Influencing your local CMH board (who’s who and how to testify)
Somewhere in your county, twelve people you’ve never met vote on the policies and budgets that shape your family member’s services. Their meetings are public. Almost nobody shows up.
Showing up once, before you have an urgent issue to raise, teaches you the room, the format, and the personalities. That familiarity makes your first real testimony far more effective than walking in cold during a crisis.
12 appointed members
Board members are appointed by the county board of commissioners, not elected, and typically serve staggered terms.
Sets policy and budget
The board’s core function is approving CMH policy direction and budget allocations for the entire county system.
Meetings run mostly empty
Public comment periods exist at almost every meeting. Almost nobody uses them.
Open Meetings Act applies
Michigan law guarantees these meetings are public, with notice requirements and a right to attend.
3-minute testimony window
Most boards limit public comment to roughly three minutes per speaker. Structure your testimony to fit.
Data beats emotion, but both matter
Specific issues backed by concrete data and a proposed solution carry more weight than general frustration alone.
What effective testimony includes
Name the exact policy, budget line, or decision
A number, a wait time, a documented denial
How this affects your family, briefly and specifically
What you’re actually asking the board to do
Request a written response or a future agenda item
Trina attended her first CMH board meeting simply to understand the format, expecting to say nothing. Three months later, she testified for exactly three minutes about a specific documentation policy that had delayed her son’s respite hours for six weeks. She cited the delay, the specific policy language, and one proposed fix. The board asked staff to review the policy at the next meeting. It wasn’t an immediate win. It was the first time anyone with power had actually looked at the problem directly.
When you want to influence your CMH board, here is how to start
Escalation ladder
- 1Find your CMH board’s meeting schedule and location.
- 2Attend one meeting simply to observe the format.
- 3Identify one specific issue, policy, or budget line to address.
- 4Draft a three-minute testimony with a concrete ask.
- 5Deliver testimony during the public comment period.
- 6Follow up in writing requesting a response or future agenda item.
Have ready
- Your CMH board’s meeting schedule and public comment rules
- A specific issue, with dates and documentation if possible
- A three-minute testimony draft, timed in advance
- A concrete, specific ask (not a general complaint)
- Contact information for following up in writing afterward
Twelve people vote on your family’s services in a room that’s almost always empty. Showing up is most of the battle.
Trina walked into her first CMH board meeting with no intention of speaking, just curiosity about who actually made the decisions that had shaped six frustrating months of her son’s respite care. The room held maybe four other people, not counting staff. She came back three months later with a specific problem: a documentation policy that had stalled his respite hours for six weeks. Three minutes, one specific ask, and the board directed staff to review the policy at the next meeting.
Who actually sits on a CMH board
A typical Michigan CMH board has around twelve members, appointed by the county board of commissioners rather than elected directly. These are the people who set policy direction and approve budgets for your county’s entire community mental health system, and most families have never seen their names, let alone attended a meeting where they vote.
Why the meetings matter, and why nobody comes
Under Michigan’s Open Meetings Act, CMH board meetings are legally public, with advance notice requirements and, typically, a public comment period built into the agenda. Attendance is nonetheless usually sparse, which means the handful of people who do show up have outsized influence simply by being present in a mostly empty room.
What makes testimony actually effective
Effective public comment names a specific policy, budget line, or decision, backs it with concrete data (a wait time, a documented denial, a specific dollar figure), and closes with a clear, actionable ask. General frustration is understandable and valid, but a board with limited time responds more directly to a request it can actually act on.
What testimony should not be
Testimony that becomes a personal attack on a specific staff member, or that rambles across five unrelated grievances in three minutes, tends to lose the room rather than move it. Focus, specificity, and a concrete ask are what separate testimony that gets remembered from testimony that gets politely thanked and forgotten.
Trina’s three minutes didn’t fix everything overnight. It put a real problem in front of the twelve people with the actual power to fix it, which is more than silence had ever accomplished.
Jim Palasty is the founder of OASIS for Autism and a single father of an adult autistic daughter in Michigan.