The Butler County commissioners will vote Wednesday on accepting $9.523 million from the state's proposed $1.07 billion settlement with several opioid manufacturers.

The proposed settlement involves several, but not all, of the defendants in the national opioid class action proceedings. The defendants who are part of the proposed settlement with the state are McKesson Corporation, Cardinal Health, Amerisource Bergen Corp., Johnson & Johnson, Janssen Pharmaceuticals and Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals.

The proposed settlement would result in the creation of the Pennsylvania Opioid Misuse and Addiction Abatement Trust. The trust would govern the disbursement of the settlement funds received by the state and the political subdivisions in the state that were parties to the class action proceeding, which include Butler County.

The trust would allocate 15% of the settlement amount to the state; 70% to local governments and 15% to the litigating subdivisions and agencies that participated in the class action suit. If all goes as planned, the state should receive approximately $1.07 billion. The share of that going to the counties would be approximately $700 million, and the county's potential share would be about $9,523,238.

The settlement requires municipalities with populations of 10,000 or more in the counties to approve the settlement. Those municipalities include Butler city, and Butler, Cranberry and Adams townships.

Leslie Osche, chairwoman of the county commissioners, said money from the settlement would be used to combat opioid abuse.

“Certainly our county has been dramatically impacted, like so many others, by the opioid crisis. The dollars that may be received over the next several years will be put to good use by our drug and alcohol commission and our opioid task force for their efforts in addiction and treatment and prevention,” Osche said.

She said she's glad the county joined the class action lawsuit instead of hiring an attorney to sue the manufacturers independently.

“We made the decision to be part of the state class action effort. I'm very glad we waited for the attorney general to settle this case,” Osche said.

She commended Commissioner Kevin Boozel in his role as president of the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania, which advocated for counties in the settlement agreement.

“We were very loud with our opinion on how it should be handled,” Boozel said. “We made it very clear we wanted the money to come directly to the counties.”

He commended Attorney General Josh Shapiro's office for negotiating the settlement in the ongoing opioid crisis.

“This is one of the best pieces of negotiating I've seen with the attorney general's office. They did a fantastic job,” Boozel said. “When the (COVID-19) pandemic hit, it overshadowed the overdose deaths. They weren't reported as often or talked about as often, but they didn't go away.”

The settlement money can be spent on a list of core opioid-use abatement strategies and approved uses, which include treatment, prevention and other strategies.

The strategies include expanded training and distribution of naloxone or other overdose reversal drugs approved by the Federal Drug Administration, increased distribution of medication-assisted treatment for people who are uninsured or whose insurance doesn't cover treatment, expanding treatment for pregnant and postpartum women, expanding treatment for newborns who were exposed to opioids in the womb, expansion of warm hand-off programs and recovery services, increasing treatment for prison inmates, and providing funding for a wide variety of prevention and education programs.