Public artwork in Altoona, Penn., one in all many cities hit arduous by the opioid epidemic. Marianne Sinisi organized the set up after her son died of an overdose. State and native governments have acquired about $3 billion up to now out of $50 billion complete in settlements from nationwide lawsuits.

Nancy Andrews/KFF Health News

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Nancy Andrews/KFF Health News

Public artwork in Altoona, Penn., one in all many cities hit arduous by the opioid epidemic. Marianne Sinisi organized the set up after her son died of an overdose. State and native governments have acquired about $3 billion up to now out of $50 billion complete in settlements from nationwide lawsuits.

Nancy Andrews/KFF Health News

Thousands of native governments nationwide are receiving settlement cash from firms that made, distributed, or bought opioid painkillers, like Johnson & Johnson, AmerisourceBergen, and Walmart. The firms are shelling out greater than $50 billion complete in settlements from nationwide lawsuits. But discovering out the exact quantity every metropolis or county is receiving has been almost not possible as a result of the agency administering the settlement hasn’t made the knowledge public.

Until now.

After greater than a month of communications with state attorneys common, personal attorneys engaged on the settlement, and the settlement directors, KFF Health News has obtained paperwork displaying the precise greenback quantities — right down to the cent — that native governments have been allotted for 2022 and 2023. More than 200 spreadsheets element the quantities paid by 4 of the businesses concerned in nationwide settlements. (Several different opioid-related firms will begin making funds later this yr.)

Search the documents to see how a lot your group might have gotten up to now.

For instance, Jefferson County, Kentucky — dwelling to Louisville — acquired $860,657.73 from three pharmaceutical distributors this yr, whereas Knox County, a rural Kentucky county in Appalachia — the area many think about floor zero of the disaster — acquired $45,395.33.

In California, Los Angeles County was allotted $6.3 million from Janssen, the pharmaceutical subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, this yr. Mendocino County, which has one of many highest opioid overdose death rates within the state, was allotted about $185,000.

Access to “this information is revolutionary for people who care about how this money will be used,” says Dennis Cauchon, president of the nonprofit advocacy group Harm Reduction Ohio.

Some states, like North Carolina and Colorado, have posted their distribution specifics on-line. But in most different locations, monitoring fee quantities requires folks to make cellphone calls, ship emails, and file public information requests with each native authorities for which they need the knowledge.

Thus, gathering the information throughout one state might imply contacting a whole bunch of locations. For the nation, that would translate to hundreds.

Cauchon has been looking for this info for his state since April 2022. “Opioid remediation work is done at the local level, at the individual level, and, now, for the first time, local people working on the issues will know how much money is available in their community.”

The nationwide opioid settlements are the second-largest public well being settlement of all time, following the tobacco grasp settlement of the Nineteen Nineties. The cash is supposed as remediation for the way in which companies aggressively promoted opioid painkillers, fueling an overdose disaster that has now largely transitioned to illicit medicine, like fentanyl. More than 105,000 Americans died of drug overdoses final yr.

So far, state and native governments have acquired greater than $3 billion mixed, in response to a nationwide abstract doc created by BrownGreer, a court-appointed agency that’s administering the settlement and dealing with the distribution of funds.

In every state, settlement funds are divided in various percentages amongst state companies, native governments, and, in some circumstances, councils that oversee opioid abatement trusts. Payments started in 2022 and can proceed by 2038, establishing what public well being specialists and advocates are calling an unprecedented alternative to make progress in opposition to an epidemic that has ravaged America for 3 many years. KFF Health News is monitoring how governments use — and misuse — this money in a yearlong investigation.

The newest trove of paperwork was obtained from BrownGreer. The agency is among the few entities that is aware of precisely how a lot cash every state and native authorities receives and when, because it oversees complicated calculations involving the various phrases and timelines of every firm’s settlement.

Even so, there are gaps within the info it shared. A handful of states opted to not obtain their funds through BrownGreer. Some directed the agency to pay a lump sum to the state, which might then distribute it to native governments. In these circumstances, BrownGreer didn’t have figures for native allocations. A couple of states that settled with the opioid-related firms individually from the nationwide offers are usually not a part of BrownGreer’s knowledge, both.

Roma Petkauskas, a accomplice at BrownGreer, mentioned the settlement settlement requires the agency to ship notices of fee quantities to state and native governments, in addition to to the businesses that settled. It shared paperwork when KFF Health News requested, however it’s not clear if the agency will proceed doing so sooner or later.

Petkauskas wrote, “Settlement Agreements do not provide that such notices be made public,” indicating such disclosure was not a requirement.

People harmed by the opioid disaster say they need extra transparency than the naked minimal necessities. They say, at the moment, it isn’t solely tough to find out how a lot cash governments obtain, but in addition how these {dollars} are spent. Many folks have reached out to local officials with questions or solutions solely to be turned away or ignored.

Christine Minhee, founding father of OpioidSettlementTracker.com, discovered that, as of March, solely 12 states had committed to publicly reporting using 100% of their settlement {dollars}. Since then, simply three extra states have promised to share detailed info on their use of the cash.

Legal and political specialists watching the settlements say the shortage of transparency might should do with political leverage. State attorneys common have touted these offers as achievements in glowing press releases.

“Attorney General [Daniel] Cameron today delivered on his promise to fight back against the opioid epidemic by announcing a more than $53 million agreement with Walmart,” learn one press release issued late final yr by the state of Kentucky.

“Thousands of our neighbors have buried their loved ones throughout the opioid epidemic” and “I am proud to have delivered this great agreement to them,” said Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, in a July 2021 announcement when one of many earliest settlements was finalized.

Greater transparency, together with the precise fee quantities for every native authorities, might take the wind out of a few of these press releases, Minhee mentioned. “It’s hard to politicize things when you can’t present the numbers in a vacuum.”

If one group compares its several-hundred-dollar payout to a different group’s multi-thousand-dollar payout, there could also be political fallout. Concerns have already arisen in rural areas hit arduous by the disaster that the distribution system weighs inhabitants numbers too closely, and they won’t obtain sufficient cash to handle many years of hurt.

Still, specialists say making this knowledge public is a vital step in making certain the settlements fulfill the purpose of saving lives and remediating this disaster.

Solutions should be community-led, mentioned Regina LaBelle, director of the dependancy and public coverage initiative at Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute. “In order to do that, the communities themselves need to know how much money they’re getting.”

If their county is receiving $5,000 this yr, it would not make sense to advocate for a $500,000 detox facility. Instead, they may give attention to buying naloxone, a medicine that reverses opioid overdoses. Knowing the yearly quantity additionally permits folks to trace the funds and guarantee they are not being misspent, LaBelle added.

For Cauchon, of Harm Reduction Ohio, the local-level fee knowledge is essential to making sure settlement {dollars} are put to good use in every Ohio county.

“Knowledge is power and, in this case, it’s the power to know how much money is available to be used to prevent overdoses,” he mentioned.

KFF Health News, previously referred to as Kaiser Health News (KHN), is a nationwide newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about well being points and is among the core working applications at KFF — the impartial supply for well being coverage analysis, polling, and journalism.