Westmoreland County receives first payment of opioid settlement

Westmoreland County and its 11 largest municipalities will split nearly $3 million this year as part of the first installments paid out from a $26 billion national settlement of a federal lawsuit with drug manufacturers implicated in the opioid epidemic.

Commissioners on Thursday approved a resolution to receive the county’s share of the settlement and provisions for how the money will be spent. Programs that focus on addiction treatment, recovery, prevention and for first responders can be funded through the settlement funds.

“Now we can look at expanding programs and helping out local municipalities,” Commissioner Sean Kertes said. “There are a lot of ways we can help people out.”

Westmoreland County will receive $22 million over the next 17 years from the settlement. The first installment, more than $1 million, is expected to be received before the end of August. A second payment, nearly $2 million, is scheduled to arrive this fall, commissioners said.

The funds will be split among county government and the 11 largest municipalities in Westmoreland County: Greensburg, Lower Burrell, Murrysville, New Kensington, Derry, Hempfield, Mt. Pleasant, North Huntingdon, Penn, Rostraver and Unity.

The towns slated to receive money were stipulated in the settlement agreement, but the amounts they are allocated will be determined by county commissioners.

Plans announced last year for a special committee that included representatives from those municipalities to disburse the settlement funds have been scrapped.

Commissioners said they will meet in private with members of the county’s Drug Overdose Taskforce to devise a plan to allocate the funds.

“Rather than having a committee, we decided, wherever the money goes, they can decide on their own. They are all so different. Some have a police force, some do not. So whatever that number is (they will receive), we will let them decide,” Commissioner Gina Cerilli Thrasher said.

The county has used grants and other funding sources to pay for myriad drug treatment and prevention services. On Thursday, commissioners accepted state grants, including a $30,000 allocation from the state, to pay for weekend testing services as part of the drug court program.

The county allocated another $167,200 received from state funds to pay operating costs and salaries for its Drug Overdose Task Force.

Those programs and others can be financed through the opioid lawsuit settlement cash, as well as expansion of long-term programs that focus on addiction and prevention, commissioners said. .

Westmoreland County had steady increases in drug overdose deaths over the past decade that topped out in 2017 with a record 193 fatalities. Drug-related deaths slowly fell over the next several years, but totals again started to increase. There were 168 fatal overdoses in the county last year, the coroner’s office said.

This year, through the end of July, the coroner’s office reported 44 confirmed fatal overdoses with another 15 suspected deaths awaiting final toxicology results.

Officials said the financial costs of drug addiction have also been significant.

A study completed in 2017 by Controller Jeff Balzer found the county paid nearly $19 million that year for criminal justice programs, law enforcement, coroner’s expenses, detention costs and prevention and education efforts related to drug addiction and abuse.