Council Commits $5.2M in Opioid Settlement Funds — But Withdraws Vote on Endowment

Three years after the first settlement check arrived, the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council finally started allocating the money. $5.2 million was assigned. The biggest question — how much to save, how much to spend — was withdrawn before it came to a vote.

On April 21, 2026, at 3 p.m., Commissioner Kacy Allen-Bryant stood in front of the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council and presented a spending plan for approximately $8.9 million in opioid litigation settlement funds. The money had been accumulating in a city account since December 2022. The Mayor’s Opioid Abatement Commission had been meeting monthly for three years. Nothing had been spent.

Two and a half hours later, the council had voted on three motions, amended two of them mid-debate, withdrawn one entirely, and committed $5.2 million of the money to actual programs. The rest — $3.7 million and counting — would come back to the council at the next work session.

The Plan

Allen-Bryant’s slides laid out Mayor Linda Gorton’s six prioritized recommendations, based on the Opioid Abatement Commission’s work:

Establish an interest-bearing account
Supportive housing and integrated services
Support for LFUCG Community Corrections programs
Launch a tiered Community Grant program
Support for the city’s Substance Use Disorder Intervention (SUDI) program
Pilot a symposium for those with lived experience

The initial spending plan recommended money for three of those: $3 million to an interest-bearing account that would function like a quasi-endowment, $2.2 million reserved for Homelessness Task Force recommendations related to opioid use disorder, and $2 million for a tiered community grant program — micro grants up to $75,000 and macro grants between $75,000 and $250,000 for nonprofits working on prevention, treatment, recovery, and support services. The remaining $1.8 million would be held for future discussion.

The presentation was for information only. No vote was required.

The Motions

Councilmember Lynch moved first. She proposed allocating $3 million — not $2 million — to the community grant program. Vice Mayor Wu seconded.

The motion triggered a cascade. Councilmember Morton asked where the extra $1 million would come from. Councilmember Baxter pointed out that the $30 million the city expected over 18 years was an estimate, not a guarantee — multiple defendants were in bankruptcy, and disbursement schedules had not been approved in all settling states. “There really is no guarantee,” Commissioner Hensley said.

Vice Mayor Wu amended Lynch’s motion so that the extra $1 million would come from the $1.8 million in undesignated funds rather than from the $2.2 million reserved for homelessness. Councilmember Sheehan had signaled she would not support reducing the homelessness allocation. “Homelessness is an emergency in our community,” she said, “and it’s a thing that we do need to deal with now.”

The amendment passed on a voice vote. The motion, as amended, passed: $3 million to tiered grants, $800,000 remaining unassigned from the former $1.8 million pool.

Councilmember Curtis then moved to allocate the $2.2 million for the Homelessness Task Force. Morton seconded. It passed without audible dissent.

In the span of a few minutes, the council had committed $5.2 million.

The Endowment That Wasn’t

Then Councilmember Brown moved to put $3 million into the interest-bearing account — the Mayor’s Priority #1. The principal would be restricted; the interest would fund future opioid-related grants.

Vice Mayor Wu had already spent much of the afternoon arguing against it.

“Right now opioids for our community is a crisis and we need to act like it,” Wu had said earlier. “We have needs right now, this minute, and we have providers who are ready to work already doing this work right now, both nonprofits and our own city’s programs.”

He was blunter about the balance of the plan: “To say that we’re not going to put out a lot of this money when there’s a fire and we’re saving our money for a longer hose or a fire hydrant or some other preventative things, I think the balance of this conversation is tilted in kind of a wrong direction.”

Wu amended Brown’s motion to reduce the interest-bearing account from $3 million to $1 million. Councilmember Beasley seconded. During discussion, Morton asked Hensley what $1 million in a restricted endowment would actually produce. Hensley answered: “At 4 percent you’d be earning $40,000 a year.”

Morton did the math out loud. “We spend, what, $200,000 on Narcan every year? $40,000 would only buy us a quarter of that. $120,000 would get us a lot closer.” The $120,000 figure was the projected annual interest on a $3 million principal.

Councilmember Sheehan said she would support the $1 million figure as a compromise: “When we hear that a federal grant is being cut overnight, we need to be able to respond immediately, which means having flexible dollars.” She pushed back against the charge that the council was acting too quickly. The commission had worked for three years. The packet had been out since the previous week. “I am ready to make decisions today because I do want this money to get out and be moving and be working in the way that it is intended.”

Councilmember Brown disagreed. He said he was comfortable putting an equal $3 million toward the endowment. “This opioid crisis doesn’t look like it’s going to end any time soon.”

Morton offered a different frame. The $3 million for grants would be spent soon. The $2.2 million for homelessness would wait until the task force produced recommendations, months out. The remaining funds were not going to be spent tomorrow. “There’s time to have discussion,” he said. “We’ve had a commission look at this funding… but then also time to discuss what should we do, what are our priorities for assigning the unassigned dollars.”

Councilmember Curtis named the discomfort directly. “I have to admit a personal frustration with legislating on the fly, though I do appreciate the urgency with which we are all moving to get these funds out.”

Vice Mayor Wu then withdrew his amendment. Brown withdrew the motion. The seconders withdrew. The interest-bearing account — the Opioid Abatement Commission’s first recommendation — was not voted on.

The SUDI Problem

Earlier in the meeting, Morton had raised a different concern.

“I was disappointed that money wasn’t allotted for a position in the SUTI office,” he said, referring to the city’s Substance Use Disorder Intervention program. “We have a strong but mighty team, but they need help. And with the addition of these potential proposals to their workload, there needs to be another staff person. So like, who is going to logistically handle the grant program?”

The SUDI program is run by Carmen Combs Marks, who told the same council eight months earlier that “the most significant barrier to access in Narcan is the stigma.” Marks’s team is responsible for the naloxone distribution that contributed to a 43 percent drop in Fayette County’s fatal overdoses between 2022 and 2024. The program employs two Overdose Prevention Coordinators and one Peer Support Specialist.

Allen-Bryant’s response to Morton was that a realignment of existing staff — one person in finance, one in her department — would handle the grant program logistics. No new position was proposed.

SUDI — the fifth item in the mayor’s priority list — did not receive an allocation in the April 21 spending plan.

The Money That Keeps Coming — Maybe

The city has received $8.9 million in opioid settlement funds. The total expected is roughly $30 million over 18 years. That figure came with a caveat. As Commissioner Hensley told the council, some settlements are still pending, some defendants are in bankruptcy, and the distribution of settlement payments is subject to flux. The $30 million is an estimate, not a commitment.

By Allen-Bryant’s accounting, the first $9 million had arrived; approximately $21 million is expected over the next 12 years.

The state, meanwhile, has pulled back. Councilmember Wu told the council that some of the city’s nonprofit partners had been told by Kentucky not to apply for state opioid abatement funding yet — “go spend your local money first.”

What the Numbers Actually Mean

The context behind the April 21 meeting is the subject of a separate piece published earlier: the decade of infrastructure Lexington built to fight the opioid epidemic, starting with a single coordinator position in 2018 and expanding to a 13-person Community Paramedicine Program, multiple Overdose Prevention Coordinators, a Peer Support Specialist, and a Substance Use Disorder Intervention program. That infrastructure helped drive Fayette County’s fatal overdoses from 210 in 2022 to 120 in 2024.

All of that was funded through federal grants, city general fund dollars, and foundation money. None of it came from opioid settlement funds. As of April 21, 2026, still none of it does.

The $3 million grant program the council approved will flow to nonprofits, not to city programs. The $2.2 million reserved for the Homelessness Task Force will wait for recommendations that are months out. The $3.7 million remaining — what Morton called the time-to-discuss money — will come back to the council at a future work session, likely with a formal process to allocate it.

What Comes Next

The work session ended with Mayor Gorton handing the gavel to Councilmember Ellinger so she could attend a Martin School Hall of Fame induction for Chief Administrative Officer Sally Hamilton. Vice Mayor Wu was also leaving early. Two items remained on the agenda, including a parking authority budget presentation and discussion about adjusting garage rates.

The council had not resolved how to allocate the remaining $3.7 million. It had not decided whether to create a true endowment, a quasi-endowment with restricted principal, or simply a general investment account. It had not addressed the SUDI staffing gap Morton raised in the meeting’s first hour. It had not voted on recommendations for Community Corrections, the third priority in Mayor Gorton’s plan.

The next work session is April 28. A Council of the Whole meeting, which Mayor Gorton and several council members suggested as a more structured forum for the remaining decisions, is scheduled for mid-May.

The plan the Opioid Abatement Commission spent three years developing survived its first council meeting — but only partially. The grant program was funded at $3 million instead of $2 million. The homelessness allocation held at $2.2 million. The endowment, the commission’s Priority #1, was not voted on. And the programs the city already runs — the ones that helped cut overdose deaths nearly in half — were not among the day’s allocations.

The 210 deaths recorded in 2022 have fallen to 120. The $8.9 million in settlement funds is now $5.2 million closer to being spent.

This investigation was conducted using the LFUCG Meeting Archive, a searchable database of Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government meeting transcripts, summaries, and minutes. Quotes, vote counts, and motion language are drawn from the full transcript of the April 21, 2026 Council Work Session (Clip 6750) and the associated agenda packet. Background context draws on prior reporting, city press releases, and CivicLex analysis.

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