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photo by: Steven Allen Adams

Parkersburg Mayor Tom Joyce, the representative for District 3 on the West Virginia First Foundation board, addressed lawmakers Monday during legislative interim meetings.

CHARLESTON — The new chief financial officer for the quasi-private foundation tasked with distribution of the majority of the nearly $1 billion in opioid settlement funds coming to the state and local governments over the next several years said the group is close to sending money out the door.

Anthony Woods, CFO for the West Virginia First Foundation, gave members of the West Virginia Legislature’s Joint Standing Committee on Finance an update Monday afternoon on the progress of the organization.

The foundation approved the creation of the Initial Opportunity Grant program in September, receiving more than 174 applications by the close of the Oct. 5 deadline. Woods said announcements regarding approved grants will be made by the end of this month.

“We are getting ready this week actually to make the final votes on this,” he said. “Our board is going to come in and evaluate those grant awards and make those final awards. And you’ll be hearing from us by the end of this month about who will be the initial recipients of that Initial Opportunity grant.”

The Initial Opportunity Grant program will distribute $19.2 million, or $800,000 per four target areas to six regions of the state, with up to four awards per target area per region.

Funding approved through the Initial Opportunity Grant program can be used for four areas dealing with the state’s substance use disorder crisis: drug diversion programs and interdiction programs, youth drug prevention and workforce development, child advocacy centers and pregnant/parenting women neonatal abstinence syndrome programs and transitional and/or recovery housing expansion.

“We understand that we have to get this money out in the communities,” Woods said. “We know that this is a priority. We know your constituents have been asking about this. But we want to make sure that we’re nimble and we’re pivoting at the speed of the public health crisis.

“We want to be very careful because these dollars are very important,” Woods continued. “They represent lives lost and people who are not with us today. We want to be very judicious and very wise in our use and award of these funds. So, this is something that we’re constantly balancing, getting that money out there but making sure we select those projects that really work.”

Eligibility for the Initial Opportunity Grant program is limited to nonprofit organizations with a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status and other kinds of nonprofits and organizations that fulfill a charitable or public purpose.

The applications were reviewed by the foundation’s statewide expert panel, which includes representatives of law enforcement, corrections, the court system, substance use treatment and recovery and health care. The statewide expert panel judged the applications based on scoring rubrics, such as evidence-based strategies, how the programs applying for the grant fit into the foundation’s strategic vision, implementation and sustainability, transparency and fairness and impact and measurability.

Parkersburg Mayor Tom Joyce, the representative for District 3 on the foundation board, said each of the six regional foundation districts will get their own expert panel to recommend future projects to the foundation.

“As the region 3 representative, I’ve been tasked to recruit folks from across those areas of expertise, whether they be law enforcement, treatment, prevention. Every region will have its own expert panel eventually,” he said.

Woods also said the foundation has created guidelines for funding proposals for governments or nonprofits that wish to present an idea directly to the foundation for consideration.

“The board has started considering some of those requests,” Woods said. “So that’s something that we will have some announcements on here very soon.

“If there is someone who feels that they can achieve outcomes, such as reducing substance abuse disorder, they can present that to our board, and our board reviews those and makes a determination on whether that’s funded or not,” he said.

Following Monday’s Joint Standing Committee on Finance, the West Virginia First Foundation held a special virtual meeting to consider a direct funding proposal for a program with a federal dollar match, though foundation members provided little in detail about the program, called ACORN, during its meeting.

Representatives of the cities and counties involved in opioid litigation — as well as the Attorney General’s Office — agreed to a memorandum of understanding in 2023 to create the West Virginia First Foundation, as well as a formula for distributing settlement awards. The MOU included all 55 counties and more than 220 cities.

Johnson & Johnson, Teva, Walgreens, CVS, Kroger, Walmart, Allergan and Rite Aid agreed to a $940 million settlement with the state and local governments for their part in manufacturing and distributing prescription opioids to West Virginia, feeding a substance use crisis.

The West Virginia First program will distribute settlement dollars, with 24.5% going to cities and counties, 3% going to the Attorney General’s Office and 72.5% going to the West Virginia First Foundation.

Woods said more than $300 million of settlement monies have been distributed to date between the state, local governments and the foundation, with more funding to be allocated in the coming years. The foundation has $117.3 million in its qualified settlement fund, with $73.5 million distributed to cities and counties to date and another quarterly distribution of $28.7 million set to go out the door to local governments.