Bernalillo County officials on Thursday updated the Local Government Coordinated Council on plans to publish a public accountability dashboard showing how opioid settlement funds are spent and what outcomes funded programs produce.

The dashboard will include financial measures such as appropriations, receipts and expenditures and program accountability measures tied to behavioral-health results, John Lancet, the county’s IT and data lead, told the council. “We’re going to have 2 different groups of measures…financial measures…and accountability measures,” Lancet said.

County staff said the dashboard will be hosted on Tableau and published across the city, county and Albuquerque Public Schools (APS) websites. The county has contracted Vital Strategies as a consultant to lead a community-centered dashboard design process that staff said will include subject-matter experts, elected officials and community feedback channels. According to the presentation, Vital Strategies will also help write the narrative that accompanies the dashboard visualizations to provide context for the numbers and report both progress and disruptions.

Why it matters: Elected officials and advocates said a public dashboard will let residents see where settlement dollars go and whether programs are working, a requirement the council previously recommended in its joint opioid settlement implementation plan.

What staff told the council
- Timeline: Lancet said many timelines depend on contract execution and when contractors begin providing monthly data. “I would expect within the next 3 to 6 months we’d be able to report back in order to give you a more solid timeline for when that dashboard would go live,” he said.
- Data collection: Staff emphasized they will require contractors to submit standardized monthly data regardless of the contractor’s internal data system. Lancet said the county will accept data submissions independently of HMIS or Unite Us by requiring monthly uploads in a county-specified format.
- Contracts and allocations: Staff listed several allocations already in process: an open RFP for small and medium providers (described at different points in the presentation as involving $2,000,000 and as a separate $4,000,000 solicitation that yielded 21 proposals), a $10,000,000 City Capital grant round closing in mid-October, and an APS intergovernmental agreement (IGA) routing for execution. County staff said the city executed a stopgap IGA to allow APS to hire and start programs while the formal IGA is finalized.
- Payment and reporting linkage: Councilor Rogers pressed whether contractors must submit the required data to be paid; a county presenter replied in the affirmative: contractors must submit the monthly data to receive payment.

Next steps and public transparency
County staff said they can publish incremental reports before the full Tableau dashboard is complete — for example, posting lists of contracted providers and allocation amounts as contracts are executed. The design process led by Vital Strategies includes public feedback avenues and a regular reporting cadence to return updates to the council.

What the council asked
Councilor Rogers asked whether APS’ IGA includes funding for the dashboard and whether it requires APS to provide data. A county presenter said participation is included in the IGA scope but that a specific line-item for dashboard funding will be confirmed when staff review the IGA language.

Staff committed to return with updates at future meetings; the council agreed to receive another update in roughly two months.

Ending: County staff described the dashboard as an evolving effort that will be phased in as contracts are executed and data arrive, and they said they will publish both financial distributions and outcome measures to show whether funded programs are making a measurable difference.