A Mat-Su borough plan to borrow city health powers could unlock millions in opioid help

What you need to know:

• Mat-Su officials want to leverage health powers held by the area’s cities to better distribute more than $2 million in opioid settlement funds for addiction treatment and prevention services. The Mat-Su Borough does not have health powers under Alaska state law and can currently use the funding only for training and education services.
• Under the proposal, the borough would use the cities’ health powers to significantly expand the types of organizations eligible to access funding for opioid-related treatment, prevention, recovery and harm-reduction services.
• About 360 Alaskans died from drug overdoses in 2023, a nearly 45% increase from 2022, according to state health data. An average of 21 drug overdoses occurred in the borough annually between 2018 and 2022, according to borough data.

PALMER - Millions in funding could soon be available for Mat-Su-based opioid treatment services under a proposed grant partnership between the borough and the region's cities.

The plan would allow officials to distribute more than $2.3 million in opioid settlement funds to a wide range of local addiction treatment and prevention services by co-opting the health powers granted to the region's cities under Alaska law, Matanuska-Susitna Borough Manager Mike Brown said.

Brown said that without such a workaround, the borough can spend the money only on training and education because it has no health powers of its own.

The borough will receive the $2.3 million over 18 years, with about $300,000 of the disbursements received so far. Only four organizations applied for grants last year under the borough's current narrow distribution rules, leaving more than $230,000 unspent and limiting options for using the remaining money, he said.

About 360 Alaskans died from drug overdoses in 2023, a nearly 45% increase from 2022, according to state health data. About 80% of those deaths were caused by opioids, the data show. From 2018 to 2022, the Mat-Su region averaged 21 drug overdose deaths per year, according to a borough fact sheet.

That deepening crisis means the borough needs to find a way to legally distribute the money to services that need it most, Brown said. While the borough could also get the health authority it needs through a ballot measure or from state lawmakers, working with the cities offers the easiest path, he said.

“We should do our best to get this deployed into the community because that was its intended use — not for the borough to just sit on it,” he said.

Expanding the scope of eligible addiction services could significantly impact the region's programs, said Michael Carson, former chair of the Mat-Su Opioid Task Force and vice president of MyHouse, a Wasilla-based nonprofit youth shelter. The organization received $23,000 of the borough's settlement funds for training and education but would apply for additional funding under an expanded program, he said.

“We’re going to have to get the word out, like, ‘Yo, guess what? Now you can access money for direct services.’ I would think that would put a lot of smiles on a lot of people’s faces.”

Although the borough needs to strike an agreement with only one of the cities to go forward with the plan, officials hope to reach agreements with all three, Brown said.

If approved by the city councils and the Assembly, the borough’s new health power would be limited to opioid settlement-related activities and would expire when the money is exhausted, Brown said. The arrangement would allow funds to be distributed to organizations throughout the borough, not just those operating in Houston, Palmer or Wasilla.

Funds distributed under the plan would follow a set of guidelines approved by the Mat-Su Assembly last year, Brown said. The rules require the borough to use 30% of the funds for treatment, 30% for prevention, 10% for recovery, 10% for harm reduction, and, for the first five years only, 20% for media about the effort.

The plan would allow Wasilla, which is receiving its own payout from the settlement estimated at about $80,000 annually, to continue to distribute its funds according to its guidelines, Brown said. Palmer and Houston were not eligible for settlement funds because of their smaller populations.

Brown first approached the cities about the proposal in September and held an informational meeting with officials from each city just before Christmas.

Palmer Mayor Steve Carrington and Houston Mayor Carter Cole said they plan to brief their city councils on the plan this month and work to introduce legislation in February. Both said they support the plan but want to ensure the cities have a role in selecting grant recipients under the agreement.

“Our area has been hard hit with those afflictions, and I just want to be sure that whatever we’re going to do is going to make an impact,” Cole said.

In Wasilla, the proposal is "currently a work in progress," Mayor Glenda Ledford said in a statement.

Brown said he hopes to have an approved health powers agreement in place in the next few months.

-- Contact Amy Bushatz at abushatz@matsusentinel.com