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A Pennsylvania appeals court ruled Monday that the trust overseeing opioid settlement funds inappropriately denied two counties funding over their proposed use of the dollars.
More than $1 billion in opioid settlement dollars are going to the state's 67 counties.
In one case, Somerset County is seeking to use opioid settlement funds to pay for an outdoors camp for children. In the other, Chester County is seeking to use $52,464.96 to pay the salary of the assistant district attorney who works in the county's drug court.
The opioid trust ruled that neither proposal satisfied the requirements for using settlement funds.
The board of the trust is composed of state lawmakers, county officials and other appointees nominated by the governor and legislative leaders.
Core strategies identified as being given top priority for funding include:
– Expanding access to Naxolone, the medication used to reverse an opioid overdose
– Expanding access to medication-assisted treatment and other opioid-treatment programs
– Broadening availability for programs serving pregnant women and new mothers with substance use disorder
– Making treatment for neonatal abstinence syndrome more accessible
– Expanding warm handoff programs to get more people into treatment programs
– Improving access to treatment programs for prison inmates
– Funding prevention programs, including public awareness campaigns and school programs
– Making syringe services more widely available
– Funding research and data collection efforts
A panel of Commonwealth Court judges ruled Monday, though, that the trust did not sufficiently justify its reasoning in denying the counties' requests.
Chester County officials argued that while the documents identify strategies that would be given priority, they don't explicitly bar other uses and that the county's request to fund the treatment court administrator had been deemed an appropriate use of the opioid settlement funds.
However, the opioid trust countered that the funds are only supposed to be used for training law enforcement and to pay the salaries of prosecutors. They too pointed out that the funding for the court administrator post had been approved, asserting that it was deemed appropriate because the administrator's responsibilities are "non-prosecutorial."
In the Somerset County dispute, county officials were seeking to use $30,000 in opioid settlement funds to pay to send high school-aged students to Movement Outdoors, a program designed to expose young people to the benefits of outdoor activities.
Somerset County officials said that the program serves students who are not otherwise involved in youth sports or other after-school activities and that it should qualify as a "youth-focused" activity with a "demonstrated effectiveness in preventing drug misuse."
On the other hand, the opioid trust board argued that the county is operating "under the misguided assumption that any activity that might divert students away from idle time . . . is qualified for opioid settlement funding," Judge Lori Dumas wrote in the opinion.
The settlement trust's guidelines say prevention programs that receive funding should use "evidence-based" or "evidence-informed" strategies to deter misuse of drug use. The board argued that the outdoors program does not meet those standards.
However, Dumas noted in her opinion that the settlement trust did not satisfactorily spell out how or why it determined that the outdoors program did not qualify as an acceptable prevention.
"We must remand to have the Board file an appropriate decision explaining its reasoning," she wrote. "To the extent the Board relies on undefined terms or apparent terms of art, e.g., 'evidence-based' or 'evidence-informed,' to justify its decision, the Board must define those terms. In sum, the Board's decision must provide sufficient factual detail and reasoning that would permit this Court to exercise its appellate role in reviewing the Board's denial."
The court gave the opioid settlement trust board 30 days to file documents to "memorialize its reasoning" for the denials so that the courts can take another look at the disputes.