Fifty Groups Ask New Jersey to Hold a Hearing on Settlement Spending

A coalition of 50 treatment and advocacy organizations and 100 individuals asked New Jersey's Department of Human Services on Tuesday to schedule a public hearing on how the state polices the spending of its $1.1 billion share of the national opioid settlements. The request, organized by the New Jersey Harm Reduction Coalition, follows a year of reporting on money that went to concerts, parties and police equipment rather than to treatment.

The department did not respond to a request for comment on the letter.

New Jersey is slated to collect the $1.1 billion through 2038 from drug makers, distributors and pharmacies under the multistate settlements. Half of that is controlled by the state; the rest is distributed to towns and counties that signed on, which is where most of the disputed spending has occurred.

What the letter actually asks for

The coalition is not demanding that the state claw back money already spent. The request is narrower and more procedural: a hearing, on the record, where residents and providers can describe what oversight of the fund should look like before the next round of local allocations.

"The use of opioid settlement funds has significant consequences for people and communities across New Jersey," the letter states. "These funds represent an opportunity to address the harms of the overdose crisis, support evidence-informed services, and invest in the community-based organizations that work directly with people affected by substance use."

Jenna Mellor, the coalition's executive director, put the case in blunter terms. "It's time for the state to step up and get a handle on these settlement funds," she told the New Jersey Monitor. "This public hearing request makes clear that people all over the state care about how these dollars are spent, and they want the state to lead."

She added that the state has authority it has not used. "We have more than enough evidence that local governments need clear guidance, and without that, millions of dollars are getting wasted at best, and going towards punishing people who need care at worst."

The record behind the request

The state has spent more than $100 million of its share on treatment, housing and harm reduction, including naloxone distribution. Alongside that, a series of disclosures have accumulated.

A government watchdog flagged Irvington's use of settlement money as what it described as a slush fund for concerts. State lawmakers diverted $45 million from the fund to hospital aid, a move critics described as theft from the settlement. And reports released this fall showed counties and towns spending settlement dollars on concerts, parties and police equipment — purchases that are difficult to square with the abatement purposes the national settlements were built around.

The letter arrives three weeks after harm reduction workers, mayors and public health officials spent three hours in front of an Assembly committee describing the same problem, as this blog reported at the time. That hearing concerned a bill from Assemblymen Avi Schnall and Cody Miller that would require towns and counties to spend their settlement money within 18 months and redistribute what they leave unspent. No vote was taken, and the bill has not moved since.

Two tracks, one fund

New Jersey now has parallel pressure points: a legislative fix stalled in committee and an administrative request sitting with the department that writes the guidance local governments follow.

The state is not starting from nothing on the second track. A panel of treatment experts, prevention advocates and people with firsthand addiction experience issued a strategic spending plan in 2025 that recommended directing the money toward housing, treatment, family support and harm reduction. State allocations have largely tracked that plan; the dispute is about the half that flows to localities, where the plan functions as advice rather than requirement.

That distinction matters for what a hearing could accomplish. A public hearing does not change a rule. But it creates a record that the department would have to answer, and in a state where the same complaints have now been raised by a watchdog, by lawmakers at a three-hour hearing, and by 150 organizations and residents in a single letter, the absence of a formal response becomes its own political fact.

Why the mechanics matter more than the totals

For people working in harm reduction, the argument about settlement money is rarely about whether the state spends enough. It is about whether the dollars reach the organizations that see people who use drugs, and whether local governments can spend the money on things that have no relationship to opioid use disorder at all.

The national settlement structure gives states broad discretion and gives localities a share with comparatively little strings attached. New Jersey's own county filings show what that looks like in practice — settlement dollars booked for concerts, parties and police equipment — and the same fights have surfaced in rural Virginia and in Ohio counties weighing levy money against abatement rules. New Jersey's version has a specific wrinkle: a $1.1 billion total that is large enough to be a permanent line item in local budgets, and a state share that has already been redirected once by the Legislature.

Whether the department schedules the hearing is now the test. Mellor's coalition framed the request as evidence that the public is watching; the department's silence this week leaves that unanswered.