Brevard County approves nearly $5.98 million in opioid-abatement awards amid complaints about RFA scoring

The Brevard County Board of County Commissioners voted to approve $5,984,640 in opioid-abatement funding on March 17, directing settlement dollars to local providers that will provide jail-based medication-assisted treatment, drug-court services, recovery supports and expanded behavioral-health capacity.

Staff said the awards followed a competitive request-for-awards process. "Purchasing services released the opioid misuse abatement funding request or RFA," said Lanita, the staff member presenting the item, summarizing the review and recommendation steps that led to the board item. "Twenty-one applications moved forward to the TIP recommendation subcommittee," she said, and the committee recommended awards across prioritized categories that match the state's approved uses for settlement funds.

The board packet and staff presentation listed the recommendation totals: $2.0 million to Circles of Care for jail-based medication-assisted treatment and expansion of services; $1.7 million to Circles of Care for broader MAT expansion and enhanced services in Brevard County; $780,000 to STEPS (Specialized Treatment, Education and Prevention Services) for access to drug-court programs; $785,000 for STEPS' living-room-type wraparound and linkage services; and awards to Recovery Connection of Central Florida (about $597,000) and other providers to support transitions from treatment and link people to care. Staff said the funding comes from opioid-settlement dollars and will not require a general-fund allocation.

The vote to approve the recommendation passed after discussion. "We want to make sure that these settlement dollars are moving and going towards organizations that are going to help with opioid addiction," one commissioner said during the consent-item discussion.

A public commenter involved in the TIP process, Laura McCarthy, read a prepared statement and raised a procedural complaint about how the county evaluated the RFAs. "Brevard County issued four separate RFAs," she said. "Applicants reasonably understood that each RFA represented a separate funding category and expected intracategory competition. Instead, during the public scoring meeting, the county staff instructed the recommendation committee to treat all applications as a single pool and rank uniformly and fund sequentially from the top down with no discretion for category balance and no ability to reduce awards." McCarthy cited her view of Florida statute 287 and asked that the process be corrected in the future.

Wanita, a staff member who participated in the RFA process, responded that reviewers used the state's approved uses for settlement dollars to define three areas of concentration and that the review and recommendation commitee considered applications within those parameters. "The opioid settlement dollars can only be spent on approved uses through the state abatement program," Wanita told the board, and she described the committee's review steps and the plan to exclude recipients from applying in the next round so dollars can be spread to other areas in subsequent cycles.

The board also heard brief remarks from applicant representatives who described how the funds would be used to reduce overdose risk, expand access to medication-assisted treatment and support people returning from incarceration. Staff said agencies receiving awards will be asked to report on program uses and outcomes per the settlement rules.

The board approved the recommendations and moved to release the awards. The motion carried on the record.