State Joint Finance Committee Approves Opioid Settlement Plan After Republican Changes

Friday, September 9th, 2022 -- 8:01 AM

(Bob Hague, WRN) The legislature’s Joint Finance Committee approves a plan, to allocate an initial 31 million dollars from an opioid lawsuit settlement.

Thursday’s unanimous vote came after a press conference in which the committee’s Republican leaders ripped the original plan from the state Department of Health Services. JFC co-chair, Representative Mark Born, “We saw the Evers administration, and particularly the department of health, fail with a half-baked plan.”

Republicans spent three weeks reworking what Senator Howard Marklein called a “unilateral” plan from DHS. “It takes time to communicate, and we spent that time communicating with the stakeholders.”

Born criticized the plan submitted by the state Department of Health Services. “There was a lack of details, there was a lack of clear working with stakeholders.”

Democratic Representative Even Goyke said that’s just not true. “I mean in the materials submitted to the members of this committee, the department outlined that they spoke with 800 different individuals that came forward at various listening sessions as early as January of this year.”

Despite the criticisms, Republicans retained most of the DHS proposal, which committee then approved on a unanimous vote Thursday.

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