In September, Calhoun County officials announced that roughly $600,000 in opioid settlement funding would be awarded to local organizations who were chosen through a competitive bid process. Earlier this month, officials say the first checks were sent out.
Calhoun County Administrator/Controller Kelli Scott said for the second year in a row, organizations were chosen through a competitive bid process. Some of the recipients include an organization looking to create a café for people in recovery, treatment facilities seeking funding to expand services, and more.
“We are doing our part to help improve the services in place to give our residents a better chance to succeed in their journey to overcoming addiction to opioids and other drugs," Scott said.
Over the past few years, drug makers and distributors have reached enormous settlements in opioid-related lawsuits. That money goes to the federal government, where it’s then split between the states and local governments.
Scott said the amount given to each local government depends on overdose rates and the amount of distributors in a county. The most recent available overdose fatality data, released in 2022, showed that Calhoun County had the 5th highest crude rate of opioid-involved fatalities of all counties in the state.
Calhoun's overall rate of drug-related fatalities was 38.2 per 100,000 people in 2022. Because of these numbers, Scott said Calhoun receives a larger chunk of funding.
"Our estimate is about $700,000 or so per year that we're expecting to receive and we will use 100% of it to help with opioid remediation strategies,” Scott said.
Over the next 18 years, Scott said the county is expected to receive roughly $13 million in overall opioid settlement funding. She said some of that funding will also go to the county itself, where it will be used to improve services like recovery courts for people with drug charges, medication-assisted treatment within jails and more.
As for the rest, which Scott said is the lion's share of the funding, the county's current strategy is to award it to local community organizations through the bid process — a process Scott said she expects will continue.
"We're just now getting in annual reports from the first round of grants, and we're really impressed with with the impact and the accomplishments that came from the first $600,000 of funding that we sent out last year," Scott said.
The first round of settlement grants was awarded in October 2024, and Scott said the county's Opioid Settlement Funds Steering Committee plans to adjust their process and mission each year based on what they learn from the organizations that receive funding.
"Generally that's been our strategy — is let's make sure that the county is using the funding that we need for the really large programs, and then really using the additional funding to help boost the capacity of our organizations throughout the county that could probably do better and serve more people if they have this extra funding," Scott said.
