By MELINDA J. OVERSTREET
for Glasgow News 1
After several questions and comments, the Glasgow Common Council approved a municipal order prohibiting the use of medical cannabis by city employees without exception.
The order states that Kentucky law allows a city to choose to do this, and this decision would maintain consistency in the city’s zero-tolerance policy with respect to drugs and alcohol.
After City Attorney Rich Alexander read the document aloud and the motion was made and seconded, Councilman Freddie Norris asked whether this would apply to employees when they are off duty as well as on duty. Mayor Henry Royse answered in the affirmative but then clarified that a person cannot work for the city and have the substance in your system.
Councilman Patrick Gaunce asked whether the city has the same policy with regard to alcohol and was told it does.
Councilman Max Marion asked whether a person who was taking a prescription narcotic after a surgery, for example, would be allowed to ….
As he trailed off, Alexander said they could provide a copy of that prescription, but they wouldn’t be allowed to operate machinery, for example, and perhaps not work at all while taking the medication.
Councilman Joe Trigg said he wanted to make sure they understood a couple of main points.
He said other states are trying to wrestle with the same types of questions, and he anticipates that within about six months, the state may have additional guidelines issued so people won’t feel they’re being discriminated against for medical reasons. Some of this may be influenced by what the federal government decides about whether to legalize prescription medical use of cannabis. At that point, he said, they may need to look at the issue again.
Alexander said the Kentucky law specifically says that if a city does prohibit use among its employees, it could not face any liability and it couldn’t have any action against it by a disgruntled employee, so it has built in certain protections for the municipality.
Gaunce said he just didn’t want this to be perceived as “running off” people because some don’t want marijuana in the Bible Belt.
Marion said one difference is that alcohol is legal up to a certain point, so a person could drink while off duty with no problem, but marijuana can stay in a person’s system for weeks, so a drug test could come back positive even if the person had been using the drug on their own time.
He agreed that some changes may come down the pike to where testing could show whether, for example, the substance had been used in the past 12 hours.
With all nine members present, the vote in favor of the municipal order was unanimous.
The Barren County Fiscal Court approved its own version of such a policy on Friday.
Other than approving the agenda and minutes, that was the sole action item on Monday’s agenda, but there was a bit more business to address.
Royse noted that three members of the council would not be returning in 2025 and said they have contributed a great deal.
“Anybody that tells you that the job of being on the council is a simple job, [it] is not the truth,” he said.
The mayor added that the work the council members do requires a great deal of time and has to be taken seriously, and with that, he read aloud and then handed a certificate of appreciation to each of those three individuals – Gaunce, Marlin Witcher and Marion. Gaunce came to the council January 2017. Witcher started in January 2009 and Marion has served for the past two years.
The mayor also announced that Glasgow City Hall is closed Tuesday and Wednesday for the Christmas holiday and Jan. 1 for New Year’s Day.
He invited all to attend the swearing-in ceremony for the council members for the 2025-2026 term, to take place in Council Chambers at 9 a.m. Dec. 30, and he advised that the next regular meeting is at 6 p.m. Jan. 13, also in Council Chambers, which is on Floor 2 of City Hall, 126 E. Public Square.
The three new members who will be joining the council in 2025 are Tommy Burris, Elizabeth Shoemaker and Randy Wilkinson.
HR and other related policies
Just prior to the meeting, Glasgow News 1 spoke with Lance Crimmins, human resources manager for the city, about the current employee policies and why this step was being taken.
As it is now, employees are supposed to report any prescription medication they are taking that could impair their ability to do their job well and safely.
“We don’t really do anything with that information other than file it away, so that if something happens, we have something to share with the MRO – the medical review officer,” he said, providing an example of an automobile accident as a “something” that could happen that would prompt a drug test and a look at that information.
In that instance, the employee would need to provide proof of that prescription to the MRO.
“Really, the reason we ask them to tell us those things is because, if we have somebody who might be potentially impaired, that doesn’t mean they can’t come to work, but we probably don’t want them driving a fire truck to a fire, you know,” Crimmins said. “Or we probably don’t want them at the landfill driving an excavator. We can find other work for them to do if they’re going to be on this antibiotic for a week or whatever. We can usually find things for them to do that don’t involve that.”
He said the employee is responsible for letting the proper person know.
“It’s really just so we can try to maintain a safer workplace for our employees and also if they’re out in the public,” said Crimmins, who is also the safety coordinator for the city. In the process, it also reduces the city’s liability for any accidents that could happen.
So one issue with any such medication is that it requires the trust that the employee will report it.
GN1 asked why medical cannabis couldn’t be treated just like any other prescription drug with this same policy, as anyone using it is supposed to have a prescription.
He noted the state law allows them to prohibit it. That same state law, though, does not mandate prohibiting this use by employees.
“We may have to revisit this in a year. The issue is that this is a really new area of the law where the state has not really hashed out a lot of things about it,” Crimmins said.
He said he and other city officials have been in touch with the Kentucky League of Cities for about the past six weeks, and he’s been told there are roughly a handful of cities that are going to allow employees to use medical cannabis with a prescription.
Crimmins said one of the major issues with allowing it is that the federal government has not legalized even medical use, and that means that anyone driving a vehicle or equipment that requires a commercial driver’s license can’t use it.
“If you drive a bus, you can’t use it. There’s some federal statutes that – they’re not 100 percent sure, but they seem to imply that you can’t be in possession of a handgun and use it, which would take away our police officers. So, just those three groups are about probably a third of our workforce, so just from a management standpoint, if you have a third of your workforce who can’t use it, but you’re going to allow it for this two-thirds, it kind of creates a weird kind of two-tiered system that we kind of want to avoid, so that’s the one point,” Crimmins said.
Another major driving factor is that, “when applying for federal grants, you have to certify that you’re in compliance with federal law,” he said. “If we allow our employees to use medical marijuana …, we’ve had some agencies tell us they haven’t decided yet whether that’s going to be a disqualifying factor. And we don’t want to wait until they decide it is, and then we suddenly don’t have federal grants anymore.”
Because of those factors, he said, city officials didn’t want to have employees getting the medical card Jan. 1 that would allow them to purchase the drug, only to find out they won’t be able to use it or, worse yet, for them to use it and then find out they’re at risk of using their job.
He said cannabis stays in the system for about 30 days, and the way the drug-test policy is now, it’s pass or fail. Because it has been illegal in Kentucky, regardless of the reason for use, it didn’t matter whether it was a little bit or a lot. His understanding is that there is nothing with tests that shows how long ago the substance was used or to what extent, at least not in the kind of detail that would be needed for these types of situations. To his knowledge, there also isn’t an established cutoff that indicates at what level a person is impaired like there is with a blood alcohol test, for example.
If a city employee came to them with a substance-use problem before an issue arose and wanted to get help, the city and/or insurance has options that could help that person with treatment. But if they don’t say anything about the problem and then get into a situation where they have a positive test, it’s too late at that point; the person’s employment would be terminated.
“I will say again like I said before at the beginning, I think, as this is an evolving thing – it’s very fluid – I think in a year or two, once the state has had some experience with this – and who knows where we’re going to go on a federal level – we may revisit it,” Crimmins said.
KLC, which is the city’s insurance carrier, has recommended this approach of prohibiting the use altogether. He said they thought more guidance would come out and had been waiting and watching for word for the past couple of months, but they didn’t get anything definitive.
He also said that at first, they thought this could be done by the mayor with an executive order but then learned the decision would have to go through the council.
“I didn’t intend to wait until the last minute like this,” Crimmins said. “Basically, we want to continue what we’re doing, just make any change at all. We want to clarify it for the employees, so they understand before Jan. 1 what happens.”
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