Mitch McConnell says he helped win $3.3M for former Gov. Ernie Fletcher’s nonprofit

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., this week said he helped secure $3.33 million in federal funds for a nonprofit founded by his onetime Republican ally, former Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher, to fight drug addiction in rural areas.

“With the help of the Fletcher Group’s targeted prevention, treatment and enforcement programs, Kentucky’s rural communities can take a stand against addiction and save lives,” McConnell said in a prepared statement.

The Fletcher Group Inc. is one of three “Rural Centers of Excellence” that have shared in many millions of dollars in drug abuse grants in recent years from the Health Resources and Services Administration at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The Fletcher Group seeks out federal funds and uses that money to provide technical and research assistance for recovery housing programs that offer addiction treatment and job training.

It has paid the Washington lobbying firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld at least $120,000 a year since 2018 to lobby congressional spending committees on its behalf, according to federal lobbying disclosures.

“We do not own any facilities or provide direct care,” said Andrew Howard, a former legislative aide to McConnell who now serves as the Fletcher Group’s policy director.

“Rural communities often have capacity challenges,” Howard said. “Because you’ll have one kind of spark plug in the community that’s wearing multiple hats, and they don’t have that capacity to understand or to figure out or to find information about new best practices or recovery housing programs. So that’s where we come in — to be boots on the ground and walk with those community stakeholders.”

The Fletcher Group, founded in 2017, has locations in London and at the home of Ernie Fletcher and his wife, Glenna, near Sarasota, Fla. It employs more than 30 people working out of 13 states. From 2018 to 2021, it collected nearly $8.8 million in public funds, with steadily rising revenues, according to its most recently available tax returns.

McConnell announced previous HHS grants for The Fletcher Group of $6.66 million in 2019 and $3.33 million in 2021. McConnell also announced an award of $1.68 million from the Appalachian Regional Commission in 2019. But those grants are doled out to recipients over a period of time, not all at once, Howard said.

On its website, the nonprofit says Ernie Fletcher was inspired to follow up on the Recovery Kentucky housing program that he established during his one term as governor in the mid-2000s.

Fletcher, 70, is a doctor who served three terms as the congressman from Central Kentucky before he was elected governor in 2003. He lost his re-election bid to Democratic challenger Steve Beshear, father of the current governor, Andy Beshear.

Ernie and Glenna Fletcher together collected $850,345 in compensation from The Fletcher Group during the three years from 2019 to 2021, according to the nonprofit’s tax filings. Each of them is identified as co-chair and co-founder of The Fletcher Group. Additionally, Ernie Fletcher is listed as chief medical officer.

Chief executive officer David Johnson received $615,753 during those same three years, according to the tax filings. One of Ernie Fletcher’s relatives, Danny Fletcher, was paid $68,072 for his work at the nonprofit over those three years. Danny Fletcher was identified in 2020 as the nonprofit’s director of faith-based initiatives.

This latest round of HHS funding will help The Fletcher Group and its partners to accomplish several specific projects in Kentucky, Howard said.

Among them will be the opening of a recovery home in Bell County for pregnant women and new mothers that will offer holistic treatment and job training, Howard said. Also, there will be a pilot project at Southeast Kentucky Community & Technical College to help recruit and train certified peer support specialists, professionals who provide support to others struggling with addiction or mental health issues, he said.

Other projects at The Fletcher Group include a mapping tool that it says it developed with the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago to show the recovery resources available in every county in the United States, as well as the demographic information and overdose mortality rate in each county.

And working with the Kentucky Injury Prevention and Research Center at the University of Kentucky, The Fletcher Group says it created a recovery housing web portal that includes a nearly real-time registry of recovery options and their current availability, plus a management system to track the outcomes of residents.

On another project, funded by a $2.2 million grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, The Fletcher Group is helping the Kentucky Injury Prevention and Research Center to evaluate the effectiveness of a program aimed at reducing the risk of nonfatal and fatal drug overdoses. Ernie Fletcher is identified as serving as one of the co-investigators on this project.