra has been that she is doing what I asked her to do when I appointed her; that is, she is a ‘change agent.’ The complaints against her, she repeatedly states, are merely responses to her efforts to reform a dysfunctional agency where people with bad motives are out to get her (and have cold-opted me to assist them).”
“Unless I’m in a coma”
Goldberg wrote: “In her position as a commissioner, Chair O’Brien understood herself to be effectively impervious to oversight and accountability. She told the First Investigator that commissioners ‘are not accountable to anyone [at the Agency].’” O’Brien reportedly said, “I basically can’t be fired unless I’m in a coma.”
“Blunt” language
In a section titled “Berating and Threatening to Fire [REDACTED],” it states that [REDACTED] “alleged that chair O’Brien continually berated [REDACTED] and threatened to fire [REDACTED], repeatedly claiming she had a ‘blunt instrument’ at her disposal to address the problem she believed needed to be fixed at the Commission, i.e., if [REDACTED] would not fix those problems, she would exercise the blunt instrument of termination.” From emails to in-person conversations, O’Brien apparently raised more blunt objects than Method Man and Redman during their tenure at Harvard.
The long campaign against rivals
Goldberg wrote: “Chair O’Brien testified extensively about how she thought [REDACTED] was failing as the organization’s [REDACTED] … (testifying [REDACTED] was ‘MIA for months, leaving the organization without the strong leadership it needed during a critical time’) … Two months prior to the [aforementioned] public meeting [heard ’round the cannabis world], Chair O’Brien even expressed to me that she thought it was time for [REDACTED] to be replaced given her assessment that performance was dismal. …
“Given Chair O’Brien’s extensive statements that [REDACTED] was not operating the Commission effectively and had essentially gone missing, her assertion that she was concerned that [REDACTED] taking parental leave would undermine the Commission’s ability to function is not credible.”
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