A Penobscot County committee deciding how to spend millions of dollars in opioid settlement funds has been meeting in secret, drawing criticism from some committee members and recovery advocates.
The county’s commissioners appointed committee members earlier this year, according to Commissioner Chairman Andre Cushing III. The committee began meeting around the beginning of the summer, he said. Its members are tasked with planning how to spend the approximately $4.5 million the county will receive from opioid settlements by 2038.
Penobscot County began receiving settlement money in 2022 and already had about $1.4 million by the end of 2024, according to data from the Maine Attorney General’s office.
The committee is working on a proposal process for the money that it plans to open to the public this fall.
Although the group was appointed by the county government and tasked with planning how to spend public money, the meetings have not been advertised to the public. The lack of information has raised questions about what the committee is doing and whether the county is fulfilling its duty to keep people informed about decisions around public money.
“It’s important, if we’re gonna do this right, to instill public confidence in what we’re doing, and being open and transparent is a very easy way to do that,” said committee member Jamie Beck, a nonprofit consultant who previously ran a homelessness service organization.
When asked why there are no public notices about the meetings, Cushing referred the Bangor Daily News to county administrator Scott Adkins. Adkins did not respond to requests for comment.
Advisory bodies — committees that strictly make recommendations and don’t have any decision-making power — are exempt from some parts of Maine’s public access law. That means the committee likely is not legally required to provide public records or notices about its meetings, according to Trevor Brice, a lawyer at the Lewiston-based law firm Skelton Taintor & Abbott.
However, meetings of advisory bodies still have to allow members of the public to attend, Brice added, even if the committee is not required to notify the public about the meeting ahead of time.
Still, some advocates have emphasized that it’s in the public interest to provide more information about the decision-making process around how the opioid money is going to be spent.
“The legal question here is besides the point, because you have large amounts of public money being discussed and eventually distributed based on secret conversations, and that is certainly not in the public’s interest,” said Justin Silverman, the executive director of the New England First Amendment Coalition.
“We shouldn’t ignore the spirit of the open meeting law and the public’s right to know,” SIlverman added. “Regardless of whether a particular advisory body falls within an open meeting law, there’s certain principles at play here that should be respected and the public should have an opportunity to see how these large amounts of money ultimately will be spent.”
The committee has met about four times so far, Beck said. There have been no public meeting notices or minutes posted to the county website or Facebook page about its meetings.
The six committee members are Adkins, Beck, Sheriff Troy Morton, recovery advocate Pat Kimball, recovery coach Angela Walker and Randy Jackson, a former Millinocket town councilor who founded a recovery home.
The committee in Penobscot County spent some of its settlement funds last year on a medication assisted treatment initiative at the county jail, Cushing said. That totaled more than $200,000, according to Beck.
Beck said she raised concerns about the committee’s lack of transparency early on, and took to Facebook on Tuesday to share her own report about what the committee has done so far because of her frustration.
“I would like to see a lot more open communication about what it is that we’re up to,” she said. “We should be and should have been from the beginning sharing publicly when we’re meeting, and at the very least putting out the meeting notes.”
The committee is working to establish a process for local organizations to apply for up to $50,000 of the settlement funds, according to Beck. If approved by the county, its plan is to begin accepting proposals at the beginning of October and release decisions by the end of December.
Nearly 40 cities and counties across the state are receiving payouts from national settlements with companies accused of contributing to the opioid crisis.
Penobscot County’s decision-making process around the funds has been less transparent than some of its peers. Bangor’s committee, which is also structured as an advisory body, has been meeting publicly and posting its meeting times on the city council website.
The Maine Recovery Action Project, a recovery advocacy organization, on Tuesday urged the county to “make these meetings publicly accessible.”
“This money is public. The decisions should be too,” the group stated. “Transparency builds trust, and our communities deserve the chance to understand and engage in how these life-saving resources are allocated.”
