Mississippi women who work in government don’t get a single day of paid time off after giving birth or adopting a child. That’s about to change.
A bill that cleared the Legislature Friday will give six weeks of paid family leave to primary caregivers who are state employees. It now heads to the governor to be signed into law.
“This is a great day for Mississippi,” said Rep. Kevin Felsher, R-Biloxi, author of the bill. “We’re placing the value on mothers and children in a post-Roe vs. Wade society. And it’s time we put our money where our mouths are.”
House Bill 1063 will apply to state employees who adopt or give birth to a child and are the primary caregiver for that child. It applies to employees working for state government agencies but does not include public school teachers.
The bill passed the House unanimously with a vote of 118-0.
The original version of the House bill included eight weeks of paid leave for primary caregivers and two weeks of paid leave for secondary caregivers before it was amended by the Senate.
Felsher said he would consider expanding paid leave provisions in the future after seeing how effective it is.
“I’ve been strong for pro-life and for mothers and children, and also fathers, so I’m all about the family. And so if this is something we can continue discussions on in the future and it’s successful, I would gladly lead the charge on that.”
The policy has garnered wide support from leadership in both chambers. Speaker of the House Jason White and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann have championed it. Attorney General Lynn Fitch has also publicly spoken out in support of it.
Proponents say it acts as a recruitment and retention tool for the public sector, which tends to pay less than the private sector.
“We have trouble retaining workers because our pay sometimes is not as competitive as the private sector, so this is just one more tool to allow us to retain folks,” said Felsher.
Sen. Jeremy England, R-Vancleave, authored a similar bill which has also had overwhelming support this year. For him, the issue was personal – and simple.
“The exhaustion of having a new baby at home, and the joy of doing that – it’s something that you’ll never get back,” England said. “And so for that reason, as a father, it was very important for me to do that.”
England said he was surprised to learn that this policy didn’t already exist.
“We’ve had state employees that have children, and we celebrate with them, and I just had no idea they weren’t getting that time,” he said.
Mississippi will now join 36 other states in offering dedicated paid family leave for state employees, according to A Better Balance, a national nonprofit advocating for better work-life balance.
“The cost of living, the turmoil in the world … you look around and I imagine you do think ‘Wow, is it a great time to be a parent?’ And this should not be one thing that you have to think about, in my opinion,” Felsher said. “If you want to be a parent, we as a state need to be here in that role as an employer and say: ‘We’ll stand behind you being a parent and having a healthy child.’”
Highly pathogenic avian influenza – commonly known as bird flu – has been detected in a commercial chicken flock in Noxubee County.
Birds from the infected flock, which were being raised for meat, have not entered the food system.
This is the third case of avian influenza uncovered in commercial poultry in Mississippi since the spring of 2023. The virus, which is widespread in wild birds worldwide, has also been detected in migratory waterfowl in multiple areas of Mississippi since November 2024.
The public health risk associated with avian influenza in birds remains low, and poultry and eggs are safe to eat when they are handled and cooked properly, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Poultry and eggs should be cooked to an internal temperature of 165°F to kill bacteria and viruses.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Veterinary Services Laboratory notified the Mississippi Board of Animal Health that the poultry tested positive for avian influenza after testing samples from the flock at a laboratory in Mississippi and confirming the samples at a national laboratory in Iowa.
The area has been quarantined and birds on the property have been killed to prevent spread of the virus.
The Mississippi Board of Animal Health is working with the poultry industry to heighten monitoring of chicken flocks statewide.
There has been one death associated with avian influenza in Louisiana and 70 human cases reported in the United States since 2024. There have been no reported cases in humans in Mississippi.
Most reported cases have been mild, and cases generally last from a few days to less than two weeks. Symptoms include eye redness and irritation, fever, cough and a sore throat, though some symptoms can be more severe.
They play the SEC Basketball Tournament this week in Nashville. The weather calls for pleasant springtime weather until Saturday when there is a 100 percent chance of rain and the forecast calls for thunderstorms that are likely to be severe.
And you ask: Why the hell does that matter? They play basketball indoors.
Well, let me tell you, there was one March when it really did matter. Boy, did it matter.
We’re talking Atlanta and the Georgia Dome. 2008. It was a Friday night, March 14, although Friday the 13th should have been much appropriate. This was the quarterfinal round, last game of the night. Mississippi State vs. Alabama. Hell of a game. I was covering for the Clarion Ledger with my sidekick Kyle Veazey. We were on a fairly tight deadline, which is to say the newspaper was going to hold the presses until we filed our stories.
Of course, Alabama hit a desperation three-pointer to send the game into overtime. And now, State led 64-61 with two minutes, 11 seconds remaining. Just steps away from us, Bama’s Mykal Riley, who had hit the game-tying shot at the buzzer, dribbled the ball near the sideline with State’s Ben Hansbrough guarding him closely. Suddenly, we all heard this incredible roaring sound, really, like a freight train coming straight through the building, which began to shake.
I looked at Veazey, and managed this: “Tornado?”
Kyle replied, wide-eyed, “Earthquake?”
Riley stopped dribbling. Hansbrough quit guarding. Both looked up at the ceiling. They were so close to us, we heard Hansbrough say to Riley, “Sounds like a tornado.”
It was.
Astonished and frightened fans all stood and looked all around, trying to figure out what was happening. Some rushed for the exits. A catwalk, hanging far above us, menacingly swung back and forth as if it might fall any second. Veazey and I didn’t know whether we should hide under the press table, check our britches, or run like hell. Suddenly, deadline pressure was the least of our worries.
As it turned out, the winds had torn off a huge section of fabric siding, leaving a gaping hole near the ceiling on one end of the building. Rain blew through that. The Georgia Dome cooled considerably in just minutes. Nature provided a lot more air conditioning than needed.
On the State bench, Coach Rick Stansbury looked into the stands and finally spotted his wife, Meo, and one of their three sons. He texted her and asked where the other two sons were. She texted back that they were sitting down on the bench with him.
“I had a little lapse there,” Stansbury later told us.
We all did.
The delay lasted about an hour. The Bulldogs – Hail State and all that – eventually claimed a two-point victory. Alabama’s Riley launched a 3-pointer at the buzzer from nearly the same spot where he had been dribbling when Mother Nature so rudely interrupted. The ball went in the basket, then rattled out.
What came next was a waiting game. SEC officials and athletic directors met behind closed doors for a couple hours before a decision was made the tournament would be continued the next day at Georgia Tech. The Georgia Dome was declared unsafe.
Several of us reporters already knew before the announcement came. How? We were walking around near the loading docks when we saw workers loading up all the cameras and production equipment on the TV trucks.
“Where y’all headed?” we asked.
“Georgia Tech’s gym,” one of them answered.
To make a long, long story short, the tournament was finished on Saturday and Sunday in the much smaller Georgia Tech arena. The SEC lost hundreds of thousands of dollars – if not more – on ticket refunds. As fate did have it, Georgia, one of the two lowest seeds, shocked everyone but perhaps themselves by winning the whole thing. Dennis Felton’s Bulldogs, who had upset Ole Miss by two points in the first round, defeated Kentucky, Mississippi State and then Arkansas. They heroically won those last three games over two days (30 hours). Georgia had entered the tournament with a 13-16 record. The Bulldogs entered the NCAA Tournament with the SEC’s automatic bid at 17-16.
It was weird, by far the weirdest SEC Tournament on record.
Thankfully, nobody died. In retrospect, many might have perished or been badly injured if not for Mykal Riley’s shot that sent the Alabama-Mississippi State game into overtime. Had Riley not made that shot, thousands of fans would have been exiting the arena – or already out on the sidewalks and streets – when the tornado roared through downtown Atlanta.
When representatives of Alcorn State University, one of the oldest historically Black colleges in the state, came to the Capitol recently to recognize Hiram Revels’ importance in Mississippi history, members of the House of Representatives offered a round of applause during the presentation.
The special recognition came after the majority-GOP House unanimously passed a resolution honoring Revels, a Natchez resident, the first president of Alcorn State and the first Black person to sit as a member of Congress in Washington.
“In 1868, Revels became a delegate to the Mississippi State Republican Convention where he played a pivotal role in advocating for the rights of freedmen and ensuring their participation in the political process,” Democratic Rep. Gregory Hollaway of Hazelhurst said in his remarks about the groundbreaking figure.
But legislation pending in that same chamber could honor Revels more prominently. Yet, House leadership has declined to advance it out of a committee and will likely let it die, as they have for the past several years.
Rep. Robert Johnson III, the Democratic leader, authored a resolution to replace Mississippi’s two statues of Jefferson Davis and J.Z. George in the U.S Capitol’s National Statuary Hall Collection with statues of civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer and Revels.
Johnson told Mississippi Today he is open to other replacements or other proposal to replaces the statues.
House Rules Chairman Fred Shanks, who could advance the measure, told Mississippi Today last year he would consider legislation to replace the statues during the 2025 session, but he recently said he does not plan to address the issue this year.
“There hasn’t been a lot of talk about it,” Shanks said. “The big thing leadership is pushing this year is tax cuts.”
Each U.S. state is allowed to place two statues of people “illustrious for their historic renown” or “distinguished civil or military services,” after Congress passed a federal law in the mid-nineteenth century establishing the national collection.
Some Democratic House members who participated in the event honoring Revels noticed that the measures to install a statue of Revels in Washington have stalled during the session.
“It would speak volumes about our state racially and historically if we honored him with a statue in Washington,” Democratic Rep. Grace Bulter-Washington of Jackson said of Revels.
Senate Rules Committee Chairman Dean Kirby, a Republican from Pearl, also let two Senate measures that would have replaced the statues in the U.S. Capitol die in his committee.
Mississippi remains an outlier for its statues, even among other Southern states. The Magnolia State is currently the only state in the nation to honor two Confederate leaders in the National Statuary Hall Collection.
Several Southern states have replaced their original statues with more inclusive figures.
Alabama replaced a statue of Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry, a Confederate officer, with one of Helen Keller, a political activist and disability rights advocate.
Florida approved a measure to replace Confederate Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith with Mary McLeod Bethune, a civil rights activist and founder of a Florida university.
Arkansas replaced statues of Uriah Milton Rose, a Confederate sympathizer, and James Paul Clarke, a former U.S. senator, with statues of civil rights activist Daisy Bates and musician Johnny Cash.
But Mississippi, whose leaders often fret that the rest of the nation does not recognize the state for its many contributions to music, literature, and civil rights activism, continues to honor the legacy of people who fought to maintain slavery and white supremacy during their day.
Davis served in the U.S. House and Senate from Mississippi before becoming the first and only president of the Confederate States of America, which fought to preserve slavery. Davis later said in a speech to the Mississippi Legislature that if he had the chance to change his past actions about secession, he would not do anything differently.
George was a member of Mississippi’s Secession Convention in 1861, and he signed the secession ordinance that included these words: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world.”
George served in the Confederate Army and was also the architect of the 1890 Constitution that sought to reestablish white supremacy in the state and disenfranchise Black citizens from voting or holding elected office.
Mississippi’s legislative leaders could easily replace the two statues, as many Southern states have done. To change a statue, federal law requires a majority of lawmakers in both legislative chambers to vote to approve the replacement, and the state is required to pay for the costs of replacing the two statues.
The Senate passed a bill Wednesday that would increase the regulation and transparency of pharmacy benefit managers, which advocates argue will protect patients and independent pharmacists.
The legislation, authored by Sen. Rita Parks, R-Corinth, beefs up a House of Representatives bill focusing on the transparency of pharmacy benefit managers by adding language to tighten appeal procedures, bar the companies from steering patients to affiliate pharmacies and prohibit spread pricing – the practice of paying insurers more for drugs than pharmacists in order to inflate pharmacy benefit managers’ profits.
Parks said the bill, which passed 46-4, has the support of the House, which can now send it to the governor’s desk to sign or go to conference with the Senate to negotiate changes.
“This is the furthest we’ve been in two years,” said Parks. “We’re bringing fairness to the patient and to independent pharmacists.”
The bill’s passage came after a strong showing of support for reform from independent pharmacists, who have warned that if legislators do not pass a law this year to regulate pharmacy benefit managers, which serve as middlemen in the pharmaceutical industry, some pharmacies may be forced to close. They say that the companies’ low payments and unfair business practices have left them struggling to break even.
The Senate’s original bill died in the House, but the body revived most of its language by inserting it into a similar House bill, House Bill 1123, which was authored by House Speaker Jason White.
The Senate made several concessions in the most recent version of the legislation, including forgoing a provision that would have required pharmacy benefit managers to reimburse prescription discount card claims within seven days. These claims are currently paid within 60 to 90 days, which pharmacists argue is a burdensome timeframe.
The bill is a “good start” to real pharmacy benefit manager reform and transparency, said Robert Dozier, the executive director of the Mississippi Independent Pharmacy Association.
“The independent pharmacists are pleased with the current form of House Bill 1123,” he said. “They did not get everything they wanted, but they got what they needed.”
The bill also gives the Mississippi Board of Pharmacy more tools to conduct audits and requires drug manufacturers, pharmacy benefit managers and health insurers to submit data to the Mississippi Board of Pharmacy, which will be available to the public.
Sen. Jeremy England, R-Ocean Springs, said he is concerned the bill will lead to higher health insurance costs for employers, including the state itself, which provides health insurance to state employees.
Pharmacy benefit managers negotiate rebates, or cost savings, for employers, and some critics of pharmacy benefit manager reform argue that regulating the companies’ business practices will lead to higher insurance costs for employers.
England said that Mississippi employers stand to lose tens of millions of dollars and that regulation could deter new businesses from coming to the state.
“This language that we are trying to put into state law here goes too far, in fact it goes to the point where it could end up costing jobs,” he said.
A vote requested by England to determine if a fiscal note is necessary for the bill failed.
Parks said she disagreed that the bill would raise state health insurance costs and called England’s concerns a “scare tactic” meant to deter legislators from passing the bill.
England also proposed an amendment to the bill to remove self-funded insurance plans, or health plans in which employers assume the financial risk of covering employees’ health care costs themselves, from a section of the bill that prohibits pharmacy benefit managers from steering patients to specific pharmacies and interfering with their right to choose a particular pharmacy.
Self-funded health plans often use pharmacy benefit managers to administer prescription drug benefits and process claims.
Parks argued that excluding self-funded health plans from those guidelines would remove the fundamental protections the bill affords pharmacies and patients.
England’s amendment failed.
“Mississippi’s been a beacon in where we have stood with PBM,” Parks said. “We need to continue to be that beacon and not go backwards.”
One of the state’s top basketball coaches, Tadlock overcame the loss of all five starters from last year’s championship team and losing his leading scorer this season, to win a second straight state championship and the seventh in school history. Tadlock talks about how he works with a 40-man basketball roster and maintaining a remarkable winning culture at Raymond.
The National Transportation Safety Board has completed its initial visit at the site of the medical helicopter crash Monday that claimed three lives with plans to issue a preliminary report in 30 days.
But the final report will take one to two years, said NTSB member Todd Inman at a news conference Tuesday.
“We want to not just find out what happened but why it happened and to recommend changes to prevent things like that from happening in the future,” Inman said.
Inman said AirCare 3 departed from the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, where it had dropped off a patient, at 12:28 p.m. Monday and was operating at 2,500 feet.
“At some point during the flight, AirCare 3 ceased communicating with Air Traffic Control but made communication with base operations,” Inman said.
The pilot said they were having a flight control problem and were going to attempt a landing in a clearing. The helicopter, which Inman identified as a Eurocopter, never made it. Investigators found “tree scratch marks consistent with rotor strikes.”
At 12:40, a resident reported through 911 seeing a helicopter crash. There was an initial fire plume followed by an explosion, Inman said.
Because of the remote location, it took firefighters two to three hours to extinguish the blaze, he said.
Investigators had to wade through 6-8 inches of water to reach the helicopter, which had “extensive thermal damage,” Inman said.
Two UMMC employees and the pilot died in the crash: Dustin Pope, a flight nurse and the base supervisor for AirCare in Columbus; Jakob Kindt, a critical care paramedic from Tupel; and Cal Wesolowski of Starkville, a pilot with Med-Trans, which leases helicopters to UMMC.
Columbus-based AirCare 3 was, one of four helicopters UMMC leased from Med-Trans. AirCare has been temporarily grounded. UMMC said it is working with health care and medical transportation services around the state to fill the gap.
Mitch Gallow, a senior aerospace engineer with NTSB Central Region in Denver, is leading the investigation.
“We’ve pulled records regarding the crew and the aircraft,” he said.
He said removing the wreckage may be dependent on a weather system moving into the state Friday, expecting to bring in heavy rain.
Advocates, Medicaid recipients and their family members gathered outside the Capitol Tuesday to urge both state and federal lawmakers to “protect and expand Medicaid now.”
Speakers, who held signs with slogans such as “pro-life span,” included representatives from the Mississippi Coalition for Citizens with Disabilities, members of Care4Mississippi, parents of children on Medicaid and one 9-year-old girl.
Their presence was in response to recent federal action that threatens Medicaid funding nationwide. In February, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a budget resolution that calls for the committee that oversees Medicaid and Medicare to cut $880 billion over 10 years.
“This budget may not explicitly mention Medicaid, but the math is clear,” said Pam Dollar, executive director of the disability coalition. “Lawmakers cannot meet their aggressive cuts without slashing Medicaid or Medicare. Even if they cut everything unrelated to health care, they would still be $600 billion short. In a state that prides itself on being pro-life, how can we stand by and allow this to happen?”
There are currently over 600,000 Mississippians enrolled in the program. Medicaid covers half of Mississippi’s children, three in four of its nursing home residents and three in eight people with disabilities, according to KFF.
Susan Stearns traveled from Oxford to speak at the rally. She’s used to driving – and routinely makes a two-hour round-trip car ride every time her son Oscar is in need of a pediatric specialist.
Oscar and his twin were born prematurely, causing Oscar to develop cerebral palsy, a seizure disorder and blindness. The Stearns’ first medical bill from their sons’ stay in the neonatal intensive care unit was $5.7 million.
Susan Stearns speaks during a press conference advocating to protect Medicaid at the Mississippi Capitol in Jackson, Miss., on Tuesday, March 11, 2025. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
Stearns, a professor at the University of Mississippi, and her husband work full-time and have private insurance, which does apply to Oscar – but doesn’t address the gamut of his needs.
“Commercial insurance is designed for helping when you’ve broken a leg, or you need your gallbladder removed,” Stearns explained. “It is not prepared to deal with long-term, intensive care needs.”
Oscar accesses Medicaid through what’s called a disabled child living at home waiver, which helps pay for nursing care and therapy for Oscar during school. It also pays for equipment and services that allow the Stearns to give their son care at home. Without it, Oscar would need to go to a pediatric nursing home – of which there are currently none in Mississippi, though one is projected to open in Jackson later this year.
“Without the waivers, where can these kids and their families look for the support they need?” Stearns asked. “How can their parents hope to keep their families together and their children happy and healthy? How will Mississippi have failed them?”
Luciana Pendleton, 9, shares her personal experience during a press conference advocating to protect Medicaid at the Mississippi Capitol in Jackson, Miss., on Tuesday, March 11, 2025. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
One 9-year-old girl named Luciana gave testimony of how Medicaid helps her. She’s aware that the conditions she has – including autism and ADHD – are expensive. She says Medicaid saved her life during her stay in the NICU and now helps pay for medication that helps her think.
“If I didn’t have my medicines I’d feel like a blank piece of paper without any drawings,” she told the crowd.
Since Mississippi has not expanded Medicaid, advocates fear that any cuts to the federal program will affect the poorest of the poor, pregnant women, children, seniors and those with disabilities in Mississippi.
“It is long past time to stop using the most vulnerable to subsidize the least vulnerable,” said Jayne Buttross of the disability coalition.
Another Medicaid rally will be held on the south steps of the Capitol on March 18 at 1 p.m.
Mississippi lawmakers are poised to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs fromK-12 schools in addition to universities, while the creation of a taskforce to study “efficiency” in the state’s higher education system would likely be delayed.
The Senate has passed an amended version of a House bill to shutter or ban DEI programs in all of the state’s public schools, a policy Mississippi’s Republican-controlled Legislature has advanced as President Donald Trump targets DEI across the federal government. The bill’s authors have argued the measure will elevate merit in education.
Legislative Democrats, most of whom are Black, have argued DEI programs were created to correct centuries of discrimination against minorities and women, and that eliminating them would set Mississippi back.
The Senate tweaked House Bill 1193 before passing the legislation with a party-line vote Tuesday, offering two key concessions to the House. The Senate agreed to expand the ban on DEI to K-12 schools. The Senate’s original bill only focused on universities. The upper chamber also agreed to drop a provision that would have created a taskforce to study how the state’s higher education system can become more efficient.
Some feared the information compiled by the taskforce could later be used to justify closing or merging universities, which the provision’s author, Senate Universities and Colleges Chairwoman Nicole Boyd denied.
The elimination of the efficiency taskforce the Senate initially proposed would mark the end of an effort to tie restrictions on DEI to a broader review of the state’s higher education system.
Boyd, a Republican from Oxford who had envisioned marrying anti-DEI legislation to the taskforce, said she plans to hold committee hearings this fall to examine some of the issues she hoped the taskforce would probe.
“Those are issues that we definitely are still going to look at, we’re just going to choose the path of doing that through the committee process,” Boyd said.
The Senate-approved legislation otherwise inserted much of the language from a separate anti-DEI measure it passed into the House bill. The move likely sets up negotiations in a conference committee later in the session. Alternatively, the House could opt to concur with the Senate’s changes and send the bill to Gov. Tate Reeves’ desk for his signature.
On Tuesday, Republican House Universities Chairman Rep. Donnie Scoggin, who would likely be a House negotiator, said he believed the lower chamber could agree to the Senate-approved legislation. But Scoggin cautioned that he wanted to read the amended version of the bill in depth first.
If the House declines to concur with the Senate’s changes in favor of negotiating further in a conference committee, the sticking points would center on how the law would be enforced and how DEI is defined, lawmakers said.
The Senate removed a sweeping list of “divisive concepts” the House aimed to ban from being taught in classrooms. The far-reaching House legislation would have also dictated how schools define gender. The Senate’s altered proposal instead introduces a definition of DEI as programs designed to change the composition of a school’s faculty or student body based on identity.
The move is part of a push to ensure the admissions and hiring processes at Mississippi universities are solely merit-based, said Republican Sen. Tyler McCaughn, one of the Senate version’s sponsors.
Sen. John Horhn, a Democrat from Jackson, said Mississippi would lose ground on longstanding efforts to make the state a more welcoming place for minorities.
“For a piece of legislation like this to come up, it says we are interested in turning the clock back,” Horhn said. “We’ve had enough of this fairness mumbo jumbo, and even though we’re calling what we’re doing being fair, we’re returning to unfairness.”
The Senate and House also diverge on how they would enforce a DEI ban. The Senate would direct universities to develop an internal complaint and investigative process for looking into those accused of violating the law. Only students, faculty and contractors would be able to file complaints.
The original House bill threatened to withhold state money based on complaints that anyone, not just students and faculty, could lodge. It would empower people to sue schools accused of violating the law.
DEI programs have come under fire mostly from conservatives, who say the programs divide people into categories of victims and oppressors and infuse left-wing ideology into campus life. Proponents say the programs have been critical to combatting discrimination and ensuring institutions meet the needs of increasingly diverse student populations.
The deadline for the House to concur with the Senate’s changes is March 27.
The federal welfare agency is finally asking Mississippi for its money back – a long-anticipated next step in rectifying the state’s squandering of millions of tax dollars meant to reduce poverty.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services sent a penalty notice to Mississippi in December. The agency determined the state must pay back nearly $101 million in welfare money it says officials misused during former Gov. Phil Bryant’s administration.
The letter represents the first time since the scandal broke in 2020 that HHS has confirmed rules were broken when Mississippi spent welfare money on things such as building a volleyball stadium and a million-dollar public speaking contract with a celebrity athlete. HHS is the federal agency that oversees the $16.5-billion annual Temporary Assistance for Needy Families block grants to states.
The Mississippi Department of Human Services, which administers the federal funds for the state and is still suing dozens of defendants over the misspending in ongoing civil litigation, has disputed the amount.
The welfare scandal took down a former state agency director, two nonprofit directors and a few others who pleaded guilty to federal crimes including fraud and bribery. They still await sentencing for their roles in the scheme, which involved diverting money from the poor to the pet projects of their friends, family and famous athletes.
But the penalty notice seeks administrative relief separate from criminal proceedings, signaling the next stage of the federal government’s response to the scandal.
The federal government used a combination of findings from the Office of State Auditor’s 2019 annual audit of federal funds released in May 2020 and a forensic audit commissioned by the state welfare agency released in October 2021 to arrive at a total penalty of $100,880,029.
The Office of Family Assistance inside HHS’s Administration for Children and Families is handling the matter for the federal government.
In response, Mississippi Department of Human Services Director Bob Anderson said he and the agency “appreciate the gravity of the suggested penalty,” but asked for additional time to fully respond.
“Through our ongoing discovery efforts, we have been attempting to validate the allowability or the misuse of a large portion of the funds,” Anderson wrote in a February letter. “Thus, it is the position of the agency that the amount of penalty proposed by OFA is based on insufficient information and is disputed by the agency.”
The audits categorize misuse in several ways. Of the total $101 million, $12.5 million was deemed fraud, waste or abuse – primarily because of conflicts of interest or favoritism by former Mississippi Department of Human Services Director John Davis.
Most of the penalty instead consists of “unallowable” purchases. This is spending that either did not comply with federal regulations or did not come with proper documentation. The forensic audit notably lacked records to account for $40 million in TANF spent by Mississippi Community Education Center – the nonprofit at the center of some of the most attention-grabbing purchases – lumping the entire expenditure as a “questioned cost.”
Some purchases that make up the overarching welfare scandal figure may have been legal, but five years later, state officials are still seeking documentation to parse that out and potentially reduce the penalty.
Mississippi Today requested the penalty letter and response, as well as any other follow up communications, from the state welfare agency but was told any additional correspondence was exempt due to attorney-client privilege.
“We can’t speak to ongoing negotiations in a legal matter,” said agency spokesperson Mark Jones.
The Mississippi Attorney General’s Office similarly would not comment. A spokesperson for the Governor’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Mississippi Today.
The notice from HHS was more than four years in the making,achieved right at the close of the Biden administration. Many of the top level officials at the Office of Family Assistance are no longer with the agency after Donald Trump took office in January.
Federal welfare officials had been holding off on making a request of repayment until they secured more information, or until getting clearance from the U.S. Department of Justice, which was conducting a parallel criminal investigation.
“There are several ongoing federal and state investigations, which will likely mean a lengthy process before we can make our determination,” the federal agency told Mississippi Today in 2020, while Trump was still in his first term, “however, we are eager to come to a final penalty resolution and ensure that the state replaces any misused federal TANF funds with its own state fund.”
Federal prosecutors eventually charged five people in the welfare scandal: Davis, former professional wrestlers-turned-state contractors brothers Brett and Ted “Teddy” DiBiase, nonprofit director Christi Webb and Florida-based neuroscientist Jake Vanlandingham.
Separately, federal prosecutors charged nonprofit founder Nancy New and her son Zach New – operators of Mississippi Community Education Center – for defrauding the state of public education dollars.
Teddy DiBiase is the only one who has fought the federal charges. His trial was most recently set for this August, with additional delays possible.
The penalty Mississippi received is unprecedented. The rules around states doling out TANF funds to nonprofits are so lax, and the federal government’s authority to regulate the spending so weak, that states are rarely, if ever, held accountable for misspending. States have been penalized for failing to meet requirements for distributing direct cash to poor families, such as meeting a threshold for recipients who are working or come from two-parent households.
One expert said she was unaware of the federal government ever sending a penalty notice to a state for using TANF money on prohibited outside purchases.
“To the best of my knowledge this is the first one,” said Elizabeth Lower-Basch, a longtime economic justice advocate who has spent her career working on policy within TANF, including 10 years at the federal welfare agency.
The letter is one step in the federal government’s administrative process for recouping the funds and will result in a back and forth negotiation before the state must actually pay the penalty.
“First, you may dispute the penalty … if you think the information or method that we used were in error or insufficient or that your actions in the absence of federal regulations, were based on a reasonable interpretation of the statute,” the letter from HHS reads.
Once negotiations are complete, the federal government will begin reducing the $86.5 million Mississippi is allotted in TANF money each year and require the state to make up the difference with state money until the penalty is paid.
Mississippi’s widespread TANF misspending was first revealed through arrests by the Office of State Auditor in February of 2020 after an eight-month investigation, starting with a tip that a former agency employee brought to Gov. Bryant in June of 2019 about an alleged kickback to Davis. The state had been approving as little as 2% of people applying for direct cash assistance through the TANF program, and while the recipient rolls dropped, private organizations received an unchecked windfall of money to provide ancillary services.
Annual audits of federal grant spending called the “single audit,” which the state auditor conducts on the federal government’s behalf each year, had not flagged the significant abuse that Davis and others were carrying out in the TANF program from 2016 to 2018. If not for the internal tip, it may have never been uncovered.
“HHS has very limited ability to research what states are doing that basically they’re required to rely on the state single audit for misuse of funds,” Lower-Basch said. “So unless something is directly brought to their attention, they’re not allowed to go poking into the state’s funds on their own.”
Meanwhile, this flexibility in TANF has not changed. Proposed federal rule changes to TANF published in 2023, which would have tightened regulations on how states could spend non-cash assistance funds, are dead after the Biden administration withdrew them last fall.
“There are a lot of things I don’t think Congress intended for TANF to be used for, and in some cases I don’t think is the highest priority for the use of TANF funds, but it is lawful,” Lower-Basch said. “The idea that what very low-income people, who are struggling to keep their kids housed and fed and going to school, need is someone rich and famous telling them to work harder is disgusting, but it’s allowed.”
