����������

Alliance Alert: The Alliance for Rights and Recovery share the concerns raised by members of the Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Board regarding the state’s lack of transparency in how settlement dollars are being used. These funds—secured through the pain, advocacy, and loss of countless ����������ers—must be tracked, reported, and spent responsibly. Transparency is essential for advisory board members, advocates, and policymakers to understand how these resources are being used and whether they are achieving the intended impact.

While we appreciate the state’s ongoing efforts to distribute opioid settlement dollars, we remain concerned that too much of the funding continues to sit unused while individuals, families, and communities urgently need support. The Alliance’s position is clear: these dollars must be invested directly into recovery support services, not held in a bank or diverted to fill budget gaps.

Funds should be used to expand peer and recovery programs,��community-based prevention,��harm reduction, and other initiatives proven to save lives and promote long-term wellness. The purpose of these settlements is to repair the damage done by the opioid epidemic.
We are also deeply concerned about equity in how these funds are being distributed. Despite overall declines in overdose deaths among white ����������ers,��Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities continue to experience disproportionately high rates of overdose and lower access to treatment and recovery supports. These disparities are unacceptable and must be addressed directly through targeted funding and culturally responsive service delivery.

These funds must be used to support all ����������ers—with a focus on communities that have faced the greatest harm and the least access to support.

The Alliance calls on the state to:

• Publicly release detailed data on how all opioid settlement funds are being allocated and spent.
• Invest settlement funds immediately into recovery-oriented, community-based, and peer-led supports rather than leaving them unspent.
• Ensure equity and transparency by tracking whether communities of color are receiving proportional and effective services.

The people of ���������� fought hard to secure these dollars. They must be used to build a fair, recovery-focused system that saves lives, restores communities, and ensures every person struggling with substance use has the support they need to recover and thrive.

Opioid Settlement Advisors Say Hochul Administration is Keeping Them in the Dark
By Jie Jenny Zou | ���������� Focus | November 7, 2025

The board advising ���������� on how to spend huge sums from  pressed Governor Kathy Hochul for greater transparency and faster action in its annual report released this week.

The state has received over $500 million from settlements reached with drug manufacturers for their role in the opioid crisis and is set to receive much more, including from a record  announced in January. The settlement funds consist of a complex mix of , large portions of which the Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Board oversees under state law.

But board members say the state Office of Addiction Services and Supports, which administers the funds, has been slow to respond to repeated requests for basic data, like how much of the money has made it to providers. Members have also been frustrated with the state’s routine rejection of their recommendations with little explanation.

“We don’t get any clear answers from the state,” said Ashley Livingston, a board member who has requested spending data since the body’s founding. “We’ve been asking for the same thing since June of 2022.”

Tensions hit a new high over the summer when budget officials asked the board to take a stance on whether it would support using the settlement funds to . By law, the money is meant to go toward new or expanded substance abuse initiatives and can’t be used to “supplant” or replace existing state funding.

Asked whether OASAS has specific plans to use settlement funds to backfill federal cuts, a spokesperson for the agency, Evan Frost, wrote that “OASAS is continuously evaluating the potential effects of federal actions on our providers and programs.”

The proposal has raised concerns among board members like Livingston that the funds could be used to plug budget holes as the state grapples with declining federal support for an array of social services, including mental health programs.

Over 4,500 ����������ers died from drug overdoses in 2024, by the state’s estimate. While overdose deaths have significantly dropped among white ����������ers in recent years, they have been much slower to decline in communities of color, particularly for Black, Brown and Indigenous ����������ers.

In its  published on November 1, the board urged the state to increase funding and support for communities of color disproportionately impacted by overdose deaths. It also highlighted an array of recommendations to boost transparency.

Days before the board’s October meeting — the last scheduled for the calendar year — OASAS finally provided members with 550 pages of documents in response to longstanding requests for spending data. But the board lamented in the report that the state had not provided enough time for members to review the data and that it wasn’t presented in a way that directly answered their questions. Members have moved to prioritize discussion of the state-provided data during its first meeting next year.

“For the two and half years I sat there, I couldn’t take it anymore.”

—Avi Israel, former Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Board member

The annual report also noted that only $240 million of the over $500 million of settlement dollars appear to have been “disbursed” as of October, but that more clarification was needed from the state for members to fully understand how to make sense of these numbers.

At the board’s October meeting, members passed a motion to ensure $35 million in accrued interest not be swept into the state’s general funds and instead be directed to smaller community-based organizations that may struggle with the state’s application process. Members also voted to increase the number of board meetings from four to a minimum of six annually and requested a dedicated project manager to improve coordination with OASAS.

It’s unclear whether any of these recommendations will be taken up by the state. OASAS has rejected several of the board’s recommendations in the past, including its proposals to use settlement funds to create more , to  initiatives at the state Department of Health, and to .

“We are poorly treated as an advisory board,” said board member Tracie Gardner, who heads the National Black Harm Reduction Network. “Do I think the Governor is ignoring the specific needs to fight overdose in Black communities? Yes,” Gardner added.

The lack of transparency around settlement fund spending prompted Rob Kent, a private consultant who previously worked at OASAS and at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, to file a public records request this year with the state comptroller for contract data. The result was a spreadsheet that Gardner said was the most information she had seen at the time about how some of the funds had been spent.

“We don’t know what the hell is going on …. Is the state going to try to steal this money?” said Kent, discussing concerns that the state could divert funds as it deals with budget gaps.

Such a choice would be a disservice to opioid victims and their families who fought hard for the funds in courts, Kent said, drawing a parallel with misspending by states of funds from the settlements with  in the 1990s. “This isn’t the state’s money, they’re trustees of the money,” he said. “This is blood money.”

Drug policy reform advocates have been frustrated by OASAS, too. This month, the Legal Action Center urged board members to continue to push for more transparency, resist efforts by the state to redirect settlement funds, and increase funding opportunities for smaller, grassroots organizations.

Christine Khaikin, senior health policy attorney for the organization, said her staff have found numerous inconsistencies with OASAS announcements of contract awards and have been unable to make sense of the spending. The agency’s  also appears to be out of compliance with state law, Khaikin said.

Under state regulations, OASAS must publicly report how the funds are spent, an analysis of whether they were spent effectively, and its criteria for awarding funds. To date, none of this information has been made public.

Frost, the OASAS spokesperson, told Focus the agency plans to update the tracker in the future. “Many initiatives have been in place for a little more than a year or in some cases less, we do not have full data on effectiveness or other analysis points. Once that information is available, it will be included on the dashboard,” he said.

Frost claimed the state has moved faster than any other in the country to get settlement dollars directly into communities, citing a  report. That article looked at how states had either spent or committed their funds, not necessarily if funding had reached recipients. It also found nearly a third of ����������’s total funds were “untrackable.”

Meanwhile, smaller organizations across the state are struggling to keep their doors open and programs running.

At a hearing earlier this month, the program manager of The Turning Point, the only addiction outreach center in rural Chenango County, said that the center is at risk of shuttering in June due to delays in funding.

The Buffalo-based nonprofit Save the Michaels of the World, which was created to raise awareness about addiction following the death of Michael David Israel, is also facing a cash crunch. Its founder, Michael’s father Avi Israel, resigned from the settlement fund advisory board last year after being frustrated by a lack of transparency and action.

“We can make all these suggestions and do all this stuff and OASAS is going to do whatever they want,” he said. “For the two and half years I sat there, I couldn’t take it anymore.”

His organization has helped shuttle people to treatment in Western ����������, a vast area with little regional public transit. Israel said he is unclear about the status of an OASAS contract that was supposed to go out earlier this year to support those transportation efforts.

“They’re not giving us enough money to survive,” Israel said of the state. “If we’re not around, there’s going to be a big hole in the community.”