Voters in several areas of the state will participate in special general elections Tuesday to decide who will represent them in the state Legislature.
Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Anyone in line to vote by 7 p.m. will be allowed to cast a ballot beyond the 7 p.m. closure.
There will be 10 special legislative elections across the state Tuesday, seven general elections due to a court redistricting order, and three special nonpartisan elections to fill legislative vacancies from members who left before their terms were up.
Voters in Hinds County also will elect a coroner, choosing from a crowded field of six candidates.
Voters leave Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Jackson after voting on Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2025. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
A federal three-judge panel ordered Mississippi to conduct special elections for 14 legislative seats this year because the court determined the Legislature diluted Black voting strength when it redrew legislative districts.
The federal panel specifically ordered the state to have special elections for House districts in the Chickasaw County area, Senate districts in the Hattiesburg area and Senate districts in the DeSoto County area.
Four seats are not contested, which means only one candidate filed paperwork to run in the race. Candidates in three of the elections faced contested primary elections, but not a contested general election. But seven races related to redistricting are contested in the general election: six in the Senate and one in the House.
No matter the outcome of Tuesday’s races, Republicans will still retain control of both chambers of the Legislature when lawmakers convene in January for their 2026 session. However, national Democratic organizations are hoping to end the GOP’s two-thirds supermajority control of the state Senate.
Unrelated to the redistricting lawsuit, voters in parts of the Delta and the Jackson metro area can participate in special elections Tuesday because of incumbents vacating their seats.
Sen. David Jordan, a Democrat from Greenwood whose district includes portions of Leflore, Panola and Tallahatchie counties, retired over the summer, and six candidates are vying to replace him.
Political signage is in place outside of Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Jackson on Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2025. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
Seven candidates are looking to fill Jackson Mayor John Horhn’s old Senate seat, and voters in Bolivar, Coahoma and Sunflower counties can choose a new representative for House District 26 after Orlando Paden won the election to become the new mayor of Clarksdale.
If voters have any questions about voting on Election Day, they can contact their local circuit clerk or the secretary of state’s elections hotline at 1-800-829-6786. For more voter information, visit the secretary of state’s Elections and Voting portal.
Holly Springs officials have filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Mississippi Public Service Commission accusing the agency of exceeding its authority and for violating the city’s right to due process.
The complaint, filed Thursday, comes less than two months since the PSC voted to impose daily fines of up to $12,500 against the city for failing to address deficiencies with its power system. The Holly Springs Utility Department, which serves about 12,000 customers across multiple counties, has struggled for years to maintain its power grid infrastructure and subsequently left customers with frequent electric outages.
In September, just days before imposing the daily fines, the PSC held a hearing in New Albany to listen to the utility’s customers and to give city officials a chance to respond. After the session, the three-member commission voted unanimously to move forward with steps to place the utility into a receivership.
But the commission, the new complaint alleges, overstepped its authority by interfering with the city’s contract with the Tennessee Valley Authority. Since 1935, Holly Springs has purchased and distributed electricity from TVA, a federal agency created under the New Deal to provide power to rural areas in the Southeast. Because TVA is a federal body, the lawsuit says, the PSC can’t “intrude upon” the city’s power agreement.
Holly Springs Mayor Charles Terry responds to questions about the Holly Springs Utility Department during a hearing at the municipal court in New Albany, Miss., on Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
TVA, though, has itself recently sued Holly Springs for multiple breaches of the contract. That lawsuit, filed in May, alleges the city took money from the utility department before ensuring the electric system was stable, among other financial mishaps. After a stay in the case, U.S. District Judge Debra Brown ordered the parties last week to show cause by Tuesday.
The PSC didn’t allow the city an “opportunity to cure (its) alleged negligence,” Holly Springs’ lawsuit also claims. The city had elected a new mayor and brought on new counsel shortly before the September hearing.
“As a result, the Plaintiff was unable to conduct a full review of the case file, identify relevant evidence, or prepare a complete presentation of its position,” the complaint says. “Proceeding under such circumstances deprived the Plaintiff of a meaningful opportunity to be heard, in violation of fundamental due process principles.”
The PSC’s authority over the city’s utility department came from state legislation in 2024. Republican Sen. Neil Whaley of Potts Camp wrote the bill, which allows the PSC to investigate whether utility service for certain customers is “reasonably adequate.” The commission’s September hearing found Holly Springs fell short of that bar.
The PSC told Mississippi Today on Monday that it has only issued one fine of $12,500 against the city so far. Kyle Jones, an attorney for the commission, said, while the city is subject to further fines as long as it provides inadequate service, the PSC would have to hold another hearing before it could actually impose more fines.
Regarding next steps toward placing the utility under a receivership, the PSC said it would present its petition to a chancery court judge through the state attorney general’s office. The AG’s office did not respond to a request for comment before publication.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — President Donald Trump’s administration said Monday that it will partially fund SNAP after two judges issued rulings requiring it to keep the nation’s largest food aid program running.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, had planned to freeze payments starting Nov. 1 because it said it could no longer keep funding it during the federal government shutdown. The program serves about 1 in 8 Americans and is a major piece of the nation’s social safety net. It costs more than $8 billion per month nationally. The government says an emergency fund it will use has $4.65 billion — enough to cover about half the normal benefits.
Exhausting the fund potentially sets the stage for a similar situation in December if the shutdown isn’t resolved by then.
It’s not clear exactly how much beneficiaries will receive, nor how quickly they will see value show up on the debit cards they use to buy groceries. November payments have already been delayed for millions of people.
“The Trump Administration has the means to fund this program in full, and their decision not to will leave millions of Americans hungry and waiting even longer for relief as government takes the additional steps needed to partially fund this program,” Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell, who led a coalition of Democratic state officials in one of the lawsuits that forced the funding, said in a statement.
How will SNAP beneficiaries manage?
People who receive the benefits are trying to figure out how to stretch their grocery money further.
Corina Betancourt, who’s 40 and lives in Glendale, Arizona, already uses a food bank sometimes to get groceries for herself and her three kids, ages 8 through 11. With her SNAP benefits reduced and delayed, she’s expecting to use the food bank more and find ways to stretch what she has further.
But she is worried that there won’t be enough for her children to eat with about $400 this month instead of around $800. “We always make things work somehow, some way,” she said.
In Camden, New Jersey, 41-year-old Jamal Brown, who is paralyzed after a series of strokes and on a fixed income, said family members asked him for a list of groceries he needs so they can stock him up.
But not everyone has that help.
“How did you expect to live a healthy life if you’re not eating the right stuff?” he asked. “If you don’t have the access to the food stamps, you’re going to go to the cheapest thing that you can afford.”
Details on how payments will roll out are still to come
The administration said it would provide details to states on Monday on calculating the per-household partial benefit. The process of loading the SNAP cards, which involves steps by state and federal government agencies and vendors, can take up to two weeks in some states. But the USDA warned in a court filing that it could take weeks or even months for states to make all the system changes to send out reduced benefits. The average monthly benefit is usually about $190 per person.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta said at a news conference that it would take his state about a week to load benefit cards once the funding is made available.
“These are folks who are hungry, and every day matters,” Bonta said.
The USDA said last month that benefits for November wouldn’t be paid due to the federal government shutdown. That set off a scramble by food banks, state governments and the nearly 42 million Americans who receive the aid to find ways to ensure access to groceries.
Democratic state attorneys general or governors from 25 states, as well as the District of Columbia, challenged the plan to pause the program, contending that the administration has a legal obligation to keep it running in their jurisdictions. Cities and nonprofits also filed a lawsuit.
Trump posted on social media Friday that he does “NOT want Americans to go hungry just because the Radical Democrats refuse to do the right thing and REOPEN THE GOVERNMENT.” He said he was telling government lawyers to prepare SNAP payments as soon as possible.
State governments step in
Most states have boosted aid to food banks, and some are setting up systems to reload benefit cards with state taxpayer dollars. The threat of a delay also spurred lawsuits.
Federal judges in Massachusetts and Rhode Island ruled separately but similarly Friday, telling the government that it was required to use one emergency fund to pay for the program, at least in part. They gave the government the option to use additional money to fully fund the program and a deadline of Monday to decide.
Patrick Penn, Deputy Under Secretary Food Nutrition and Consumer Services for USDA, said in a court filing Monday that the department chose not to tap other emergency funds to ensure there’s not a gap in child nutrition programs for the rest of this fiscal year, which runs through September 2026.
Advocates and beneficiaries say halting the food aid would force people to choose between buying groceries and paying other bills. The majority of states have announced more or expedited funding for food banks or novel ways to load at least some benefits onto the SNAP debit cards.
Rhode Island officials said Monday that under their program, SNAP beneficiaries who also receive benefits from another federal program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, received payments Saturday equal to one-fourth of what they typically get from SNAP. Officials in Delaware are telling recipients that benefits there won’t be available until at least Nov. 7.
To qualify for SNAP in 2025, a household’s net income after certain expenses can’t exceed the federal poverty line. For a family of four, that’s about $32,000 per year.
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Associated Press writer Kimberlee Kruesi reported from Providence, Rhode Island; Geoff Mulvihill reported from Haddonfield, New Jersey. Associated Press writer Tran Nguyen in Sacramento, California, contributed to this report.
The death of a Hinds County sheriff’s deputy over the weekend in south Jackson is being investigated as a homicide.
Sgt. James Dotson Jr., 32, died Sunday evening at a home on the 1700 block of Dorgan Street from multiple gunshot wounds, according to the Hinds County Coroner’s Office.
“On behalf of the entire Hinds County Sheriff’s Office, I extend our heartfelt condolences and prayers to Sgt. Dotson’s family, friends, and the many lives he touched throughout his career,” Hinds Sheriff Tyree Jones said in a Monday statement.
“May they find comfort in the legacy he leaves behind and the love that surrounds them during this difficult time.”
Jackson police spokesman Tommie Brown said no suspects had been arrested by midday Monday, and the investigation remains active as detectives interview witnesses and locate surveillance video. The department is encouraging people to reach out with tips, which may lead to a cash reward.
Dotson worked at the Hinds County Detention Center in Raymond and served the sheriff’s department and community with unwavering commitment, professionalism and compassion, Jones said.
“His presence was a source of strength and stability, and his contributions to our mission of justice and public safety will not be forgotten,” Jones said. “He exemplified the very best of corrections — steadfast in duty, generous in spirit, and respected by all who had the privilege to work alongside him.”
Dotson’s death comes less than a year after the Hinds County Sheriff’s Department lost Deputy Sgt. Martin Shields Jr., who died Feb. 23 while responding to a domestic violence call in Terry. The suspect, who also shot his wife and another woman trying to flee, shot Shields and died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The National Fraternal Order of Police tracks line-of-duty shootings and releases monthly updates. The most recent report through Oct. 31 found nationwide 285 officers were shot in the line of duty, and 38 of those died.
Among those fatalities is McComb Police Sgt. Jason Blake, who died Aug. 5 while responding to an off-duty request for help at a domestic violence call. The suspect shot and injured a woman before fatally shooting Blake and himself.
The Officer Down Memorial Page, a national nonprofit tracking line of duty deaths, also lists the Oct. 17 death of Jackson County Deputy Sheriff Joshua Brashears. The sheriff’s office said he was on his way home in the early morning when his cruiser collided with horses on Mississippi Highway 15.
Information relating to the investigation of Dotson’s killing can be given to Crime Stoppers at 601-355-TIPS (8477) or the Jackson Police Department at 601-960-1234.
In the heart of rural America, small businesses, which have served as the backbone of these communities, are evolving. Among them, microbusinesses – typically defined as those with less than 10 employees – are gaining ground and reshaping local economies, specifically in towns historically reliant on industries such as agriculture, manufacturing and mining.
The JPMorganChase Institute’s research, “The Rural Divide: Small Business Revenue Milestones in the U.S.,” reveals that the vast majority of businesses in rural counties are microbusinesses.
While rural areas are known for historically employing more in industries such as Agriculture, fishing and hunting, Manufacturing, and Mining, regional specialization in those industries has less of an influence on microbusinesses. These enterprises are most prevalent in industries where there are less challenges to starting a business and fewer employees are needed.
The path to success isn’t without hurdles and challenges. The JPMorganChase Institute’s research also found that these rural businesses often face slower revenue growth during the first five years, compared to their urban counterparts. To bridge this gap, rural communities need tailored solutions that empower small businesses to scale and succeed.
Here are five considerations for microbusinesses in Mississippi:
• Set up a sales funnel: Turn potential customers into loyal buyers by forming a trusted relationship with them. Start with engaging social media posts – guiding them to informative content, capture contact information for special offers and invite them to online demos.
• Enhance customer service: Conduct an audit of your customer service processes. Implement tools like customer relationship management software or a loyalty program to keep your business top-of-mind and boost sales.
• Form strategic partnerships: Collaborate with complementary businesses to package deals that potentially reach new demographics. Align with partners that share your values and seek professional advice before formalizing partnerships.
• Identify customer pain points: Use focus groups and direct, honest feedback from loyal customers to uncover hidden issues or give inspiration for products and services to offer.
• Expand your network: Build a support system of advisors, consultants and experts. Attend trade shows, expos, informational sessions, and networking events to connect with potential customers and suppliers.
To support business on their journey toward growth, JPMorganChase also offers a complimentary one-on-one Coaching for Impact program that will be expanding and in 42 cities by the end of this year, featuring Certified Small Business Consultants to mentor and coach small business owners so they can better run their business. As of the end of 2023, the program has helped over 5,000 businesses grow.
As small businesses grow, they invigorate local economies, sparking innovation and creating jobs. Their growth story is one of resilience and opportunity, proving that even the smallest enterprises can have a big impact.
For more insights on growing your small business, visit chase.com/business
After evaluating applications asking for over $100 million of public money, the Mississippi Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Council discussed Monday which proposals deserved state investment to prevent more deadly overdoses.
But its members have yet to agree on funding recommendations for the Legislature. Instead, the members introduced a number of new concerns with the application process — ones that are expected to be discussed further at another meeting in the coming few weeks.
This spring, lawmakers established this council to make recommendations on how Mississippi should spend most of its money from national lawsuits related to the opioid epidemic, a crisis that has claimed over 10,000 Mississippi lives since 2000. The council, overseen by Attorney General Lynn Fitch, is set to oversee around $300 million of Mississippi’s expected $421 million of settlement money over the next 15 years.
Before Monday’s meeting, Fitch’s office published a summary of those applications that assigns each request a score between 0 and 100, with 100 being the most qualified for funding. The council created 10-point tiers based on how highly it recommends the Legislature fund each project.
The subcommittees scored 23 applications in the top tier of grants — requests that asked for more than $40 million of opioid settlement funds. Around $23 million of those high-scored applications were from organizations with representatives serving on this council. Many of those representatives are the top officials of the requesting group. For example, two applications from the Mississippi Department of Mental Health, which is led by council co-vice chair Wendy Bailey, were among the top-scored projects.
The subcommittees did recommend funding adjustments even from highly-scored applicants. It suggested adjusting grant funding for Oceans Healthcare, whose chief executive officer Mark Stovall serves on the council, from roughly $4 million down to roughly$2 million.
Committee members are supposed to recuse themselves from evaluating grant applications they’re directly or indirectly involved with, according to the council’s rules. There’s no evidence any council member had a hand in evaluating their own application.
When the meeting started, members of the council were once again quick to point out potential issues with both the call for and evaluation of applications.
Sen. Nicole Boyd, a Republican from Oxford and a non-voting member of the council, told the group she was concerned the council didn’t have a plan to make sure funded projects weren’t duplicating efforts — both in where the projects are planned for and what they hope to do.
Sen. Nicole Boyd, R-Oxford, speaks during the Mississippi Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Council meeting at the Carroll Gartin Justice Building in Jackson, Monday, Oct. 3, 2025. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
“Have we kind of looked at that aspect yet?” she asked.
“Not yet,” responded Caleb Pracht, the meeting moderator and a special assistant to Fitch. “But that’s certainly an important consideration, I agree.”
Boyd also highlighted the absence of a guiding roadmap that could help the council determine how to best respond to the public health crisis. A third DMH opioid settlement application, which scored in the second tier of projects, proposed to create that next year.
That application summary says “the state does not currently have a unified, evidence-based assessment of prevention, treatment and recovery needs.”
“In the ideal world, we would have done that first thing,” Boyd said. “But I think (the Legislature) would like to go ahead and get this money out to people immediately.”
Some members asked whether a few of the applications themselves raised questions among council as to whether they would actually prevent more overdoses. Greg Spore, a lawyer with the Office of State Public Defender, called attention to a proposed project from the Yazoo County Sheriff’s Department for license plate readers, tasers and officer tablets – tools more akin to law enforcement than to opioid abatement.
The local government subcommittee scored the project in the second highest tier of applications.
“How is that responsive to opioid use disorder?” Spore asked the committee.
Adam Cooper, chief of the Gulfport Police Department, said these types of technology were important for preventing drugs from being sold in the community. He said he thought more Mississippi opioid settlement money should be going for these types of efforts.
Adam Cooper, a member of the Mississippi Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Council, listens to questions during a meeting at the Carroll Gartin Justice Building in Jackson, Monday, Oct. 3, 2025. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
“That is what I think really has been missing from these applications,” he said.
Michelle Williams, Fitch’s chief of staff, suggested that tasers might be a “non-lethal use of force” option for law enforcement.
Another application that concerned some council members was a roughly $9 million request from a company called Stercus Bioanalystics. Its project summary said it would use this money to conduct wastewater surveillance for drug use with the aims of identifying areas and substances the state should address. A report shows the company pitched a similar project to Nevada.
Mississippi’s settlement council gave the application a score in the third-highest tier of applications, projects the council is not expected to review at its next meeting. But Andy Taggart, a voting member of the committee, asked that the council consider adding it to the second-highest tier of grants at the next meeting.
Dr. Dan Edney, Mississippi’s health officer and a co-chair of the committee, told members that researchers have found no public health or law enforcement use for wastewater opioid data. But after some council members, including Boyd, suggested the project could still be useful, the members voted to keep the application in consideration for the next meeting.
Attorney General Lynn Fitch addresses State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney during the Mississippi Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Council meeting at the Carroll Gartin Justice Building in Jackson on Monday, Oct. 3, 2025. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
“I do see what they’re talking about in terms of specific law enforcement instances,” Edney told Mississippi Today after the meeting. “But in terms of overall abatement, I don’t see the evidence that opioid wastewater testing is all that effective.”
At the end of the meeting, Pracht said the council will meet again in the next few weeks to discuss the two highest tiers of opioid settlement projects. He instructed the 15 voting members to more thoroughly review the dozens of applications that scored in those ranges, in addition to Sercus’ proposal.
A state law enacted this year says the committee must finalize its recommendations by Dec. 1. Lawmakers are expected to approve or reject those suggestions during their 2026 session that begins in January.
This story was updated Monday evening after the meeting ended.
Correction, 11/3/2025: This story has been corrected to reflect the correct number of applications in the top tier of grants for opioid settlement funds.
Republican House Corrections Chairwoman Becky Currie of Brookhaven began touring state prisons when she got her committee chair assignment a couple of years ago, and found a disturbing dearth of medical care for inmates. “We’re paying $124 million to a company for health care and they are not doing it and they are keeping the money,” said Currie, who is pushing for reform and been a centerpiece of Mississippi Today’s investigative series on prison health care, Behind Bars, Beyond Care.
The recent escape of several research monkeys after the truck carrying them overturned on a Mississippi interstate is the latest glimpse into the secretive industry of animal research and the processes that allow key details of what happened to be kept from the public.
Three monkeys remained on the loose after the crash Tuesday in a rural area along Interstate 59 near Heidelberg, spilling wooden crates labeled “live monkeys” into the tall grass near the highway. Searchers in masks, face shields and other protective equipment have scoured nearby fields and woods for the missing primates. Five of the 21 Rhesus macaques on board were killed during the search, according to the local sheriff, but it was unclear how that happened.
Key details remain shrouded in secrecy
Mississippi authorities have not disclosed the company involved in transporting the monkeys, where the monkeys were headed or who owns them. While Tulane University in New Orleans has acknowledged that the monkeys had been housed at its National Biomedical Research Center in Covington, Louisiana, it said it doesn’t own them and won’t identify who does.
An initial report from the sheriff described the monkeys as “aggressive” and carrying diseases such as herpes, adding to the confusion. Tulane later said the monkeys were free of pathogens, but it is still unclear what kind of research the monkeys were used for.
The questions surrounding the Mississippi crash and the mystery of why the animals were traveling through the South are remarkable, animal advocates say.
“When a truck carrying 21 monkeys crashes on a public highway, the community has a right to know who owned those animals, where they were being sent, and what diseases they may have been exposed to and harbored simply by being caught up in the primate experimentation industry,” said Lisa Jones-Engel, senior science adviser on primate experimentation with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
“It is highly unusual — and deeply troubling — that Tulane refuses to identify its partner in this shipment,” Jones-Engel added.
One thing that is known is that the 2025 Chevrolet Silverado pickup hauling the monkeys was driven by a 54-year-old Cascade, Maryland, man when it ran off the highway into the grassy median area, the Mississippi Highway Patrol said in a statement to The Associated Press. The driver wasn’t hurt, nor was his passenger, a 34-year-old resident of Thurmont, Maryland.
Confidentiality is built into contracts, blocking information
Transporting research animals typically requires legally binding contracts that prohibit the parties involved from disclosing information, Tulane University said in a statement to the AP. That’s done for the safety of the animals and to protect proprietary information, the New Orleans-based university said.
“To the best of Tulane’s knowledge, the 13 recovered animals remain in the possession of their owner and are en route to their original destination,” the statement said.
The crash has drawn a range of reactions — from conspiracy theories that suggest a government plot to sicken people to serious responses from people who oppose experimenting on animals.
“How incredibly sad and wrong,” Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said of the crash.
“I’ve never met a taxpayer that wants their hard-earned dollars paying for animal abuse nor who supports it,” the Georgia congresswoman said in a post on the social platform X. “This needs to end!”
Tulane center has ties to more than 155 institutions worldwide
Tulane’s Covington center has received $35 million annually in National Institutes of Health support, and its partners include nearly 500 investigators from more than 155 institutions globally, the school said in an Oct. 9 news release. The center has been funded by NIH since 1964, and federal grants have been a significant source of income for the institution, it said.
In July, some of the research center’s 350 employees held a ribbon-cutting ceremony to mark the opening of a new 10,000-square-foot office building and a new laboratory at the facility. This fall, the facility’s name was changed from the Tulane National Primate Research Center to the Tulane National Biomedical Research Center to reflect its broader mission, university officials announced.
Research monkeys have escaped before in South Carolina, Pennsylvania
The Mississippi crash is one of at least three major monkey escapes in the U.S. over the past four years.
Last November, 43 Rhesus macaques escaped from a South Carolina compound that breeds them for medical research after an enclosure wasn’t fully locked. Employees from the Alpha Genesis facility in Yemassee, South Carolina, set up traps to capture them. However, some spent two months that winter living in the woods and weathering a rare snowstorm. By late January, the last four escapees were recaptured after being lured back into captivity by peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
In January 2022, several cynomolgus macaque monkeys escaped when a truck towing a trailer of about 100 of the animals collided with a dump truck on a Pennsylvania highway, authorities said. The monkeys were headed to a quarantine facility in an undisclosed location after arriving at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on a flight from Mauritius, an Indian Ocean island nation, authorities said. A spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said all of the animals were accounted for within about a day, though three were euthanized for undisclosed reasons.
During a recent meeting of the special Mississippi House committee studying school choice, private schools made it clear that they would not participate in any voucher program that required them to follow the same rules as public schools.
When asked about a possible middle ground, Barrett Donahoe, executive director of the Mid-South Association of Independent Schools, replied, “I don’t think we have to compromise anything. I think our schools do a good job.”
The private schools’ refusal to bend on certain issues should not be a surprise to legislators. While House Speaker Jason White, House Ways and Means Chairman Trey Lamar of Senatobia, Gov. Tate Reeves and advocates have touted the need for and advantages of vouchers, the private schools historically have been relatively quiet on the issue, though they do say now they would take the public money as long as they did not have to follow some of the rules adhered to by public schools.
But in recent years, as late as 2024, private schools embraced state tax credits being used to benefit them instead of direct taxpayer payments through vouchers.
They reasoned there would be less oversight with tax credits.
The Mid-South Association of Independent Schools said in a paper titled “The ABCs of School Choice” that tax credits with revenue going to private schools were considered more advantageous to them than vouchers.
“Freedom advocates, instead, look for policies like tuition tax credits and tax credits for donations to scholarship funds, to free up resources so that parents and donors can fund their own choices,” said the paper found on the MAIS website in 2024. “Such policies expand choice for parents without shifting the burden for their children onto others.”
The paper, which no longer is available on the private school association’s website, in part reads, “School choice cannot exist without driving up taxes – or cutting other parts of the budget to avoid deficits. As of 2019, private schools educated 44,000 students in Mississippi. If the Legislature approved a $7,000 voucher for each of those children, it must come up with $308 million more dollars in tax revenue – plus the increased bureaucratic costs (and other costs) associated with administering the program.”
The state currently offers limited tax credits to private schools through a program dubbed the Children’s Promise Act. The program allows a person or business to make a donation to one of the private schools certified by the Department of Revenue and receive a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for up to 50% of the donor’s state tax liability or a credit on local property taxes.
In simple terms, the donors to private schools get to pay less in either state income taxes or local property taxes.
The maximum a private school currently can receive through the program is $405,000 annually. Because of the popularity of the program with the private schools, there have been unsuccessful efforts in recent years, led by White and Lamar, to expand the Children’s Promise Act. It is currently capped at $9 million per year in tax credits.
To qualify to receive the benefits of the tax credits, a school must provide services to at least one student with “a chronic illness or physical, intellectual, developmental or emotional disability” or be eligible for the free lunch program or be a foster child.
The Department of Revenue, which oversees the program, has said it does not know how many students who fit into the Children Promise Act categories are educated by each school. Yes, theoretically, it could be only one.
While Lamar, the primary legislative advocate of the Children’s Promise Act, has sought unsuccessfully to increase the amount of the tax credits, he has not made any effort to increase the oversight of the program.
Some have argued that the tax credits do not put a strain on the state budget because money from state coffers does not go out to the private schools.
The argument seems disingenuous since people who donate to the private schools can have their tax liability cut in half, thus reducing the amount of money going into the state general fund.
Reducing the amount of state revenue available, as the tax credits do, accomplishes the same goal as vouchers – decreasing the amount of money available for public schools, health care, law enforcement and other services the state is expected to provide.
