19 Local Governments Pooling Settlement Funds
A Tri-County Regional Council That Separates Governance from County Administration
The Gateway to the Rockies Opioid Council pools opioid settlement dollars from 19 participating local governments across three Colorado counties, adopted the state's first fiscal-agency relationship policy to establish clearer roles between council operations and the fiscal agent and runs a competitive grant-making cycle that puts settlement funds directly in the hands of on-the-ground providers across suburban, exurban and rural communities.
The Challenge They Were Addressing
Before the council existed, the three counties in Region 10 had no shared structure for allocating opioid settlement dollars. Jefferson County is Colorado's fourth-largest county, home to more than half a million residents across a mix of urban, suburban, and foothills communities. Gilpin and Clear Creek counties are small mountain counties whose per-capita share of settlement funds would not have covered the cost of the staff person required to administer them. Each county could have run its own program, but the two smaller ones would have received amounts too small to move the needle and the region would have lost the shared administrative capacity that a single council provides.
The Colorado Attorney General's office convened local leaders in 2021 to build a statewide framework for regional opioid abatement councils. Region 10's commissioners chose to pool their regional shares and smaller local shares under a single council. Jefferson County kept some of its local share for a separate county opioid task force. Gilpin and Clear Creek counties routed their local shares into GROC, and the region opened a cross-regional collaboration funding pool so any of the 19 participating local governments could bring a proposal directly to the council between the biannual major cycles.
As GROC's grantmaking work evolved, the council recognized that traditional procurement and community grantmaking serve different purposes and require different processes. Jefferson County's procurement team provided valuable support during GROC's initial funding cycle; however, the council sought a framework more specifically designed for grantmaking, including application review, award administration, monitoring, and accountability.
Working with Jefferson County, GROC developed a Standard Operating Procedures Manual outlining its grantmaking processes and a Fiscal Agency Relationship Policy clarifying the County's role as fiscal agent. Together, these structures allow GROC to administer its grantmaking responsibilities through processes tailored to the council's work while maintaining appropriate County oversight and safeguards for the fiscal agent.
What They Built
GROC is a governance body. The council is composed of one county commissioner from each of the three counties, a city representative from each county, a designee from local law enforcement and other seats filled by regional stakeholders. An advisory council of subject-matter experts, service providers and people with lived experience meets alongside the council and shapes the funding priorities that the voting body then approves.
Jefferson County is the fiscal agent under a memorandum of understanding, further clarified through a written fiscal-agency relationship policy, the latter being the first of its kind among Colorado's regional opioid abatement councils. The Fiscal Agency Policy establishes the framework for Jefferson County to serve as fiscal agent for an external entity such as GROC. It requires the fiscal agency relationship to clearly define the respective rights, responsibilities, and obligations of the County and the entity it supports. The policy also provides a process for using alternative procedures when standard County processes are not well suited to the work, provided those procedures are reviewed and determined to be sound and not create undue risk to the County. GROC maintains its own voting processes, its own grant-making cycles and its own contracting decisions outlined in their Standard Operating Procedures manual, without routing through the Jefferson County Board of Commissioners. Jefferson County handles the bank account, insurance, contract execution, and fiscal agency administrative functions required by federal and state compliance.
A dedicated program manager, Dr. Chelsea Shore-Miller, joined in October 2024 and the position is funded through the planning and coordination line of Exhibit E. Placing the position outside the 10% fiscal-agency admin cap gave the council the capacity to run a professional grant-making operation without constraining fiscal-agent overhead. Before the program manager role was created, the council operated with a contract facilitator from The Steadman Group, which supplied the setup expertise and best practices that a first-year ROAC does not yet have on its own bench.
GROC runs its grant portfolio on a unified grant-making platform, Euna, that covers the full life cycle from application to post-award to closeout. Every voting member is trained as a reviewer with a personal portal. Each application receives a scorecard aligned to the application materials, and the platform produces averages, ranges and medians that the council uses to decide which proposals advance. Applicants who advance receive 20 minutes of group discussion, and each reviewer argues for the proposals they scored. Every grant awarded is tracked on the same platform through expense reporting, program evaluation and closeout.
Key Program Components
Who You Need at the Table
What made a willing partner essential vs. optional?
A partner is required when the council cannot function without them. The Attorney General's framework provided the region with a starting point that many states outside Colorado lacked, and it guided the council through its early operational decisions. Jefferson County gave the council the compliance backbone it could not have built on its own from day one. A dedicated program manager made professional grantmaking and consistency possible. The advisory committee brought depth of knowledge that the voting body lacked.
A helpful partner extends reach or shortens the learning curve. The Steadman Group's early facilitation contract gave the council best-practice guidance from other ROACs at a time when the council did not have a program manager to internalize that work. External evaluation through Omni Institute provided accountability and transparency. The SAFE Project's views of addiction training helped the council recognize how preconceptions enter application scoring, a design intervention GROC leaders credit with reducing the friction that competing views create between voting members.
Budget Breakdown
What is the minimum viable budget to replicate this?
A single-county council can run on a fraction of what a tri-county regional council requires. The true floor for a regional council is a fiscal-agency relationship policy that allows council-specific processes within the fiscal agent’s oversight framework, a dedicated program manager funded through planning and coordination and a grant-making platform that handles the full life cycle. A small regional council could operate with a part-time program manager if the fiscal agent absorbs more of the operational load and the council uses a lighter platform. The grant management platform, a standard operating procedures manual, the evaluation practices and the reviewer training that produces defensible scoring are the four things to protect.
What Worked and Why
Specific decisions or design features that drove success
Adopting a written fiscal-agency relationship policy is the design choice that allowed GROC-specific processes within the county’s fiscal oversight framework and made everything else possible. The policy establishes that the council votes on its own grants, sets its own priorities and executes its own contracts through the fiscal agent, under the council's authority. GROC was the first regional opioid abatement council in Colorado to formalize this relationship, and other councils in the state have since studied the policy as a starting point for their own governance.
Three commissioners sit on the council, one from each county, which puts countywide decision-makers in the same room. Elected commissioners are accountable to their constituents and speak for their county's needs. The smallest county, with 6,000 residents, gets a share of a pool large enough to matter in a community that size, and its commissioner helps set the priorities that decide where the pool goes.
The council replaced its procurement model with a grant-making model, and that gave it the operational speed and flexibility it needed. Procurement rules are designed to buy goods and services with defined deliverables. Grantmaking is a distinct discipline that requires setting priorities, evaluating applicants' capacity, and adjusting between cycles ultimately treating grantees like partners in achieving outcomes. The shift required supplementing with a Standard Operating Procedures manual and building reviewer capacity, but it enabled the council to allocate dollars based on program need rather than procurement compliance.
GROC funds the program manager through the planning and coordination line, which gives the council capacity without cannibalizing fiscal-agent administrative costs. The 10% cap stays with Jefferson County for banking, contracting, and compliance functions. The council spent its first two years working with a contract facilitator from The Steadman Group, learned enough about its own operational needs to specify the role in-house, and then hired for it. That sequence (identify the need, start with a contract and bring the work in-house) has since shaped how GROC handles data analysis and other specialized functions.
Reviewers went through the SAFE Project's views of addiction workshop. The training helped reviewers recognize which view of addiction suited which application. A recovery application scored through the medical model looks weaker than it is, and so does a treatment application scored through the social model. Identifying those views in advance gave the council a common language for scoring conversations.
Lessons Learned
Separate governance from administration in writing. A written fiscal-agency relationship policy is useful. It defines what the council decides, what the fiscal agent handles and where the boundary sits. Regions without a written policy default to their host county's procurement rules, and changing that after the fact is harder than starting there.
Sit elected officials on the council. County commissioners are elected countywide and speak for the pulse of their communities. That mandate matters when the council is deciding how to allocate dollars across communities of different sizes.
Build reviewer capacity across the whole council. Every voting member trained as a reviewer produces stronger decisions than a small scoring group. Training on views of addiction adds a layer that helps reviewers recognize their own preconceptions in scoring.
Sequence the operational build: contract, learn, and then hire. A first-year facilitation contract gave GROC exposure to what other ROACs were doing and the operational structure it needed. When the council understood the role, it hired a program manager who then developed the Standard Operating Procedures manual. The same sequence has since worked for data analysis and facilitation support that the council may bring in-house.
Use every meeting to hear from the people the funding is for. Opening meetings with a story from a person in recovery, a service provider, or a family member kept the council anchored in why the work matters. In Year 3, the council pivoted to grantee share-outs so that voting members could continue to hear directly from the community about the funding's reach.