COLUMBUS, Ohio (Legal Newsline) - An Ohio nonprofit has sued for access to the meetings and records of OneOhio Recovery Foundation, saying the state-established organization is attempting to distribute more than $400 million in opioid settlement money without legally required public oversight.
Harm Reduction Ohio asked the Ohio Supreme Court to intervene after OneOhio rebuffed its open-records requests, saying it is a private foundation and doesn’t have to comply with the Ohio Public Records Act. OneOhio was established Gov. Mike DeWine in 2021 and is slated to receive 55% of the $808 million opioid distributors have agreed to pay the state over the next 18 years.
It was formed under a memorandum of understanding that included a pledge to operate “in a transparent manner” with meetings and documents available to the public.
Despite this, the organization refused to allow Harm Reduction President Dennis Cauchon to attend its initial meeting in May and has since asserted it will only follow state open-records laws on a voluntary basis. Harm Reduction, a 501(c)3 charity, is the state’s largest provider of the anti-overdose drug naloxone.
Cauchon said he supports the idea of private foundations distributing settlement money to address the effects of opioid abuse and addiction, but that OneOhio is run by state and local officials with little experience in drug treatment.
“What can be done with the money is amazing, and the idea of funding a private foundation is fantastic,” Cauchon said. “But this has turned into the worst-case scenario, a government board that thinks it can control half a billion dollars in secret.”
OneOhio Recovery Foundation spokeswoman Connie Luck, in a statement reported by Cleveland.com, said “it is unfortunate that anyone would want to take any steps at all to block or slow down Ohio’s communities from getting the relief they need to support recovery and prevention.” A spokesman for the governor’s office said OneOhio isn’t a government agency and it has “provided significant transparency to the public.”
OneOhio was formed amid friction between Attorney General Dave Yost and local municipalities over how to distribute the settlement money, which as a matter of law belongs to the state. The memorandum of understanding among the state, local governments and private plaintiff lawyers states that 55% of the money will go to OneOhio, 30% to local communities and 15% to the state. The MOU also anticipates paying 11% in fees to attorneys unless the settling companies add that to the total they are paying the state.
“We think the foundation should operate in a transparent fashion and should abide by the Open Meetings Act,” said Jack Greiner, who is representing Harm Reduction. “It is public money; it was money recovered by the state.”
Friction over how to distribute settlement dollars is a common pattern in this type of government-sponsored litigation. The Ohio Supreme Court decided in a similar lawsuit over a $235 million foundation formed with state tobacco settlement money that the nonprofit had violated the state Open Meetings Law as part of a larger opinion upholding the power of Ohio legislators to dissolve the charity and place its money in the general fund.
While it calls itself a foundation, OneOhio has not obtained federal 501(c)3 status. Its 29-member board is appointed primarily by the governor, the AG and local governments. Cauchon said the board members, who include the vice mayor of Cincinnati and a retired sheriff, don’t have the experience necessary to develop effective drug-treatment programs.
“It’s creating a whole new bureaucracy that has no skill and no expertise to handle the overdose problem,” said Cauchon, who said his group might seek funding for naloxone, which it now obtains primarily from the state. “The legislature should consider taking (the money) back and handing it to the health department.”