More than three years after New Mexico counties and towns received the first installments of a nearly $1 billion opioid settlement fund, almost half of them had failed to report any spending by July of last year, according to a new report from the New Mexico State Auditor’s Office.
Beginning in 2023, New Mexico began receiving opioid litigation settlement payments meant to compensate communities for the harms caused by prescription opiate manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies in creating and exacerbating a national epidemic acutely felt in New Mexico, where the drug overdose death rate has been one of the highest in the nation for most of the last two decades.
The funds will ultimately total more than $920 million in New Mexico, including more than $344 million that is designated for local governments.
But the new report released Wednesday from the New Mexico Office of State Auditor’s Government Accountability Office determined that 15 of 33 counties and seven of 12 municipalities that had received that funding had yet to report any expenditures as of June 30, 2025, the end of the three-year period the office examined.
Counties and towns that reported zero expenditures were predominantly rural.
New Mexico State Auditor Joseph Maestas told Source NM on Thursday that the report’s findings should trouble New Mexicans concerned about the opioid crisis and show the need for more state involvement in helping local governments spend the funding.
“This report, I think, should be construed as a wake-up call to not just the state of New Mexico, but to these recipients, particularly the ones that have really not done a good job in spending their funds,” Maestas said.
In total, the report found that counties and municipalities reported spending just $15 million of the roughly $110 million they received in the three-year period the office examined.
Of the counties and municipalities that reported spending, four of them had spent less than $1,100, including Harding, Otero and Roosevelt counties and the City of Santa Fe.
Santa Fe Communications Director Peter Olson told Source NM that the city’s expenditure of just $605 reflects its strategy to invest the settlement funds wisely in accordance with a plan it is still developing.
“Our goal is simple: to make every settlement dollar count,” Olson said in an email. “Rather than committing these resources without a long-term strategy, we are taking the time to ensure investments are data-driven, impactful, and aligned with the City’s greatest needs.
Roosevelt County reported spending just $18 of the $390,000 it received.
Fabian Muñoz, a Roosevelt County commissioner, told Source NM on Thursday that Roosevelt and four other eastern New Mexico counties entered into an agreement in 2022 to spend all or most of their settlement funds to build a regional behavioral health facility in Clovis, N.M.
But he said the project has stalled amid rising construction costs and the challenge of finding a provider to operate the facility.
Maestas said that many of the local governments surveyed identified similar barriers to spending the funding, namely the lack of qualified addiction services providers in their areas.
The report noted counties and cities with large populations had better success spending the funding. Albuquerque and Bernalillo County, the report noted, formed a partnership to improve efficiency and had spent about $10 million of the roughly $60 million in the three-year period the office analyzed.
The report recommends the New Mexico Legislature consider legislation during the upcoming legislative session starting in January to expedite local governments’ opioid spending and make it more transparent.
“There could be a role for the state Legislature to take action,” Maestas said. “But we want to make sure that it doesn’t undermine the autonomy that these local governments have to spend the money again that best suits their communities and addresses this public health crisis.”
