A state-sponsored listening session in Northampton intended to gather input on how to spend the commonwealth’s share of a multi-billion-dollar opioid settlement was strangely taken off the record earlier this month. Local health officials also attempted to bar members of the press from the event.
BINJ endeavored to attend the meeting as part of its ongoing coverage of remediation efforts. Massachusetts anticipates receiving approximately $1 billion by 2038 for abatement, the result of lawsuits against drug manufacturers and others for their role in the opioid crisis. Among other revelations, BINJ reporting has shown that of the $113.7 million disbursed to municipalities between 2023 and 2025, cities and towns collectively spent $19.8 million, or about 17%.
The Northampton event on March 13 was advertised by the Department of Public Health in a press release. It read, in part: “The presentations will include a brief history of the opioid settlements … followed by a public comment period for community members to share their input on how settlement funds can be invested in the future to address existing needs.”
About an hour before the scheduled start of the meeting, Taylor McDonough, substance use prevention director for the Northampton Department of Health and Human Services, emailed that the event was closed to the media. She described the gathering as a working session for invited community partners and providers, and declined to share a Zoom link.
That contradicted guidance from the state, which billed the event as “in-person and virtual” and noted to email Hampshire HOPE for the details. Hampshire HOPE is a “multi-sector coalition” operated by the city’s health department to address harms caused by the abuse of opioids “through policy, practice, and systems change.”
Though a Northampton official clarified in a subsequent email that they “never intended it to be open to the media,” a spokesperson for the Department of Public Health confirmed that press “should be able to attend in person.”Minutes before the meeting started, Northampton said that reporters could cover the state’s presentation, but the ensuing public comment portion would be off the record “so that participants can engage in an open and candid dialogue that the meeting was designed to facilitate.”
The part of the meeting that was open to the public was brief. After less than 10 minutes of the planned hour-and-a-half long event, a director from the DPH announced the closure of the “first portion.” “For that reason,” she added, “the second portion will not be recorded and is off the record.”
But that’s not how off the record works—especially when it comes to public meetings. After the DPH recording stopped, though, the AI-generated transcript continued to run.
Funding drying up
Per the transcript, inside of the closed-door meeting, stakeholders noted that some funding streams are much dryer than usual. That despite the millions coming into towns and cities from opioid settlements, and hundreds millions more directed each year through the Bureau of Substance Abuse Services from marijuana tax revenue.
Merridith O’Leary, the health commissioner for Northampton, said needs in the region have risen sharply. Also, she reported, opportunities which have been accessible for years are now coming with new terms. “They’re [the federal government] demanding enforcement and to work with ICE and only serve US citizens,” O’Leary said.
“We’re not going to apply,” the commissioner added. “So our funding mechanisms are gone. So where is this money going to come from to help continue all of this groundwork that we have spent the last decade laying?”
Kaitlin Rooks, who works with both Smith College and the Southampton Board of Health, added that small communities are heavily reliant on volunteers and have little bandwidth for outreach. In Southampton, for example, she said regional school funding cuts ended a planned drug-free community district: “[It] was stopped because there was nobody that was able to take on the work.”
Political impediments to opioid remediation
Mark Jachym is an area harm reduction coordinator who serves on the attorney general’s Advisory Council on Substance Use. At the meeting in Northampton, he pointed to elected officials and law enforcement as part of the problem.
“I live in Westfield,” Jachym said. “The mayor’s not very supportive, the city council is meh. Some of them are supportive, some are not. They like to just brush it under the carpet because, you know, nothing ever happens in Westfield.”
He added: “The funds need to be going where they’re supposed to be—not to police, not to the jail. They need to listen to the experts, and not to toot our own horn in this room, but we’re all the experts. Not the people who got elected mayor, not the people who were sitting on the city council, it’s us.”
In a follow-up interview, Jachym said that a July 2025 White House executive order severely curtailed harm-reduction efforts. That directive mandates that grants distributed by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) can’t be used for “so-called” harm reduction, and directs funding towards local law enforcement for drug crimes.
According to financial disclosures, the City of Westfield has paid $500,000, approximately 80% of its share of settlement disbursements to date, to a clinic with locations all across the state to launch a new peer recovery program.
Guidance issued by the DPH advises municipalities against funding law enforcement to engage people who use drugs, because “mistrust of police among [drug users] can prevent access to services, and police presence can inadvertently intensify harms and create barriers for meaningful engagement.” However, BINJ reporting has shown that not all local governments are following directions.
In western Mass, Chicopee spent nearly $25,000 “to implement a data-aggregation and coordination platform through the Chicopee Police Department’s Real Time Information Center.” Agawam spent $17,164 on an AI-powered system for recording and transcribing 911 calls.
Harm reduction under attack
According to some event participants, the harm reduction movement is at a crisis point.
“We are at a place in harm reduction that we have not seen since the height of the AIDS epidemic,” Jess Tilly, founder of Harm Reduction Hedgehogs 413, told state officials. “I’m so terrified that we are going to walk into 2026 and hit this onslaught of death.”
As part of its mission, Hedgehogs 413 distributes fentanyl test strips, which are available in bulk from a DPH clearinghouse. Tilly said that workers must be present in the streets and in encampments doing outreach, and called for direct hiring from the community. Along with others present, the harm reduction advocate spoke out against abstinence-only approaches to public health, saying they put marginalized people including drug users and sex workers at risk.
In response, Julia Newhall, the director of opioid abatement strategy and implementation for the DPH, said the Bureau of Substance and Addiction Services “will always stand up for harm reduction.”
The Northampton health department, which hosted the Zoom, did not respond to a request for comment about the decision to limit access to the meeting.
A subsequent listening session was held in Boston, but the DPH did not send information prior to the meeting, and have not responded to an inquiry about other similar upcoming events. In January we reported on how the department has fought against releasing opioid settlement spending data, and appears to be slowwalking public records requests from reporters.
This article is syndicated by the MassWire news service of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. If you want to see more reporting like this, make a contribution at givetobinj.org.
Our ongoing reporting on opioid settlement funds is supported by a grant from the Data-Driven Reporting Project(DDRP) at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. You can read all of our settlement coverage here.
Jonathan Gerhardson is a freelance journalist in western Massachusetts. jon.gerhardson@proton.me | @jongerhardson.bsky.social
