Yager Pushing To Keep Methadone Out Of Rural Counties

Senator Ken Yager spoke to the Overton County Commission Monday about his plans to keep methadone clinics out of rural counties.

Yager said he will be refiling a bill that requires a county commission’s approval before a methadone clinic can be put in an unincorporated area. Yager said the goal of the bill is to keep clinics from taking advantage of rural areas without any zoning.

“They don’t need to be putting stuff in these rural communities,” Yager said. “What they’re trying to do is they’re trying to find rural communities that are close to a larger town like Cookeville where they’re going to get all that drug traffic from Cookeville coming in here. And I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want that.”

Yager said the original bill was proposed after Cedar Recovery attempted to set up a methadone clinic in Rickman last year but that bill was not passed. Yager said the bill would only apply to counties without zoning so it may not have any effect on the clinic set for Putnam County.

“Their zoning should take care of that,” Yager said. “That’s why that was the whole basis because we weren’t zoned here but Putnam County probably is and it’s certainly not considered a rural county compared to Overton.”

Yager said he was unaware that the clinic in Putnam received a certificate of need until commissioners told him at the meeting.

“When this all happened last year, the people that were pushing that came to see me and told me they were withdrawing it,” Yager said. “So this is news to me. We’ll bring the bill again. This battle is not over. I promise you that.”

Yager said last year’s version of the bill actually passed in the Senate but failed in the House of Representatives.

“The Senate only has nine committees,” Yager said. “The House has a lot more committees and it just got lost in some of those committees. The people who sell that stuff used that confusion to kill the bill.”

In other business, commissioners elected County Executive Steven Barlow to be the chairperson of the commission starting next month. Current Chairperson Darwin Clark was appointed as the pro tem chairperson in the event that Barlow is absent or needs assistance.

Commissioner Lee Richards announced his retirement, citing his age as a reason for the decision. Richards said he has been talking with Overton County resident Nathan Dale about having Dale fill the vacant seat.