Recreational marijuana retail licenses should be awarded in Illinois this fall, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Tuesday, despite delays to give applicants a second chance at qualifying following complaints about the scoring process.

The governor called the process “far from perfect” so far, and said a delay and review is necessary to ensure fairness and diversity of ownership in the industry.

“Illinois is attempting to produce a cannabis industry that actually looks like Illinois,” Pritzker said. He added, “As governor, I’m not interested in protecting a process that people are afraid to trust.”

The consulting firm KPMG will review the applications and send notices to applicants of deficiencies, with oversight from the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation. The applicants will then have 10 days to correct any deficiencies — just as was supposed to happen previously under the law — though they may not change ownership to add a military veteran or social equity owner.

Applicants may also ask for a rescoring of their application.

KPMG is the same firm that the state hired for $4 million in a no-bid contract to score the applications. Numerous applicants complained that identical exhibits in different applications were scored differently, or that they never got notice of deficiencies in their applications.

After the rescoring is completed, the state will hold a lottery to determine who gets the 75 new licenses. Only 21 finalists initially were deemed eligible for the lottery, out of hundreds of applicants submitting thousands of applications.

Many of the finalists included wealthy white owners, some with political connections, continuing a trend set into motion by the state’s original medical marijuana law, passed in 2013.

In addition, more than 800 applicants have applied for craft grower, infuser or transporter licenses, which like the dispensary licenses were delayed from being awarded this summer.

KPMG is in the “final stages” of scoring those applications, and the state will announce the results in coming weeks, a spokeswoman said.

The state’s cannabis licensing program is being rolled out in stages so that regulators and lawmakers can learn and make corrections along the way, senior cannabis adviser Toi Hutchinson said.

Hutchinson also said she understands concerns that some of the finalists that qualified for the lottery may have “fronts,” or people improperly posing as social equity owners, and that regulators will have a “laser focus” to expose any illegitimate ownership.

After this round of licenses are awarded, the state will conduct a disparity study to see what if any steps need to be taken to ensure diversity in awarding licenses. Next year, the state is scheduled to award another 110 dispensary licenses.

In the next round, Pritzker recommended that the law be changed to reduce the number of licenses any applicant can win to less than the current 10 He also advocated for setting a minimum score above which any applicant would qualify, rather than the current system which, in effect, requires a perfect score, which Hutchinson said was not anticipated.

In light of the revamped process, a federal lawsuit against state regulators alleging unfairness in scoring is being dropped, attorney Jon Loevy said. Loevy, who also is co-founder of Justice Grown marijuana growers, said the governor’s administration and Rep. La Shawn Ford, who called for correcting the process, deserve credit for responding to complaints.

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