Mississippi’s Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Council has selected the Denver-based health consulting firm Steadman Group to advise the committee’s grant application process for the upcoming cycle.
A state law passed in April instructed the council to contract with a third-party agency to help run its opioid settlement grant review process. Lawmakers appropriated $400,000 to Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office for the contract.
Dr. JK Costello, Steadman’s behavioral health and consulting director, told Mississippi Today he expects the work in Mississippi to cost about $350,000. He said both the Attorney General’s Office and Steadman have the option of renewing the contract after this year, if the Legislature provides funding for it again.
Steadman has contracted with South Dakota and Oklahoma to help those states manage opioid settlement dollars, and Costello said the organization has also worked with over 40 counties nationwide to help spend funds. He said he’s seen governments make thoughtful addiction response decisions, as well as short-sighted choices.
“We’ve pretty much seen it all at this point,” said Costello, who is in addiction recovery himself. “There’ll always be something different, but I think it’s just been so helpful to have seen it before and dealt with it before.”
Mississippi started receiving payments from national opioid lawsuits in 2022, and those payments are expected to total $430 million by 2040. The settlements require Mississippi to spend about $300 million of that money to prevent future overdoses, and state lawmakers and Fitch allow the remainder to be spent on any public purpose.
In spring 2025, after every other state had started spending settlement money on addressing addiction, Mississippi lawmakers passed a bill to create an opioid advisory council that oversees the $300 million portion. They tasked the council with creating a grant application for overdose prevention projects, reviewing all the responses and recommending which applications the Legislature should fund — all in around five months.
The council struggled to keep up with this tight timeline. Key instructions for organizations were initially missing from drafted documents, some council members publicly advocated for organizations they were affiliated with and application scores between subcommittees varied drastically.
Citing these issues at the council’s last 2025 meeting, James Moore, a Hattiesburg recovery advocate and council member, called on the organization to look into outside help. Fitch, the council’s chair, praised lawmakers for passing the bill that instructed the council to contract with a group that could provide this help.
MaryAsa Lee, a spokesperson for the Attorney General’s Office, said Steadman was one of three applications the council received. She said Moore and Department of Mental Health Executive Director Wendy Bailey helped the office review the applications.
The 2026 law says the third-party group will be responsible for administering an online application portal, providing technical assistance to applicants, creating methods for standardized scoring and evaluating the work organizations do with awarded settlement funds.
Costello said Steadman expects to fulfill all these requirements, and it aims to build a more comprehensive opioid settlement online monitoring system in subsequent years.
“In year two, we’re hoping to move everything into this one-stop-shop,” he said.
Costello said in his talks with the Mississippi Attorney General’s office, people raised issues with the grant proposal scoring discrepancy between different advisory council subcommittees. Steadman aims to address these issues with grade training before council members score applications, and statistical standardization adjustments after the applications have been assessed.
The new law still assigns the advisory council with making the final state opioid settlement recommendations, and the Legislature decides which recommendations to approve or reject. It furthered lawmakers’ decision power over these funds, allowing them to change the amounts of money each applicant receives.
In a controversial move, the Legislature took broader authority than some advisory council members thought it would in deciding how the state would award its first opioid settlement dollars. When that happened, Moore said he worried whether the Legislature would listen to the advice of a third-party group.
Costello said Steadman will accept however the Legislature chooses to consider his organization’s work. He said throughout the year, he will try to keep everyone involved with Mississippi’s opioid settlement distribution informed.
“Ultimately, we’ll deal with that when we come to it,” he said.
Editor’s Note: Siegler will be a speaker at the 2026 National Opioid Settlement Conference, which is hosted by Steadman Group. Neither he nor Mississippi Today received compensation for this appearance.
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