🧾 Balance due
☀️ On the eve of the summer solstice, share some sunshine. Today: Florida opioid pain, the week in money, a potential win for coffee lovers, eight reasons to love your library and more.
Today’s newsletter is a 5-minute read.
A drugmaker funneled half a billion addictive oxycodone pills into Florida. It’s balking at paying.
Oxycodone manufacturer Mallinckrodt plc is signaling it may not honor a court deal to offset the harm it caused by fueling addiction here and across the United States.
Mallinckrodt agreed in 2020 to pay $1.6 billion to settle to thousands of claims.
Now it is balking at making this month’s scheduled $200 million payment.
It’s looking at “alternatives” to the payment despite demands, and threats, by a trust managing the settlement.
Behind the little-known name, there’s local pain. Purdue Pharma was the first to push highly addictive oxycodone into household medicine chests, but Mallinckrodt seized on the Florida opportunity.
It courted doctors in Delray Beach. It swamped a tiny Lake Worth Beach pharmacy with pills.
It supplied 66 percent of all oxycodone sold in Florida between 2008 and 2012, The Washington Post reported.
Worse: Mallinckrodt pills prescribed and bought here were shipped right back out of the state, the DEA believed, feeding addiction in other states.
Florida did not crack down on pill mills for a decade. When it abruptly turned off the prescription spigot, users turned to the next best thing: heroin.
As heroin overdose deaths mounted, lawsuits by states, towns and cities gathered steam. Money judgments against not just Purdue and Mallinckrodt, but distributors such as Walgreens and Walmart have been struck.
Not known: How much of the $1.6 billion Palm Beach County and local cities would receive from the Mallinckrodt settlement.
The bill, though, keeps growing. Local oxycodone deaths were eclipsed by heroin and now, by fentanyl variations. But pills and heroin have never gone away.
More than one in every 10 of Florida’s 1,111 oxy-related deaths in 2021 were in Palm Beach County, according to state medical examiner records. And two of every 10 people who lost their lives in Florida after using heroin died here, too.
A closer look at the local damage done by Mallinckrodt here, and Pat’s Palm Beach Post series on how Florida ignited the heroin epidemic, here.
💰The week in money: NextEra, Ocwen and affordable housing
🔌 Fallout from Florida Power & Light’s reported role in financing shadow candidates, spying on reporters and courting elected officials with job offers just keeps growing.
There’s a pending Federal Elections Commission complaint citing FPL and now, corporate class-action lawyers are making their move.
New York’s Gross Law Firm is suing FPL parent NextEra Energy in West Palm Beach federal court, alleging shareholder harm from “surreptitious orchestration of political misconduct.”
NextEra lost roughly $15 billion in market equity in January, the same day the company admitted the cluster of allegations put it at legal and reputational risk. It denies them.
The complaint, here; the FEC complaint, here, and one of the many, many news stories here.
NextEra shares (NYSE: NEE) closed at $75.59 Friday, up $1.23.
🏛️ Meanwhile, exiting court: Ocwen Financial. After years of legal wrangling with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the West Palm mortgage servicer secured a victory.
In 2017, CFPB charged that thousands of homeowners were harmed by Ocwen errors, including 1,000 who faced foreclosure.
Plus: 43,000 corrections to late fees, 27,000 corrections to loan terms and 5,000 corrections to loans’ interest rates were required.
“An absolute train wreck,” an Ocwen executive said of the mortgage processing technology tied to certain errors.
But Ocwen argued, and a judge agreed, that the suit was barred by terms of a previous suit and 2014 settlement.
Ocwen’s response to the court win, here and the original complaint, here.
Shares (NYSE: OCN ) closed Friday at $29.44, down $1.05.
💵 Finally: The elderly, vets and kids aging out of foster care are beneficiaries of county housing cash.
Palm Beach County commissioners earmarked $3 million for the 148-apartment Roseland Gardens for the elderly; $600,000 to ME-ST LLC to build the 14-unit 4825 Maine Street apartments for homeless or disabled vets; and $550,000 to Vita Nova Inc. to build Omega Apartments, 12 homes for young adults aging out of foster care.
☕️ Commission to mayor: Don’t evict Subculture Coffee from Clematis
Rodney Mayo last faced off with West Palm Beach Mayor Keith James in a courtroom.
The mayor won, forcing Mayo to abandon his run for mayor — against James. That gave the mayor a second four-year term with no opposition.
Yes, but. Mayo is a business owner who operates several Clematis Street restaurants as well as the Subculture coffee shop chain. Fallout from his aborted political campaign has changed his relationship with the city.
A bit of background: The city is the landlord for Subculture on the 500 block of Clematis and an attached vegan restaurant, Ve. Mayo opened Ve this year.
Since Mayo’s failed campaign, the city stopped allowing weekend road closures that Mayo had championed on the 500 block. The city evicted Mayo from the alley next to the coffee shop, which Mayo had outfitted with plush furniture.
And city officials told Mayo his second five-year lease for the coffee shop and the neighboring restaurant would not be extended when it ends in October. The city faulted Mayo for ignoring a clause in the lease that required action a year in advance.
But before seeking a new tenant, the city asked commissioners to weigh in. Should the city offer a month-to-month lease at double what it says is a $40-per-square-foot market rate? Should it renegotiate Mayo’s $28-per-square-foot lease? Or should it seek a new tenant?
The City Commission universally sided with Mayo. Negotiate a new contract, the five commissioners said.
“Trying to start over with a new business now would be difficult,” Commissioner Christina Lambert said. “The business that’s here has a longstanding following.”
Mayo hopes the city will negotiate in good faith and keep Subculture on Clematis, he tells ByJoeCapozzi.com.
Read what Joel found out about coffee roasting at Subculture’s store in Palm Beach Gardens, here.
🆓 561 insider: Eight free offerings you didn’t know you could get at your public library
This week’s summer hack: Get thee to a library.
After a few Stet staff meetings in the friendly, air-conditioned confines of our local branch, we looked deeper and found so much to love.
1. 🥪 Free lunch for children in the summer.
All Palm Beach County library branches serve lunch from 11:30 am to 12:30 pm Monday through Friday through July 28 to anyone under 18.
It’s a partnership with the Palm Beach County School District.
Come for lunch. Stay for the reading program.
2. 🦩 Birding backpack. These are popular.
The backpack comes with an adult set of binoculars, two children’s binoculars, a pocket Florida bird guide and more in a backpack with room for hats, sunscreen and water bottles.
Library card holders can reserve one to check out and return to any branch.
3. 🧑🏽💻 Mobile hotspot. Also popular.
Mobile hotspots can be set up almost anywhere, allowing you to browse the internet for free.
Search the online library catalog to determine availability.
Place a hold.
Mobile hotspots can be checked out for 21 days.
❤️ More to love: In 2019, the Palm Beach County library stopped charging late fees on overdue materials.
Five more things you can find and a swanky local library with 75,000 books that you’ve probably never heard of here.
🍏 The juice
Fresh-squeezed news from all over
🚂 Tri-Rail began testing train runs this week to Brightline’s MiamiCentral station. The tests move Tri-Rail closer to passenger service to the city center. (WPTV)
🛑 Florida’s new immigration law is pushing Guatemalan immigrants to flee again, Wilkine Brutus reports. (WLRN)
🎖️ Wellington clocked in at No. 8 in Fortune’s 50 best places to live for families. (Fortune)
🌳 Bitter fruit: Windstorms, and greening are leading to Florida’s smallest citrus crop in 100 years – and $10 a gallon of not-too-sweet OJ. (Washington Post)
🧍🏻♂️Notes from a father: A crisis thrust a dad into the leading role in his daughter’s life. (Palm Beach Post)
🎟️ Quiz answer: Making hay with circus tickets!
Last week, we asked: How did local billionaire Jeff Greene work his way through Harvard Business School?
The answer: Selling circus tickets across the U.S., Forbes magazine reports.
Forbes, which pegs Greene’s net worth at $7.2 billion, also reported that was not the extent of his student entrepreneurship: While working on his MBA, he bought a house and rented out rooms; by graduation, he owned 18.
🏀 🏒 Close but no cigar: South Florida’s upstart basketball and hockey teams went the way of the surprising FAU Owls and UM Hurricanes last week. All made it to the highest reaches of their games before losing.
The Miami Heat and the Florida Panthers each fell in five games in their respective sports' finals, just as the Owls and Hurricanes surprised the world with a trip to the NCAA Final Four before falling.
But the pattern may not die with the winter sports teams. The Miami Marlins have been hot of late, have the majors’ leading hitter (Luis Arraez) and hold second place in their division. And the Miami Dolphins rebuild will be on display with training camp in July.
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