Grand Forks County Commission approves allocation of opioid settlement funds [Grand Forks Herald]

Sep. 5—GRAND FORKS — The Grand Forks County Commission approved the allocation of $50,000 of opioid remediation funds to its Public Health Department for the remainder of 2023, awarded as a result of litigation against opioid manufacturers and distributors.

The decision was made during the body's regular meeting on Tuesday.

Michael Dulitz, opioid response project coordinator for the county, said that in 2019, the county entered into litigation against distributors and manufacturers of opioids, alleging they contributed to the opioid epidemic. The county began receiving positive judgments in these cases in 2021.

He said the sum of funds awarded to the county from seven settlements totals $689,000 over the next 17 years, with three additional lawsuits pending.

"That number varies widely from year to year," Dulitz said. "Some years you're looking at close to $50,000, some years over $50,000. Then it kind of trails off over the latter half."

Dulitz said a major priority the county will use the funds to address is providing medication for addiction treatment at the Grand Forks County Correctional Center.

"Right now, an individual who has a prescription for those medications cannot continue them when they come into the correctional center out of concerns of diversion," he said. "The reason we're looking to address this is the legal risk. Over the past few years, the number of legal cases related to denying medications for addiction in correctional centers has been increasing. It's also the right thing to do to make sure we're providing an environment where people don't get derailed from a recovery path."

The county's spending plan for its opioid settlement funds includes $45,000 in annual spending for addiction management treatment at the correctional center between 2024 and 2030, with the amount increasing to $53,800 annually in 2030.

The county also will make a one-time expenditure of $25,000 to secure 340B pricing — a federal program allowing government-funded entities to procure prescription drugs at reduced rates.

"The state correctional facility does it, and they've seen a really nice decrease in the cost of their medications," Dulitz said. "It's in the hundreds of percent decrease for some medications."

Additionally, the county will make a one-time expenditure of $25,000 to Community Medical Services, an addiction treatment center in Grand Forks.

"They are the only place in the community that provides one of those medications — methadone — and we've had initial discussions with them to potentially provide these medications for the correctional center," Dulitz said.

Also Tuesday, Dustin Hillebrand, manager of the Grand Forks Workforce Center, presented Grand Forks County's July labor market report.

According to Hillebrand, the county's labor force — denoting a combination of the number of people employed and looking for work — is 38,309. He also said the state's labor force participation rate of 70.1% is the highest in the nation.

Hillebrand said the county's unemployment rate of 1.8% — below the state and national rates of 2.0 and 3.5%, respectively — is presenting challenges to filling the 1,361 job openings advertised in the county.

"We are needing a lot of folks here to fill the openings," he said. "Quite honestly, we know for a fact that there are employers who are not posting their jobs anymore, or if it's a small employer, their job is not automatically in our system. So there are a lot more jobs in the county than what our system represents."

Hillebrand said the center offers a program called the Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act, which provides paid on-the-job training for dislocated workers, or those who have been laid off. The center also has a work experience program for area students to introduce them to the variety of career paths in the region.

The center will be hosting its fall job fair from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 21, at the Alerus Center.

In other news from the commission meeting:

* Commissioners approved a request from Bret Burkholder, administrator of the correctional center, to extend a stop loss insurance policy for inmates requiring hospitalization. The policy, which Burkholder said costs the county $55,000 annually, provides reimbursement for medical bills exceeding $10,000.

* Commissioners welcomed Tammy Knudson as the county's new human service zone director.

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