The House Committee on Government Operations heard testimony on a package of bills — House Bills 4805 through 4808 — that would update statutes for Children Trust Michigan and change several administrative details for the statewide child-abuse-prevention board.

Amy Tattery Lapp, chair of Children Trust Michigan, told the committee the bills are intended to "modernize and update statute based on the name change" and to make the board more accessible to qualified members across Michigan. She said CTM works with partners in every county, focuses on primary prevention, and supports local programs that aim to prevent child abuse and neglect before families enter the child-protective system.

The package includes several discrete proposals. HB 4807 would amend the Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Act to update outdated language and explicitly permit CTM to partner with a 501(c)(3), Lapp said. She told the committee that an audit-related provision that had appeared in an earlier Senate draft (s2) was removed on the Senate side; the House bills had not yet been amended at the time of testimony.

Lapp described HB 4805 as a request to change the statute that governs the trust fund so CTM could withdraw up to 8% of the trust corpus in limited circumstances, up from the current 5% cap, while maintaining a $23,500,000 corpus threshold. "The intent is not that we would take that 8 percent every every year at all," she said, adding that CTM has been working with Treasury to adopt a policy to govern any withdrawals and to avoid depleting the fund.

HB 4806 is a vehicle-code cleanup tied to the organization’s name change and license-plate designation. Lapp said the specialty plate initially generated about $1 million when introduced, but now produces about $80,000 annually because many other specialty plates exist. The current plate design, she said, will remain the pinwheel image previously adopted.

HB 4808 would amend portions of the Open Meetings Act to allow CTM’s geographically dispersed board members to participate when unforeseen, duty-related matters (for example, court obligations or emergency child-protection needs) prevent travel to Lansing. Lapp said the board is still committed to in-person meetings "— we're not trying to just do Zoom" — but that the organization has struggled at times to obtain a quorum, even after reducing meeting frequency from six to four meetings per year.

In response to questions from committee members, Lapp clarified that CTM’s 2025 budget is just over $4 million and that the organization receives most of its revenue from the state-established fund (created in 2014), supplemented by federal community-based child-abuse-prevention grants and private fundraising.

On the question of audits, Lapp said earlier language that would have shifted audit requirements or required a competitive bid was removed from the package to avoid delaying the bills; the Senate had amended that language in its s2 draft. Regarding the corpus level, Lapp told the committee the trust has "never been below" the $23.5 million threshold and that the corpus sits "almost at 29" million dollars currently. She also said staffing reductions have occurred this year as ARPA and other temporary funds ended.

Several committee members expressed support for CTM’s mission and asked clarifying questions about the plate revenue, audit language, and Open Meetings Act changes. No committee vote on the bills was recorded during the hearing; committee business continued and the panel adjourned after excusing a member.

Why it matters: CTM funds prevention-focused services in every Michigan county and argues that modest statutory changes would help the board operate statewide and stabilize funding during downturns. The requested 8% withdrawal authority is limited by the organization’s stated intent and pending policies with Treasury; the bills would not change the corpus threshold stated in statute.

Provenance: Testimony and Q&A on these bills appear in the committee transcript beginning when the committee chair introduced the CTM package (transcript block id "3", 04:58) and continuing through Lapp’s closing remarks and Q&A (transcript block id "5", 15:42).