Committee hears Children Trust Michigan package seeking statutory updates, temporary access to larger share of corpus

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 HB 4807 would amend the Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Act to update outdated language and explicitly permit CTM to partner with a 501(c)(3), Lapp said.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…