Over the past year, mental health care advocates and providers repeatedly stressed how a mental health board could directly benefit patients to a county commission tasked with assessing the viability of placing a referendum on the primary ballot.<\/p>\n
Two-thirds of counties in Illinois have these mental health boards \u2013 sometimes called 708 boards after the decades-old Illinois bill-turned-law to grant the creation of such boards through a public vote \u2013 which approve funding for local social service organizations through some form of tax revenue.<\/p>\n
While grants regularly prop up nonprofit organizations, 708 boards can stabilize funding for mental health services and remain more reliable than the typical grant cycle process that nonprofit providers use to obtain funding.<\/p>\n
Jodi Dart is the state coordinator for the Association of Community Mental Health Authorities of Illinois, a nonprofit organization that coordinates collaboration and development among publicly funded boards that disburse tax dollars for local social services. She told Illinois Times the push for more community health care can be traced back to President John F. Kennedy.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe (Illinois) act came out of a movement during President Kennedy\u2019s term to move from institutional settings to providing community-based services,\u201d Dart wrote. While some mental health boards have been in place since the 1960s and 70s, she noted that more than a dozen boards in Illinois were formed after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.<\/p>\n
\u201cClose to 15 new boards have recently been approved by voters,\u201d Dart said. \u201cIt shows that communities really value what a 708 board brings to addressing the behavioral health needs of their residents.\u201d<\/p>\n
The push for a mental health board<\/p>\n
The Sangamon County Mental Health Commission was formed in 2024 after both the Mid-Illinois Medical District and Massey Commission formally recommended the county create a mental health board.<\/p>\n
Mike Murphy, president and CEO of The Greater Springfield Chamber of Commerce, chaired the Mental Health Commission, which met throughout 2025. The group presented its findings to the Sangamon County Board in November.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/EB6A6086.jpg\")
Sergio \u201cSatch\u201d Pecori, left, is a prominent Republican and CEO of Hanson Professional Services. He and Ryan Croke, a well-known Democrat who is president of the Mid-Illinois Medical District, have been making joint appearances to support the referendum that would create a mental health board for Sangamon County. PHOTO BY ZACH ADAMS<\/p>\n
\u201cThe message we heard was consistent and clear: our community is asking for stronger, more coordinated mental health support,\u201d said Murphy, a Republican member of the General Assembly from 2018 through 2021 and former owner of Charlie Parker\u2019s Diner. \u201cA 708 mental health board is a locally governed board that does not provide services directly but instead coordinates, funds and strengthens the network of providers already serving our residents.\u201d<\/p>\n
He emphasized that the county\u2019s existing support systems for people in need of mental health care are inadequate and, sometimes, even unknown to community members.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do have some programs that I described as \u2018an inch deep and a foot wide\u2019 that need to be a lot better,\u201d he said. \u201cThis mental health board will not provide services. They provide funding for people who do provide services. The other thing I hope they can do is help coordinate and educate the people on our services that we have here, because that came across loud and clear \u2013 we have a lot of services that people don\u2019t know about.\u201d<\/p>\n
The commission\u2019s final report<\/a> mentions sharing space with the county\u2019s Department of Public Health to save on costs. It also recommends addressing some gaps in care with a mental health board, should it be approved by voters, such as expanding co-response teams that send social service workers to ride with police officers, increasing housing opportunities and creating more capacity to care for psychiatric patients.<\/p>\n Sangamon County Board Chair Andy Van Meter, a Republican, told Illinois Times he envisioned little overhead for the mental health board, which would rely on volunteer board members to steward the tax money toward providers rather than a large staff that would decrease the amount of funds available for services.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want a very flat organization,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t want a lot of bureaucracy on the mental health board. Some staff will be necessary, but very minimal staff so that the money is really getting out into the field to help people.\u201d<\/p>\n The board would be comprised of working professionals, according to Van Meter.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t want politicians. We want professionals in the field of mental health.\u201d<\/p>\n Memorial Health\u2019s 2024 Community Health Needs Assessment<\/a>, which surveyed almost 850 people through area schools, human service agencies and the Sangamon County Department of Public Health, highlighted the growing need for mental health support. More than three-fourths of all respondents were women, and over half of them reported someone with mental illness in their household.<\/p>\n \u201cThat statistic just absolutely shocked me,\u201d Van Meter said.<\/p>\n Van Meter said he had already submitted his ballot early and voted yes on the referendum. He said should the referendum pass, the county expects to nominate board members within a month or so.<\/p>\n Ryan Croke, president of the Mid-Illinois Medical District, said the referendum is a big opportunity for Sangamon County to possibly inspire other central Illinois counties that are also without such boards.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re the biggest county in Illinois that doesn\u2019t have a body like this anywhere within it. Whether it\u2019s Winnebago, McHenry, Champaign, St. Clair or Jackson County, some of these mental health boards have been doing this for decades \u2013 I think if residents of those counties felt like there was not value in continuing them, they would reverse course,\u201d Croke said. \u201cNone of them have done that, not one.\u201d<\/p>\n The Mid-Illinois Medical District was the first group to publicly call for a mental health board in Sangamon County.<\/p>\n Croke, who is well-known in Democratic circles, has been making public appearances to support the referendum alongside Sergio \u201cSatch\u201d Pecori, a prominent Republican and CEO of Hanson Professional Services, a Springfield-based engineering and consulting firm.<\/p>\n Croke said his personal support for the referendum is \u201ca love-thy-neighbor thing.\u201d He said he\u2019s never seen a local issue bring together people of such varied political perspectives.<\/p>\n \u201cThe local Democrats, the local Republicans, the Farm Bureau, the NAACP, the hospitals are singing with one voice on this topic, and to me, that\u2019s the clearest indication that this isn\u2019t a throwaway political issue,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s certainly not a partisan issue. It cuts across all of the economic, social, racial and ethnic divides that are sometimes really hard to overcome.\u201d<\/p>\n Comparison to other counties<\/p>\n Only two other county mental health boards, McHenry and Winnebago, are funded through sales taxes and both of those Wisconsin-bordering counties have at least 90,000 more residents than Sangamon County.<\/p>\n Commissioners considered recommending a property tax but ultimately decided on a sales tax funding structure so as to not put the burden of the tax solely on Sangamon County residents, but tourists as well.<\/p>\n \u201cSales tax, to me, the selling point is the fact that we are going to have tourists and others chip in,\u201d said Josh Sabo, executive director of Heartland Housed and a county mental health commissioner, during a September commission hearing.<\/p>\n Jim Birge, manager of Sangamon County Farm Bureau, agreed with Sabo while speaking to commissioners. He said farmers in Sangamon County already pay up to $30,000 in agricultural and property taxes each year.<\/p>\n \u201cA sales tax, to the Farm Bureau, makes much more sense,\u201d Birge said. \u201cWe have a very large contingency of tourism as a county, whether it be from the Lincoln sites, whether it be from the State Fair (or) the new sports facilities.\u201d<\/p>\n Winnebago County voters overwhelmingly approved the sales tax referendum during the 2020 primary election with about 62% voting in favor<\/a>. Winnebago, where Rockford is located, is in its second year of a three-year, almost $60 million plan<\/a> to fund more than three dozen social service programs that focus on mental health treatment, case management, crisis response, housing and more. The Sangamon County Mental Health Commission recommended a mental health board adopt a similar strategy of planning three years ahead in addition to current fiscal year budgeting.<\/p>\n In 2024, just about 53% of McHenry County voters approved<\/a> a switchover from property tax to sales tax to fund their mental health board. Last month, McHenry County, which has had a mental health board since 1967, reported an increase in mental health funding<\/a> after its first year of funding the board through a sales tax. In its current fiscal year, McHenry County\u2019s Mental Health Board committed around $10 million to more than 30 different organizations.<\/p>\n Champaign County, which is closer in population size to Sangamon County, utilizes a property tax to fund nearly 40 programs with about $6 million<\/a>. Among other programs, the Champaign County Mental Health Board is currently funding crisis co-response teams, reentry housing vouchers for people exiting prison, general affordable housing vouchers and programs that hire specialized therapists such as counselors for pregnant women, children or survivors of sexual assault.<\/p>\n Providers want more resources<\/p>\n Several providers from Memorial Health told Illinois Times this won\u2019t be a \u201csilver bullet\u201d for all community health issues but would benefit the least-funded sector of the health industry, mental and behavioral health.<\/p>\n Memorial Health, a five-hospital system with 500-bed Springfield Memorial as its flagship, was affected by significant layoffs in 2023. Federal budgeting plans for Medicaid are expected to hamper the nonprofit\u2019s main source of revenue<\/a> by tens of millions of dollars each year, far beyond what a local mental health board could help cover.<\/p>\n Dr. Ted Clark, senior vice president and chief clinical officer at Memorial Health, said the nonprofit is still continuing to find ways to invest in mental health care despite the closures and cutbacks from 2023.<\/p>\n \u201cMemorial Health is committed to mental health. We\u2019re increasing our investment in mental health as we speak,\u201d said Clark, who is also a practicing emergency doctor. \u201cHistorically, in medicine, mental health hasn\u2019t been a profitable enterprise, so to speak, and it doesn\u2019t need to be \u2013 because it\u2019s a community service and there\u2019s downstream impact on the health of the community\u2026 Mental health care and physical health care are really one and the same, and bringing those two together and coordinating those two is the key priority for us.\u201d<\/p>\n He gave the example of substance use disorder as an issue that could be handled better with a mental health board in place to fund more community health workers<\/a>. Overdose deaths in Sangamon County outpace other kinds of incidental deaths, including homicides and accidents.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very, very different for me to go to a patient and say, \u2018Hey, here\u2019s a list of substance use disorder treatment centers\u2019 or \u2018Here\u2019s a list of counseling providers or mental health care providers, good luck.\u2019 It\u2019s a very different conversation than, \u2018Yeah, I\u2019ve got somebody on the phone here\u2019 or \u2018Hey, we\u2019ve got a liaison with our substance use programs\u2019 or \u2018with our mental health programs, who\u2019s going to speak to you and tell you how these programs play out,\u2019\u201d Clark said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know that these patients have better outcomes if we\u2019re able to provide a warm handoff and move them into the treatment space for substance use disorder, and it takes resources, it takes human beings to do that. It doesn\u2019t just happen magically,\u201d Clark said.<\/p>\n Dr. Abigail Galle-Buoy, a psychiatrist at Memorial\u2019s Behavioral Health unit, said Springfield has seen a great reduction in psychiatric care capacity since she\u2019s moved to town.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the 15 years I\u2019ve been here, I have seen us go from two robust inpatient psychiatric units \u2013 the one at St. John\u2019s was actually both a geriatric and adult unit \u2013 to only one at Memorial,\u201d Galle-Buoy said. She said Memorial\u2019s inpatient psychiatric unit, the only one in Springfield, has 38 beds.<\/p>\n \u201cSpringfield Memorial had to pick up the slack but our inpatient unit is often full, and that creates overflow for psychiatric care and psychiatric patients being in the ER, which is not the best care for them,\u201d she said. \u201cWe all do our best, but what we need is actual psychiatric care and having that available before when someone presents in the ER for crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n Galle-Buoy stressed that some of the social services that were helpful for patients, including medication management, organized support groups and other wraparound programs, have been cut in recent years.<\/p>\n Alicia Lehman, systems administrator for Behavioral Health and Social Services of Memorial Health, said the nonprofit\u2019s key workforces to expand include \u201cpeer specialists, community health workers, licensed clinical social workers, counselors, case managers and case coordinators,\u201d she said. \u201cThe more therapists we have, the more therapy we can provide. The more case managers we have, the more case management we can provide.\u201d<\/p>\n She and Clark also stressed the value of a mental health board to help the various mental health care providers around Sangamon County to regularly meet and discuss ideas. Members of the Sangamon County Recovery Oriented Systems of Care Council, which supports individuals in recovery from substance use, agreed that regular interorganizational meetings would be beneficial to help familiarize everyone with the services that Springfield already has.<\/p>\n Austin Dambacher, ROSC coordinator, and Whitney Devine, ROSC program manager, also said a successful mental health board should have multiple people with lived experience on it.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can make all of these grand plans and I could come up with what I think utopia should look like on paper,\u201d Dambacher said. \u201cHowever, if that utopia \u2013 the planning of it \u2013 doesn\u2019t involve the people that it serves being all of Sangamon County, then I\u2019m probably going to be doing them a disservice and an injustice.\u201d<\/p>\n Devine said it would also signal to people who are in need that their concerns are being taken seriously.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen community members are seeing that the work is done, there\u2019s a certain level of trust there to that to know, \u2018Oh, there are people on this board who actually lived this,\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Both said that the people they work with, primarily those who are in recovery from some type of substance use disorder, regularly cite a lack of insurance and long wait times as the main barriers to accessing medical care.<\/p>\n Dambacher emphasized his argument for voting yes on the referendum.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a lot of stuff going on in the world and there\u2019s a lot of people struggling, so why would we not try to help people? Because everyone deserves to be healthy and happy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Dilpreet Raju is a staff writer for Illinois Times and a Report for America corps member. He has a master\u2019s degree from Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and was a reporting fellow at Capitol News Illinois. He can be reached at draju@illinoistimes.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n