Iberia Parish Can’t Account for $325,000 in Opioid Funds

When Iberia Parish agreed to accept opioid settlement funds, it didn’t just accept money. It accepted legal obligations.

Those obligations are spelled out clearly — in parish resolutions, in the statewide opioid Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), and in the Cooperative Endeavor Agreement governing payments to the 16th Judicial District Attorney’s Office. They are also echoed, and quietly warned about, in a 2025 report by the Louisiana Legislative Auditor.

The problem is not that Iberia Parish spent opioid funds. The problem is that the records required to prove lawful spending don’t appear to exist at all. As of February 2026, neither the Parish nor the District Attorney’s Office has produced the invoices, reimbursement requests, payroll records, or program documentation that the law and their own agreements require.

What Iberia Parish Agreed To

In October 2021, the Iberia Parish Council formally joined as a participant in the Louisiana State–Local Governmental Opioid Litigation Memorandum of Understanding through Resolution No. 2021-169. That resolution is not symbolic. It explicitly states that participation ensures that “almost all of the settlement funds go to abate and resolve the opioid epidemic.” More importantly, the MOU, incorporated by reference, governs the use of the funds and the documentation required.

The language is unambiguous: opioid settlement funds must only be used for approved opioid abatement purposes. Just as importantly, participating entities are required to maintain records of expenditures and the documents underlying those expenditures for at least five years so that compliance can be verified.

Under the MOU, approved purposes are defined as evidence-based, forward-looking strategies, programming, and services aimed at treating substance use disorders, supporting recovery through appropriately licensed providers, and targeting treatment for individuals not otherwise covered by Medicaid or private insurance.

That record-retention requirement is not optional. It exists because Louisiana deliberately chose a decentralized system in which parishes control spending, but accountability depends entirely on documentation.

The 2025 Ordinances and the DA Agreements

Fast forward to April 2025.

On April 23, 2025, the Iberia Parish Council adopted two key resolutions. One, resolution 2025-083, authorized a Cooperative Endeavor Agreement with the 16th Judicial District Attorney’s Office for $85,000.00 in opioid settlement funding for Family Services programs. The second, resolution 2025-085, authorized a $325,000.00 reimbursement for opioid-related expenses allegedly incurred by the District Attorney’s Office in 2022, 2023, and 2024.

Those resolutions matter because they authorize reimbursement only on the assumption that compliant records already exist.

The Cooperative Endeavor Agreement executed shortly thereafter repeats and strengthens the documentation requirement. The District Attorney explicitly agrees to provide Iberia Parish and its auditors “any requested documentation of expenses paid from opioid settlement funds,” including receipts, paystubs, reports, spreadsheets, bids, and purchase records. Failure to do so, the agreement states, may result in withholding of future funds or reimbursement to the Parish.

In plain terms, the agreement assumes — and legally requires — that detailed records already exist.

What the Parish’s Own Ledger Shows

In October 2025, the Iberia Parish Government was requested to provide records of opioid-fund disbursements for 2025. That same month, the Parish retained the 16th Judicial District Attorney’s Office to respond to the public records request.

When records were finally made available to our office for inspection in January of 2026, it produced a three-page ledger reflecting four payments:

• September 4, 2025, payment to the 16th Judicial District Attorney’s Office in the amount of $121,063.82;
• September 4, 2025, payment to the 16th Judicial District Attorney’s Office in the amount of $98,486.03;
• September 4, 2025, payment to the 16th Judicial District Attorney’s Office in the amount of $105,834.15; and
• December 18, 2025, payment to the Drug Court in the amount of $83,547.67.

The $325,384.00 amount paid to the 16th Judicial District Attorney’s Office aligns closely with the reimbursement amount authorized by the Council earlier that year. However, the ledger reflects payments only; it does not include invoices, reimbursement requests, payroll detail, or program descriptions that are required under the agreement.

But That is Where The Trail Stops

Our office brought the lack of documentation directly to the attention of the 16th Judicial District Attorney’s Office on January 8, 2026. Three weeks later, we were informed that additional records were available for inspection. We conducted yet another inspection.

Despite multiple public records inspections, no invoices, reimbursement requests, payroll records, checks, ACH confirmations, or program documentation were produced to support the three September 4 payments to the 16th Judicial District Attorney’s Office.

At the second inspection, the 16th Judicial District Attorney’s Office produced documentation related only to payments made to the Drug Court. But those documents totaled $79,771.14, leaving $3,776.53 unexplained.

This is not a clerical error or a timing issue. Under the Cooperative Endeavor Agreement, those documents are mandatory.

Things are Heightened By Retroactive Reimbursements

The Parish resolutions expressly state that the $325,000 is reimbursement for expenses incurred in prior fiscal years. Retroactive reimbursement is not prohibited — but it is inherently high-risk.

To lawfully reimburse prior expenses with opioid settlement funds, the Parish must be able to show that:

• The expenses were opioid-related at the time they were incurred
• They fit within the MOU’s approved abatement purposes
• They were not already paid with other public funds

None of those determinations can be made without contemporaneous records—and no such records have been produced. Without documentation, there is no way to make a determination. And without a determination, reimbursement becomes indistinguishable from supplanting — a scenario best-practice guidance strongly warns against.

The Legislative Auditor’s Warning — Already Issued

In May 2025, the Louisiana Legislative Auditor released an informational report on opioid settlement funds statewide. The report makes two findings that are critical here.

First, it confirms that no entity in Louisiana has been tasked with enforcing compliance with opioid settlement requirements. The Opioid Abatement Taskforce is advisory only. Oversight, by design, falls back on parishes and auditors.

Second, the report emphasizes that accountability depends entirely on local record-keeping. The Auditor notes that, although parishes are required to report expenditures, statewide reporting is incomplete, and that best practices require documentation sufficient to verify lawful use.

In other words, the Legislative Auditor has already warned that Louisiana’s system works only if local governments keep their paperwork straight.

Iberia Parish as a Case Study

A December 2025 Louisiana Illuminator investigation found that more than $100 million in opioid settlement funds statewide remain difficult to track, with uneven reporting and limited public visibility. Iberia Parish now provides a concrete example of why that matters.

This is not an abstract policy debate. It is a simple factual question: When $325,000 left the Opioid Abatement Fund, where is the paper trail the law requires? As of this writing, some five months hence, that paper trail has not been produced.

Why This Is an Audit Issue — Not a Political One

Unsupported disbursements from a restricted fund are audit findings by definition under Louisiana law and the Parish’s own agreements. Simply put, this is a question of compliance. Either the records exist and have not been produced, or they do not exist. Both scenarios are problematic for the governing authority.

Notably, the opioid settlement payments also occurred during a period of unusually large funding inflows to the 16th Judicial District Attorney’s Office from other sources.

Between July 2024 and June 2025, the District Attorney sought and obtained judicial authorization to draw more than $2.2 million from the Criminal Court Fund. The Louisiana Legislative Auditor has repeatedly documented that criminal court funds and related justice-system revenues were historically fragmented, inconsistently reported, and lacked basic transparency. These conditions were serious enough that the Legislature enacted Act 87 of 2020, which mandates uniform statewide reporting.

Those transactions are separate from the opioid settlement funds addressed here and are not evaluated in this article. However, the timing and scale of these concurrent funding streams raise broader questions about financial controls and transparency that warrant independent examination.

These Funds are Supposed to Solve Real Problems

Opioid settlement funds were meant to repair damage caused by one of the worst public health crises in modern history. They were not meant to disappear into ledgers without explanation. This issue is easily resolved if the required records exist. Invoices, reimbursement requests, payroll documentation, or program records demonstrating compliant opioid abatement spending would satisfy the Parish’s obligations. As of this writing, those documents have not been produced.

If Louisiana’s opioid settlement system depends on trust, that trust must be backed by records. In Iberia Parish, those records are missing. Until they appear, the question remains unanswered.

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