Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, state legislators and several Oklahoma cities have raised concerns about who would get the $85 million from a settlement the Oklahoma attorney general reached last month with opioid manufacturer Teva Pharmaceuticals Industries Ltd.

In an amicus brief filed Friday, the governor, along with Oklahoma House of Representatives Speaker Charles McCall and the state's Senate President Pro Tempore Greg Treat, wrote that the Teva settlement did not comply with an Oklahoma law enacted last month that made it “unconstitutional for any settlement agreement to direct how, when or where the legislature appropriates state monies.”

Separately, on Friday, Oklahoma City and eight other cities in Oklahoma filed a motion to intervene asking the judge to allocate “a fair proportion of the $85 million Teva settlement directly to cities and counties.” They also feared that the Teva deal would release their claims against the opioid companies.

Both filings followed a June 10 order in which Cleveland County District Judge Thad Balkman refused to approve the Teva settlement without more briefing. On Monday, Balkman said he would bring in retired Oklahoma Supreme Court Judge Steven Taylor to attempt to resolve the dispute, according to a source who attended the hearing.

Tony Puckett, a shareholder at McAfee & Taft in Oklahoma City, who represented the cities, did not respond to a request for comment. A spokeswoman for the governor's office declined to comment, and both legislators did not return calls.

Neither a spokesman for Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter, nor Steven Reed, a Philadelphia partner at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, who represents Teva, responded to requests for comment.

The filings, in part, reflect an internal battle going on in the opioid lawsuits between the state attorneys general and cities and counties of those states. On Friday, plaintiffs' lawyers in the federal multidistrict litigation, which coordinated more than 1,800 cases brought by cities and counties across the country against opioid companies, filed a motion to certify a class to negotiate a potential nationwide settlement. The proposed structure would include three representatives who would negotiate with state attorneys general, who have pursued their own cases in state courts.

The conflict already arose in the first opioid settlement in the nation: Hunter's $270 million settlement with another opioid manufacturer, Purdue Pharma, reached March 26. Five of the same Oklahoma cities opposing the Teva deal sought to intervene in the Purdue settlement, which provided a $12.5 million fund for other “political subdivisions,” fearing that it would release their own claims. Comanche County also filed a motion over the deal, which it said paid “a mere fraction of what counsel for the state is to receive in attorney fees.” The county estimated it would receive about $18,500, which would provide “minimal assistance in abating the public nuisance of the opioid epidemic in Comanche County.”

“So, roughly 73% of the settlement went to one national center that will be inaccessible to most Oklahomans and does nothing to combat the opioid crisis for the first responders and individuals battling the epidemic in counties across Oklahoma,” wrote Matthew Sill, of Fulmer Sill in Oklahoma City. He and W. Mark Lanier, of The Lanier Law Firm in Houston, who represents Comanche County, did not respond to requests for comment.

Purdue, responding to the cities' motion, called the concerns hypothetical and speculative, while Hunter described the filing as “illogical on its face” that sets a “dangerous precedent.”

On April 25, Balkman ruled that any Oklahoma political subdivision “is not a party to, or bound by, or otherwise subject to the terms” of the settlement, unless they choose to participate—a decision that Purdue said in court documents that it plans to appeal.

“Movants are once again concerned that the settlement agreement and consent judgment may attempt to release the political subdivisions' claims without their participation or consent,” wrote Puckett in Friday's brief about the Teva deal.

For the governor, the issue is a bill he signed into law May 24, two days before Teva's settlement. The legislature had swiftly introduced the bill, which the governor signed into law May 24, following concerns about the Purdue settlement, which mostly went to outside attorneys and a center at the Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences.

In their amicus brief, the governor and two legislators wrote that the bill merely affirmed existing law mandating that the legislature, and no one else, should decide where state funds go. Doing otherwise would be an “unconstitutional breach of the separation of powers,” they wrote.

“To be clear, it is the intent and commitment of applicants to expend the above settlement funds and any other monies attributable to this lawsuit for the abatement of the nuisance related to the opioid crisis, but to do so in a statutorily legal and constitutional way,” they wrote.

They added that such a requirement excluded any legal fees that the attorney general agreed to pay private counsel.