Opioid settlement dollars coming to Howard County
Also, Kinsey Center gets new leadership, county employee health benefits improve, county meetings now livestreaming
Today’s article is brought to you by Freedom Financial.
County assigns opioid settlement dollars
Howard County will receive its first installment of funding from the national opioid settlement this week, and the Board of Commissioners ensured the money will be spent on fighting the epidemic. At its Dec. 5 meeting, the board voted to split the $800,000 initial allotment among five local organizations tasked with serving individuals and families who are struggling with opioid addiction.
“This is a big day for our community,” said Commissioner Paul Wyman. “We are told the first installment will arrive on Friday (Dec. 9). This will be a pay-out over 18 years, but the first installment will be larger because Johnson and Johnson wanted to get as much of this off their books as they could.
“County government is in a position to ensure that this funding goes to organizations in our community that we know are on the front lines battling this pandemic. The settlement dollars must go toward abatement, and each of these organizations have agreed that they will use them to help individuals and families suffering from addiction.”
Howard County is slated to receive $5 million over 18 years, with $800,000 coming in the first installment. For the first two years of the settlement, 63 percent of the funds will go to Turning Point Systems of Care. Howard County Drug Free will receive 13 percent of the funds, while Valley of Grace, Gilead House, and the Family Service Association of Howard County each will receive eight percent.
“Each of these organizations has been directly involved with us over the years in the fight against the opioid epidemic, and we are confident in the work they do,” said Wyman. “They will work closely with us to implement these dollars, and the organizations will report back on an annual basis on how the settlement dollars have been spent, the number of people served, and the number of programs established.”
Commissioner Jack Dodd underscored the accountability requirement enacted by the county.
“Each of these organizations will be required to submit a written plan to this board on how they will spend this money,” said Dodd. “Rest assured this board will look at those plans and each year and expect an accounting on how they spent the money. It’s not that we question it, but just for accounting purposes we want to make sure the money is being spent appropriately.”
“This board and the county council feel that it is inappropriate to take settlement dollars designed for people who are suffering and spend them on anything else. We are committing 100 percent of the settlement to helping individuals and families struggling with addiction. We will not use it for anything else.” — Commissioner Paul Wyman
How the money is spent is a point of contention. Howard County was one of a handful of local government units that initially refused to join the State of Indiana as a party to the settlement. Their resistance sprang from the fact that the state intended to keep 85 percent of the money for itself initially and sought to preclude local units of government from pursuing any future settlement in the matter.
Howard County leaders balked at this and retained legal counsel to represent them as a party in the settlement separate from the state. Eventually, 80 Indiana cities and counties rejected the settlement agreement championed by Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita. Gov. Eric Holcomb and the state legislature intervened in the matter in March, enacting a law that required the settlement money be divided 50/50 between the state and local governments.
Even this arrangement was distasteful to Wyman, who criticized the state’s action to mandate just 70 percent of the settlement to fighting opioid addiction, while allowing the remaining 30 percent – also split evenly between state and local governments – to be spent with no restrictions.
“In the settlement, 15 percent of the dollars to local governments are allowed to be spent on whatever, as crazy as that sounds,” said Wyman. “The lawsuit concerned opioid addiction and the horrible things that come along with that, and yet in the national settlement, they found a way to allow government to spend 15 percent on whatever it wants.
“This board and the county council feel that it is inappropriate to take settlement dollars designed for people who are suffering and spend them on anything else. We are committing 100 percent of the settlement to helping individuals and families struggling with addiction. We will not use it for anything else.
“It’s a bittersweet deal. You hope to never be in a situation where you would need these dollars, but I’m thankful these dollars are here so we can start helping families.”
Kinsey Center gets new leadership
The Robert J. Kinsey Youth Center is experiencing a changing of the guard. Jeff Lipinski, who served as director of the center for 11 years, retired from county government last month and will assume elected office on the Howard County Board of Commissioners in January.
This prompted Howard Circuit Court Judge Lynn Murray to select new leadership for the center, and she presented her selections to the commissioners on Dec. 5. Former assistant director Kathy Cullison has assumed the role of director at Kinsey, while youth manager and supervisor Michelle Ege was promoted to assistant director.
“Kinsey is a place in which services and rehabilitation and safety are provided for our youth as well as more than 45 other counties which have used it since it opened in 1993,” said Murray. “With Mr. Lipinski’s retirement after more than 30 years of service and leadership, those are some big shoes to fill.
“I have full confidence in the abilities of the two women who will be assuming the management of the Kinsey Youth Center,” said Murray.
Lipinski endorsed Cullison as his successor.
“Kathy has a wealth of knowledge,” said Lipinski. “She’s a Master’s level therapist and knows a lot about children. There will be a little bit of a learning curve for her when it comes to things like budgeting, but as far as the kids go, that’s right up her alley.
“I want the Kinsey Center to thrive. It has been a facility that has changed children’s lives for the better and has returned money to the taxpayers, and I am confident that will continue under Kathy’s leadership.”
Cullison holds a Master’s degree in Social Work from Indiana University and has 36 years’ experience working with troubled youth. She has been employed at Kinsey since 1996, where she served as a clinical supervisor and program director and spent nine years as assistant director. She is a licensed clinical social worker, addictions counselor, and juvenile sex offender counselor.
Ege joined Kinsey in 2014 and has served as a youth manager and supervisor and JDAI coordinator. She will receive her Master’s degree in Criminal Justice from Southern New Hampshire University in January.
As one of Cullison’s first acts as director, she asked the commissioners to approve an increase in the per diem the facility charges other counties to hold their youth in secure detention.
“I’ve taken an average of all the detention centers that participate in IJDA and came up with a new daily per diem figure for our secure detention facility,” said Cullison. “We currently charge $137 a day, but our operating costs are increasing fairly significantly with current inflation. We came up with a figure of $147 a day, which is approximately a seven percent increase, which is approximately the current rate of inflation.”
The commissioners approved this increase.
In other news …
In other action from the board of commissioners meeting, Doug Heath of the county’s insurance committee addressed the board, proposing no increase to costs to county employees for health insurance in 2023.
He explained that that county’s health insurance fund balance is strong and that the committee desired to pass along some relief to the employees. Therefore, the committee proposed to lower health insurance deductibles in 2023 to $2,000, down from $2,500 in 2022.
The commissioners approved this adjustment.
The board also acknowledged that the county’s information technology department has successfully begun livestreaming county meetings. According to IT director Jeremy Stevens, commissioners and county council meetings will be livestreamed on YouTube going forward. A link to each meeting is provided on the front page of the Howard County website, and the department is working on embedding the feed there as well.