By Brianna Washington with SGJC Student News Network
As Baltimore begins to distribute the nearly $669 million it won from lawsuits with opioid manufacturers and distributors, the city is just beginning to lay out its plans, not just for where the money is going, but how decisions will be made and how progress will be measured.
Despite the size of the payout, city officials have not yet clearly stated exactly which organizations will be eligible to receive funds and when and how they can apply. This has left some local treatment providers confused about the allocation process, and others in the community worried about transparency and community involvement.
In December 2024, Ben Toney, CEO of Valley Bridge House, a treatment center in Baltimore City, sent a letter to Mayor Scott’s administration asking when applications for the rest of the funding would be available, even making a case for his organization, and says he never got a clear answer. “Everything I put in that letter is what I would use the funding for. It’s to put measures in place to help the client succeed,” he said.
Sara Whaley, executive director for Overdose Response, acknowledged that there may have been some confusion about why some community groups initially received funds and others did not, as the city’s process is starting to roll out, but that the city is committed to engaging community members in the process.
“That is something that we could have done better in communicating where that came from because currently we don't have an open application process,” said Whaley. “There are a lot of different ways that we can go about communicating that to organizations, and that's part of what we're working on building with this office,” she added.
In terms of the broader work the city has been doing to combat the overdose crisis, “we know what we will continue to do, and so, we also feel like a lot of folks in the community also know what we've been doing,” said Whaley.
Demystifying a complex process
Baltimore City took the unusual step of sueing opioid manufacturers and distributors itself, rather than accept part of a global settlement, winning about six times what they would otherwise have been awarded, according to city officials.
In August 2024, Mayor Scott issued an executive order outlining their next steps in the multi-year legal battle. This came after the city had just received $45 million from Allergan Finance.
Mayor Scott’s executive order established the Baltimore City Opioid Restitution Fund to manage proceeds from the opioid litigation.
The order stipulates that the Restitution Fund will have to submit a transparency and accountability plan every two years and a public-facing dashboard that will provide updates on programs receiving funds. The city committed to using this dashboard to provide ongoing updates to residents on the City of Baltimore’s website.
By November 2024, the city had reached settlements totaling more than $668.5 million, with the first set of funds already being distributed – $20 million going directly to the Baltimore City Health Department, and $42 million going to specific care providers and organizations.
Twenty-two specific care providers and organizations will ultimately receive $87 million of the funds, according to city officials, and were not chosen through a competitive bidding or application process, but rather, were directly included and agreed upon within the legal settlement.
To guide future allocations, Mayor Scott announced in February 2025 the 17 voting members and 3 non-voting members to the Restitution Advisory Board.
This board is responsible for reviewing proposals, making funding recommendations, and ensuring that community needs are reflected in the allocation of funds. Their recommendations will go to an “Overdose Cabinet” before the mayor makes a final decision on money going to any community groups.
However, Baltimore City’s preliminary 2026 budget currently allocates only $2 million total for community group grants that will be selected by the restitution advisory board, a small fraction of the total $180 million that has flowed to the city so far from its winnings.
The remaining $36.7 million being allocated from the restitution fund for the coming fiscal year will go toward the groups already selected in the settlement agreement and city agencies whose work is directly connected to the opioid crisis, leaving many of those working on opioid issues in the community dismayed.
Concerns—lack of transparency
Concerns about the city’s transparency in its response to the opioid crisis have dogged the Mayor’s office for much of the last year, starting with the release of a three-part Baltimore Banner/New York Times investigative series last summer that was critical of the city’s response to the crisis.
Within months, Baltimore City Council-member Mark Conway began calling for hearings to discuss the crisis, but they were cancelled, with the Mayor’s office citing ongoing litigation with opioid distributors and manufacturers.
Councilman Mark Conway has been vocal about how he disagrees with the administration’s stance. “The city is 'past that stage' of litigation, and it is time for public hearings,” he said.
When asked why he felt it was important to hold hearings, Conway responded: “I would like to be able to begin working on solutions, and if not working on solutions, begin understanding the problem more effectively… and you can only do that by talking with the folks who are looking at it.”
Receiving pushback from Scott’s administration for wanting to hold hearings, Conway was seemingly frustrated by the lack of transparency regarding the understanding of Baltimore City’s opioid crisis.
“We were literally putting money out the door or guaranteeing money to organizations before we'd even understood the problem,” he said,. “It just seemed backward to me.”
“I think there is a huge opportunity to involve the public in this discussion about what's going on, and that's been postponed and postponed,” says Alissa Zhu, a reporter for the Baltimore Banner who spent two years reporting on the city’s overdose epidemic.
“[Community members and advocates] thought the reason the city didn't want to talk about the issue is also because, you know, people who use drugs have been stigmatized for so long,” said Zhu, who was recently awarded the Pulitzer Prize in local reporting for her work on the series.
“They saw that the hearing's being canceled as an extension of that, almost like silencing or ignoring of a community.” said Zhu.
Administrative Response
In response to concerns about transparency, Sara Whaley, who, in addition to overseeing Overdose Response for the city is a non-voting member of the Restitution Advisory Board, said her office was working to improve communication regarding the Restitution Fund's work with the public.
“We want to get the application and the notice of funding out so that we can get applications back.” Said Whaley, “while also balancing the applications that we're getting to ensure equity.”
Whaley said the request for proposals (RFPs) for community groups hoping to receive funding would be posted this fall.
Before joining the city in February, Whaley co-authored a Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health report outlining six key principles for how communities should use opioid settlement funds. Mayor Brandon Scott has cited the report as a guide for the city’s decision-making process regarding the settlement funds.
When asked how the Board will determine how to distribute the funds to local organizations, Whaley offered a straightforward explanation:
“Based on a citywide strategic plan, the restitution advisory board is going to identify some fiscal priorities for each year, and those priorities will inform an RFP process to get money out into the communities.”
So far, no comprehensive timeline has been released outlining exactly when the RFPs will open or how community groups can prepare to apply. Whaley said the Restitution Fund and Advisory Board also needed to move its landing page to the Mayor’s Office, rather than the Health Department’s website, and that her office would actively reach out to groups directly through various avenues.
She emphasized that the Board would require in-depth reporting from every group receiving funds, publicly tracking where all Restitution Fund money was spent.
“Even though the Restitution Advisory Board did not select the twenty-two community organizations that are already receiving funds, per the settlement agreement, it is overseeing how their money is being spent,” said Whaley.
Whaley concluded the interview by assuring the Restitution board would be working with the chosen community organizations to determine future rollout for funds: “Our office is working really closely with these organizations, and figuring out the cadence of how the money will roll out to them, and what their reporting requirements are.”
