Gov. Phil Scott on Friday denied that his administration had improperly altered an advisory group’s recommendations, rebutting the Vermont ACLU’s accusation that the state’s top health official had acted illegally.
On Thursday, the Vermont ACLU said that Health Commissioner Mark Levine had unilaterally and unlawfully changed the final recommendations of the Opioid Settlement Advisory Committee, a group discussing how to spend settlement funds from opioid manufacturers.
That change, the ACLU wrote in a letter, amounted to an “egregious” violation of Vermont’s Open Meeting Law and the statute that created the advisory group.
But in a Friday afternoon press release, the Scott administration defended Levine’s conduct, arguing that he had acted within the law and had been “inappropriately smeared.”
“Dr. Levine is a committed public servant who has dedicated his skills and expertise to public service,” Scott said in the release. “He has always acted in good faith and made these recommendations well within his authority under state law and followed through on his obligations to the Committee, my Administration, and — most importantly — to Vermonters.”
The allegations centered on changes that were made to a list of recommendations created by the advisory committee, which was discussing in recent months how to spend roughly $5 million in settlement funds in 2025.
At a December meeting, the committee determined that $2.6 million of that money should be directed toward creating two overdose prevention centers, sometimes called safe injection sites.
But after that meeting, Levine, the committee’s nonvoting chair, sent a memo to legislative leaders omitting that recommendation.
That’s because, Levine told lawmakers, it was “clear” that the Legislature planned to fund overdose prevention centers through a different funding source.
Levine was referring to H.72, a bill that would use fees, not settlement cash, from pharmaceutical companies to create two overdose prevention centers. Scott has said he opposes the bill and may veto it.
On Thursday, the ACLU sent a letter to Levine saying that his change violated Vermont’s Open Meeting Law, which “requires that any official action be fully public,” and “undermines the (advisory) group’s critical mandate.”
On Friday morning, Senate President Pro Tem Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central, weighed in with a statement of his own expressing concern about Levine’s actions.
“The stakes involved with the group’s work are life and death, and more than one statute protects its integrity with the force of law,” Baruth said.
The Scott administration, however, forcefully argued that Levine had the authority to make that unilateral change.
The administration pointed to language in statute that requires the Vermont Department of Health to submit a spending proposal “informed by the recommendations of the Opioid Settlement Advisory Committee” to the Legislature.
That same law also designates the health department as the “lead State agency and single point of contact for submitting requests for funding to the national settlement fund administrator,” the release notes.
What’s more, the press release said, Levine had informed the committee about the change prior to sending a memo to the Legislature — and had clearly explained his reasoning for the omission.
The health commissioner “cares deeply about preventing the tragic loss of life from the opioid epidemic and will continue to work to find solutions from all sides of this issue,” Scott said. “To see Legislative leadership hurl even more accusations at Dr. Levine, who demonstrated his integrity daily during the pandemic, is disheartening.”
The ACLU pushed back on the Scott administration’s denial Friday evening.
“We hope the Department will take this opportunity to remedy (its) violations as required by statute,” staff attorney Harrison Stark said in an email.
