The City of Charleston announced on April 8 that records obtained through a public records request reveal a three-year spending plan for opioid settlement funds, budgeting approximately $893,000 across 14 proposals. The plan includes allocations for transitional housing, substance abuse counseling, and police equipment, with nearly $200,000 from the first year still unspent.
The spending plan outlines how the city intends to use its share of opioid settlement money in response to the ongoing opioid crisis. According to documents obtained through the request, Charleston’s plan includes $190,000 for a pallet shelter village to house people struggling with addiction, $100,000 for a substance abuse counselor, and $80,000 on a portable drug detection device for police. The city also budgeted $73,500 on billboards, bus ads, and radio spots to raise awareness about opioid use disorder according to the records.
South Carolina is set to receive up to $365.9 million in opioid settlement money from drug distributors and Johnson & Johnson. Of this amount, 89 qualifying cities and counties across the state will split roughly $54.9 million in direct payments according to documents obtained through the request.
The records do not reveal which law firms Charleston hired to pursue the opioid cases or what fee arrangements were agreed to. Former Mayor Tecklenburg signed the city onto five national opioid settlements in April 2023 but the documents produced do not include any outside counsel contracts according to the same records.
According to a July 2025 white paper published by the Washington Legal Foundation authored by former Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson, “legal and policy questions have been raised about the authority of municipalities to retain private law firms for public-interest litigation. In the opioid cases, private lawyers delayed billions in settlement payouts for two years while negotiating their own fees” according to Peterson.
