12 States Promised To Open the Books on Their Opioid Settlement Funds. We Checked Up on Them. - KFF Health News

Victims of the crisis have repeatedly called on governments to transparently report how they’re using opioid settlement funds.

Many of those reports remain difficult, if not impossible, for the average person to decipher.

KFF Health News revisited 12 states: Arizona , Colorado , Delaware , Idaho , Massachusetts , Minnesota , New Hampshire , New Jersey , Oregon , South Carolina , and Utah .

In South Carolina , for instance, more information can be found in the meeting minutes of the Opioid Recovery Fund Board .

New Hampshire’s efforts to report its expenditures follow a similar pattern.

Other states that lacked detail in some of their expenditure reports say further descriptions are available to the public.

Lawmakers have asked the health department to devise a new plan by Dec. 1 to make local governments’ expenditures public.

Lawmakers introduced a bill that required each county to post an annual report detailing the use of its settlement funds.

A year later , KFF Health News revisited 12 states’ reporting practices to determine if they had fulfilled their promises.