The Massey Commission presented drafts of final recommendations to the public on Sept. 15, with dozens of desired policy changes, expansions and reaffirmations for the Sangamon County Board and local entities to consider.
Four different commission work groups that have met over the past year shared various goals and direct actions they wanted to see addressed by the county or community. To hear those presentations and view the corresponding slide deck, visit the Massey Commission YouTube page. Between each work group’s presentation of items to consider, members of the public, commissioners and some work group members discussed what was missing from the drafted ideas.
Broadly, the work groups expressed a desire for more mental health services, including a civilian-led crisis response team, more robust Know Your Rights campaigns for interactions with police and new recruitment strategies for counselors, police officers and teachers.
Multiple groups also mentioned the need to implement the Community Emergency Services and Support Act, which allows 911 operators to transfer calls to 988 crisis counselors in order to have mental health professionals respond to such crises, rather than police. Gov. JB Pritzker signed a law adding to the 2021 legislation last month.
The commission was created in 2024 to address “systemic issues in law enforcement practices, mental health responses and community relations” one month after Sonya Massey called 911 only to be shot and killed in her home by a sheriff’s deputy.
Kelly Hurst, the commission’s managing director, opened the Monday night public forum by acknowledging the inaction of past commissions formed in the wake of a police officer killing a Black person. She quoted a report from the nonprofit Forward Through Ferguson that referenced Lindsey Lupo’s 2010 book, Flak-Catchers: One Hundred Years of Riot Commission Politics in America.
“‘Historically, these commissions are appointed to calm the public and give the impression that the government is doing something – that they ‘give the appearance of action but are little more than a tool to maintain the status quo,’” she said, quoting the book’s author. “We have heard those same things about our own commission and we are committed to figuring out how to do this.”
Sontae Massey, a cousin of Sonya Massey, told Illinois Times after the meeting that he’s confident in the commission’s commitment to seeing things through.
“I think this was a good start,” Massey said, referring to the Memorial Learning Center auditorium room where the commission meeting was held. “I do think that commissions are formed to kind of suppress the masses, but I don’t think this one, in particular, was created to do that. The board chair, Andy Van Meter, and (Sen.) Doris Turner were very interested in moving the conversation forward, so I applaud them for that.”
Massey referenced the recent death of 21-year-old Demartravion “Trey” Reed in Mississippi, who was found hanging from a tree on his college campus about 30 miles from the Arkansas state line. Campus officials said there was “no evidence of foul play” but also requested local, county and state assistance in investigating the death.
“Even today, they found a young Black man hung at Delta State (University) and it just – at first deflated me because you see all these traumatic things going on in the world and you kind of lose hope for a second,” he said.
Still, he said, the hurdles facing marginalized communities can’t be understated and the commission itself can steer local entities toward considering what those communities within Sangamon County experience.
“I start thinking, ‘Well, I’m at the perfect place, I’m in the Massey Commission’ and we have all of these agendas to work on,” he said, referring to the collaborative nature of the evening. “This just gives us more things to work on. That’s why I think this is work that can continue for the next 10 years, and we wouldn’t work on the same thing every year.”
Last month, Pritzker signed a bill into law increasing the documentation police departments must ask for when screening applicants. At the time, Turner said, “There’s still more work that needs to be done, whether it continues as the Massey Commission or whether it continues as another iteration of that.”
RELATED
Massey Commission strives for long-term change
Securing mental health funding
In its early days, the commission also issued a resolution calling for Sangamon County to establish a dedicated mental health board, also known in Illinois as a 708 Board. That’s something Massey said he’d like to see. “We definitely need the 708 mental health board,” he said.
Earlier this month, county administrator Brian McFadden showed the Sangamon County Mental Health Commission – a separate short-term entity formed by the Sangamon County Board to assess the costs and benefits of establishing a county mental health board through a public referendum set for March 2026 – two different tax levy models the county could utilize to fund a mental health board:
| Proposed sales tax increase | Estimated annual revenue |
|---|---|
| 0.25% | $7,361,183 |
| 0.50% | $14,722,366 |
| 0.75% | $22,083,549 |
| Proposed property tax increase | Estimated annual revenue |
|---|---|
| 0.05% | $2,717,250 |
| 0.10% | $5,434,500 |
| 0.15% | $8,151,750 |
Mental health commissioners voiced support for putting a sales tax – rather than a property tax – on the public referendum, though no final decisions have been voted on by the commission. There remain options for commissioners to consider how to best structure either of the tax increments, including sunset provisions and limits on modifying the tax percentage between years.
“I think property tax, as members of this community, we’re all going to be paying all of that, right? 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.
Jim Birge, manager of Sangamon County Farm Bureau, also shared that sentiment when speaking before the commission. He said farmers in Sangamon County already pay up to $30,000 in taxes each year.
“Farmers are already heavily, heavily burdened disproportionately from other members of the community by being what we call asset rich, cash poor. The Farm Bureau has a standing policy that, for general purposes, we do oppose the increase of personal property tax as a burdensome cost of doing business for our farmers,” Birge said. “A sales tax, to the Farm Bureau, makes much more sense… 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.”
The next Sangamon County Mental Health Commission meeting will be Oct. 1 at 6 p.m. inside the Sangamon County Complex, 200 S. Ninth St. The meetings are open to the public.
Hurst said she expects the Massey Commission to work on a final report through all of October, with room for at least one more public meeting, before hopefully sharing the report with the County Board in December.
