Gov. Ned Lamont is asking Connecticut lawmakers to help him bypass a 2022 law that was meant to safeguard millions of dollars from opioid legal settlements so that he can redirect some of that money into social service programs that were previously funded by fees, taxes and federal funds.
The 2022 law, which created the Connecticut Opioid Settlement Advisory Committee, was inspired by model legislation offered up by President Joe Biden’s administration and was meant to ensure that the settlement funds were put to use counteracting the deadly effects of the opioid epidemic.
Even more, it was intended to prevent Connecticut lawmakers and future governors from redirecting the funds to fill budget gaps or to offset the cost of existing government programs, like they historically did with the tobacco settlements of the 1990s.
Lamont’s administration was the primary driver behind that 2022 bill. Lawmakers introduced the legislation on the Lamont’s behalf, and the governor openly celebrated the bill after it passed with near unanimous support.
“By passing this legislation, we are writing it into law that the funding from this settlement must be dedicated only to strategies that will fight the opioid epidemic, and do it in a way that is transparent and includes input from the community,” Lamont proudly announced.
Less than three years later, however, Lamont is seeking to find a way around that law so he can pay for a variety of services that were not funded in other areas of his budget.
To accomplish that goal, Lamont’s office inserted language into his budget proposal that would give him the authority to order the state’s 45-member Opioid Settlement Advisory Committee to allocate more $34 million over the next two years on his administration’s priorities.
Lamont’s plan to take control of millions of dollars in settlement funds comes at a time when the governor is trying to find money for vital social programs without breaking the so-called fiscal guardrails that have allowed the state to pay down its debts and rack up billions of dollars in surpluses in recent years.
Chris Collibee, a spokesman for the Office of Policy and Management, Lamont’s budget office, emphasized that the programs the governor wants to allocate the settlement money to are broadly focused on behavioral health and other issues associated with opioid addiction, like homelessness.
“The administration remains focused on providing help to those with addiction,” Collibee said.
All told, the governor wants to fund five different social service programs using the settlement funds. That includes supportive housing, mobile crisis services for adults and children, warming centers during cold weather events, and the Health Assistance InterVention Education Network, which provides services to health care professionals who are struggling with mental health or substance use.
If that plan is approved, the governor’s priorities would consume more than half of the roughly $66 million that has yet to be appropriated by the opioid settlement committee.
Advocates and people who work in the fields of addiction treatment and prevention agreed that the programs Lamont wants to spend the money on are important and they said they can see how they are related to the state’s ongoing opioid epidemic, which has killed more than 1,100 Connecticut residents on average in the past five years.
But they also argued that Lamont’s plan to dictate what the settlement money should be spent on was a bad precedent to set, considering the state’s history with the tobacco settlement, which was widely used to fill state budget holes instead of funding smoking cessation efforts over the past three decades.
Dita Bhargava, an ambassador for Shatterproof, a national organization working to end stigma around addiction, said on its face she supports the programs that Lamont wants to fund. And she said there is research that shows how things like homelessness and a lack of warm shelter can exacerbate addiction and increase overdose deaths.
But Bhargava, whose son Alex died of an overdose at the age of 26, said she can understand why people might be hesitant to support the governor’s efforts to control how the settlement funds are used.
“As an advocate in this space, I want every single dollar to go towards mitigating this crisis,” Bhargava said.
“Generally speaking, I think it is an important practice to leave the sanctity of that bill and sort of the guardrails around this particular issue the way it is,” she said.
Mark Jenkins, the founder and executive director of the Connecticut Harm Reduction Alliance, was more frank about the budget maneuvering that Lamont is proposing.
“It’s bullshit. I mean, if it was already voted and written that they couldn’t do that and now they’re trying to, then that’s just an easy way out,” he said.
He said the governor was setting up the opioid settlement funds to be redirected the same way the tobacco settlement money was.
“It’s history repeating itself,” Jenkins said.
Lamont’s budget director, Jeffrey Beckham, and his staff said this week that the terms of the court settlements allow state officials to direct up to 15% of the settlement funding to government services, like Medicaid, and another 15% for “public use.”
But the 2022 law that Lamont pushed lawmakers to pass superseded the settlement terms and ordered all of the money to be transferred to a dedicated fund and placed under the sole discretion of the Opioid Settlement Advisory Committee.
The law also included language that was meant to prevent the settlements from being used to finance programs that were previously funded by other sources of state or federal money.
The legislation specifically stated that the settlement proceeds “shall be supplemental to, and shall not supplant or take the place of, any other funds.” That was meant to ensure the settlement money expanded services for opioid treatment and prevention, instead of funding programs that already existed.
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, who helped to negotiate the legal settlements in federal court, highlighted that specific clause when the law was making its way through the legislature in 2022.
Asked this week whether he agreed with Lamont’s plans to take control of the settlement funds, Tong’s office said the attorney general could not support the governor’s budget proposal as “currently drafted.”
“Opioid settlement proceeds must be spent on treatment, prevention and addiction science,” Elizabeth Benton, Tong’s spokeswoman, said. “We will work with our agency partners to ensure compliance with the settlement and Connecticut’s statutory framework.”
Some of the lawmakers who helped to create the Opioid Settlement Advisory Committee in 2022 also voiced apprehension about Lamont’s effort to sidestep the law.
Jonathan Steinberg, who chaired the Public Health Committee in 2022, said the governor’s proposals for the settlement funds seemed reasonable, but he said the governor’s plan to take control of $34 million of the settlement funds could encourage other money to be siphoned off in the future.
Steinberg believes that Lamont is well intentioned, but he said state leaders in Connecticut have a bad habit of setting up funding for a specific purpose and then reallocating that money for other things when they find themselves in a pinch financially.
“When we’re not looking, something ends up in the general fund, or is repurposed for another thing, and you eventually reach a point where you’re no longer supporting the core intent of what this fund was for in the first place,” Steinberg said.
When the 2022 law was debated three years ago, lawmakers emphasized that the Opioid Settlement Advisory Committee would help to protect the funds by developing a stringent process for reviewing and approving spending proposals based on best practices and medical evidence.
The committee has spent the past two years doing exactly that.
The committee worked with researchers from Yale to understand the most proven strategies for reducing fatalities from opioid addiction. The members solicited suggestions from treatment providers and members of the public about how the money might be used. And they set up a nine-step approval process to make sure there is evidence behind the initiatives that are funded.
Sen. Saud Anwar, D-South Windsor, the co-chair of the Legislature’s Public Health Committee and a member of the Opioid Settlement Advisory Committee, said it seemed counterproductive to ditch that process and allow the governor to order the body to fund his budget priorities.
“I’m hesitant to support bypassing the OSAC through legislation,” Anwar said. “The OSAC should remain independent and guide us about where to invest. The job of OSAC is far from over. Every day we lose an average of three to four people to opioids in Connecticut. We have a lot more work to do.”
Sabrina Trocchi, the president and CEO of the Wheeler Clinic, one of the state’s larger opioid treatment providers, agreed.
Trocchi said the opioid settlement committee was created to ensure that experts, including treatment providers and individuals in recovery, could come up with a plan to meet the state’s needs.
And she said it seems like “all of that effort is being thrown out the window.”