Massachusetts Treasurer Deborah Goldberg said that she takes allegations that suspended state pot boss Shannon O’Brien made racist remarks “very seriously” and wants O’Brien given an opportunity to address them “without further delay.”

“The Treasurer takes these allegations very seriously, which is why she wants to provide Chair O’Brien with the opportunity to address them without further delay, and with a fair process that provides an opportunity for her to do that,” Goldberg’s director of communications Andrew Napolitano wrote in a statement provided to the Herald.

O’Brien was suspended with pay from her $181,722 post as chair of the state’s Cannabis Control Commission in September for reasons that were never very clear. Weeks after the suspension, Treasurer Goldberg said that she was left no alternative but to suspend O’Brien following an investigative report compiled by an outside law firm that made “several serious allegations.” Those allegations were not disclosed and the report was not public.

On Friday, some of those “serious allegations” were revealed as being racist and “culturally insensitive” remarks, including referring to Asian people as “yellow,” according to an October letter by Goldberg made public after O’Brien herself filed it — along with a response denying the allegations — in Suffolk Superior Court, the Boston Globe reports. The Herald could not independently obtain the filings on Friday evening.

O’Brien fired off a lawsuit over her suspension in October, saying — in a contemporary statement — that she filed suit “in order to force Treasurer Goldberg to follow the law and give me an opportunity to be heard.”

On Friday, Napolitano said that “In October, Chair O’Brien was so adamant about having this meeting that she went to court to demand it. Now, despite knowing about the allegations since September, she is asking to delay the meeting again. It is in the best interest of the taxpayers and the CCC that this meeting proceed.”