Counties in northern Michigan are starting to receive and spend money from a court settlement with opioid makers.
The funding is meant to address the damage done by addictive opioid drugs across the country.
So far, Benzie County has set aside more than $91,000. County administrator Katelyn Zeits they've been able to put the money to use swiftly, partly because of Benzie County's small size.
“And so we have that advantage compared to a lot of those big counties," Zeits told reporters Friday. "We’re already collaborating on so much that we just really expanded upon our collaborations.”
Here's how that money was spent in Benzie County:
- $28,000: Treatment services and home health programming, as well as transportation to services
- $22,093: Improvements to emergency medical dispatching
- $15,000: Drug court expansion
- $12,200: Educational and motivational speaking in both school districts
- $6,900: Training on overdose life-saving measures for Almira Township
- $4,465: Substance abuse assessments, testing and monitoring for district/probate court and Centra Wellness
- $2,688.32: Training for police and first responders
(Source: Benzie County Central Dispatch)
Zeits spoke with reporters on a sidelines of a roundtable meeting with Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel on Friday in Beulah.
Nessel said opioid money needs to be spent on efforts to address the crisis, but there are many ways to do that. And she addressed some concerns that the money might be misspent in other jurisdictions.
So far, she says, her office has not seen instances of funds being misused across the state.
“If that happened, then we do have the authority to claw back money and to say, ‘Alright, fine, you’re not getting any more money for the next 16 years of this settlement," Nessel said. "And that’s a pretty good deterrent, right?”
Still, state officials have taken heat over how settlement funds have been distributed.
Reporting from Bridge Michigan says some providers have been confused about how to access the money. And other communities have the dollars sitting unspent.
