Senate Health & Welfare hears Department of Health on H.660 opioid‑abatement spending; DOH urges pause on new projects

The Senate Health & Welfare Committee on April 7 heard from Department of Health staff about H.660, the bill that would allocate opioid abatement (opioid settlement) funds. Shail Livingston, an advisor in the commissioner’s office at the Vermont Department of Health, told the committee the state has two distinct recommendation sets — the department’s and those from the Opioid Settlement Advisory Committee (OSAC) — and thanked OSAC members for reviewing 67 community proposals.

Livingston said the fund’s estimated new receipts are typically under $5,000,000 per year and will decline substantially after about 2032, so the department is urging a strategic approach to spending. “We really deeply appreciate the amount of work that the members of the opioid settlement advisory committee put in to their recommendations,” Livingston said, and added that DOH recommends pausing new project approvals so the committee and DOH can evaluate the performance and sustainability of projects already funded.

That evaluation focus is reflected in language the department supports in H.660, Livingston said. DOH would like OSAC to review evaluation results for all previously funded projects (not only four initiatives the legislature already asked to sustain) and then recommend which programs merit ongoing base funding or…