Delaware Senate Votes To Override Governor’s Veto Of Bill That Would Limit Restrictive Business Zoning Rule

The Delaware Senate has voted to override the governor’s veto of a bill that would prevent local governments from imposing onerous zoning restrictions that make it more challenging for marijuana businesses to operate in their jurisdictions.

This comes months after Gov. Matt Meyer (D) vetoed the legislation from Sen. Trey Paradee (D), who pitched it as a means of ensuring that the state’s maturing cannabis market is not impeded by county zoning rules.

The Senate voted 14-6 to on Wednesday to override the veto, clearing the three-fifth majority threshold for such action. The House must also vote by that same standard in order for the legislation to take effect contrary to the governor’s wishes.

Paradee, who sharply criticized Meyer immediately after the veto and alleged that he “lied” about a deal to get the bill enacted last year, changed his tone somewhat ahead of the override vote this week, stating that lawmakers did not intend to reject the veto as a “personal attack” on the governor.

“This is not about personalities. This is not about politics,” the senator said. “This is about policy—and, more specifically, it is about whether the General Assembly is willing to stand behind the policy choices we already made in 2023 or whether we are comfortable allowing those choices to slowly collapse under the weight of inaction and obstruction.”

Despite efforts to stand up the cannabis industry, “we have not meaningfully expanded the number of operating retail dispensaries,” he said, adding that the state “created expectations” about entrepreneurial growth but then “left license holders stranded.”

“We have created a licensing system that promises opportunity while tolerating a local land use environment that prevents those licenses from ever being used,” he said. “That is not regulation. That is paralysis.”

Delaware’s adult-use cannabis market launched last August, with the governor touting the state’s first “successful” weekend of adult-use cannabis sales, with total purchases for medical and recreational marijuana totaling nearly $1 million—and compliance checks demonstrating that the regulated market is operating as intended under the law.

But when it comes to local control, Meyer aligned himself with county governments in a way that Pardee and others say is kneecapping the industry with zoning restrictions that limit the expansion of the commercial market.

“A weak legal market only serves to strengthen the illegal market,” Pardee said on Wednesday. “The first step to displacing the illicit market is not more rhetoric, it is building a functional, accessible, regulated legal market. The first step to building that market is allowing licensed businesses to open.”

The legislation that lawmakers passed and the governor, a former New Castle County executive, vetoed would “prevent zoning from being used as a disguised prohibition,” Pardee said.