Opioid settlement funds: Supplanting?

Abstract

“Supplement, don't supplant” has long been the watchcry of public interest, and all interest, groups when it comes to funding. Whether for health issues, education or other public-interest issues, new funding is not supposed to take the place of what is already there, with the end result that there is no increase at all. The taxpayer is, in effect, robbed of the good that was supposed to be done by the new funds. Yet that has happened, time and time again, as states, for example, use new funding to supplant existing funding, taking the money and putting it towards another purpose — the general fund, salaries and benefits, or whatever. It takes solid and dedicated reporting to ferret out this kind of problem.