Why Should Delaware Care?
Delaware overdose deaths ranked fourth in the nation on a per-capita basis in 2022. Services for people with addiction can reduce the possibility of an overdose, but only if the money is well spent.
Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings is urging members of the state’s opioid commission to pause the flow of public dollars to charities that provide addiction services, claiming that certain organizations’ use of the money is “rife with potential for fraud, waste, and abuse.”
Jennings made the comments on Friday in a scathing letter sent to members of the Prescription Opioid Settlement Distribution Commission, which is tasked with handing out hundreds of millions of dollars in proceeds that Delaware has secured in past years from legal settlements with prescription opioid producers, distributors and pharmacies.
In 2023, Delaware had received nearly $250 million in such settlements, according to a report from the Office of the Attorney General. The state has received several million more since then, and on Friday the opioid commission recommended that the latest round of dollars fund a variety of recovery programs.
But Jennings said Delaware should wait.
“I share everyone’s sense of urgency in getting these funds where they are needed, but we still have no satisfactory answer as to where those targets are. I have repeatedly stressed that even this seemingly large pot of money is finite and that not all spending is created equal. And I continue to urge restraint; it has been 20 months since the Commission began awarding grants, and we still do not have know where these funds will be most useful, how we will measure their impact, or even whether our grantees are compliant,” Jennings wrote in her letter that detailed more than a year of efforts by her and others to establish sufficient reporting measurements and oversight to no avail.
It is not immediately clear if any members of the commission – of which Jennings serves as a co-chair – support the attorney general’s position.
None of the four state lawmakers who serve on the commission, nor the commission’s executive director, responded Monday to a request for comment by Spotlight Delaware regarding the critique by Delaware’s top prosecutor.
In an emailed statement, Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long, who serves with Jennings as co-chair of the opioid commission, said the commission uses a “rigorous process” to ensure that recipients of the opioid settlement money comply with the terms of their grants.
“Non-compliance with these standards results in an immediate cessation of funding for the recipient. In addition to having funds halted, an awardee would be referred to the proper state agencies for investigation, ensuring that violators are subject to the appropriate consequences. This process worked recently when issues were raised,” Hall-Long said in the statement.
Jennings’ letter is in direct response to a separate letter sent to her in early June by Delaware Auditor Lydia York, which cited a recent financial examination from her office that found a “reason to believe” that dollars awarded to a Dover nonprofit was “secured with fraudulent documentation.”
Officials from the nonprofit, Code Purple Kent County, did not respond to requests to comment for this story sent on Monday.
“Despite our best efforts, we have encountered significant challenges in establishing trust regarding the accuracy and authenticity of the documents provided by” Code Purple, York said in her letter.
Delaware’s Open Checkbook shows that Code Purple Kent County received nearly $1 million from various Delaware agencies during fiscal year 2024, which just ended June 30.
The nonprofit operates that day center, as well as a mobile center that visits the streets and different encampments to distribute clean needles, and Narcan, among other items.
On Monday, a spokesman for Jennings said the attorney general’s office is “referring the entire matter to our white-collar crime unit for investigation.”
He also said the attorney general’s civil division is exploring whether they can claw back any of the money that Code Purple has received from the state.
In her statement, Hall-Long said she shares Jennings’ concerns about “ensuring our processes are sound.”
“I’m happy to continue working with the Department of Justice and the State Auditor’s Office to further strengthen our protections while ensuring these dollars reach our families and communities,” she said.
On Friday, during a quarterly meeting of the state’s Opioid Commission, Jennings made a motion that the state “begin the process” of recovering as much as $290,000 in grant money that she said “had potentially been misused” by Code Purple. The motion passed.
Following the meeting, Jennings sent her letter to her fellow opioid commission members. It lamented that the state commission had been awarding grants for 20 months despite not knowing “where these funds will be most useful, how we will measure their impact, or even whether our grantees are compliant.”
Jennings concluded that commission grants should be paused until a consulting company, Wilmington-based Social Contract, completes a report about the industry of addiction resource companies in Delaware.
Jennings’ spokesman said the report is expected to be complete in a few months.
In all, the drama follows years of addiction recovery advocates clamoring for more services to stem the harms of the opioid crisis, particularly in Kent and Sussex counties.
Last week, Spotlight Delaware published a story with the voices of several of those advocates.
The story included comments from Ennio Emmanuel, a director of Code Purple Kent County, who called for more resources in central Delaware, saying he had seen people living with addiction in Dover in ways that resembled “third-world countries.”
In its most recent round of funding, the opioid commission awarded organizations based in New Castle County $3.18 million. Kent and Sussex County-based organizations received a total of $1.63 million, while more funding also went to organizations that served statewide populations.
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