Hancock County is looking to fill seats on a new committee it has created to provide advice on how to spend the county’s allotment of opioid settlement funds.
The county so far has received $926,885 and expects to receive in total a little more than $2.5 million by 2038 as a result of legal settlements between the Maine attorney general’s office and various pharmaceutical companies over their role in the nationwide opioid addiction crisis.
The settlements are intended to fund programs that address the causes and harms of that crisis, which killed roughly 800,000 people from overdoses across the country, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Those programs may include services for drug treatment, recovery, prevention and harm reduction initiatives like syringe programs.
The county began receiving payments in November 2022. Of that money, the county’s commissioners so far have approved the use of a little over $200,000, county administrator Michael Crooker said.
One advocate hopes the funds will bring more transportation options, which is essential to accessing community services, to Hancock County.
“Down East Community Partners ended their transportation service and there are just so many gaps in care,” local recovery advocate Courtney Meade said. “In rural Maine, if you’re involved with the drug court or DHS [Department of Health and Human Services] and you have a random drug test and there’s no transportation, it makes it really difficult for people that are involved in the judicial system to get out of it and stay out of it.”
Up until now, Hancock County’s portion of funds have exclusively gone to the sheriff’s office for mental health and recovery services at the county jail, Crooker said. Those services include medication-assisted treatment like Suboxone.
This is in part because the county previously had no dedicated body to vet settlement fund proposals from community organizations. The newly minted committee will publicly solicit funding requests, review those proposals and then submit their recommendations to the county commissioners for final approval.
“Arguably we may be a little bit behind some other communities, but we obviously wanted to make sure that we are developing it and spending the funds where they need to go and intended to go,” Crooker said. “Making sure that we come up with a framework that will support this over the long term so the committee will be successful.”
Meade, a Hancock County resident who contacted the county six months ago about forming the committee, helped Crooker design a formal body that would review proposals, as other communities have done, Crooker said.
Representatives from the Maine Opioid Settlement Support Center, an organization that helps municipalities organize the disbursement of their settlement funds, assisted Crooker and Meade.
“Other counties and municipalities around the state have started forming their own committees and disbursing these funds to community organizations to strengthen their recovery network,” Meade said. “There hadn’t really been anything happening in Hancock County.”
Meade has submitted an application for a spot on the committee, as well. As of Feb. 18, the county had only received one application, Crooker said.
County commissioners formed to the committee ensure these funds are distributed “transparently and equitably,” according to the committee’s approved bylaws. The nine-member body, which will have three-year staggered terms, will include various community stakeholders like a recovery advocate, public health representative, harm reduction specialist and jail administrator, among others.
One member will be a county commissioner or their designee. Crooker has been selected for that role for the time being, he said.
Crooker invited the public to visit Hancock County’s website to review the committee’s bylaws and application process. The county aims to have the committee filled by May, Crooker said.
“This is an opportunity to support or build current services that are being provided and fill voids where more needs to be done,” Crooker said. “This is not obviously going to solve the problem entirely but we’re hopeful the residents of Hancock County will be able to benefit from some of these funds.”
