Wyoming nonprofit receives $3.4M of Nebraska’s opioid settlement funds to build Nebraska clinic

Nebraska’s decision to award $3.4 million in opioid settlement funds to an out-of-state organization has raised questions about potential conflicts of interest and transparency in the allocation process.

The Central Wyoming Counseling Center, a Wyoming nonprofit, is set to receive funding from Nebraska’s Opioid Treatment Infrastructure Cash Fund to build a crisis stabilization center in Kimball County, which borders Wyoming. The connection drawing scrutiny is that the organization’s former acting CEO, Steve Corsi, now serves as the CEO of Nebraska’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), the very agency distributing the funds.

When asked about this connection, DHHS spokesperson Jeff Powell stated that Corsi had no involvement in the grant review or selection process and has had no involvement with the Counseling Center since leaving in 2023. The state agency has declined to release application materials from grantees, citing state laws that allow “proprietary or commercial information” and “examination records” to be withheld from public records requests.

According to Powell, 23 organizations applied for this round of funding, with two applicants from outside Nebraska. The Central Wyoming Counseling Center’s proposal was reportedly the only such project planned for the Nebraska Panhandle.

“If this project wasn’t chosen, it would have meant Western Nebraskans in crisis and in need of immediate services to begin stabilization would need to be hospitalized or travel hundreds of miles to receive those services,” Powell wrote in an email, emphasizing the critical need for such facilities in the region.

The funding comes from nationwide legal settlements totaling more than $50 billion between state attorneys general and opioid manufacturers and distributors, including Johnson & Johnson, Walmart, and Walgreens. Nebraska will receive approximately $150 million from these settlements over the next decade, with most funds arriving between 2021 and 2028.

Experts note that states vary widely in how they manage and distribute these settlement funds, with no standardized reporting requirements. Robert Pack, director of East Tennessee State University’s Addiction Science Center, described the situation: “What we have is like if you’ve seen one state, you’ve seen one state. Everybody’s trying to make sense of it and evaluate it and hold everybody to account, but it’s very, very difficult.”

In Nebraska, settlement money designated for the state goes into the Opioid Recovery Fund managed by DHHS’s Division of Behavioral Health. The fund currently holds $32.6 million, according to John Meals, DHHS’s chief financial officer. Some funds are distributed to behavioral health regions, while others are allocated for infrastructure projects through the Opioid Treatment Infrastructure Cash Fund, established by the Nebraska Legislature in 2024.

This year’s infrastructure grants, the first distributed through the fund, total approximately $10.5 million. Other recipients include $4.4 million to Heartland Counseling Services for a crisis stabilization center near South Sioux City, $2 million for Centerpointe to expand short-term residential treatment in Lincoln and Omaha, $350,000 for Bryan Medical Center in Lincoln, and $276,000 for ARCH in Omaha.

Thomas Janousek, director of DHHS’s Division of Behavioral Health, noted at a December meeting that officials had identified a significant need for crisis stabilization and withdrawal services in western and northern Nebraska, where the Central Wyoming Counseling Center and Heartland Counseling Services projects will operate.

Western Nebraska faces a notable shortage of both short-term crisis centers and longer-term resources like residential treatment centers and methadone providers. Jeremy Kourvelas, substance use program coordinator with the University of Tennessee’s Institute for Public Service, emphasized that while short-term programs are vital, they are just the first step in addressing substance use disorders.

“If you don’t have integration with long-term care, you’re not going to see long-term reductions in overdose rates, presentations in the ER, crime, so on and so forth related to drugs,” Kourvelas explained.

The Central Wyoming Counseling Center, according to 2024 IRS filings, has over $18 million in assets and $13.8 million in revenue, primarily through contracts with Wyoming’s Department of Health. DHHS did not specify if Wyoming residents will be able to use the services at the new Kimball facility, though Powell stated the center will serve Nebraskans in Kimball and surrounding areas.

Experts like Pack believe Corsi’s association with the center should have been publicly disclosed. “If they don’t do that, they’re inviting scrutiny, negative scrutiny, that’s going to be problematic for them in the long term,” he said.

Powell maintained that DHHS has complied with all legal requirements and that Corsi has provided required accountability and disclosure statements in accordance with law. The applications for the infrastructure grants were reportedly scored based on objective criteria by reviewers who had no vested interest in the applicant agencies.

Both Pack and Kourvelas stress that transparency in opioid settlement funding is essential, given the devastating human cost of the opioid epidemic that led to these settlements.

“It’s blood money,” Pack said. “These resources are the result of extreme cost. Extreme suffering. Psychic, emotional, familial, otherwise. It’s absolutely imperative that we do our best to ensure that none of these resources that we use are used in vain.”