Local governments spent $3 million in opioid settlement funds last year on projects ranging from addiction treatment in jails to prevention workshops in schools, according to new data collected by the attorney general’s office and the University of Southern Maine.

That leaves more than $19 million in funds that have yet to be spent, with another $50 million set to flow into their accounts over the next dozen years.

The money comes from nationwide settlements reached with more than a dozen pharmaceutical companies that made or sold prescription opioids. Maine’s share, which totals more than $230 million, is split three ways, with about a third of it going to 39 counties, cities and towns known as direct share subdivisions, and the remaining shares going to the attorney general’s office and the statewide Maine Recovery Council. Payments began in 2022 and will continue through 2038.

The money is intended to address the harms caused by the opioid epidemic by supporting treatment, harm reduction, recovery and prevention initiatives.

The court settlements came out of years of litigation brought by dozens of states and hundreds of other plaintiffs against companies such as Purdue Pharma, McKesson Corp. and CVS Pharmacy, alleging they profited from a misleading and ultimately deadly campaign to put pharmaceutical opioids into medicine cabinets across the country. While the settlements include a 15-page document detailing approved uses for the funds, oversight is mostly left up to the states.

As millions have been disbursed in Maine and across the country, local governments have struggled to figure out how to spend the money and to pinpoint who should be making the decisions. Some advocates have criticized officials for being slow to spend the funds, making decisions behind closed doors and putting money toward projects that do not clearly respond to the opioid crisis.

Earlier this year, for the first time since payments began, local governments were required to report how they spent their funds to the AG’s office. The new data collection is mandated by a law passed last year, which requires local governments to submit annual reports each January.

The Maine Monitor obtained the data, which was analyzed and compiled into a report for the Maine Legislature by the Maine Opioid Settlement Support (MOSS) Center at USM, through a public records request to the AG’s office.

The report was presented to the Legislature’s health and human services committee on Wednesday.

The data shows that 29 local governments spent some funds last year, with just over 40 percent of the money going to police departments and jails. The counties and municipalities spent the most on harm reduction and treatment efforts, while prevention programming received the least amount of funding.

For the most part, elected and appointed officials were the decision makers. Only about a quarter of subdivisions have adopted a formal policy guiding their decision-making processes.

Spending choices

A quarter of the local governments reported spending no money in 2025. Two of those said they have made spending decisions but have not yet distributed the funds. York County plans to put all of its money toward a $21 million recovery center in Alfred, while Kennebec County is planning to use its money on addiction treatment in its jail.

The law requires that local governments report money they spent in the past year but not funds that have been budgeted for future projects. 

The eight other local governments that did not spend any money last year — Auburn, Falmouth, Piscataquis County, Saco, Waldo County, Wells, Windham and the town of York — said they were still in the planning phase.

Of the $3 million spent across the rest of the local governments last year, nearly half went toward behavioral health liaisons in local police departments and addiction treatment programs in jails.

Augusta, Brunswick, Gorham, Lewiston, Lincoln County, Sanford, Somerset County, South Portland and Waterville each used funds — a total of $685,000 — to pay for behavioral health liaisons, who work with law enforcement to respond to calls or provide community members with resources.

Androscoggin, Hancock, Knox and Penobscot counties put their funds toward addiction treatment in jails. Since a court order in 2019, all Maine jails and prisons have been required to provide treatment for substance use disorder. Many sheriffs have called this requirement an “unfunded mandate” and have used opioid settlement funds to help offset the growing cost.

Courtney Gary-Allen, the executive director of the Maine Recovery Access Project, praised the work of advocates who pushed for the bill.

“I think that this begins what we’ve always wanted, which is a transparent process from all the subdivisions and allows us to understand, to some degree, what is happening across the state with opioid settlement funding,” she said.

She said it was not surprising to hear that much of the money has gone to addiction treatment in jails. While Gary-Allen said this is a critical resource, she said it’s unfortunate that counties feel they have to dip into the settlement funds to “fund a basic need of people who are incarcerated.” She would rather see the “once-in-a-generation” money going to creative community-based solutions than to sustain government programs.

Penobscot County made just one expenditure last year: $181,000 for medication-assisted treatment in the jail. This was done because “the state has refused to pay for methadone treatment when an individual becomes incarcerated,” Toni Dyer, the county’s HR director, said in an email.

“In order to meet continuity of treatment, and comply with individual treatment plans, the county has been using opioid funds to cover the additional expense of methadone and a liaison position to assist the MAT program recipients,” she said.

In December, Penobscot County commissioners also approved $400,000 in grants for 12 organizations proposed by the county’s opioid settlement funds committee.

In addition to the law enforcement spending, subdivisions spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to support local recovery centers, which are community hubs where individuals can meet with peer recovery coaches, attend support meetings and work with community resource navigators, as well as youth-focused prevention and intervention programming.

Just over a third of the recipients were community-based organizations, such as the Mid-Coast Recovery Coalition, Healthy Androscoggin and the Aroostook Community Action Program. Other recipients included behavioral treatment providers, first responders, private businesses or consultants, and county and municipal public health departments.

Several projects focused on students: Oxford County gave MaineHealth $82,000 to expand its “Building Resilient Families” prevention initiative focused on K-12 students in the Oxford Hills School District. The city of Westbrook spent just over $5,000 to support Westbrook High School’s prevention programs and to pay for driver’s education classes for two students in recovery.

Other funds went to programs that help people in recovery re-enter the workforce, a van providing treatment to people living on the street, incentives for people to get tested for HIV, training sessions for community members to respond to overdoses, youth mentoring services, awareness campaigns and more.

Many subdivisions also put money toward providing direct financial assistance to individuals in recovery, which included scholarships for recovery housing, Hannaford gift cards, bus tickets, phone minutes and other survival supplies, such as tents and sleeping bags for people who are unhoused.

Decision makers

It’s been a bumpy road for many local governments since payments began more than three years ago. Many counties and municipalities have struggled to figure out how to spend their money, and to decide who should be making those decisions. Advocates have criticized some of those spending choices, particularly when much of the money went to law enforcement agencies rather than community organizations.

Some local governments have found themselves in hot water for making decisions without public input. Penobscot County, for instance, only publicly disclosed meetings of its opioid settlement funds committee after a report in the Bangor Daily News caused an uproar among advocates.

Seeing issues like these play out across the state and hearing directly from local governments that they needed help, Attorney General Aaron Frey used $2.5 million of his office’s own settlement funds to create the Maine Opioid Settlement Support Center, housed at the University of Southern Maine.

The MOSS Center has since fulfilled more than 100 requests for assistance from subdivisions, Dr. Lindsey Smith, the center’s director, said in the fall. At least a couple of subdivisions consulted the MOSS Center after receiving criticism for a lack of transparency or haphazard decision-making.

Franklin County commissioners, for example, established a settlement committee in 2024, then dissolved it, after accusations of conflicts of interest, personal biases and excessive red tape came to a head. Commissioners requested help from the MOSS Center before reforming the committee later that year. Waldo County, meanwhile, began working with the MOSS Center after officials struggled to answer local residents’ questions about how more than $100,000 in funds had been spent.

The MOSS Center built a submission portal to collect subdivisions’ spending data and analyzed the responses for its report submitted to the Legislature last month. 

While the bill only required spending data, the center also asked subdivisions about their decision-making, governance and monitoring. All the local governments except Knox County provided details.

In most cases, the final decisions are up to county commissioners or city or town councilors. Some also include municipal or county administrators. In two cases, final decisions are made by the town or city manager alone.

Eighteen subdivisions have an opioid settlement task force or committee, most of which play an advisory role. In five subdivisions — Calais, Cumberland County, Kennebunk, Rockland and Waldo County — the task force is involved in final decisions.

More than half of the local governments said police departments or sheriff’s offices were involved in the decision-making process.

Fourteen counties and municipalities said that people who have been directly affected by the opioid crisis advised final decision makers, but, unless incidentally, were not part of the final decision-making group itself. That’s something Gary-Allen, from ME-RAP, would like to see change.

“What I would like to see across the state of Maine is that people with lived experience have meaningful say over what this money is spent on,” she said, highlighting the origin of the funds. “It is blood money collected on the grief and the pain of people who were mass marketed to by opiate (makers) like Purdue Pharma and others.”

The MOSS Center spent a month and a half cleaning up the data submitted by the subdivisions, according to the report. The center’s staff flagged more than half of the submissions for “data quality issues,” most frequently typos, unclear project descriptions and dollar discrepancies.

The primary challenge subdivisions had, according to the report, was the quick turnaround between the end of the calendar year and the January 15 reporting deadline, which did not leave much time for end-of-year expenditures to clear.

The report said this “may warrant legislative adjustment.” 

Public data dashboards showing spending by the subdivisions, the attorney general’s office and the Maine Recovery Council are expected to go live later this month.

Recovery from addiction is possible. For help, please call the free and confidential treatment referral hotline (1-800-662-HELP) or visit findtreatment.gov.

This story was originally published by The Maine Monitor, a nonprofit civic news organization. To get regular coverage from The Monitor, sign up for a free Monitor newsletter here.