Dane County Opioid Settlement Dashboard

$14.0M

Total received

$4.31M

Total spent

$9.69M

Current balance

$24M

Estimated remaining through 2038

Money in the fund at year-end

Settlement-account balance at December 31 — official annual filings

filings

Money in vs. money out, by year

Payments + interest in, vs. money paid out

filings

2025 “in” is partial (payments through July); “out” is the county’s estimate.

Interest earned by the fund

$665K+

Overdose deaths, 2024

118

18% decrease from 2023 (144)

Programs funded in 2026

$1.03M

Eight lines in the adopted budget

Funded strategy areas

View strategy areas

Naloxone, harm reduction & outreach
Treatment & medications for opioid use disorder
Crisis & behavioral health services
Reentry & continuity of care
Recovery, housing & practical supports
Racial equity & community-led outreach
Youth & family prevention
Drug-supply monitoring & emerging harms
Settlement administration & reporting

Hypothetical outcome pathways

From funded strategy to possible community outcomes

Pick a thread to see what could be measured. These pathways do not indicate that an outcome occurred.

Evidence may come from official records, agency reporting, and lived and living experience. Methodology →

The county’s settlement account

The money, year by year

Select a year to review allocations and settlement-approved use categories.

Budget and allocation process

County and state roles

Settlement payments, county budgeting, public meetings, and program delivery

Settlement payments

Allocation formula and payment schedule

National settlements set Wisconsin’s $874M+ through 2038
Each community’s share was set by opioid-impact data — deaths, addiction prevalence, pills shipped
Act 57 splits every dollar: 70% to 87 local governments, 30% to the state
Dane County’s share arrives in yearly payments through 2038

Spending decisions

County and state responsibilities

The County Executive proposes settlement lines in the fall budget
The Opioid Settlement Subcommittee — eight members, created in the 2024 budget — reviews and recommends
The Health & Human Needs Committee, then the full County Board, adopt
County departments and funded agencies deliver the work
For the state’s 30%, DHS runs its own grant rounds

When — the decision calendar

The year, in decision moments

Early October — settlement lines appear in the Executive’s budget
Oct–Nov — committee review and public hearings
Mid-November — the Board adopts; January 1 — money moves
Twice a month — the Opioid Settlement Subcommittee meets
Quarterly — state filings and DHS grant rounds; Dec 31 — the Act 57 report

How residents weigh in: comment at any Opioid Settlement Subcommittee meeting, speak at the fall budget hearings, or apply when state grant rounds open.

State-managed settlement funding

State awards serving Dane County

$384,757 in state awards identified for Dane County so far in 2026

DHS manages the state’s 30% and awards grants counties and agencies apply for — a second stream reaching Dane County on top of the fund above. Through June 2026 the state has received $92.7M, awarded $86.6M, and spent $52.6M.

Received by the state for its projects, through June 2026

$92.7M

FY26 Q4 filing

State awards identified for Dane County so far, 2026

$384,757

Wis. DHS awards lists

Combined state project package, fiscal 2026–2027

≈$31M

Wis. DHS

State program	Who received it in Dane County	2026 award	Status
Room & board for Medicaid members in residential addiction treatment	Dane County (human services)	$282,757	Awarded — ≈9% of the $3M statewide pool
Treatment for jail residents with opioid use disorder	Dane County Sheriff’s Office (with Wellpath)	$102,000	Awarded — reporting results
Law-enforcement abatement contract — diversion & drug disposal (MARI)	Madison Police Department — Madison Area Recovery Initiative	—	Active — amount not itemized in this filing
Overdose-prevention supplies — naloxone, fentanyl & xylazine test strips, at no cost	Public Health Madison & Dane County · Dane County EMS · Sheriff’s Office · Madison PD · Middleton, Verona, Waunakee & Shorewood Hills PDs · VA harm reduction · Wisconsin Voices for Recovery	supplies	Active — distributed quarterly
Birth to 3 — support for infants, toddlers & families affected by opioid use	County Birth to 3 programs (Dane eligible)	—	Statewide; no update published yet

Most recent state program measures quarterly program reporting

Jail treatment — 517 people screened at intake, 244 in medication treatment, 160 case-managed, 98 trained and given a naloxone kit at release
MARI — 20 referrals, 6 completions, 19 naloxone kits at release, 221 doses and 114 test strips at outreach
Supplies — Public Health 7,500 fentanyl + 4,600 xylazine test-strip kits; Dane County EMS 5,000 + 3,000; Sheriff’s Office 145 naloxone cases (≈3,480 doses); Madison PD 102 cases (≈2,448 doses)
Room & board — 510 people and 12,411 days of treatment covered statewide
Statewide naloxone program — 7,834 people trained, ≈23,370 doses distributed, 414 reported overdose reversals
State receipts by year — $30.7M (2022) · $8.0M (2023) · $36.6M (2024) · $14.5M (2025) · $2.95M so far in 2026

DHS opens application rounds each cycle — a law-enforcement round closed July 10, 2026. Watch the DHS settlement funds page for the next windows.

Quarterly program reporting

Illustrative reports by funded program

Example data Measures vary by program area. Organization and program names come from public funding records; all values shown here are fictional examples.

Period

Program area

Reporting organization

Example program reports

Most recent first

Program detail · naloxone distribution

Illustrative naloxone distribution by ZIP

ZIP-level totals are shown on the map.

Evidence review · Dane County public record

Can the public follow a dollar all the way to health?

Not yet. The county can show what it planned to spend and how overdose burden changed. The public record does not yet connect those facts through services, reach, experience, and results.

Preliminary crosswalk Public records reviewed Not a rating of program quality

The current record

Two ends of the story are documented. The middle is not.

Documented $1.03M Strategy and funding

Eight spending lines in the 2026 local-share plan.

Not publicly traceable Service → reach → experience → result The bridge between dollars and health

No published award-level path carries a dollar through these steps.

Documented 144 → 118* Population burden

Overdose deaths in 2023 and preliminary 2024; opioids were involved in roughly 80%.

The record shows the bookends. It does not yet show the bridge.

No county program can be credited with the decline in overdose deaths on this record. The answerable question is whether the portfolio plausibly contributed—which requires all three evidence legs to point in the same direction.

Three legs · equal standing

Three ways to know.

Each answers a different question. A complete finding needs all three.

01 · Official record
What changed in spending and health?Budgets, ledgers, filings, death records, and EMS surveillance establish the public baseline.
Authoritative, often delayed.
02 · Delivery record
What was actually delivered?Units, encounters, completed referrals, reach, place, and service quality show whether the strategy happened.
The thinnest link today.
03 · Community record
What did people experience?Recurring, compensated reporting shows who was missed, what was unusable, and what emerged first.
Evidence—not a quote for color.

Follow the record

Where the chain breaks.

The record holds through appropriation. It thins at payment and stops before service delivery.

Budgetedis not contracted.
Contractedis not paid.
Awardedis not distributed.
A population trendis not program impact.

Source key

What stands behind each number?

Six labels show whether a figure is verified, derived, provisional, provider-reported, community-reported, or unverified.

A source list says where a project looked. It does not say which source holds up which figure.

A seventh, Demonstration data, appears only on the Outcomes tab and the Agency portal. It sits outside the vocabulary on purpose: a sample number is not a claim about the world.

Preliminary public-record scorecard

Nine strategy files.

Open a file to see where its chain stops and the smallest reporting change that would repair it.

Derived from verified sources

No strategy has all three legs at Solid. This describes the public record, not the programs. Staff and providers may hold information nobody has asked them to publish.

Field notes and standards

Standards behind the score.

The definitions, decision rules, and minimum systems behind the review. Open only what you need.

Claim rules what each kind of statement requires

The claim being made	Minimum evidence required
“The county allocated money”	Official budget, resolution, contract, or ledger
“The program was implemented”	Official record plus delivery data
“The intended population was reached”	Delivery data plus lived-experience confirmation
“Access or quality improved”	Delivery and lived-experience measures over time
“The strategy contributed to healthier communities”	All three legs, moving coherently by time, place, and population
“The strategy caused the outcome”	A substantially stronger design than routine triangulation

Contribution language is used throughout — “consistent with,” “likely contributed to,” “the evidence does not yet establish.” “Caused” requires a study design this record does not have.

Evidence grades what Solid, Thin and Missing mean

The grade describes evidence sufficiency, not program quality. A well-run program can score Missing because nobody was ever asked to report on it.

Leg	Solid	Thin	Missing
Official data	Primary source; period and geography match; numerator and denominator defined; provisional status clear; reconciles to the ledger	Budget rather than actual; lagged or partial; estimated; no denominator; a county-wide trend not linked to the strategy	No accessible source, or the record does not support the claim
Delivery data	Dollars paid linked to activities, reach, quality, time and place; consistent definitions; checkable against invoices	Activity counts without reach or quality; referrals without completed linkage; unvalidated self-report; no place detail	No routine reporting, or anecdote only
Lived and living experience	Recurring and compensated; people currently affected included; two or more methods; who was missed documented; county response published	A one-time listening session; unpaid advisory input; recruitment only through providers; no published method	No structured collection, no compensation, no decision role

When the legs disagree street-first, verify-fast

Official data show deaths falling. Provider data show naloxone distribution rising. Outreach workers report unusual sedation, new wounds, harder reversals. All can be true — the disagreement is the finding, and averaging it away loses the signal.

Within 72 hours

Reversible protective action — more naloxone, wound care, safer-use supplies
Notify outreach and clinical partners
Adjust outreach hours or locations
Provisional targeted alert where appropriate

Within 14 days

Check against EMS runs and emergency-department data
Medical examiner toxicology and drug-checking results
Provider observations; treatment-access information
Additional lived-experience interviews

Within 30 days

Publish what was reported and what was checked
Classify: corroborated, unresolved, not corroborated, or closed
State what changed, and what remains uncertain

“Believe the street first” means a credible frontline report is enough to trigger investigation and low-risk protective action without waiting on death certificates. It does not mean publishing an unconfirmed observation as a population estimate. PHMDC already runs part of this loop; the missing piece is a structured lived-experience signal feeding it.

Rebuilding the third leg a community drug-health sentinel network

A public hearing is useful. It is not a lived-experience data system. Dane County held a hearing in 2025; the record reviewed here does not establish a recurring, compensated process in which people who use drugs help interpret results and shape decisions.

Composition

12–18 compensated members
At least half people currently using drugs, not only people in long-term recovery
Deliberate inclusion of Black residents and others facing disproportionate mortality; people unhoused; people using stimulants, opioids or several at once; LGBTQ+ residents; adults 55+; people recently released from jail; residents outside central Madison
Workers and family members contribute parallel evidence — not substitutes

Collection

Monthly five-question pulse by text, phone, paper or in person
Monthly 60-minute sentinel meeting
Quarterly interpretation session alongside the official and delivery review
An urgent channel for new adulterants, unusual sedation, wounds, clusters, stockouts, or abrupt treatment barriers

Compensation

Illustrative, not prescribed: $25 a completed pulse, $75 a session, $150 a quarter for each co-chair
Transport, childcare, phone, interpretation paid separately
Fastest lawful payment mechanism — no vendor onboarding
Roughly $30,000–$50,000 a year, budgeted as a normal data-system cost

Publication and protection

A monthly signal note: what participants see, how many independent reports, broad geography, degree of agreement, action taken, what remains unverified
Two paid co-chairs approve the wording; disagreement is preserved, not resolved into consensus
No names, exact purchasing locations, identifiable supply networks, or information usable for individual law-enforcement action should be published
Identifiable reports should not be shared with law enforcement. Participation should never affect access to services, benefits, treatment, probation, or housing

Rebuilding the second leg minimum provider reporting standard

No provider should have to build a new data system. Four compact blocks, once a quarter. The county fills in the financial and surveillance fields itself rather than making providers re-enter them.

Finance

Award identifier
Funding source
Amount contracted
Amount invoiced
Amount paid
Service period

Delivery

Eligible population or denominator
Encounters
Approximate unique participants where feasible
Core service units
Referrals and completed linkages

Reach

Municipality or protected geographic unit
Voluntary aggregate demographics
Housing or incarceration status where safely collected
Populations the award was meant to reach

Experience and result

Two to four strategy-specific outcomes
One standardized participant-experience measure
Explanation of major variance from plan
Action requested from the county

Aggregate counts only. Never client names, birthdates, or anything traceable to an individual. Small cells suppressed. Staying non-identifiable is what keeps this standard viable — and it is what the Agency portal demonstrates.

The operating cycle what a county would do, month to month

Monthly

Fiscal staff update budgeted, encumbered, invoiced and paid amounts
Providers submit the minimum delivery extract
Peer researchers submit findings and rapid signals
Epidemiology updates surveillance indicators
A 60-minute huddle: what changed, what agrees, what happens next

Quarterly

A two-hour triangulation review, one page per strategy
Dollars · official grade · delivery grade · lived grade
What converges, what conflicts, where the chain breaks
Decision: continue, expand, modify, investigate, pause, close
Named owner and a due date

Annually

Publish all receipts, interest, appropriations, contracts, payments and balances
Strategy-level implementation and outcome evidence; equity analyses
Community evidence and unresolved discrepancies
A baseline analysis showing settlement funds supplemented rather than replaced existing resources
No automatic renewal on the grounds that money was historically allocated

If a county did only three things the highest-leverage changes within a year

1One award-to-outcome registry for every settlement dollar. Authorization, contract, payment, service, reach, experience and outcome under a single award identifier, local and state funding kept separate. Every allocation carries a measurement schedule: intended population and geography, three to eight delivery measures, one or two near-term outcomes, an equity measure, a lived-experience method, and a named system owner.
2A funded lived-and-living-experience evidence unit. A permanent peer research function, not an occasional advisory panel — paid roles in collection, interpretation, oversight and public presentation, plus a requirement that the county document what changed because of the findings. Pair it with the street-first protocol so adulterants, wounds, stockouts and access failures can trigger action before mortality data arrive.
3One quarterly strategy review in place of separate finance and health reports. Board, subcommittee and public see the same six columns: official trend, delivery performance, lived experience, disagreement, traceability gap, decision. Complete the needs assessment the county has already recommended and use it as the formal baseline.

The result is a management cycle, not an academic evaluation: this was the need; this is what we funded; this is what was delivered; this is who experienced it; this is what changed; this is what remains uncertain; this is what we are doing next.

Countywide context

Community health indicators

Selected Dane County health and social indicators, shown by reporting year.

Community Health Assessment 2023 · 2022–2024 CHIP · Public Health surveillance

Grayed tiles have no figure published for the selected year and show the most recent one instead. CDC and Public Health count deaths slightly differently (2024: 121 vs. 118).

Drug overdose deaths, rolling 12 months

January 2020–August 2025 · CDC provisional county data, as of July 5, 2026

CDC VSRR

Each point counts the 12 months ending in that month. September–December 2025 are omitted because more than 20% of records were pending review.

Overdose death rate, 2023

Deaths per 100,000, age-adjusted — Dane County vs. Wisconsin & U.S.

PHMDC

2026 local-share plan

Dane County · $1,030,038 across eight spending lines

Funded area	Spending lines	Amount
Harm reduction & overdose prevention	PHMDC specialists · EMS HOPE Kits · OutReach overdose-prevention positions	$532,938
Treatment	UW Health Compass Clinic · medication purchases	$245,000
Administration	Opioid Settlement Coordinator	$141,800
Reentry	Sheriff’s Office Re-entry Coordinator	$70,300
School prevention	Safe Communities curricula	$40,000
Total		$1,030,038

Reporting example

Quarterly program reporting portal

Example form Aggregate program totals only. Do not enter names or other client-level information.

Methods and sources

About this example dashboard

Dane County opioid settlement information

This example site shows how a county could publish settlement receipts, allocations, expenditures, program reports, and community health indicators in one place.

Financial information is based on the cited county and state records. Program reports and reporting-portal entries are fictional examples created to demonstrate the format.

What is included

Overview. Headline financial totals and year-to-year charts.

Funding. Annual allocations, approved-use categories, and state-managed awards serving Dane County.

Program reports. Illustrative quarterly measures tailored to each funded program area.

Community health. Countywide indicators shown as context, not as results attributed to individual awards.

Measurement

How program information is organized

This example dashboard brings together financial records, program reporting, and community health information. Countywide health trends are shown as context and are not attributed to individual awards.

Financial and official records

Funding and community indicators

Budgets, contracts, payments, settlement filings, vital statistics, and public-health surveillance.

Program reporting

Services and reach

Activities, supplies, encounters, completed connections to services, locations, and populations reached.

Community feedback

Access and experience

Structured feedback about availability, service experience, barriers, and changing community conditions.

Reporting pathway

From funding to community outcomes

1 · Strategy

The community need and funded program area.

2 · Funding

The amount budgeted, contracted, and paid.

3 · Delivery

The services, supplies, or activities provided.

4 · Reach

The people and places reached during the reporting period.

5 · Experience

Participant and community feedback collected with privacy protections.

6 · Results

Near-term program measures and related countywide health indicators.

Example quarterly reporting

Common information submitted by funded programs

Finance

Award identifier
Funding source
Amount contracted and paid
Service period

Program activity

Core service measures
Encounters or participants
Completed connections to services
Progress during the quarter

Reach

Municipality or protected geographic area
Voluntary aggregate demographics
Population served
Access measures relevant to the award

Experience and results

Program-specific measures
Participant feedback
Explanation of major variation from plan
Support requested from the county

Aggregate reporting only. Names and other client-level information are not included.

Methods and data notes

Financial data reporting periods and estimates

Fund 2500 totals use Dane County settlement reports, adopted budgets, resolutions, and Wisconsin Counties Association payment reports. Amounts marked ~ or ≈ are estimates or derived totals. Reporting periods are shown beside the relevant figure.

Program reporting example illustrative quarterly data

Measures vary by funded program. The example reporting portal uses aggregate program totals and does not request names, birthdates, or other client-level information.

Wisconsin Act 57 financial reporting requirements

Wisconsin law requires participating local governments to hold settlement funds in a segregated account, use them for settlement-approved purposes, include the account in the regular audit process, and file annual financial reports.

Sources documents and datasets

Dane County annual opioid-settlement reports, adopted budgets, resolutions, and Opioid Settlement Subcommittee records
Public Health Madison & Dane County overdose reports, Community Health Assessment, and Community Health Improvement Plan
CDC provisional county overdose data
Wisconsin DHS opioid settlement information
2021 Wisconsin Act 57 and Wis. Stat. § 165.12

Methods & sources

About this dashboard

What this platform is

One instance of the County Opioid Settlement Accountability Platform. Four things are identical in every county, so a figure from one can be read against the same figure from another.

Layout. Same seven tabs, same four headline metrics, same year-by-year structure.

Methodology. Same three evidence legs, eight-link chain, six source tags, grading rules.

Outcome reporting. Same minimum standard, quarterly cycle, aggregate-only privacy floor.

Act 57 section. Same statement of what state law requires and what it does not.

Only the data, the county name and colors, and the local governance detail change. Built for county staff who file these numbers, journalists checking them, coalitions asking where a dollar went, foundations, and state agencies looking across counties.

How to read this site

The record of Dane County’s segregated settlement account (Fund 2500) — money in, money out, every allocation year by year — plus a working demonstration of the quarterly outcome reporting that state law does not require.

Annotations what “Needs clarification” means

Every settlement dollar should match one of the settlement’s approved uses (“Exhibit E”). A line reads Needs clarification when the records reviewed here do not identify which approved use it falls under, or do not document how it was reconciled with Act 57’s bar on replacing money already budgeted (“supplanting”). A Note carries forward a condition from a prior year.

Neither is a finding of wrongdoing. Both mark a question the public record does not answer — the answer may exist in records not published here, and the county is the right place to ask. Category mappings are this project’s reading of the source documents, published so they can be checked and corrected.

Quarterly reporting how the Agency portal would work

Funded agencies sign in four times a year, choose the funded program, and report only the measures in that award agreement. Treatment, youth prevention, harm reduction, reentry, outreach, naloxone, and administration each have their own measure set. ZIP detail appears only for naloxone distribution and feeds the map without being repeated in the public report list. Reports would be due Jan 15, Apr 15, Jul 15, and Oct 15.

Take the data CSV export

The ↓ CSV button on the Funding tab downloads every allocation from every year — line item, amount, approved use, source tag, annotation, and what the record does not show. Nothing here is a claim you have to take on faith.

Strategy taxonomy the Exhibit E categories

Spending is tagged with the national settlement’s Exhibit E core strategies: (A) naloxone and overdose-reversal medications, (B) medication-assisted treatment distribution, (C) pregnant and postpartum women, (D) neonatal abstinence syndrome, (E) warm hand-off and recovery services, (F) treatment for people who are incarcerated, (G) prevention, (H) syringe service expansion, (I) data collection and research — reviewed against the five Johns Hopkins principles.

Sources every document behind these figures

Fund 2500 figures — Dane County’s annual opioid-settlement reports to the Wisconsin DOJ (s. 165.12 filings), county budget documents, and Wisconsin Counties Association payment reports
Dane County — Opioid Settlement Subcommittee (Legistar), adopted budgets, and RES-143
PHMDC — Summary of Drug Overdose Deaths, Digging Deeper into Overdose Deaths, CHA 2023, 2022–2024 CHIP
Current county-level deaths — CDC VSRR provisional county overdose death counts (12-month rolling; data as of July 5, 2026)
Wisconsin DHS — Opioid settlement funds (70/30 split; $874M+ through 2038) and the FY26 Q4 settlement summary
Wisconsin Legislature — 2021 Act 57 and Wis. Stat. § 165.12
Wisconsin Watch — Where Wisconsin’s $160M+ in local settlement funds is going; hngnews — Plans for opioid settlement funds in Dane County
MARI — Madison Area Recovery Initiative and the UW-Madison recidivism study coverage
Harm Reduction & Prevention Act recipients incl. the African American Opioid Coalition — County Executive release, Nov 18, 2022; AAOC
Method — Johns Hopkins Principles, CDC Overdose Data to Action, SAMHSA harm reduction framework, National Harm Reduction Coalition principles

Limitations read before sharing

Financial figures come from public records. Amounts marked ~ or ≈ are approximate; “money in ≈$14.0M” is derived arithmetic — the official year-end balance plus cumulative disbursements.
The 2026 itemized plan totals $1,030,038 across eight funded lines plus a $0 data-and-evaluation line. The ≈$1.01M of transfer authority beyond that list is not itemized in the budget document.
County brand colors here are an approximation — swap official values into the token block at the top of the file.
Prepared with AI assistance in July 2026. Verify all cited figures, and the Exhibit E mappings, before public use.

Money in the fund at year-end

Money in vs. money out, by year

From funded strategy to possible community outcomes

The money, year by year

County and state roles

Allocation formula and payment schedule

County and state responsibilities

The year, in decision moments

State awards serving Dane County

Illustrative reports by funded program

Example program reports

Illustrative naloxone distribution by ZIP

Community health indicators

Drug overdose deaths, rolling 12 months

Overdose death rate, 2023

2026 local-share plan

Quarterly program reporting portal

About this example dashboard

Dane County opioid settlement information

What is included

How program information is organized

Funding and community indicators

Services and reach

Access and experience

From funding to community outcomes

Common information submitted by funded programs

Methods and data notes

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