Memo To BHL: Opioids Hazardous To Your Political Health
Karl Baker captures Bethany Hall Long’s utter incompetence in screwing up one of the only things she’s responsible for. Featuring unusually harsh language from the Attorney General. State Auditor is also involved. Looks like at least some Democratic officials are tired of cleaning up and/or covering up her messes. Great reporting from Karl Baker. Oh, and a tip of the sombrero to our very own hmm:
Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings is urging members of the state’s opioid commission to pause the flow of public dollars to charities that provide addiction services, claiming that certain organizations’ use of the money is “rife with potential for fraud, waste, and abuse.”
Jennings made the comments on Friday in a scathing letter sent to members of the Prescription Opioid Settlement Distribution Commission, which is tasked with directing the hundreds of millions of dollars in proceeds that Delaware has secured in past years from legal settlements with prescription opioid producers, distributors and pharmacies.
In 2023, Delaware had received nearly $250 million in such settlements, according to a report from the Office of the Attorney General. The state has received several million more since then, and on Friday the opioid commission recommended that the latest round of dollars fund a variety of recovery programs.
But Jennings said Delaware should wait.
“I share everyone’s sense of urgency in getting these funds where they are needed, but we still have no satisfactory answer as to where those targets are. I have repeatedly stressed that even this seemingly large pot of money is finite and that not all spending is created equal. And I continue to urge restraint; it has been 20 months since the Commission began awarding grants, and we still do not have know where these funds will be most useful, how we will measure their impact, or even whether our grantees are compliant,” Jennings wrote in her letter that detailed more than a year of efforts by her and others to establish sufficient reporting measurements and oversight to no avail.
Baker shares the letter that Jennings sent to the Commission. The letter outlines her repeated attempts to get some clarity on the awarding and tracking of the grants. There are no such attempts at accountability from co-Chair BHL. Her statement pretty much defines her:
In her statement, Hall-Long said she shares Jennings’ concerns about “ensuring our processes are sound.”
“I’m happy to continue working with the Department of Justice and the State Auditor’s Office to further strengthen our protections while ensuring these dollars reach our families and communities,” she said.
Gee, mighty nice of her. Oh, the members of the Commission? Perhaps Stephanie Hansen, who has been carrying BHL’s water since getting elected to replace her, will deign to speak publicly. Oh, and Michael Smith–doesn’t he have a great D challenger this year? Why, yes, yes he does. And, seriously, WTF is Bible Thumper Sen. Richardson doing on a commission like this? Looks like BHL hand-picked the members, which is why so few are talking.
Good thing Karl Baker is reporting.
The pot of money might be new, but the problems are not. There are not enough addiction treatment centers in Delaware, that needs to get addressed first. Even the bad actors are still actors. The solution of cutting off funding leaves people who depend on the services in a bad place and those people cannot effectively advocate for themselves.
Agreed. However, it’s not as if Jennings is just now raising this issue.
She’s been demanding data and accountability for over a year.
BHL and her minions have not provided it.
Wouldn’t you agree that these dollars need to go to the people who need help as opposed to possibly the pockets of bad actors who are not providing the services they have been contracted to provide?
Of course I agree with that.
My point is no one should be shocked to find accountability in short supply in this area. Its been that way for much longer than the one year Jennings has been demanding info. If the answer were as simple as cutting off funding to force compliance, it would have been done long ago.
Right. The answer seems to be having procedures in place to (a) prevent fraud, and/or (b) to recoup any funds that were paid out to organizations that committed fraud or misused the funds.
There were supposed to be guardrails in place, but they didn’t do the job.
The solution is to not mismanage the money. Is the BHL position going to be that Jennings is the bad guy? It doesn’t seem like the money was even going to people that were using it correctly. Which makes one wonder why they were getting the money. And why they were trying to get so much of it out the door before September.
What happened is Bethany hall long thinks all of these little piggy banks are her to use as she sees fit. For personal purposes or for political favors. This is illegal. Let’s say that again together as a class. This. Is. Illegal.
But yes people are going to go without these services because of bethany hall long. For the people she claims to care so much about. Because she can’t be trusted to manage even the most basic of grant processes.
The not so dirty secret is her staff is famously lazy and dumb. Including Val’s chief of staff who was Bethany’s former staffer – also involved in this opioid settlement work btw.
It’s disgusting. She’s a despicable person and let’s start calling out those who enabled her and continue to enable her. Houghton and Bullock – you’re next up.
Stephanie Hansen led the creation of the opioid impact fee, SB 34. She then eliminated it’s sunset date, ensured integration with the settlement fund so that it could be best invested and grow instead of being one-time spends. Not to hyper fixate on one mention of her, but having witnessed these difficult endeavors, she should receive as equal respect for the creation of all of this as the AG does. And, she can get mad. I hope she does — this is an incredible legacy to go to waste, and it’s clear this entire statute needs revision now that we are looking at it. And it’s no small thing that the AG was willing to speak on this as well.
IMO, John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight forced this issue to the spotlight in many states (can’t tell you how many bills I see that align with his episodes), and I am glad that this is being looked into. It is clear that the law lacks of prescriptiveness/consistency in the payments. The IMPACT Funds must be used for “opioid addiction prevention,” and then a much better specified list of opioid addiction services. The SETTLEMENT Funds “shall be administered collectively” with the Impact Fund, but, it does not specify if it must be distributed along the same lines. Instead, it must be used for ‘services that remediate the harm caused by opioids, to reduce harm caused by opioids, consistent with the terms of the settlement/judgment/other source of the money.” THEN it is distributed by BHL’s Behavioral Health Consortium rather than the Settlement Distribution Commission. These statutes certainly need cleaning up, and the Consortium and Commission cleared out (most members seem to have no appointment dates or specified terms).
Why do we not have public hearings for these dollars like the rest of the budget, or why doesn’t it operate more similarly to Grant-In-Aid? While imperfect, at least it is defined! The same goes for the use of funds for administering these laws — Code says $300,000 or 5% of the total may be used to administer the chapter. That’s up to $1.25M used to what, pay for BHL’s staff, order food for meetings, maybe hire some fancy consultant?!
And, we have no knowledge of the investment schemes for this money — but we do know that Delaware hasn’t divested from things like pharmaceutical and opioid companies, big oil, etc. The law gives the Treasurer and the Cash Management Policy Board oversight of these investments, but is silent on what is appropriate or inappropriate to invest in.
Lest there be any doubt, this Susan Holloway who runs interference for BHL is a member of the Lt. Governor’s staff:
https://ltgov.delaware.gov/lieutenant-governors-staff/
Whether the failure to provide the mandated information is deliberate and/or due to incompetence makes little difference. The buck stops at BHL’s desk.
As to Stephanie Hansen, she is a member of this commission. She is a supporter of BHL. Two facts. To whom or to what will she display true fealty?
It’s not just Susan Holloway who’s a member of Bethany’s staff.
*ALL* of the Opioid Commission staff are employees of the Lt. Governor’s office.
And they’re the ones who select which grant applications to fund, not the Commission members. The Commission members merely rubber-stamp the selections made by Bethany’s staff.
So, Code Purple, the organization that was stealing money and committing fraud, was hand picked by Bethany’s office, just like all the other awardees.
I wonder how many of the awardees are BHL campaign donors. My guess- probably a lot of them.
Maybe BHL can chase another addict around a park with Narcan. It’s clearly the best we can do.
Oh Bethany, due to my own personal health issues I have not been as close to the addiction services community as I have been. I was still crediting you for being “good” on this issue despite your abject corruption and incompetence in your campaign and investment behavior. I know that you have done actual good work on the ground with Dr. Gibney and multiple established providers. I walked the streets of Knollwood with you in 2020 in the height of the pandemic. But all you need is a pot of money to revert to corrupt sleaze. You have set back effective treatment and cast doubt on many ethical treatment professionals. You need to take your corrupt self off the public stage, NOW!
Maybe I just don’t understand but has BHL somehow taken or misused money from the opioid trust fund?
If you’re trying to catch up on this, this News Journal article is actually really descriptive and explains things very sequentially: https://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/local/2024/07/03/delaware-nonprofit-code-purple-kent-county-investigation-for-potential-fraud/74269492007/.
Basically, Code Purple is under investigation for potential fraud. They got $290K from the opioid settlement fund (in addition to other state money, including Grant in Aid). What’s been missed here is the part where the commission discovered the potential fraud themselves, froze the funds and reported it to DOJ, who referred it to the auditor.
What you’ve wilfully missed here is that it was BHL and her staff who was responsible for administering this program.
They did next-to-no administering–just tossed the money out there with no guardrails. They continued to throw the money out there even when they KNEW that they’d done a shitty job.
Man, you’re a terrible troll. Pretending to be reasonable, but just running interference for BHL.
BTW., BillDM, there’s much more coming on this. So prepare your bullshit cover-ups in advance. Say, by Monday.
You know, after the holiday weekend.
Karl Baker was REALLY REALLY descriptive, check his piece out Bill:)
Amazing that John Kowalko is standing up for this corrupt group of jokers
Kowalko you dithering old maniac, you’re so quiet about Bethany. What gives? Take your medicine this week?
I just think he didn’t read the article.
It’s probably the most disastrous statewide campaign I’ve ever witnessed. Bill Roth was dying and ran a better campaign.
But at least she gets to go to jail at the end.
Bullshit. It’s a legitimate question. Unless there’s some link between Code Purple and someone in BHL’s orbit, it’s a sign of incompetence, not corruption.
Asking the question is not “standing up for” BHL. The foam at the corners of your mouth is showing.
Right. The incompetence is that they gave out all this money, were charged with making sure it was going to qualified agencies and making sure that the money was being spent properly.
The only thing they did was give out the money. Didn’t even TRY to impose accountability on the recipients.
They also slow-walked any response to concerns expressed by the AG and others. They also continued to vote to give out grants even when they said that they wouldn’t. More on that soon.
I looked at that Code Purple outfit, and I didn’t see any direct link between them and BHL.
Ennio Emmanuel is a long time donor to BHL. I have a gut feeling that there will be other coincidences such as that.
Kathy Jennings doesn’t want this thing paused because everything is going great and on the up and up.
Imo the race was over months ago so I’m not concerned about her winning the race. I’m more interested in what law enforcement does with her and her staff at this point.
and if the rumors are true then…..
That opinion still puzzles me. In our low-media environment, her stonewalling strategy seems to be working.
I think the polls are going to show differently. I suspect she’s had a marked draw down in support since the last polling. Which was a while ago. In that time not an ad or postcard has been sent. So any movement will be based solely on just people observing in a low media environment. And then she’s going to have millions in ads dropped on her head and you’ll see it really really go south.
And no one at this point is going to learn anything about her. The only thing she did was opioid settlement related and that was taken from her.
Plus. Biden ain’t surviving at the top of the ticket. This is a change election now. Away from the establishment which she firmly implanted herself.
She’s going to lose by ~10.
If you have any reason why you think she might win I’d be curious to hear it.
Nobody outside political circles knows anything about the scandal, nor will they learn much about it because whether you acknowledge it or not it’s a low-media environment.
Between downstaters and the unions, plus the Meyer-haters, she has a core of supporters who aren’t going anywhere. O’Mara will split off another portion of the anti-BHL vote, maybe enough to make a difference.
I don’t think Biden’s fate will have any effect on the Delaware primary. The larger factor is when and how those millions will be spent. It’s July and I haven’t heard squat from any of them.
Also, if you’ve seen polling you must be an insider. I’d be interested in the crosstabs on the one you’ve seen.
I’ve heard that most recent polling has O’Mara relegated to single digits, with Meyer and BHL close.
O’Mara is not taking a single vote from BHL, but he will of course take votes from Matt.
This is from someone not in either camp. I can’t verify it, I might be getting played, but I generally trust the source.
If you’ll recall, LBR didn’t win her initial three-way primary with a majority but rather a little less than half the vote.
FWIW, O’Mara’s hydrogen project probably counts as an establishment thing. BHL is more likely to continue backing it than Meyer is.
Dammit! You’re correct. From BHL’s 2023 Lt. Gov. year-end report:
08/31/2023 Ennio Emmanuel 233 Walker Rd, Dover, Delaware, 19904 $1,200.00 $1,200.00.
Looks like I’ve got more work to do…
Checked out contributions alphabetically. This was the only contribution I could find from Ennio Emmanuel.
Still, the timing, along with the grant, looks a little questionable…
Pretty nice piece of real estate at that address. Glad the opioid settlement money went to a good cause. You don’t see colonials like that for sale all of the time.
Check the Zillow.
Yeah, I don’t think he made that nut by grifting five figures from the state. He’s a musician.
Here he is on YouTube. Tune has 654K views, posted 13 years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzNkJemrtkI
Unless I read it wrong, it said 654 views.
Only 3 likes. In 13 years.
Having heard the song, 3 likes too many.
BTW, house is currently for sale. $1.375 mill, down from a high of $1.49 mill.
Starting to think there’s more of a story here than we’ve been told.
Yeah, I clicked on the wrong one. This one has 377K views, from 2020.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fV-a2kqsTBA
I never heard of the guy, but this music isn’t on my radar.
He doesn’t own the house, BTW.
It is for sale, though…
It’s the kind of house you use to impress people. Seems off-brand for a do-gooder but on-brand for an entertainer.
IOW, who is this guy?
Sounds like an operator to me. From the bio on the Code Purple page:
“Ennio Emmanuel is a spokesperson and philanthropist. Born in New York, he was raised in Delaware for most of his life and his love for this area has grown his passion to help make it better. Weekly you’ll find him leading events at his local church, volunteering at Code Purple or working on something new with his music. Ennio Emmanuel adds his work with Code Purple to his every day life which involves his full time jobs in project management marketing, music production, writing, insurance, real estate, business development, communications and public relations.”