As the sun set over Jackson late Tuesday afternoon, the Mississippi Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Council members wanted to end their meeting.

They had finished making the final recommendations for how the state should spend tens of million dollars paid by companies that contributed to thousands of deadly Mississippi overdoses. Moderator Caleb Pracht offered his final remarks of the nearly three-hour meeting, wishing the committee safe travels home from the state capital. But one council member paused the concluding remarks to share some concerns. 

James Moore, a Hattiesburg recovery advocate and father of a son who died of an overdose, pointed out some of the ways in which the council had struggled with its role in distributing most of the hundreds of millions of lawsuit dollars the state is recouping to address the opioid epidemic.

Sitting at a desk away from most of the other members, Moore spoke about the inconsistent grading of the over 100 proposals the council received. Subcommittees, each made up of a few council members, initially reviewed and scored the applications. But the groups graded differently. The average score of the Public Health subcommittee was in the highest of five grading tiers, and the average score of applications reviewed by the Family subcommittee was in the second lowest tier.

He highlighted perceptions of conflicts of interests within the council, as many of the grants recommended for funding came from organizations with representatives on the committee.

“I don’t believe there was anything improper,” he told the other council members. “But obviously there was an appearance when we’re sitting across the table grading each others’ applications and multimillion dollar requests.” 

To address these and other issues, Moore asked the council if it would consider seeking help the next time it evaluated opioid settlement grants. Mississippi should be receiving the lawsuit money until at least 2040, and the review process is expected to happen yearly. 

He suggested to the council that outside groups, ones that have provided guidance to other states, could improve a process that many of the Mississippians who’ve been most impacted by addiction have raised concerns about since its first meeting. Moore said he had spoken to opioid settlement experts that day, and they said they would be happy to help the state. 

“It wouldn’t supplant us,” he said. “It would support us.”

For the prior two and a half hours, at what’s expected to be the council’s last meeting of the year, the members worked without that additional help. They decided which applications the committee would recommend state lawmakers fund in the 2026 regular legislative session. 

The council spent most of its time reviewing the dozens of applications the subcommittees had ranked in the highest two tiers and continued to make major adjustments to the process for distributing funds from the lawsuits. 

They significantly changed which organizations are eligible to receive opioid settlement funding. After Moore raised concerns about an applicant group that did not allow participants to use medication for opioid addiction and other psychiatric conditions, the council voted in favor of requiring that any group receiving money allows the people they serve to continue being on prescribed drugs. 

While medications like buprenorphine and methadone are considered the gold standard addiction treatments, many organizations across the country prohibit participants from using them. Wendy Bailey, the Mississippi Department of Mental Health executive director and co-vice chair of the council, said after the meeting that the council’s new rule could help change that for organizations serving Mississippians.

“We need to look to make sure there is more acceptance and understanding of it,” she said.

Andy Taggart, another council member, also successfully made a motion to remove all the applications from local first responder agencies from the list of opioid-related projects the committee will submit to the Legislature. Some of those first responder proposals did not appear to qualify as addressing addiction as defined by the lawsuit settlements.

Instead, the council chose to include them in a list of projects the Legislature could fund with opioid settlement money Attorney General and Council Chair Lynn Fitch has allowed lawmakers to use on non-addiction expenses.

A bill state lawmakers passed last spring, the one that created the council, says this portion of opioid settlement funds will be spent without any recommendations from the council. Taggart told the council members that the body should still make its suggestions.

“It strikes me that they would not be offended if we say, ‘Hey, here’s some non-abatement projects we recommended,’” he said. 

The council also tinkered with the priority and funding amounts they recommend for individual applicants. The biggest change was to adjust an application from Mississippi’s Administrative Office of Courts, a roughly $61 million request to improve the state’s drug court system — programs to divert people who use drugs away from the criminal justice system and toward treatment. 

Joseph Sclafani, a lawyer with Gov. Tate Reeves’ office, successfully proposed a motion to move the request to the highest-ranking tier and recommend that the Legislature reduce the funding to $12 million. 

The council also revived one application, a proposal from a company called Stercus Bioanalytics to create an opioid wastewater surveillance program, for recommendation. The application asked for roughly $9 million and was graded in the middle category, but the members passed Taggart’s motion to reduce the proposal to $2 million and include it in the second highest tier. 

Taggart told the council he thinks wastewater data could be an effective way for law enforcement and other state officials to figure out where there’s frequent opioid use. Recent MacArthur “Genius” grant recipient Nabarun Dasgupta, a senior scientist at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill who researches street drug supply, told Mississippi Today in November that while opioid wastewater surveillance can provide some surface-level information, it doesn’t do much to protect those most at risk of overdosing. 

“It’s big money for a small idea,” he said of Stercus’ unadjusted application.  

After the meeting ended, Michelle Williams, chief of staff for Fitch, said the Attorney General’s office would look into Moore’s idea of incorporating outside help next year, in addition to other process changes. 

Just before Pracht dismissed the council members, Williams told them she thought they did a great job of making recommendations for the money on a tight timeline. 

“But that’s my opinion.”