Judge refuses to halt spending $58M opioid settlement in Ohio
COLUMBUS, Ohio - A judge has refused to issue an order to temporarily prevent Ohio from spending $58.3 million in opioid settlement funds.
The decision came Tuesday in Franklin County Court following a hearing in a lawsuit filed by Harm Reduction Ohio against the OneOhio Recovery Foundation, the entity designated to coordinate the distribution of a settlement reached with national opioid distributors.
The OneOhio Recovery Foundation will receive 55% of Ohio’s $1 billion opioid settlement over 18 years. The other 45% goes directly to the state and local governments.
Harm Reduction Ohio, which says it is a non-profit human rights organization working to improve the health and happiness of people who use drugs, is the largest distributor of naloxone in the state.
Attorneys for Harm Reduction Ohio sought to stop spending the settlement funds, arguing that OneOhio has held dozens of meetings since May 2022, the last six of which violated Judge Mark Serrott’s order to comply with the state’s open meetings law.
After Tuesday’s court hearing, Judge Serrott did order the OneOhio opioid settlement board to start complying with the Ohio Open Meetings Act.
Harm Reduction argues that decisions made at OneOhio meetings that violate open meetings law are automatically invalidated.
OneOhio hopes to start taking grant applications for the settlement funding in June with plans to disburse the money on October 1. A full hearing on the case is scheduled for July.
Harm Reduction Ohio had asked the judge to issue a temporary restraining order to immediately stop the grant process, arguing that waiting until the July hearing would make the law’s invalidation requirement impossible to enforce without hurting grant applicants.
A court hearing to determine whether open meetings law violations invalidate what was done in secret will be heard at a preliminary injunction hearing, now scheduled for July 12 and July 14.
