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JXN Water, the federally appointed manager of the capital city’s water system, is working to boost the revenue it collects through water bills. Its goal is to establish enough revenue so that the city won’t be reliant on federal funds, in addition to having the money the city needs to pay for sewer repairs.

Last year, JXN Water set up a new rate structure, which started showing up in residents’ bill this past February. The changes include an increased price for the average rate-payer, and a SNAP discount that has struggled to get traction due to a dispute over recipients’ privacy (a federal judge ordered the release of SNAP data in April, although the U.S. Department of Agriculture is appealing the decision). The utility is also in the process of replacing the city’s infamously unreliable water meters.

To get more people paying bills, JXN Water has also started to show its teeth, disconnecting service to customers who aren’t making payments. So far, manager Ted Henifin told Mississippi Today, the utility has prioritized disconnecting places that get water without accounts, as well as multi-family homes with large outstanding debts.

Given the history of Jackson’s water system, we want to know how residents are responding to the recent changes. How are residents handling the new prices? What are their experiences with being disconnected, especially when their landlord is the one responsible for making payments?

If you live in Jackson, please take a few minutes to fill out the survey below:

The post Tell us about paying your water bill in Jackson appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The company that operates a Hattiesburg poultry plant where a 16-year-old employee died last year while cleaning a machine has settled with the federal agency tasked with worker safety. 

Mar-Jac Poultry agreed to pay nearly $165,000 in fines and implement safety measures to protect employees from well-known machine hazards, the U.S. Department of Labor announced Wednesday. 

The night of July 14, 2023, Duvan Perez was cleaning a deboning machine at the plant when the machine turned on and pulled him in, Occupational Safety and Health Administration found in its investigation of the incident. 

“Tragically, a teenage boy died needlessly before Mar-Jac Poultry took required steps to protect its workers,” OSHA Regional Administrator Kurt Petermeyer said in a statement. “ …  Enhanced supervision and increased training can go a long way toward minimizing risks faced by workers in meat processing facilities.”

In addition to addressing the violations, the company must implement several enhancements relating to the use of lockout/tagout standards, which are procedures to shut down equipment before maintenance and other activities are performed. The enhancements include training, a risk and hazard assessment of current procedures and monthly audits for its use on the sanitation shift for a year. 

Earlier this year, OSHA cited Mar-Jac for 17 violations relating to Perez’s death, with 14 classified as serious and proposed over $212,000 in penalties. Records also show the company issued at least eight citations at the Hattiesburg plant between 2020 and 2021 – incidents that included deaths, amputations and other injuries. 

“Mar-Jac was aware of these safety problems for years and had been warned and fined by OSHA, yet did nothing. Hopefully, Mar-Jac will follow through this time so that no other worker is killed in such a senseless manner,” Biloxi attorney Jim Reeves, who represents Perez’s family,  said in a Friday statement. 

Perez’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Mar-Jac, agency Onin Staffing and others in February. As of Friday, that case is ongoing in the Forrest County Circuit Court. 

Federal child labor laws prohibit anyone under the age of 18 from working in meat processing plants because of the dangerous machinery. 

Mar-Jac and other defendants, such as the staffing agency that placed Perez at the plant, denied the allegations of the lawsuit. 

In a statement released shortly after the teenager’s death, Mar-Jac said staffing companies are responsible for verifying employee’s age and identification. Additionally, an attorney for Mar-Jac told NBC News last year that the teenager used identification of a 32-year-old man to get the job. 

Perez’s case was also highlighted in the NBC documentary about child labor in slaughterhouses. 

The post Mar-Jac settles with OSHA over teen worker’s death appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The University of Mississippi plans to shutter its Division of Diversity and Community Engagement following a yearlong internal review, the chancellor announced in a campus-wide email Friday.

In its place, the state’s flagship university will create a Division of Access, Opportunity and Community Engagement to redouble its efforts to help more students attend and graduate college amid the looming enrollment cliff facing Mississippi’s institutions of higher learning.

“We are steadfast in our commitment to the transformative power of higher education, and now is the time to prioritize our efforts to broaden access to higher education,” Chancellor Glenn Boyce wrote in the campus-wide email. “However, access alone is not enough. We must be committed to providing opportunities that cultivate academic attainment which leads to meaningful lives and careers.”

The changes come without a ban in Mississippi, as has occurred elsewhere, on state spending on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and just three years after the university announced an ambitious plan for diversity on campus called “Pathways to Equity.”

In higher education, DEI traditionally refers to a range of administrative efforts to comply with civil rights laws and foster a sense of on-campus belonging among those populations. But in Mississippi and across the country, some Republicans and influential conservative think tanks have argued that DEI is more nefarious.

In particular, State Auditor Shad White has repeatedly warned about what he sees as the dangers of DEI in speeches, interviews and on social media.

“We’re glad universities are responding to public pressure to end these controversial, racist programs,” White’s communications director, Jacob Walters, wrote in a text message. “But a university saying they’re doing this is like Mississippi Today saying they’re a legitimate news organization; just because you say it doesn’t mean it’s true. We’ll continue to keep Mississippi taxpayers informed on whether their money is spent on controversial programming.”

Boyce’s statement did not make reference to potential anti-DEI legislation in Mississippi. A bill that would have done so died in committee this past session.

Most universities across Mississippi have already implemented changes to their diversity offices, Mississippi Today reported earlier this month.

But unlike its counterparts, Ole Miss says it will submit its proposal to the governing board of all eight universities in Mississippi, the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees.

Neither the University of Southern Mississippi nor Mississippi State University submitted the changes made to their diversity offices to IHL.

“We did not have to seek IHL for the change, as it was simply a change in the office name,” Nicole Ruhnke, USM’s chief communications officer, wrote in an email.

Mississippi State University did not request approval from IHL for its internal reorganization of the Division of Access, Opportunity and Success because it typically only submits name changes for academic units or the naming of colleges in honor of major donors, according to an email from the university’s vice president for strategic communications.

“That said, our leadership maintains a robust dialogue with IHL’s leadership on almost all matters,” Sid Salter wrote in an email.

At Ole Miss, the new division will oversee three areas, according to Boyce’s email and a press release that he linked to: “Access and Community Engagement,” “Access and Opportunity” and “Access and Compliance.”

Several university offices and functions will be brought under its aegis, including Equal Opportunity and Regulatory Compliance, Student Disability Services, Digital Accessibility, the Bonner Leaders Program and Ole Miss Opportunity, which is a last-dollar scholarship for low-income students from Mississippi.

“The mission for our division will enable us to better address the unique needs of our community and ensure that every individual has the support they need to thrive,” the division’s vice chancellor, Shawnboda Mead, said in the release. “This will enhance pathways for success, opportunity and achievement.”

The press release also mentioned the statewide Ascent to 55% initiative, which seeks to grow the number of Mississippians with a college degree or equivalent credential.

A major challenge for this initiative is the enrollment cliff facing Mississippi, a trend in which the state will have less high school graduates going to college. The press release notes that from the 2017 to 2022 school years, the number of Mississippians graduating from high school and attending college in-state dropped by nearly 7%.

This has partly fueled enrollment declines at universities across Mississippi, particularly at the regional institutions like Delta State University and Mississippi University for Women.

But not so much at Ole Miss. Though the university’s enrollment has stayed roughly the same since 2014, it has recently seen a record-sized freshmen class, largely due to increasing enrollment of mostly white, out-of-state students, according to IHL data.

In his email, Boyce thanked members of the campus community who contributed to a yearlong organizational and program review of the division. It’s not clear who he consulted.

“I appreciate the members of our campus community who provided invaluable feedback and guidance,” Boyce wrote.

The post Ole Miss to close diversity division appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Getting the Memo appeared first on Mississippi Today.

William Bradford Huie believed Carolyn Bryant lied when she testified that Emmett Till attacked her, but the author still published her fabrication, a long-secret memo reveals.

Huie’s reporting in his 1956 Look magazine article has been denounced for twisting and omitting critical facts, but this memo, for the first time, proves the writer purposely published falsehoods that became the official narrative for Till’s 1955 slaying for decades.

Wright Thompson, author of a new book about the Till case, “The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi,” called the memo “a smoking gun” that reveals “a long suspected but never quite proveable truth about Huie.”

While national debate rages over critical race theory, this memo shows “how hard it is to teach Black history, because part of white supremacy is lying about the past,” said Dave Tell, author of “Remembering Emmett Till.”

Thirty-three pages of “confidential” notes, labeled for destruction, show how Huie convinced Bryant’s husband, Roy, and his brother, J.W. Milam, to talk after an all-white Mississippi jury acquitted them. In return for telling how they murdered Till, the writer slipped them thousands in cash, refused to testify against them, repeated their lies and erased the Black witnesses who identified others in the lynch mob.

Keith Beauchamp, a producer for the 2022 “Till” film, whose 2005 documentary “The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till,” helped reopen the Till case — said Huie was far more passionate about making a movie than he was about telling the truth.

“I am ‘hot’ in Hollywood right now,” Huie bragged to an editor. “This Mississippi story, with proper releases, is a good bet for $100,000,” the modern-day equivalent of more than $1.1 million.

Sharing a “secret 15%” with the killers is “a damn good way for Milam and Bryant to make crime pay,” he wrote.

The lies that Huie published enabled the killers to justify their torture and killing of a 14-year-old boy, said Davis Houck, Fannie Lou Hamer Professor of Rhetorical Studies at Florida State University, where the memo, along with letters, are part of a new donation to The Emmett Till Archives at Florida State University Libraries. “Huie did generational damage to Mississippi and the nation by making Emmett Till an avatar for hate.”

Carolyn Bryant’s testimony ‘fabricated,’ Huie writes

On July 25, 1955, Emmett Till turned 14. When he had spare time, he liked playing baseball, but most of all, he loved humor.

“He would pay people to tell him jokes,” said his cousin, Wheeler Parker. “He was strictly fun.”

Weeks later, Till’s great-uncle, Moses Wright, visited Chicago and invited Till and Parker to come vacation with him in Mississippi for a couple of weeks before school started.

Till’s mother, Mamie, gave him permission, and he fished, swam and picked cotton with his cousins in the Mississippi Delta.

On a Wednesday evening, Aug. 24, 1955, he and his cousins visited Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market in Money. Parker bought an ice cream cone and went outside to finish it. Till stayed inside.

Roy Bryant told Huie that Till entered the store and said “yeah” instead of “yes.”

“The atmosphere in the store tensed,” Huie wrote in his memo. “Carolyn Bryant noted the ‘insult’ and became excited.”

When two other Black youths urged him to leave, Roy quoted Till as saying that he knew white women.

“Frightened, Carolyn Bryant hurried to get the pistol,” Huie wrote. “The Chicago youth ‘leered at her’ and whistled.”

Bryant’s getting the gun frightened the cousins, Parker said, and they sped away in Wright’s 1946 Ford. None of them, he said, had seen Till do anything inappropriate in the store.

After her husband’s arrest, Carolyn Bryant told defense lawyer Sidney Carlton that Till had bought bubble gum, grabbed her hand and asked for a date, according to Carlton’s notes, contained in Huie’s papers at Ohio State University Libraries.

When she pulled her hand away, she said Till asked, “What’s the matter, baby, can’t you take it?”

She said he also said goodbye and whistled at her, according to the lawyer’s notes.

Days before jury selection began in the September 1955 trial, Carlton announced to the press a much different story: Till had “mauled” her. The story ran in Mississippi newspapers and spread to those who wound up serving as jurors, according to interviews with them.

Carolyn Bryant claimed Till had “mauled” her, and she echoed that claim in her testimony. She depicted Till as a predator, grabbing her by the waist and refusing to let go. She claimed he told her that she didn’t need to be afraid because he had “f—ed” white women.

Huie wrote in his memo, “There appears no doubt that much of Mrs. Bryant’s testimony regarding physical contact with the Negro youth or alleged ‘obscene remarks’ was fabricated — probably at the suggestion of one of the lawyers.”

A day later, the killers changed their story, claiming Till attacked her and used obscene language. Huie published it without question.

Parker said he has spent a lifetime defending his cousin from Huie’s slander and many others who read his article and believed that Till had done something wrong.

“They had us ashamed to talk about it, he was denigrated so badly,” Parker said. “Like his mother said, people swallowed it [Huie’s article] hook, line and sinker.”

He continues to combat those lies, he said. “When I tell the story, they say it’s alleged. Not much credence is given to those involved.”

The Look article’s lies about her son wounded Mamie Till-Mobley, said Christopher Benson, co-author of her memoir, “Death of Innocence.”

Huie’s article turned Till into a “Black brute” and Milam into a decorated war hero, duty bound to punish this “uppity intruder,” he said. 

The article so upset Till-Mobley that she sued Huie and the magazine. 

The lawsuit failed in the end, Benson said, because the person who had been defamed, Emmett Till, was dead.

‘God, just let me live’

On Saturday evening, Aug. 27, 1955, Till joined his cousins on a trip to town, and on the way back, Parker said the driver accidentally ran over a dog.

“Emmett started crying,” he said. “That was the kind of person he was.”

They arrived home close to midnight, and after 2 a.m., the two half-brothers appeared at Moses “Preacher” Wright’s home, where Till was staying.

Roy Bryant pounded on the door and called out, “Preacher, it’s Mr. Bryant. Let me in.”

When Wright opened the door, the white men dashed in.

Parker, who was 16, woke to angry voices. A man with a pistol and flashlight came down the hall, and Parker readied for his life to end. He closed his eyes and prayed, “God, just let me live.”

The men walked by, and he heard them say they wanted “the fat boy from Chicago who did the talking,” he recalled.

Houck said the killers’ choice of words makes it obvious that Till never “mauled” Carolyn Bryant, or they would have said that.

Milam told Huie that he yanked the covers off Till and “ordered him to get the hell up and get his clothes on.”

When Wright’s wife, Elizabeth, objected, Milam said he replied, “Get your ass back there in bed and shut up — and I mean get in the goddamn bed!”

Huie wrote that she told him there was a third white man there that night. She identified him as Milam’s brother-in-law from Minter City. That was Melvin Campbell, whom the FBI concluded was part of the lynch mob, said Dale Killinger, the FBI agent who investigated the Till case in 2006.

But when Huie wrote the piece, he erased Campbell.

Before the killers left his home, Moses Wright testified that Milam told him, “If this is not the right boy, then we are going to bring him back.”

“Did Mr. Bryant or Mr. Milam ever bring him back?” the prosecutor asked.

“No, sir,” Wright replied.

Milam asked him how old he was.

“Sixty-four,” Wright replied.

Milam warned him that if he identified them, “you will never live to get to be 65.”

Wright said he heard one of the men ask someone inside the truck “if this was the boy” and that he heard that someone reply, “Yes.”

Huie erased the preacher’s testimony, too.

At the murder trial, Leflore County Sheriff George Smith testified that Roy Bryant said he and Milam abducted Till, but turned the youth loose after they brought him to Bryant’s Grocery and found out “he wasn’t the right one.”

But when the killers talked to Huie, they changed their story.

“Are you the Chicago sonofabitch that whistled at that white woman?” Milam said he asked Till.

“Yeah,” Till was quoted as replying, “what’re you gonna do about it? I’m as good as you are.”

The brothers told Huie that if Till had denied it, they would have taken Till back to Carolyn Bryant. “Hell, he didn’t deny it,” Milam told Huie. “We had the right n—-. He admitted it, so we didn’t need to go by the store.”

The memo shows Huie never questioned them about this change, which concealed the role that Carolyn Bryant played.

Dale Killinger, the FBI agent who investigated the Till case in 2006, said he has long believed that she did identify Till, who was then tortured and killed.

In her original statement to defense lawyers, “Carolyn Bryant stated that Emmett was brought to her,” he said. “This is the same information that, in 2005, she admitted to, saying that Roy Bryant, J.W. Milam and Elmer Kimbell brought Emmett to her at the store in Money in the middle of the night.”

Huie erased Carolyn Bryant from the story.

Till’s unafraid demeanor ‘nothing more than a myth’

Even Huie recognized the ridiculousness in the next part of the killers’ story. 

“Here is the most incredible portion of the story,” Huie wrote in his memo. “Milam and [Roy] Bryant insist — and apparently they are truthful — that no one else was with them; that the two of them sat in the cab; that they did not tie the youth; that they did nothing more than menace him with their pistols; yet he remained ‘impudent’ and ‘full of fight’ all during the subsequent five-hour ordeal of driving around and whipping — and he never once tried to run!”

The killers told Huie they drove around in the dark, looking for a cliff 80 miles away where they hoped to “scare” Till. They listed the multitude of Delta towns they traveled through before abandoning their search.

Huie never questioned them, and he never retraced their trip. If he had, he would have concluded, like the FBI did, that covering such a distance was impossible. (Later, Roy Bryant admitted to a relative that this was all a lie.)

The killers insisted that Till stayed the entire time in the back of the pickup, despite no one holding him there. “He wasn’t afraid of them!” Huie wrote in Look. “He was tough as they were. He didn’t think they had the guts to kill him.”

Tell said Huie had to concoct an “unafraid Till” to get the magazine to publish his article. “Had Till been scared, Huie’s narrative would have required extra men to guard him in the back of the truck,” he said. “But with the extra men, Look would not publish the story.”

Huie’s claim “absolved Huie of the need to secure signatures he could not obtain and cleared the way for Look to publish the story,” Tell said.

Huie had evidence that Till had fears. Huie wrote that Moses Wright’s wife, Elizabeth, told him that Till “was scared when they drove away from the store [on Aug. 24]. He wanted to go home.”

Tell said the “stoic, unafraid Till” is nothing but a myth created by the white establishment to write the guilty men out of the story and foster the false impression that Mississippi tried everyone responsible.

The truth is that a mob of killers brutalized this kidnapped youth inside a dark barn before shooting him, Tell said. “He was terrified.” 

Huie downplayed the terror that the 14-year-old endured, he said. “Till’s unafraid demeanor is nothing more than a myth, a political creation designed to sanitize our memory of the night Till was killed.”

Erasing witnesses

Not long after the sun rose the next morning, Willie Reed was walking across a plantation near Drew. He testified at trial that he saw four white men in the cab of a 1955 Chevy pickup with three Black men holding “a black boy” in the back of the truck.

Reed also testified that he heard “a whole lot of licks” in the barn and someone hollering, “Oh.” He also saw Milam emerge from the barn and get a drink of water.

Mary Bradley saw a truck with four white men, and Reed’s grandfather, Add, identified Milam’s brother, Leslie, with the men.

None of that testimony appeared in the Look article, and Huie moved the beating of Till from a Drew plantation that Milam’s brother ran to Milam’s shed in Glendora, more than a half hour away.

“Huie can’t write the story he wants to write,” Houck said, “unless he eliminates Willie Reed and the other Black witnesses from the story.”

Blood money

Huie first heard about the Till trial while he was sitting on the set of a Hollywood film adapting another one of his books.

Less than two weeks after the killers’ acquittal, Huie sat in the law office of Breland & Whitten in Sumner, talking to the defense lawyers about a magazine article, a book and a possible film based on the Till case, the memo shows.

“From the moment he strode in with his proposal,” said Devery Anderson, author of “Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement”, “personal gain was all he really cared about.”

Huie promised to protect the killers by refusing to testify against them if a grand jury indicted them for kidnapping, and he vowed to keep secret “any others who might have been involved in the abduction-and-slaying.”

In return for their story, Huie offered the killers a percentage of the net profits he would realize. They would get 15% (later raised to 20%), and the attorneys would get 10%. (Huie would later pay the killers $3,150 and the lawyers $1,260.)

In an interview with the “Eyes on the Prize” documentary, Huie quoted himself as explaining that killers “must tell me the truth, they must give me ways so that in the daytime I can go out and verify that they’re telling me the truth. And if I find them telling me a lie, I won’t pay them a damn thing.”

Huie paid them, and he published their falsehoods, Houck said. “Without their carefully concocted lies, which we now know were embellished by Huie, he had no ‘shocking’ story — and the white South did not have a villain in Emmett Till. Without those two things, no money-making journalism and books would be published, and no blockbuster films would be made.”

Huie’s  ‘primary motive’ was money

While many sang hymns at nearby churches in Sumner on Sunday morning, Oct. 23, 1955, Huie listened to the two brothers describe how they kidnapped and killed Till, used barbed wire to tie a heavy fan around his neck and dumped his body into a river. Milam even pulled out his Colt .45 and demonstrated how he pistol-whipped Till before shooting him.

Days before the meeting, Huie told his editor at Look, “There are four men in the abduction-torture-and-murder party. I know all four of them.”

But the two brothers — whose relatives also participated in the killing, according to the FBI — told Huie they did it all by themselves.

When the writer mentioned the Black witnesses identifying additional members of the lynch mob, Milam replied, “Them crazy n—–s didn’t know what they were talking about.”

Roy Bryant objected to his wife signing a release, according to the memo.

Huie responded that she was a part of the story and that the “‘insult’ to her was the motive for the killing.”

“You gonna picture her as some slut?” Roy asked.

Huie vowed to tell the truth.

And that was just the start of the lies the killers told Huie, said Dale Killinger, the FBI agent who reinvestigated the Till case in 2006.

They lied about where they drove Till after abducting him, where they tortured him, where they shot him, where they got the gin fan and where they dumped his body, he said.

These falsehoods, knowingly promoted by Huie, kept the focus on Bryant and Milam as the killers, concealed the others involved and concealed the fact they brought Till to Carolyn Bryant, Killinger said. As a result, he said, many Americans question what happened to Till, “even questioning the fact he was murdered, despite the killers’ admissions.”

Milam claimed Till told him, “He was [as] good as I was, that he had f—– white women, and that his grandmother was a white woman.”

Parker, who grew up with Till, said the killers’ claim that his cousin had sex was ridiculous. “He was barely 14,” he said.

Anderson said Till’s grandmother wasn’t white.

Instead of calling out the killers for justifying their murder of a 14-year-old, the writer paid them and published their lies as truth, Anderson said. “This all goes to show that Huie’s primary motive was to make money off of this story.”

An inventory of lies

Shortly before his Look article appeared in January 1956, Huie began to wonder if he had been bamboozled by the killers.

After traveling to Chicago and hearing Willie Reed’s story about hearing Till’s beating in the barn, Huie began to doubt himself. 

“I began doubting myself and one night I was {at} the point of coming back to Mississippi and ‘pistol-whipping’ Milam for telling me a fabric of lies,” he wrote defense lawyer John Whitten Jr. “Lord help me if Milam lied to me!”

Huie’s secret memo and his letters to Whitten were contained in an envelope that Whitten marked first with “M&B” for Milam and Bryant and then “Destroy.”

They never were, and now Whitten’s family has donated them to Florida State’s Emmett Till Archives.

“It seems it was more important to him to preserve it than destroy it,” said Whitten’s granddaughter, Ellen. “That is why we preserved it, and that is why we donated it.”

Despite criticism from Till’s mother and others, the Look article went largely unchallenged in the mainstream press until Killinger investigated for the FBI in 2006 and determined that most of Huie’s “facts” were actually fabrications.

But Huie’s article “has proved almost impossible to kill,” said Thompson, whose new book centers on the barn where Till was brutally beaten and shot. “Even today, when Washington D.C., politicians and staffers come to learn about Till, they are often still told details from the Look magazine article — details that Huie simply invented or was too gullible to see for what they were.”

He pointed to organizations such as the Emmett Till Interpretive Center and the Emmett Till and Mamie Till Mobley Institute as among those seeking to tell the truth about what happened.

Katie McCormick, Florida State’s associate dean of libraries for Special Collections & Archives, said Mamie Till-Mobley’s story was “rejected by publisher after publisher” at the same time that Huie’s story became “the defining framework for decades.”

In the end, “Huie and the killers stole the story of Emmett Till from his mother and family,” she said.

This latest donation documents “the fabrication of lies,” she said. “We hope the archival collections can contribute to the preservation of truth and support educational efforts in the spirit of Mamie Till-Mobley.”

The post The writer and killers ‘stole the story of Emmett Till from his mother and family’ appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Delta State University’s governing board approved more budget cuts at its regular meeting Thursday — this time, at the administrative level. 

The regional university in the Mississippi Delta now has three colleges instead of four as part of its quest for financial sustainability under the current president, Daniel Ennis. 

This has resulted in the loss of four chairs and two less deans, the administrators that lead the colleges. A dean of graduate education was also eliminated even though that position did not oversee a college. The changes also led to two fewer positions at the vice presidential level, but Ennis created a new one to oversee enrollment management — something the university in Cleveland has struggled for years to fix.

“It didn’t make sense to stick with the same administrative structure” after the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees approved the university’s programs cuts earlier this summer, Ennis said. “What we did today was implicit in their approval of the cuts … but still you have to go through the steps and get the final approval.”

It’s all in an effort to reduce $750,000 a year in administrative level spending as part of Ennis’ master plan for the university’s budget that he unveiled at a town hall in May.

In an email, a university spokesperson did not answer how much in savings the university netted with these administrative cuts but it is expected to align with Ennis’ goal.

“The administrative changes approved by the IHL Board of Trustees represent a key step toward better fiscal health for the University,” Christy Riddle wrote, “and we anticipate we will see a reduction in overall administrative costs that aligns with our stated goal.”

The move brings the university one step closer to finalizing faculty layoffs. Before that can happen, Ennis said, faculty will have to sign off on the new degree programs, and IHL will approve them.

“I could probably figure out the number of faculty (to be laid off) now if everything we pose to the faculty passes,” Ennis said, “but I don’t want to get that far because they have a right to modify, they have a right to say no, they have a right to do all kinds of things.”

Ennis expects the university’s proposal to pass the faculty, but until then, he said the administration won’t know which classes it needs faculty to teach. This is further complicated by the steady drip of faculty layoffs ahead of the fall semester.

“If a faculty member resigns and they take another job and it was likely they were gonna be laid off,” Ennis said, “then that doesn’t change things. But sometimes faculty leave who we didn’t expect to leave and then you look and go okay, does that change out needs? Does that affect what we were gonna do?”

A visual aid of the changes was presented in an infographic to IHL trustees. The College of Arts and Sciences is now the College of Education Arts and Humanities.

UPDATE 8/16/24: This story has been updated to correct what the infographic presented to IHL trustees showed.

The post IHL approves administrative cuts at Delta State, clearing another budget hurdle appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Bonnie Griffith of Clinton missed four doctor appointments in June and July because of problems with the transportation company that contracts with the Mississippi Division of Medicaid. 

Griffith, who has a chronic nerve damage condition that requires her to use an electric mobility scooter, relies on Medicaid’s non-emergency medical transportation program to see her health care providers. 

But on two occasions, she said drivers refused to transport her because they did not feel comfortable securing her scooter in the vehicle. Electric scooters qualify as wheelchairs under the Americans with Disabilities Act. 

A third time, she said Modivcare told her there were no drivers available with the capacity to transport a wheelchair. And another time, the driver never showed up to the location she specified. 

In July, she ran out of her medication. 

“I have no way to get to any medical doctor at all,” said Griffith, who has severe peripheral neuropathy. 

There’s no way to know if Griffith’s issues are unique or widespread. Denver-based for-profit Modivcare’s three-year, $96.5 million contract with the Division of Medicaid mandates it submit “monthly reports” containing information about the percent of scheduled trips that are late or missed each day or exceed 45 minutes longer than the average travel time. 

The company assumed the state’s non-emergency medical services contract on June 8 of this year. 

But two weeks after Mississippi Today submitted a public records request for the reports, the agency told the outlet they have no such reports. Spokesperson Matt Westerfield said the reports are not yet due, though he did note that historically, non-emergency medical transportation contractors have struggled to meet the contractual ceiling of 2% late or missed trips each day. 

He did not respond to an inquiry about when the monthly reports are due by the time the story was published.

The federally-required service helps Medicaid beneficiaries with no other means of getting to the doctor make it to their appointments. But some beneficiaries and advocates question whether it properly serves people who use wheelchairs and mobility devices.

People with disabilities – not all of whom use wheelchairs – are some of the most frequent users of the service. 

Griffith made it to her first doctor’s appointment since the contract began on July 18. 

“I feel so much better today just having gotten to where I was supposed to be,” she told Mississippi Today. 

Experts question whether Modivcare’s policy complies with law

Modivcare’s website states that it is the “largest and most experienced broker of non-emergency medical transportation” in the nation. The company provides transportation services in 48 states and reported $118.3 million in profits during the first half of 2024 for non-emergency transportation services alone. 

Modivcare contracts with local transportation companies, which give beneficiaries rides to their doctor’s appointments and take them home afterwards. 

Advocates argue that the program yields cost savings for states and the federal government by heightening access to preventative medicine and routine health care that helps beneficiaries manage their medical conditions and avoid costly trips to the emergency room. 

Griffith said she has relied on non-emergency medical transportation services in Mississippi for over 10 years. 

Modivcare spokesperson Melody Lai told Mississippi Today in an email that while the service can transport people who use power carts or mobility scooters, they “will have to either transfer to a wheelchair or ambulate into the seat of the vehicle,” citing concerns about safety while transporting people seated on their mobility device.

Griffith, however, can not walk to a vehicle or push a non-motorized wheelchair by herself. 

Her home health aide can accompany her to appointments to push the wheelchair, but Griffith must then give up time with the aide intended to support her personal care needs.

Hunter Robertson, the civil rights team supervising attorney at Disability Rights Mississippi, said he believes Modivcare’s policy is a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. 

He said drivers can recommend that wheelchair users transfer to a vehicle seat, but can not require them to transfer, according to the latest guidance from the Federal Transit Authority. 

“The final decision on whether to transfer is up to the passenger,” reads the agency’s circular. 

Robertson said that if a wheelchair fits inside the vehicle and on the lift and can be secured, even if it is not constrained to the comfort of the company, a driver can not refuse to transport a rider.

Scott Crawford, an advocate for people with disabilities and a board member of the Mississippi Coalition for Citizens with Disabilities, disagreed. He said that he believes requiring people using mobility devices to transfer to a seat is an acceptable policy, given concerns that they might tip during hard turns. 

However, transportation providers are still required to transport people and their mobility devices, even if the person must transfer to a seat, he said. 

“It is vital that transportation providers allow people to bring their ‘legs’ (mobility device) with them when they are transported, assuming they will fit,” he said. “There are plenty of ways of securing a scooter or walker so that they won’t move.”

Robertson said non-emergency medical transportation services are a critical service for people who use wheelchairs. 

“There is a limited amount of public transportation or transportation that is accessible when you are a wheelchair user or a power cart user,” he said. “The non-emergency transport is one of the few ways to safely get to doctor’s appointments on time … while using your mobility aid.”

Matt Westerfield, spokesperson for the Mississippi Division of Medicaid, said that Modivcare provided wheelchair securement training to 451 drivers prior to Modivcare’s contract beginning on June 8. He noted that from then to the end of June, there were 4,984 trips completed using wheelchair accessible vehicles. 

Modivcare’s contract with the Division of Medicaid specifies that each wheelchair vehicle must have a wheelchair securement device that meets Americans with Disabilities Act guidelines. 

In response to questions about the company’s adherence to the Americans with Disabilities Act, Lai wrote in an email, “Modivcare complies with all applicable laws, quality is very important to us and we provide training as may be required by law.”

Modivcare did not respond to specific questions about the contractor’s compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act and declined Mississippi Today’s request for an interview. 

Problems with transportation are not new for Medicaid beneficiaries

Griffith said the challenges she has faced with Medicaid transportation are not specific to Modivcare. She remembered unreliable transportation during the period another company contracted with the state for the service.

On several occasions, her driver did not pick her up from her appointment. 

“I was offered a ride … by someone who had seen me still waiting there,” she said. 

A 2021 report on non-emergency medical transportation by the federal Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission cited nationwide concerns about limited supplies of wheelchair vans, late pickups, ill-equipped vehicles and long call center wait times.

Some states have sought to heighten regulation of the companies that provide such services.  In 2023, a bill in the New Jersey Legislature to establish performance and reporting standards for Medicaid transportation brokers died in committee. The legislation came after the New Jersey Department of Human Services fined Modivcare $1.7 million between 2017 and 2022 for failing to meet contract requirements, including missing scheduled pickups, according to the Bergen Record.

In Georgia, Modivcare and Southeasttrans, another non-emergency medical transportation company, were fined over $1 million from 2018 to 2020 for picking up patients late, reported KFF. 

Over 450 complaints have been lodged against Modivcare in the past three years, according to the Better Business Bureau.

In July, Griffith’s nurse practitioner detected atrial fibrillation, or an irregular heartbeat, during an examination. 

She worries about being able to get to visit her cardiologist given the unreliability of Mississippi’s non-emergency medical transportation.

“What am I going to do?” she asked. 

The post ‘What am I going to do?’: Wheelchair user says Medicaid transportation caused her to miss medical visits appeared first on Mississippi Today.

To quote Councilman Kenneth Stokes, the boo boo has hit the fan.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Bribery appeared first on Mississippi Today.

As many Americans, this writer eagerly read all I could about Tim Walz after Kamala Harris chose him as her running mate.

I didn’t have to hear or read more than three paragraphs before I became far more interested. There it was: Tim Walz was a former high school football coach, the defensive coordinator of a state championship winning team in Minnesota. He also taught geography and social studies.

Now then, I have spent a professional lifetime dealing with high school coaches and have some observations:

• Number one, some of the smartest, most inspiring, most common-sense leaders I have ever known were high football coaches.
• Number two, some of the most intellectually challenged, ineffective people I have ever known were high school football coaches.

You could say the same about workers in just about any profession, including doctors, lawyers, business execs and sports writers. There are really, really good ones; there are really, really awful ones. I have known scores of high school football coaches who would have been successful in any profession they chose.

Gulfport coaching legend Lindy Callahan comes immediately to mind. Coach Callahan is 96 years young now, and I’d probably still vote for him no matter the office. He could, in the words of the great Jake Gaither, take his’n and beat your’n, or take your’n and beat his’n. He would have been a terrific mayor, congressman or governor. You could say the same about Marion “Chief” Henley, who won 116 games and lost only eight as the coach at old Carver High School in Picayune in the days before integration.

Callahan and Henley both possessed all the qualities and traits and people skills that make football coaches successful. They were smart, yes, but they also surrounded themselves with competent people. They inspired the young folks who played for them. They commanded respect, but they also engendered uncommon love and devotion. They were quick on their feet, adjusted well when the game was on the line. They worked and worked and worked. They inspired others to work just as hard as they did.

I play a lot of golf these days with Mike Justice, another highly successful, championships-winning high school football coach who would have been successful no matter what he did, even if he had been a pulpwood hauler like his father was in Itawamba County. We were talking the other day about whether or not the same qualities and characteristics that make a successful football coach might also make a good vice president or even president. As we know all too well, a vice president is just one heartbeat away from a promotion.

Justice believes the No. 1 path to success as a high school football coach “is the ability to surround yourself with good people, run a system that you believe in and get really good at it. Stay hitched to it, no matter what.”

Said Justice, “You better believe in what you are doing and you better be able to inspire your players to believe in it and buy into it.”

Sounds a lot like qualities and characteristics you need to be an effective leader in government, although I still have a difficult time imagining Justice in the Oval Office – or wearing a suit and tie every day for that matter. So does he.

Here, we haven’t that many coaches venture into politics, although in small-town Mississippi a winning football coach is often the most popular, most respected man in town. One possible reason: By law, a retired coach would have his or her PERS state retirement payments frozen the day he or she took office.

For what it’s worth, we have had more cheerleaders than players or coaches become powerful movers and shakers in government. Sen. John Stennis was a yell leader at Mississippi State. Sens. Trent Lott and Thad Cochran were both Ole Miss cheerleaders. I am not sure what that tells us. “Hotty Toddy” and “Hail State,” I guess.

And I know what many readers are thinking: But what about Tommy Tuberville, the ex-Ole Miss football coach-turned-Alabama senator, who told us he would only leave Oxford in a pine box but then left on a private jet bound for Auburn?

Frankly, I don’t count Tuberville any more than I trust him. He spent four years at Ole Miss during which he won 25 games and lost 20. Indeed, I am not sure Alabamans should count him as one of their own, either. After all, he was living in Florida – and had been for years – when he decided to run for the U.S. Senate from Alabama.

You ask me, Tuberville’s record as a senator is not a great advertisement for coaches becoming politicians. For nearly a year in 2023, he held up all promotions of U.S. military senior officers, drawing the ire of the nation’s military brass and many in his own party who believed he was putting the nation’s security at risk.

“There’s nobody more military than me,” said Tuberville, who has never served one second in any branch of the service.

But back to the original theme of this column. Can a high school football coach become an effective national leader?

My take: Some could, and many could not. This much is certain: Many of the same qualities that make for a highly successful coach would serve a vice president or president equally well.

The post Can a high school football coach make a good U.S. vice president? It depends. appeared first on Mississippi Today.

A Jackson City Council member pleaded guilty Wednesday to a federal bribery charge related to a proposed downtown development hours after resigning from her office.

Angelique Lee pleaded guilty to everything detailed in a bill of information. 

Lee, who represented northwest Jackson’s Ward 2, admitted to a conspiracy to commit bribery by accepting “cash, deposits and other gifts” valued at more than $5,000 from two federal agents posing as real estate developers from Nashville, Tennessee, who were attempting to influence her and reward her for her vote. She accepted those bribes from the undercover agents through an “unindicted co-conspirator,” according to court documents. Twice they gave her a credit card to go shopping. “Don’t go too crazy but have an f— great time,” the bogus developer told her, according to testimony at Wednesday’s plea hearing.

In March, the “Facility Solutions Team” was one of three companies that bid to build a 335-room hotel across the street from the Jackson Convention Complex. That hotel was slated to include an open entertainment space and a parking garage.

Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens II is listed as the registered agent for the Facility Solutions Team, which is a limited liability company.

The business’ address, the Downtown Cigar Company which is owned by Owens, was raided by the FBI on May 22, along with Owens’ office in the Hinds County Courthouse.

Lee’s attorney, Aafram Sellers, acknowledged the charges against his client are related to the hotel project.

Owens referred questions about Wednesday’s developments to his attorney Rob McDuff. McDuff told Mississippi Today in a statement that it is his understanding the federal investigation is not related to Owens’ work as district attorney. 

McDuff acknowledged that Owens has participated in real estate business deals during the past 15 years, including owning two pieces of property in downtown Jackson. 

“Two gentlemen who claimed they were successful large-scale developers with their own development company raised with him the possibility of building a convention center hotel in Jackson,” McDuff said. “He believed them, and after multiple conversations, agreed to help them. It turns out they were operatives for the FBI.” 

According to the bill of information, Lee voted in favor of the real estate development project proposed by the Nashville developers and supported the closure of a road to aid that project.

“It was further an object of the conspiracy to hide, conceal and cover up the nature and scope of the things of value that Lee received, including the true source and nature of the cash payments,” court papers say.

She received a $10,000 electronic transfer from the FBI sources to pay off a portion of Lee’s campaign debt, a $3,000 cash payment on March 27 of this year, and $6,000 in credit card charges made at a “luxury retail store in the city of Jackson,” according to the indictment. WLBT reported in July that Lee’s wages were being garnished to pay off nearly $21,000 in campaign debt.

Lee will have to forfeit any and all property or proceeds obtained through the criminal actions, including $13,654 in currency, a pair of Valentino wedge sandals, a Christian Louboutin tote bag, earrings, and other items.

In accepting her guilty plea, U.S. District Judge Daniel Jordan III listed what she could no longer do, including holding office and serving on a jury. Lee’s voice broke as she acknowledged, “Yes, sir.”

Lee faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. She is scheduled to be sentenced at 10 a.m. Nov. 13.

Lee, 28, who has a master’s degree, defeated former Hinds County Sheriff Tyrone Lewis in a special election for the Ward 2 seat in 2020. She was elected to a full term the following year.

City Council President Virgi Lindsay released a copy of Lee’s resignation at a brief news conference Wednesday: “Circumstances that I am not at liberty to discuss at the moment have led to this decision,” she wrote. “I will greatly miss working with each of you and I am proud of the work that we have done as a collective body for the city of Jackson and its citizens.”

Lindsay said the council has to meet within the next 10 days to schedule a special election and the election will be held 30 to 45 days after that.

Owens was first elected as district attorney in 2019. At the time of the raids, he posted a statement on Facebook that his office continues to “work on behalf of the citizens of Hinds County. That has been and will continue to be our primary focus.”

Owens handled the state’s prosecution of people involved in a massive fraud case involving theft or misspending of millions of federal welfare dollars meant to help the poor.

The Terry native  previously served as chief policy counsel and managing attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Mississippi office. He attended Howard University School of Law in Washington, D.C., and worked for the late U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran as a legal intern for the Senate Appropriations Committee. Owens is a lieutenant intelligence officer in the Navy Reserves.

UPDATE 8/14/24: This story has been updated to correct Angelique Lee’s position on the Jackson City Council.

The post Jackson City Council member resigns, admits to federal bribery charge appeared first on Mississippi Today.