St. Mary’s County commissioners voted July 28 to formally create the county’s Community Reinvestment and Repair Fund, ending a review that stretched back to February and opening the door for local nonprofits to begin competing this fall for more than $1.5 million in state cannabis tax revenue.
The ordinance, approved during the board’s regular business meeting at the Chesapeake Building in Leonardtown, establishes the fund as a separate, nonlapsing account and directs the county administrator or a designee to run an annual grant application process for organizations working to improve economic, educational and health outcomes in eligible communities. As of late May, the county had banked $1,542,136.62 in reinvestment funding passed down from the state, according to figures presented to commissioners ahead of the vote.
The fund traces its authority to Maryland’s Cannabis Reform Act of 2023, which legalized adult-use cannabis statewide and created a Community Reinvestment and Repair Fund, financed by a share of the resulting cannabis sales tax revenue, to direct money toward communities the state determined were disproportionately harmed by decades of cannabis enforcement. The law left one crucial piece unresolved: it never defined what counts as a qualifying “low-income community,” leaving that determination to each of Maryland’s 24 counties. Deputy County Attorney John Sterling Houser, who has guided the ordinance through the county’s review process since the start of the year, told commissioners that 19 to 20 counties statewide had already adopted their own local ordinances and begun building funding frameworks despite that lack of statewide guidance.
St. Mary’s County’s own definition shifted more than once as commissioners weighed the tradeoff between broad eligibility and a workable applicant pool. At a Feb. 10 work session, the board settled on defining a qualifying community as a census tract with either a poverty rate above 20% or a median household income no greater than 70% of the countywide median — a figure Houser calculated at $83,612. Houser cautioned commissioners at the time that the 70% threshold was “still pretty restrictive,” noting there weren’t “a whole lot of ZIP codes in the county where that would be eligible.” By the time the ordinance reached a July 14 public hearing, the income threshold had been raised to 80% of the county median, broadening the geographic pool somewhat. At the same time, separate guidance from the state narrowed eligibility on the applicant side, requiring that grant recipients be IRS-recognized nonprofit organizations in good standing with Maryland — a requirement Houser said commissioners could choose to formally adopt or modify when finalizing the ordinance.
Nearly a dozen residents testified at the July 14 hearing, largely voicing support for the fund’s creation while pressing commissioners to keep the eventual award process transparent and squarely targeted at communities most affected by cannabis-related enforcement historically. Several speakers pushed commissioners to prioritize Lexington Park’s 20653 ZIP code specifically, which county staff and residents have identified as the area most clearly meeting the income and poverty criteria under consideration — a detail that underscores how narrow the fund’s practical geographic reach in St. Mary’s County may end up being, even though the ordinance itself applies countywide. Commissioner Eric Colvin took care during the hearing to separate the policy question from the funding decisions that will follow it. “Tonight’s public hearing is about the process that we have,” Colvin told the audience. “It is not about the actual organizations that are going to be receiving the funding.”
