BENNINGTON — Any employer will say that having a retirement plan is an important element to attracting and retaining employees long term. Offering that, of course, is a more significant challenge for small business owners.
Colleen McQuade, owner of Bennington's first retail cannabis business – Juniper Lane – can attest that there are even more such obstacles for the cannabis industry in Vermont due to federal laws.
In hopes of improving the landscape for her employees, and other cannabis workers across the state (McQuade also chairs the Cannabis Retailers Association of Vermont), McQuade has accepted a position on the VT Saves Advisory Board. VT Saves is a public retirement initiative headed up by Vermont State Treasurer Mike Pieciak, which is slated to take effect by late 2024 or early 2025.
"All benefits, retirement plans to health benefits – all benefits – are extremely hard and very expensive to procure if you're a cannabis business," McQuade said.
Fortunately, to at least alleviate the retirement concerns, Governor Phil Scott signed Act 43 into law in June 2023 to establish the VT Saves program.
Businesses with five or more employees that don't already offer a retirement plan will be required to sign up for VT Saves, but the initiative is touted as being relatively painless.
"The VT Saves program establishes a retirement savings plan for Vermonters who are not currently offered a retirement plan through their employer," an explanation on the Vermont State Office of the Treasurer says. "It’s designed to make saving for retirement easy and automatic, at no cost to employers and no ongoing cost to taxpayers."
McQuade joined a list of 13 other business owners across the Green Mountain State to be named to the advisory board in a release from the treasurer's office.
McQuade said to the best of her knowledge, this is the first time a cannabis business owner has been on a state level board in Vermont for something that wasn't directly related to cannabis, and that she felt it was a significant step for cannabis being recognized as a legitimate industry.
"The state law doesn't require that we have an advisory board," said VT Saves Executive Director Becky Wasserman. "But the treasurer felt that it was important to have an advisory board for the purposes of making sure that we're doing outreach, connecting with a number of different kinds of businesses, and just getting diverse voices to be a part of that process ... and making sure that everyone is aware of this program."
Wasserman said that adding McQuade to the board offers representation for not only the cannabis industry, but for agriculture in general.
"We tried to identify a diverse number of industries and make sure that we were including industries with smaller businesses as well, in that process," Wasserman said. "We reached out to industry organizations to provide us recommendations for folks in their network who would make good candidates."
"We thought that it was important – in terms of the diverse agricultural space in the state – to include the cannabis industry," she later added. "Since Colleen is the head of (CRAV), we thought that she would be a great addition to the board and bring in those voices both from Southern Vermont and in that industry ... We're really excited that she's able to join."
Pieciak will be the "sole fiduciary" of the program that will be "privately administered." It is the responsibility of the treasurer to make sure "everyone's money is safe, and that ... everyone's money is invested according to best practices," Wasserman explained.
Employees who do not opt-out of the program will automatically have a Roth IRA (individual retirement account) established with payroll deductions. A Roth IRA accrues funds after taxes, meaning that when employees want to withdraw those funds, it will come out tax free, Wasserman explained.
Wasserman said that VT Saves has looked into potential federal entanglements with cannabis, but that they don't foresee it being a problem.
"That is something that we have looked into," she said. "There are other states that have implemented similar programs, and we have been in discussion with them, and they they've also enrolled employers in the cannabis industry into their programs. As far as we see, there are no legal issues."
In addition to the individual recognition, McQuade said she was excited to take this step to help her employees, and toward making the cannabis industry more "sustainable."
"What I what I'm trying to do – for myself and for my employees – is to have a career in cannabis ..." she said. "Not just something temporary, but to be able to offer benefits and competitive wages and all kinds of stuff."
McQuade said she hopes a step like this is only the beginning.
"I'm hoping that this opens the door for the cannabis industry," she said. "That we can start working with the state on a greater level, to get more better access to all benefits for employees."