New Mexico Counties Have Spent Just 13% of Opioid Settlement Funds
Summary
New Mexico's 33 counties and participating cities have received $116.7 million in opioid settlement money since 2023, according to the state auditor's review of local financial audits -- and spent just $15.7 million of it, about 13%, leaving $107.1 million sitting in local accounts. Fifteen of the 33 counties reported spending nothing at all through fiscal year 2025. In Taos County, where overdose deaths rose 340% in the first half of 2025 compared with the year before, the county had spent just $55,000 of the $2.27 million it had received.
A billion-dollar settlement built with no one steering it
New Mexico's opioid litigation settlements will ultimately total more than $920 million⧉, paid out through the late 2030s -- $249 million to outside counsel, $328 million-plus to the state, and $344 million-plus to local governments. Under the New Mexico Opioid Allocation Agreement, the local-government share is distributed directly to all 33 counties and to municipalities that participated in the litigation, with each required to keep the money in a separate "LG Abatement Fund" spent only on prevention, treatment, harm reduction, and recovery.
But the agreement sets no statewide plan for how, or how fast, that money gets used. New Mexico is one of only nine states that does not require or maintain a formal statewide advisory or coordinating body⧉ to support the use of opioid settlement funds -- spending and implementation decisions rest entirely with each of the 33 counties and roughly 19 cities on its own.
View data as table
| FY2023 | 6 local governments (4 counties, 2 municipalities) |
|---|---|
| FY2024 | 11 local governments (9 counties, 2 municipalities) |
| FY2025 | 18 local governments (14 counties, 4 municipalities) |
The counties with the worst overdose spikes are not spending fastest
The gap between money received and money spent is not evenly distributed, and it does not track need. In Rio Arriba, Santa Fe, and Taos counties, drug overdose deaths rose 48%, 104%, and 340% respectively in the first half of 2025 compared with a year earlier⧉, the New Mexico Department of Health reported⧉ in September 2025 -- fentanyl was linked to most of the deaths. Yet Taos County, which posted by far the sharpest increase, had spent just $55,000 of the $2,265,499 it had received through its annual audits -- about 2.4%, by this outlet's arithmetic on the auditor's own Appendix C figures. Santa Fe County had spent 21.5% of its $1,250,818; Rio Arriba, 18.9% of its $4,639,508.
Statewide, the auditor's survey of 38 local governments⧉ found only 8 (21%) reported having adequate treatment-provider capacity, while 20 (53%) reported gaps or significant gaps -- and fewer than half, just 16, had even written a formal spending plan.
Not corruption -- a structural gap between money and delivery
OSA's report does not allege misuse of the money; the barrier its own survey of counties and cities identifies most often is finding qualified treatment providers to spend it on, followed by procurement and contracting processes and concerns about sustaining programs once settlement payments taper off. Larger, more coordinated governments -- Bernalillo County and the City of Albuquerque's joint procurement and public dashboard, Doña Ana County and the City of Las Cruces' shared Opioid Settlement Advisory Council -- appeared better positioned to move money into programs. Most of New Mexico's 33 counties and cities have no comparable partnership, no dedicated dashboard, and, per the report, no state body coordinating them.
The unspent balance the auditor now reports, $107.1 million combined across counties and municipalities, is nearly seven times the $15.7 million spent so far -- a backlog of public-health money for a state where, in 2021 alone, 1,029 New Mexicans died from drug overdose⧉ and roughly 83,000 New Mexicans were estimated to have opioid use disorder⧉ as of 2020.
View data as table
| Statewide county average | 9.59% spent -- deaths change not applicable (statewide) |
|---|---|
| Rio Arriba County | 18.93% spent -- overdose deaths +48%, H1 2025 vs H1 2024 |
| Santa Fe County | 21.54% spent -- overdose deaths +104%, H1 2025 vs H1 2024 |
| Taos County | 2.43% spent -- overdose deaths +340%, H1 2025 vs H1 2024 |
The takeaway
- New Mexico's counties and cities have received $116.7 million in opioid settlement money since 2023 and spent just $15.7 million of it -- about 13%. The $107.1 million left over is the auditor's own reported combined fund balance, nearly seven times the amount spent so far.
- Fifteen of 33 counties, and 7 of 12 municipalities with a direct allocation, reported spending nothing at all through their most recent annual financial audits.
- The counties with the worst 2025 overdose spikes are not the ones spending fastest. Taos County, where overdose deaths rose 340% in the first half of 2025, had spent about 2.4% of its settlement money -- a smaller share than the statewide county average.
- New Mexico gives local governments the money but no statewide plan for spending it. It is one of only nine states without a formal coordinating body for opioid settlement funds; each of the 33 counties and roughly 19 cities is left to identify treatment providers, plan programs, and procure services entirely on its own.
- The auditor's own survey points to capacity, not misuse, as the barrier. Only 21% of 38 responding local governments reported adequate provider capacity, and fewer than half had even written a formal spending plan -- the report recommends the Legislature consider minimum public-reporting standards and stronger state-local coordination.
All dollar figures, percentages, and counts in this piece attributed to the state auditor trace to the New Mexico Office of the State Auditor's Government Accountability Office Transparency Report 2026-01, "Opioid Settlement Expenditures by New Mexico Local Governments" (July 15, 2026), read in full from the OSA's own hosted PDF. Overdose-death percentage changes for Rio Arriba, Santa Fe, and Taos counties come from the New Mexico Department of Health's September 18, 2025 release, a separate document the OSA report itself cites. The percent-spent figures for individual counties and statewide, and the unspent-to-spent multiple, are this outlet's own arithmetic performed on the auditor's reported revenue, expenditure, and fund-balance totals (methods and results in analysis.json); the auditor's report does not itself state these percentages. A blind adversarial verifier, working from the primary documents alone with no access to this draft, independently checked every itemized fact; see verification.json.
Sources(2) ▾
- New Mexico Office of the State Auditor, Government Accountability Office, Opioid Settlement Expenditures by New Mexico Local Governments (Transparency Report 2026-01) (2026-07-15) — State Auditor Joseph M. Maestas's Government Accountability Office reviewed FY2023-FY2025 annual financial audit reports for all 33 New Mexico counties and participating municipalities plus a March 2026 survey of local governments (38 responses) to measure how much opioid settlement money local governments have received, spent, and still hold, and what barriers they report to spending it. Source for every county/municipal revenue-expenditure-balance figure (Appendices C and D), the statewide settlement structure (Figure 2), the year-by-year count of governments reporting any spending (Figure 4), the zero-spending and provider-capacity survey findings, and the nine-states coordination finding. osa.nm.gov · original document
- New Mexico Department of Health, Rise in Overdose Deaths and ER Visits in Three Northeast Counties (2025-09-18) — The Department of Health's own year-over-year comparison of drug overdose deaths and emergency-department visits in Rio Arriba, Santa Fe, and Taos counties, first half of 2025 versus first half of 2024 -- the source for every county-level overdose-death percentage change cited in this piece. Independently cited (as a footnote) in the OSA's opioid transparency report, corroborating the connection this piece draws between the two documents' county-level data. nmhealth.org · original document
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New Mexico's 33 counties and participating cities have received $116.7 million in opioid settlement money since 2023⧉ -- and, per State Auditor Joseph M. Maestas's Government Accountability Office⧉, have spent just $15.7 million of it, about 13%, based on the office's own review of local annual financial audits. The auditor's July 15, 2026 transparency report puts the same pattern in its own round numbers: local governments had "collectively accumulated more than $110 million by FY 2025⧉." Fifteen of the 33 counties, and seven of the 12 municipalities that receive their own direct allocation, had not reported spending a single dollar.