A high-ranking official at the cabinet-level state agency admitted Wednesday that she intentionally withheld a report from lawmakers last year to protect the Office of Cannabis Policy’s legislative agenda.
Anya Trundy, the deputy director for legislative affairs for Maine’s Department of Administrative and Financial Services (DAFS), made the shocking confession during the Office of Cannabis Policy’s first appearance before the legislature’s Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee.
According to Maine law (Sec. B-19. 28-B MRSA §113, sub-§1), Trundy was required to submit a report to the committee on Feb. 15, 2024, as lawmakers were returning to Augusta for the second half of the 131st Legislature.
The report would have shared information with lawmakers concerning Maine’s cannabis industry, including public health information and Office of Cannabis Policy (OCP) spending data from the prior year.
However, DAFS and OCP never shared that report, and the government agencies never explained why that report was withheld from lawmakers—until yesterday.
“Is there a reason why we’re late on that?” asked Rep. David Boyer (R-Poland).
Prefacing her admission as a “very human response,” Trundy explained that she received the report from OCP but then sat on it so as not to complicate the effort cannabis lobbyists, the Mills Administration, and OCP’s legislative staff were putting into LD 40, a major cannabis reform package.
“We had a really difficult legislative session last year in this committee that was filled with a lot of acrimony, and that report is due in the middle of it,” said Trundy. “And when the draft came to me from OCP, I put it on my desk and I realized that it needed some editing, and that likely releasing that report would throw another log on the fire. And I didn’t want to throw another log on the fire.”
“What I really wanted to do was have a tone change, and at the end of the session, we ended on a great note,” she said.
Nothing in Maine’s cannabis statutes allows government employees to withhold documents from lawmakers in order to police the tone of legislative debate.
The “log” that Trundy decided to keep out of the “fire” would likely have been two 20- to 30-page reports—one for both the adult-use cannabis industry and the medicinal cannabis program—in line with reports from previous years, which are available on the DAFS website.
The reports Trundy unilaterally withheld from lawmakers were due, as she seemed to admit, in the middle of the legislative session last year. That means the reports covering 2023 would have been due on Feb. 15, 2024, just as prior years’ reports have been due every Feb. 15 since 2020.
Now, nearly a year later, the report still has not been released.
That may be because within the very piece of legislation Trundy was aiming to protect, LD 40, was language that would move the deadline just enough to permit the withholding of those records until Feb. 15, 2025, but only after the fact.
In other words, after flouting the law and denying information to lawmakers, DAFS and OCP were able to get lawmakers to approve a statutory change essentially approving of the extra-legal maneuver.
The reports have historically provided information on the prior year activity within the adult-use recreational program and the medicinal program that could be helpful to lawmakers writing policy for the industry.
That includes data on total capacity of cannabis production, volume produced, licensure stats, OCP’s staffing, revenue, and spending, the number of compliance issues in the year, and public health information.
Trundy didn’t say whether she intended to comply with the statutory deadline this year. Depending on how it’s read, the statute may now allow DAFS and OCP to skip the 2023 report altogether.
The annual cannabis reports aren’t the only document requests that the deputy director deals with in her government job.
According to the DAFS website, she’s the point person for “legislative requests,” but she’s also been involved with a number of the Maine Wire’s FOAA requests related to the OCP and other matters.
Trundy’s admission and her key position as liaison between DAFS and lawmakers raises questions about what other information she may be withholding from the legislature in order to advance a bureaucratic agenda. It also raises questions about her role as a public records manager for the agency.
Over the last two years, DAFS has been the worst offender of all Maine state agencies when it comes to responding to the Maine Wire’s FOAA’s in good faith, with the agency delaying or failing to respond to some simple requests for more than 600 days.
A number of cannabis related requests submitted to OCP last April remain outstanding.
According to state payroll records, Trundy’s taxpayer-funded compensation was valued at more than $152,000 in 2024.
In the same year, OCP Director John Hudak earned $171,389.16.
Trundy did not respond to an email Wednesday evening seeking comment regarding her remarks to the VLA committee. If she does, this story will be updated.
