By Charles Romans
Carter County Times
Lauren Carr, the Opioid Settlement Adviser at the Kentucky Association of Counties (KACo) in Frankfort, has been in her current position for thirteen months. Prior to taking that position, Carr was involved with her local county substance use prevention coalition.
“I worked with our local health department,” Carr said. “I have done harm reduction, youth coalition and youth empowerment.”
Carr said her passion for the field began when she tragically lost her brother to a fentanyl overdose in 2011, and she has worked since then with the goal of mitigating and when possible preventing the catastrophic damage done by opioids.
Carr said that when the opioid settlement came through, her county turned to her because she was already involved in the work of opioid abatement. At that point Carr reached out to a national organization, National Association of Counties (NACO) to get more information.
“They have an Opioids Solutions Leadership Network,” Carr said.
At that point Carr was selected as a county employee, along with three other county judge executives; Dan Mosely from Harlan County, Reagan Taylor from Madison County, and Gary Moore from Boone County.
“When I came from my positions as ‘boots on the ground’ to more local government, I saw that sometimes the subject matter experts are not the decision makers,” Carr said. “Unless your public official has a background in public health or addiction, then maybe they don’t have the information they need. And so KACo decided to bring someone, me, on full time.”
“The opioid settlement funds come from a lawsuit,” Carr explained. “It’s a national settlement, and in Kentucky it comes out to a little less than a billion dollars.”
“That money isn’t grant money or state money,” Carr continued. “That money goes to the attorney general, and the attorney general created an Opioid Advisory Commission. The commission is made up of nine voting members, and they oversee the funds. But they only grant out fifty percent.”
“In Kentucky the breakdown is fifty percent goes to municipalities (cities and counties), and the other fifty percent goes to the state,” she added.
Carr said the money going to municipalities is based upon how many prescriptions were written, the number of overdose deaths, and population.
“So, allocations to each county are different based on that formula. The National League of Cities has a portal where you can type in your zip code, and it will give you an estimate of what your county received,” she explained.
Carr said that how funds are awarded at that point are determined by the county’s fiscal court. “KACO does not receive any funds,” she said, “and no funds pass through us.”
“An abatement fund is pretty much just saying that it isn’t tax money or revenue, but it is money set aside for opioid remediation,” Carr said. “Remediation is to mitigate the harm done by the opioid crisis. It’s a broad range from treating Opioid Use Disorder to preventing further harm, and providing services to those impacted, such as children who have lost loved ones or who are now living with their grandparents and things like that.”
“It just has to have a nexus to opioid remediation,” Carr added.
Most of the spending is related to one of 29 strategies in the KRS Statute 15.291, subsection 5, Carr said.
“If you’re not a lawyer, it’s hard to read that,” she said. “But there is an exhaustive list on the national settlement, which is easier to understand.”
Carr said that counties are allowed to use the opioid funds in their existing budgets to expand eligible programs such as those in jails that help individuals reenter society with a ‘fresh start.’
“Opioid abatement funds can be used for a wide variety of things,” Carr said. “They (counties) could contract with a local nonprofit or third party. For instance, if they wanted to go through the local health department to set up or expand a program in schools, they could do that.”
Carr said that one of the things funded with opioid abatement money was a prevention program called Better Without it.
“It’s a Youth Prevention Program based around the question of how do you keep people from falling in the water? You have to build a bridge, but you still have to catch the ones who are falling in the water. It’s very important to look at where your needs are and where your gaps are to determine how these funds can best be used. We just need to be strategic and plan how these funds can best be used.”
She said KACo can help by providing information and resources for those charged with distributing the funds.
“We have a resource library, and we provide technical assistance,” Carr said. “We can work with counties to try to determine what you can and can’t do. Counties have an opportunity to tackle this problem in a different way.”
One of the things Carr said that the Opioid Advisory Commission is promoting is for counties to establish their own advisory groups to help determine the county needs. Those groups could be made up of people who are involved in treatment, people from local schools, or local officials that could make recommendations to local fiscal courts on how abatement money should be spent.
Contact the writer at charles@cartercountytimes.com
