Long waitlists to obtain mental health care may shorten if supporters of a mental health board are successful during the March 17 primary election.
A wide range of community leaders, along with every hospital and health care organization in Sangamon County, have voiced support for the referendum that would use revenue from a limited sales tax to distribute millions of tax dollars to social service and mental health care providers through a dedicated mental health board. Local taxes as a funding mechanism for mental health services is something two-thirds of counties in Illinois have already approved, although most utilize property taxes.
The 0.5% sales tax increase (an additional 5 cents of tax per $10 of goods purchased, or 50 cents per $100) would not apply to certain goods – including groceries and medicine – or services. It would apply mainly to merchandise, restaurant spending and recreational purchases.
Even with those exceptions, county administrator Brian McFadden estimates such a tax would generate about $14.7 million annually for a mental health board, creating one of the most well-funded mental health boards in the state. Supporters have pointed to various federal and international cost savings analyses that show how money invested in mental health care saves taxpayers money in the long run through fewer emergency calls, hospital visits, jail bookings and court processes.
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.
Two-thirds of counties in Illinois have these mental health boards – sometimes called 708 boards after the decades-old Illinois bill-turned-law to grant the creation of such boards through a public vote – which approve funding for local social service organizations through some form of tax revenue.
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.
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.
“The (Illinois) act came out of a movement during President Kennedy’s term to move from institutional settings to providing community-based services,” 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.
“Close to 15 new boards have recently been approved by voters,” Dart said. “It shows that communities really value what a 708 board brings to addressing the behavioral health needs of their residents.”
The push for a mental health board
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.
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.
Sergio “Satch” 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
“The message we heard was consistent and clear: our community is asking for stronger, more coordinated mental health support,” said Murphy, a Republican member of the General Assembly from 2018 through 2021 and former owner of Charlie Parker’s Diner. “A 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.”
He emphasized that the county’s existing support systems for people in need of mental health care are inadequate and, sometimes, even unknown to community members.
“We do have some programs that I described as ‘an inch deep and a foot wide’ that need to be a lot better,” he said. “This 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 – we have a lot of services that people don’t know about.”
The commission’s final report mentions sharing space with the county’s 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.
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.
“We want a very flat organization,” he said. “We don’t 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.”
The board would be comprised of working professionals, according to Van Meter.
“We don’t want politicians. We want professionals in the field of mental health.”
Memorial Health’s 2024 Community Health Needs Assessment, 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.
“That statistic just absolutely shocked me,” Van Meter said.
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.
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.
“We’re the biggest county in Illinois that doesn’t have a body like this anywhere within it. Whether it’s Winnebago, McHenry, Champaign, St. Clair or Jackson County, some of these mental health boards have been doing this for decades – I think if residents of those counties felt like there was not value in continuing them, they would reverse course,” Croke said. “None of them have done that, not one.”
The Mid-Illinois Medical District was the first group to publicly call for a mental health board in Sangamon County.
Croke, who is well-known in Democratic circles, has been making public appearances to support the referendum alongside Sergio “Satch” Pecori, a prominent Republican and CEO of Hanson Professional Services, a Springfield-based engineering and consulting firm.
Croke said his personal support for the referendum is “a love-thy-neighbor thing.” He said he’s never seen a local issue bring together people of such varied political perspectives.
“The local Democrats, the local Republicans, the Farm Bureau, the NAACP, the hospitals are singing with one voice on this topic, and to me, that’s the clearest indication that this isn’t a throwaway political issue,” he said. “It’s certainly not a partisan issue. It cuts across all of the economic, social, racial and ethnic divides that are sometimes really hard to overcome.”
Comparison to other counties
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.
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.
“Sales tax, to me, the selling point is the fact that we are going to have tourists and others chip in,” said Josh Sabo, executive director of Heartland Housed and a county mental health commissioner, during a September commission hearing.
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.
“A sales tax, to the Farm Bureau, makes much more sense,” Birge said. “We 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.”
Winnebago County voters overwhelmingly approved the sales tax referendum during the 2020 primary election with about 62% voting in favor. Winnebago, where Rockford is located, is in its second year of a three-year, almost $60 million plan 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.
In 2024, just about 53% of McHenry County voters approved 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 after its first year of funding the board through a sales tax. In its current fiscal year, McHenry County’s Mental Health Board committed around $10 million to more than 30 different organizations.
Champaign County, which is closer in population size to Sangamon County, utilizes a property tax to fund nearly 40 programs with about $6 million. 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.
Providers want more resources
Several providers from Memorial Health told Illinois Times this won’t be a “silver bullet” for all community health issues but would benefit the least-funded sector of the health industry, mental and behavioral health.
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’s main source of revenue by tens of millions of dollars each year, far beyond what a local mental health board could help cover.
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.
“Memorial Health is committed to mental health. We’re increasing our investment in mental health as we speak,” said Clark, who is also a practicing emergency doctor. “Historically, in medicine, mental health hasn’t been a profitable enterprise, so to speak, and it doesn’t need to be – because it’s a community service and there’s downstream impact on the health of the community… 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.”
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. Overdose deaths in Sangamon County outpace other kinds of incidental deaths, including homicides and accidents.
“It’s very, very different for me to go to a patient and say, ‘Hey, here’s a list of substance use disorder treatment centers’ or ‘Here’s a list of counseling providers or mental health care providers, good luck.’ It’s a very different conversation than, ‘Yeah, I’ve got somebody on the phone here’ or ‘Hey, we’ve got a liaison with our substance use programs’ or ‘with our mental health programs, who’s going to speak to you and tell you how these programs play out,’” Clark said.
“We know that these patients have better outcomes if we’re 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’t just happen magically,” Clark said.
Dr. Abigail Galle-Buoy, a psychiatrist at Memorial’s Behavioral Health unit, said Springfield has seen a great reduction in psychiatric care capacity since she’s moved to town.
“In the 15 years I’ve been here, I have seen us go from two robust inpatient psychiatric units – the one at St. John’s was actually both a geriatric and adult unit – to only one at Memorial,” Galle-Buoy said. She said Memorial’s inpatient psychiatric unit, the only one in Springfield, has 38 beds.
“Springfield 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,” she said. “We 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.”
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.
Alicia Lehman, systems administrator for Behavioral Health and Social Services of Memorial Health, said the nonprofit’s key workforces to expand include “peer specialists, community health workers, licensed clinical social workers, counselors, case managers and case coordinators,” she said. “The more therapists we have, the more therapy we can provide. The more case managers we have, the more case management we can provide.”
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.
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.
“We can make all of these grand plans and I could come up with what I think utopia should look like on paper,” Dambacher said. “However, if that utopia – the planning of it – doesn’t involve the people that it serves being all of Sangamon County, then I’m probably going to be doing them a disservice and an injustice.”
Devine said it would also signal to people who are in need that their concerns are being taken seriously.
“When community members are seeing that the work is done, there’s a certain level of trust there to that to know, ‘Oh, there are people on this board who actually lived this,’” she said.
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.
Dambacher emphasized his argument for voting yes on the referendum.
“There is a lot of stuff going on in the world and there’s a lot of people struggling, so why would we not try to help people? Because everyone deserves to be healthy and happy,” he said.
Dilpreet Raju is a staff writer for Illinois Times and a Report for America corps member. He has a master’s 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.
This article appears in March 12-18, 2026.
Leave a comment