HATTIESBURG — Sitting in Moore’s Bicycle Shop in Hattiesburg less than three weeks after his 35-year-old daughter died of an overdose, Jonathan Aultman wondered aloud what he was supposed to do next.
It wasn’t grief that made the mourning father from Sumrall feel lost. It was the prospect of Mississippi wasting an opportunity to prevent more tragedies like his family’s.
Chelsea Aultman Sadler struggled with addiction for most of her life, starting when she was prescribed opioid painkillers after a surgery. The pills’ manufacturers falsely told her and other Americans that their products were safe and nonaddictive, all while drug companies flooded towns with prescriptions.
Shelby Aultman holds a photo of her daughter, Chelsea Sadler, who died from opioid use, at Moore’s Bicycle Shop, Friday, May 30, 2025, in Hattiesburg, Miss. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi TodayHer father was frustrated by the plan – or lack thereof – his local and state elected officials put together to spend the money paid by companies for their roles in the thousands of deadly overdoses they catalyzed in Mississippi. The state is expected to receive $370 million of the nearly $50 billion in settlement funds the corporations have committed to states so far.
While addiction researchers and the lawyers who negotiated the settlements have said it’s important for all the money to go toward preventing more drug deaths, the settlements themselves allow for up to 30% to be spent on other uses.
Attorney General Lynn Fitch and the Legislature, the decision-makers for Mississippi’s settlements, have maximized that portion. Fitch developed a contract that allows towns, cities and counties to spend about $56 million on any expense – regardless of whether it addresses the opioid epidemic. In 2021, she said in a letter to localities this was done to “free local governments up to use your funds as you see fit.”
It’s a setup that’s allowed the three local governments in the Hattiesburg area — Forrest County, Lamar County and the city of Hattiesburg — to take different approaches using their settlement shares, which public records indicate have totaled just under $750,000 as of late May.
Some of this money went to a criminal justice diversion program and a series of sheriff’s department expenses, including pole surveillance cameras and a handheld X-ray device, a public records request revealed. Another chunk is set to go to a new local mental health facility.
And a third portion of the shares remains unspent and without a plan.
Some local officials Mississippi Today spoke to hadn’t yet considered what to do with the money that’s been trickling in since 2022. They had a variety of justifications for their spending decisions, often citing small amounts of money they received relative to the cost to address addiction.
Sharon Miller talks about losing her son, Mackenzie Massenburg, and his romantic partner, Amanda Phillips, to opioid use during a discussion with other parents at Moore’s Bicycle Shop, Friday, May 30, 2025, in Hattiesburg, Miss. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi TodayThat late May afternoon inside the Hardy Street bike shop, Aultman and four other Hattiesburg area parents who also lost children to drug deaths learned about the plans – and the inaction – from Mississippi Today.
They expressed concern that elected officials hadn’t sought the voices of people in their shoes and worried these funds could be used in ways that wouldn’t prevent more deaths.
“From sitting in this chair, where do I go next?” Aultman asked, sitting next to a framed photo of his daughter. “Other than taking my pictures and going to the AG’s office and saying, ‘I’d like some accountability.’”
Jonathan Aultman expresses emotion while discussing the loss of his daughter during a gathering at Moore’s Bicycle Shop, Friday, May 30, 2025, in Hattiesburg, Miss. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today“This is very, very new and very, very fresh for me, and doesn’t sound like y’all are going to be doing right by this big pot of money you just got handed to you.”
Michelle Williams, chief of staff for the Mississippi attorney general, said that while Fitch would love for all the settlement dollars to be spent on addressing the overdose epidemic, the state’s top lawyer followed the requirements of the settlement when creating the agreement.
Since James Moore, the bike shop owner, lost his son to an overdose in 2015, he’s publicly advocated for policy changes that will prevent more parents from losing their children. He raises a flag at half-staff in front of his shop every time there’s an overdose death in the Hattiesburg area. It’s purple, the color for overdose awareness.
A sign outside Moore’s Bicycle Shop in Hattiesburg, Miss., Friday, May 30, 2025, explains the significance of the purple flag raised to honor those who have died from opioid overdoses in the community. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today A log kept by James Moore records people in the area who have died from opioid use, Friday, May 30, 2025, at Moore’s Bicycle Shop in Hattiesburg, Miss. Moore raises a purple flag each time someone in the community dies from an overdose. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi TodayHe’s raised it at least 65 times since Mississippi local governments have been receiving opioid settlement checks.
Moore said he watches local news every night, and he’s never heard a word about Forrest, Lamar or Hattiesburg settlement shares. Knowing the dollars had been coming in for years as residents continued to die “really drives me crazy,” he said.
Surveillance cameras, gun flashlights and an X-ray device
Over the next 14 years, the three Hattiesburg governments are expected to receive about $2.6 million from the national opioid settlements – about 5% of the local shares being sent to Mississippi cities and counties.
From October 2022 to May 2025, the city of Hattiesburg, Forrest County and Lamar County have received a total of $748,505, according to public records and administrators. Of that, $200,000 has been allocated.
The only locality to spend any of its share is Forrest County, which is responsible for most of the money. Pharmaceutical companies distributed over 85 pills per Forrest County resident each year from 2006 to 2019 – the second highest rate of any county in Mississippi, according to the Washington Post.
In November, the county’s supervisors awarded $100,000 to the local drug court, a program aimed at diverting people who’ve been arrested for nonviolent drug charges away from jail and to addiction treatment. Board meeting minutes say the funds are for court staff, addiction treatment and transportation.
In February, the supervisors considered Forrest County Sheriff Charlie Sims’ request for about $190,000 for items he said would help his department “in responding to narcotics violations.”
The county granted him $100,000, and Sims told Mississippi Today he’s prioritizing the first few items — a handheld X-ray device, a drug identification machine, pole surveillance cameras, a vehicle tracking device and weapon accessories like gun flashlights. Sims said his department has purchased the first three.
Many of the items listed may not have qualified as appropriate spending if the local government agreement had said all funds must be spent addressing addiction. But, unlike most states, Mississippi’s agreement doesn’t mandate that.
Sims said the biggest drug problem his department focuses on is cracking down on fentanyl distribution, and these devices will help. He said he may look to use future funds for items like naloxone, an opioid overdose-reversing medication.
Sims said his department has enough naloxone now.
Roderick Woullard, a Forrest County supervisor, said the county recently put over $500,000 of other county funds toward a new regional crisis stabilization unit, a facility that provides short-term, urgent psychiatric care. It shows the county’s commitment to treating substance use disorder beyond the opioid settlements, he said.
Gentry Mordica, another Forrest County supervisor, said the board has public meetings and no one from the recovery community had brought ideas about how to spend these funds. Mordica said that to his knowledge, the board hasn’t publicly announced receiving the money.
The remaining amount, about $550,000, is unallocated.
Lamar County and the city of Hattiesburg are behind Forrest County. Neither have allocated any of their settlement money.
Hattiesburg received just over $50,000 – a small portion of its over $160 million annual budget.
In June, after Mississippi Today filed a public records request about Hattiesburg’s opioid settlements, Mayor Toby Barker contacted Moore, the Hattiesburg bike shop owner and recovery advocate. Barker asked Moore to form a committee to advise how Hattiesburg should spend the money.
James Moore poses next to a photo of himself and his son, Jeffrey Moore, at Moore’s Bicycle Shop, Friday, May 30, 2025, in Hattiesburg, Miss. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi TodayBarker said the city hasn’t spent any of its money because payments have been small and infrequent. He hopes the opioid settlement committee includes those who have recovered from substance use disorder, families who’ve lost loved ones to overdoses, addiction treatment clinicians, law enforcement officers and others.
“I want to see Hattiesburg make a focused investment on where it can do some good,” he said.
Lamar County administrator Joseph Waits said his supervisors plan to use their settlement dollars to help build the new regional crisis stabilization unit. The county made that decision without public participation because supervisors didn’t expect it to make up a lot of the county’s annual budget of tens of millions of dollars, he said.
Waits and Mordica, the Forrest supervisor, said that while the Mississippi Attorney General’s office has repeatedly told local governments that these funds can be spent like any other public dollar, their counties were intent on using their funds to address the opioid crisis.
“We’re concerned about it (the crisis),” Mordica said.
‘We don’t want it to happen to you and your children’
Shelby Aultman and her husband, Jonathan, comfort each other during a discussion about opioid-related deaths at Moore’s Bicycle Shop, Friday, May 30, 2025, in Hattiesburg, Miss. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today Jonathan Aultman, from left, Shelby Aultman and Brooke Zimmerman pose with a photo of Chelsea Sadler, who died from opioid use, at Moore’s Bicycle Shop, Friday, May 30, 2025, in Hattiesburg, Miss. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi TodayIn Moore’s Bicycle Shop, Jonathan Aultman was joined by his wife, Shelby Aultman. While the weeks since her daughter’s death have been an “emotional roller coaster,” she said, she’s spent time thinking about how much joy Chelsea brought to everyone who surrounded her, even as she suffered from addiction.
The last public post on Chelsea’s Facebook page is a love note to her mom. At the celebration of life just a week earlier, on the Sumrall shores of the Bouie River, Shelby Aultman recalled Chelsea’s 7-year-old daughter Lily calling out to her mom as double rainbows appeared above their heads.
“Lily going, ‘I love you forever. I love you from the ocean deep. I love you from the sky high, no matter what,’” Aultman said.
Jonathan Aultman watches his granddaughters, Lily and Esmae, at the shores of the Bouie River on May 24, 2025 in Sumrall, Miss. They were at a celebration of life for Chelsea Aultman Sadler, Aultman’s daughter and Lily’s mother, after she died of an overdose.She believes her daughter always wanted to maintain longterm recovery, and additional resources, like those that could be purchased with local opioid settlement dollars, may have helped her do that. Aultman suggested ideas like therapy services for those whose addiction stems from trauma and education for parents about helping children with addiction.
Even if local governments can spend their shares on other purposes, she thinks ending this crisis should take precedence.
“This has happened to us. And we don’t want it to happen to you and your children.”
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