NEW ULM – As Minnesota is gearing up to open licensing to sell cannabis in 2025, Brown County is working on drafting local ordinances regulating potential cannabis businesses.

The county commissioners held a special workshop Tuesday to review a potential draft ordinance on cannabis sales, but several questions remain open for consideration. The main issue was whether individual cities in Brown County would take on marijuana licensing or delegate that responsibility to the county.

“I envision it is going to be like tobacco and liquor licensing,” County Attorney Chuck Hanson said. “If the city doesn’t want to have that responsibility, it is going to fall to the county.”

Hanson believed this was the first question they needed answered. Which cities would handle cannabis licensing on their own?

Another question was how the county would conduct compliance checks. Would each potential cannabis dispensary need a compliance check before opening to business and which departments would be responsible for the checks? This led back to the question of which cities in Brown County wanted to handle licensing on their own. The cities that decide to take on the responsibility could also do their compliance checks using city staff.

Brown County also had the option of setting limits for how many cannabis sales licenses were issued in the county. The limit could be determined by population. However, this would only apply to the parts of Brown County that have chosen to delegate licensing to the county.

If for example, New Ulm chose to take on the licensing responsibility, the county limit would not apply to that city. Brown County could limit cannabis license to three, but New Ulm be excluded from this regulation.

The commissioners were uncertain if any limit should be set for cannabis licenses. Commissioner Anton Berg said he liked the idea of placing a limit, but Commissioner Jeffrey Veerkamp believed it should be up to the business market.

Commissioner Brian Braun said the county should “walk before they run,” suggesting they started with a limited number of licenses and expand later if works.

“If it did grow, I agree, let the market determine how many we actually have,” Braun said.

County Administer Sam Hansen said he has spoken with some cities about licensing limits. In Springfield and Sleepy Eye the consensus was to let the free market decide how many cannabis businesses could operate.

“If they have five successful businesses willing to pay taxes, they were OK with that,” Hansen said.

No formal decision was made during the workshop discussion, but Commissioner David Borchert recommended Hansen reach out to the different cities to confirm which planned to handle their own licensing.

“Once we have an idea of what direction the cities are going, then we would need another workshop,” Borchert said. He wanted to move quickly to give the staff time to work on the ordinance.

“A lot of people thought the sky was going to fall,” Borchert said. “I don’t think we are going to see that. However, if we are not prepared, and some technicality that is not addressed, I think we could have a headache.”