Pennsylvania opioid trust gears up for county appeals

The Pennsylvania Opioid Trust approved its second annual report during a Thursday meeting and plans to release it sometime in September.

The goal, said trust chair Tom VanKirk, was to give a full update to the Commonwealth Court before it considered the second wave of settlement money to be sent out. The trust also plans to alert municipalities in September about what they can expect to receive in the next tranche of funding in December.

For current disagreements over how municipalities can spend funds, the trust noted that it planned to hold appeal hearings next month for rejected county projects.

In total, almost $9 million worth of projects were dismissed by the trust. County officials will face a seven-member committee with 30 minutes to convince the trust that the project complies with Exhibit E, the list of approved uses for the opioid settlement money.

“Their decision will be final from the standpoint of the trust,” VanKirk said. “Individuals that feel aggrieved can always appeal to the Commonwealth Court, but we wanted to set up a dispute resolution committee without incurring substantial attorneys fees to point out information where we think we may have been wrong.”

In previous meetings, most of the projects under review gained approval. When trust members flagged a project, it was generally due to a lack of information. During the June meeting, Philadelphia had most of its projects held for further review. On Wednesday, the majority of those were approved.

Though Exhibit E gives counties and other groups that get opioid money wide latitude in how to use it, some projects were still too far out. Of Philadelphia’s projects, the trust ruled that a $10,000 program by the Legal Clinic for the Disabled didn’t qualify. Nor did a $10,000 diaper bank project to “partner with nonprofits to provide families with basic necessities.”

The appeals process will be tested on September 5 when Somerset County argues its appeal in front of the trust; Bucks, Chester, Dauphin, Erie, and Philadelphia Counties have also appealed the ruling, and their meetings will be announced in the coming weeks.

The turnaround time on the appeal decision is expected to be fast.

“We’re hoping to hear arguments, meet in executive session, and then announce it at the conclusion of the public meeting,” VanKirk said.

For the next distribution of money from the Wave 2 settlement, however, VanKirk was unsure when counties and other jurisdictions would get the money — action requires approval from the Commonwealth Court.

“I don’t know if they will take (months) to approve it; they could approve it within a matter of weeks,” VanKirk said.

If the approval gets delayed for too long, though, some problems could pop up. Counties trying to spend money from different sources by different deadlines, and the trust reviewing and approving or delaying projects, could create a time crunch, or “administrative issues” as VanKirk noted.