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Opioid council creates exploratory committee to study who should pay for counties'consultant
Summary
Council voted to form a small exploratory committee to determine whether counties can or should share in paying a proposed SMART Initiative consulting fee after lengthy debate over administrative rates and county fairness.
The Tennessee Opioid Abatement Council on Dec. 12 voted to form a 3-to-4-person exploratory committee to determine whether there is a viable mechanism for counties to pay part of a proposed consulting fee from the SMART Initiative, after members raised concerns about administrative overhead and fairness.
Clay Jackson moved the measure, urging the council to "take the temperature of the counties" before obligating state-level funds; the motion passed after a roll-call vote. Jackson and others said counties already face pressure to spend their allocated 35% of abatement dollars and that requiring the statewide office to pay a $1.3 million consulting fee would raise the OAC's reported administrative percentage.
Dr. Steven Lloyd and Sam Bukeley, legal counsel to the council, said the public chapter creating the council does not permit the OAC to force counties to pay a fee. Bukeley summarized the minutes question that provoked the debate: the council had previously authorized the executive director to engage in negotiations and to execute a contract "with SMART Initiative for at least 2 years," but counsel emphasized that authorization to negotiate is not a binding contract until executed.
Supporters of the SMART Initiative consulting arrangement said the contractor already has county relationships and could help counties spend funds they are not currently deploying. Skeptics objected that using OAC administrative funds to pay a county-facing consultant could depress the money counties receive for direct services and temporarily inflate the OAC's administrative ratio.
The exploratory committee will consult county representatives and report back with a recommendation about whether counties would voluntarily fund part of the consultant's work or whether the council should pay the fee from OAC funds.
