Lawmakers in Mississippi are moving to protect in vitro fertilization, but state Agriculture Commissioner, Baptist preacher and outspoken anti-abortion advocate Andy Gipson is calling it “the greatest assault on the cause of life that we’ve seen in Mississippi in a long time.”
Gipson, also an attorney and former longtime lawmaker, posted a video statement on social media Thursday morning, saying “Don’t let anybody tell you it’s IVF. IVF is already legal in Mississippi, perfectly legal.”
But IVF was “perfectly legal” in Alabama until an Alabama Supreme Court decision called it into question mid-February.
House Bill 1688, authored by Medicaid Chairwoman Missy McGee, R-Hattiesburg, outlines reimbursement for community health workers. But after a Feb. 16 Alabama Supreme Court decision declaring frozen embryos are children threatened IVF and other procedures there, McGee was successful in adding an amendment to the bill that would protect the right to assisted reproductive technology in Mississippi.
In Alabama, the IVF came under question when a couple pursued litigation after an unauthorized person got access to a storage room in a fertility clinic and accidentally dropped a dish of frozen embryos on the floor, destroying them. After weeks in limbo as fertility clinics shut their doors and paused treatment, Alabama has since passed legislation to protect the procedure that allows couples facing infertility to create families.
The series of events caused enormous public outcry across the aisle.
“There is nothing more pro-life than trying to conceive a child,” McGee said on social media and again in a recent committee meeting.
Gipson said in his statement the bill was modeled after a federal Democrats’ bill which, he said, created a precedent for “back door abortion and possible cloning and selling of ‘genetic materials of humans.’” But the bill does not mention either.
In the committee meeting where she added the amendment, McGee said the amendment aims to protect families who are trying to have a baby, protects individual rights to their genetic material and protects the provider in performing or assisting in IVF. There is an enforcement section which states that an individual or a provider may sue the state if they have been prevented from receiving or providing the procedure.
“The direction things have been going in the nation, especially with all that’s happening in Alabama has been a big concern to a lot of folks,” McGee said. “… there is really nothing more pro-life than a family trying to conceive a child that’s having difficulty in doing so and we want to protect those rights for our Mississippians who are going through that process.”
The measure passed unanimously with no debate in committee. It is expected to be brought to a full House vote before the March 14 deadline.
The divide between the Senate and the House over how to fund public education — specifically local school districts — intensified dramatically on Thursday, setting the stage for a potentially contentious remainder of the 2024 legislative session.
On Thursday, the Senate passed its public school funding plan with no senator voting no and two voting present. The Senate plan would update the long-standing Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP) that features an objective formula to determine the amount of money schools needs for their basic operation.
The House leadership, conversely, passed its plan on Wednesday. While it is still supported by a strong majority of the House, it lost support after its initial approval on Wednesday, when just 13 members voted against it. But on Thursday, during a vote on a procedural motion to send the bill to the Senate, 36 members voted against it.
Before the vote on the procedural motion, Rep. Robert Johnson, D-Natchez, the chamber’s minority leader, blasted the House Republican leadership in a fiery speech for providing members with what he said was incorrect information on the bill when it was debated Wednesday in the chamber. He said the Legislative Budget Office told him that the numbers used to determine the cost of the program and how much money each school district received were not developed by the staff of the Legislative Budget Committee as House leaders had told the chamber on Wednesday.
He said as far as he knew, the numbers in the House plan were “pie in the sky.”
“I don’t mind anybody having a good idea,” Johnson said. “I don’t mind anybody coming up with a new plan. But if I am going to rely on the information presented to me, ask me to vote on something and I ask a question, I don’t think it is right to misrepresent information to me.”
House Education Chair Rob Roberson, R-Starkville, the primary author of the House bill, called it a “miscommunication” and that the numbers that the Legislative Budget Office staff verified were from publicly available data from the Mississippi Department of Education.
Speaker Jason White, R-West, said during a news conference Thursday that he respected the Senate, but indicated that basing funding on an objective formula was a non-starter. He said the House plan placed an additional $240 million into public education and that it was more equitable for poor students than the plan passed by the Senate.
But Senate Education Chair Dennis DeBar, R-Leakesville, said on Thursday that the Senate plan, which will increase education funding by about $210 million, was based “on real numbers” compiled with the assistance of the Department of Education.
Plus, he said, “I think it is extremely important we have an objective formula that everyone (every school district) can run and know what they are going to receive,” adding that an objective formula “provides accountability for us.”
DeBar is hoping with the changes in the Senate plan that the Legislature would choose to fully fund the formula each year. The formula has been fully funded only twice since 2003. And past House leaders have tried to replace the MAEP because they said it cost too much money.
The House plan would create an advisory committee composed of education professionals to make a recommendation to the Legislature of how much money schools needed.
During debate in the Senate and the House on Thursday, there was specific mention of three advocacy groups working on the House rewrite plan: Mississippi First, Empower Mississippi and the Mississippi Center for Public Policy. Two of the groups, Empower and Mississippi Center for Public Policy, are vocal supporters of vouchers, while Mississippi First has been a charter school proponent. Some public education advocates oppose charter schools that are not held to the same laws and regulations as traditional public schools.
DeBar pointed out the three groups began working in January on a plan similar to the House proposal. House leaders said they have communicated with Mississippi First, but did not know the other groups were involved. Plus, Roberson added he was willing to work with everyone.
For the first time since 1953, Mississippi would not rely on an objective funding formula to determine the amount of money local schools needed under legislation that overwhelmingly passed the House by an 95-13 margin on Wednesday.
Under the “Investing in the Needs of Students to Prioritize, Impact and Reform Education” (INSPIRE) Act, a group of eight local superintendents and employees of the state Department of Education would make a recommendation to the Legislature every four years on how much state money should go to local school districts.
The INSPIRE Act, if it is agreed to by the Senate, would replace the Mississippi Adequate Education Program. MAEP was passed in 1997 to replace the Minimum Education Program that was passed in the early 1950s as the primary source of state funding for local school districts.
The Minimum Program provided funds to local school districts based primarily on the number of teacher units they needed. Under MAEP, that process was changed to provide funds per student, referred to as the base student cost. MAEP defines the base student cost as the amount of money spent in an efficiently run “adequate” school district to educate a child. Districts receive their base student cost times their average attendance. And an important caveat in MAEP is that poor districts receive more per student than do more affluent districts.
House Education Committee Vice Chair Kent McCarty, R-Hattiesburg, who spent about an hour and a half answering questions on the bill Wednesday, told House members that INSPIRE was much more equitable than the MAEP.
“We have a bill that puts more of an emphasis on equity than anything you have ever seen,” said House Education Chair Rob Roberson, R-Starkville, who is the primary author of the legislation.
Under the bill, there would be a base student cost — $6,650 — which is about $800 less than MAEP if fully funded. But the schools would receive significantly more money than the $6,650 per student for children who are deemed as needing additional funds to be educated, such as poor students, special needs students and others. In the end, the total funding for the new House plan would be slightly less than the total funding for MAEP if fully funded.
But MAEP has been fully funded only twice since 2003, and McCarty said there is no appetite by House leaders to fully fund MAEP this year. Many legislative leaders have complained in recent years that the state could not afford full funding while saying at other times the formula was outdated and too complex to fund.
McCarty pledged that the INSPIRE Act would be fully funded this year — an additional $240 million for education — or he would vote against it later in the session. Rep. Bryant Clark, D-Pickens, said he feared that in the future, lawmakers would not fund INSPIRE just as they have not fully funded MAEP.
In the end, Clark voted present along with 13 others. The school district in his home county of Holmes, one of the poorest counties in the state, would receive about 25% in funding more than it received for the current year. Clark said he was torn on the bill.
“When you look at the bill, it has a lot of good things that would benefit my area – providing more help for low income students,” he said. But he added he is concerned that the bill leaves it up to people instead of an objective formula to determine the amount of money school districts receive, and that in future years the current funding levels would not continue.
Some wealthy districts, such as Rankin and Madison counties, will receive less funding under INSPIRE.
Rep. Jill Ford, R-Madison, said she voted for the legislation because she thought it was a better funding formula and that the reduction for her county would be phased in over three years. Plus, she said, Madison is getting the new Amazon Web Services data center that will add to its tax base.
“I think we will be all right.” she said.
Rep. Fred Shanks, a Republican who represents Rankin County, said he thought by the time that the three-year phase-in of the cut to his school district is complete, growth in funding in the formula would offset the reduction.
The House bill now moves over to the Senate, where it faces a Republican leadership that appears to this point more intent on tweaking and fully funding MAEP than scrapping the current formula and passing a new one.
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Inflamed by lack of investigation or enforcement of what he claimed were flagrant campaign finance violations by his opponent, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann after winning his reelection primary last summer vowed to push for reform.
Secretary of State Michael Watson, who said his hands were legally tied on dealing with such complaints, also vowed to push for reform and more authority for his office to police the flow of money into Mississippi politics.
On Tuesday the Senate Elections Committee moved forward a bill authored by Elections Chairman Jeremy England, R-Vancleave, one of Hosemann’s top lieutenants. The “omnibus” bill would give Watson’s office more power, add transparency for voters, increase penalties and fines and allow the secretary of state’s office to sidestep the AG’s office if it refuses to go after bad actors (which has been the current AG’s MO).
But lawmakers on both sides of the aisle in the Senate Elections Committee viewed the measure with a gimlet eye. They immediately axed its main transparency component, and added a “reverse repealer” to it, ensuring it cannot be passed into law as is. Only then did they send it along to the full Senate.
Mississippi lawmakers have long been loathe to expose themselves to transparency or strict ethics, lobbying or campaign finance rules and enforcement. The Legislature, for example, exempts itself from the open records and meetings laws it forces on others in government.
Mississippi’s campaign finance laws and reporting requirements are lax, and enforcement is nearly nonexistent. These laws have been piecemealed over many years, and the resultant hodgepodge is a confusing, often conflicting set of codes.
Hosemann said he wants an overhaul, and England’s bill covered many fronts, including creating a felony crime of perjury for willfully filing false finance reports, and a requirement that Mississippi join the modern age with candidates filing reports electronically and the secretary of state providing a publicly searchable database of campaign finance reports.
“This goes to the heart of the electoral process in this country,” Hosemann said on Monday. “Our founding fathers said the best thing we can have is an informed voter, and to have an informed voter you need to know who’s paying for what, who’s contributing to these candidates.”
Most other states, including all those surrounding Mississippi, have searchable databases of campaign contributions. For instance, a voter could type in a donor’s name and see to whom and how much that donor has given. While Mississippi’s SOS office has online campaign finance records, they are non-searchable PDFs — essentially pictures of pages — and candidates are still allowed to file paper, handwritten — even written in crayon — campaign finance reports.
Watson has advocated creating a searchable database, and lawmakers are expected to approve about $5 million in funding for a new SOS computer system. England’s bill would have required a searchable database and candidates to file electronically by 2027.
But Sen. Hob Bryan, D-Amory, said requiring Mississippi candidates to use such technology — either filing electronic reports or filling out online report forms — would be too onerous. He said this would prevent those who don’t have computers or cannot use them from running for office. He noted many areas of the state still lack high-speed internet service.
Bryan offered a successful amendment to strip the requirement for candidates to file campaign finance reports electronically.
Bryan and others also voiced trepidation about measures in the bill to aid investigation and prosecution of campaign finance violations. The measure, England said, changed a lot of “mays” about investigation and prosecution into “shalls.” It also says the secretary of state’s office, after it reports potential violations to the attorney general’s office, can hire outside counsel, engage a district attorney or find a special prosecutor if the AG’s office refuses to act.
“We are trying to clear up gray areas,” England said. “… so we don’t have situations where we don’t know who’s responsible to do what.”
But Sen. Joey Fillingane, R-Sumrall, said he fears this would amount to “shopping for a prosecutor who’s willing to prosecute … almost like fishing for prosecution.”
Bryan said, “I worry we are weaponizing the filing of complaints” against candidates.
After numerous critical questions about the measure, Sen. David Blount, D-Jackson, successfully offered an amendment to add a “reverse repealer” to the bill. This says the bill repeals before it could take effect, meaning it could not be passed into law without further scrutiny and work.
“Our laws can use a tune-up from time to time, but there are a lot of questions on this,” Blount said. “Let’s just keep working on this bill.”
England said that despite the rocky start, “I think we’ll get something out this year,” even if all the proposed reforms don’t make it. As to the searchable campaign finance database like other states have, he said, “I think we will eventually see that added back, just maybe not this year.”
The House this session did not have an omnibus campaign finance reform bill, but had several smaller measures. Most died without a vote in committee with Tuesday’s deadline.
New House Speaker Jason White, who in the past has championed some campaign finance reform measures, said he is open to such legislation.
“One specific thing lots of lawmakers are talking about is how we can better enforce the laws we have on the books now,” White said recently. “Also, transparency and searchable information that is easily accessed and available to the public is another potential place we could improve.”
It would remove the state Ethics Commission from campaign finance duties. The commission, spartanly staffed and funded, had been given some oversight over campaign finance reports, but the law was unclear on its authority, and conflicted with other laws still on the books. Hosemann said the secretary of state and attorney general offices have more staff, attorneys and expertise to deal with the regulations and laws.
The bill would increase criminal penalties for willful violations of campaign finance laws from up to $3,000 and six months in jail to up to $5,000 and a year in jail. It would create a felony penalty of perjury for willfully filing false campaign finance reports. It would also increase fines and penalties for administrative violations, such as failing to file campaign finance reports timely.
It would define coordinated expenditures and electioneering, seeking to prohibit third parties spending to help candidates but claiming they are acting independently and not following contribution limits and cut down on millions in “dark money” that has begun flowing into Mississippi elections.
Would clearly define corporations and clarify that corporations both in state and out of state are limited to contributions of $1,000 a year. Recently, AG Lynn Fitch said state law is not clear on the definition of a corporation, and she opined that out-of-state corporations don’t face the $1,000 limit — contrary to decades of interpretation of Mississippi’s law and practice.
Would require candidates to list the name, address and occupation of a donor. It would also give the secretary of state authority to check reports to make sure they are complete and appear accurate. Under current law, the secretary’s office is simply a repository, and has little oversight on whether reports are accurate and complete.
The state’s officer training board moved a step closer in the Legislature on Tuesday to gaining the power to investigate law enforcement misconduct.
“I am pleased that House Bill 691 and Senate Bill 2286 were both passed out of their committees,” said Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell. “These bills call for all law enforcement officers to be required to have continuing education training and the Board of Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Training will have the authority to launch its own investigations.”
If the bill becomes law, Tindell anticipates the Mississippi Board on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Training would hire two or three investigators who would investigate matters and make recommendations. “Ultimately,” he said, “it’s going to be up to the board.”
The bill comes in the wake of an investigation by the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting at Mississippi Today and The New York Times into sheriffs and deputies across the state over allegations of sexual abuse, torture and corruption.
For the first time, deputies, sheriffs and state law enforcement would join police officers in the requirement to have up to 24 hours of continuing education training. Those who fail to train could lose their certifications.
Other changes would take place as well. Each year, the licensing board would have to report on its activities to the Legislature and the governor.
The board’s makeup would be changed to include the public safety commissioner and the director of the Mississippi Law Enforcement Officers’ Training Academy.
Other criminal justice-related bills
House Bill 1454 and House Bill 755 would extend the repealer on parole eligibility for another two years. Senate Bill 2448 would delete the repealer in the current law and keep parole eligibility on the books.
“We are encouraged to see Mississippi lawmakers advance critical legislation to continue parole eligibility and keep reducing our state’s highest-in-the-nation imprisonment rate safely,” Alesha Judkins, state director of criminal justice group FWD.us, said in a Tuesday statement.
“This session, we urge Mississippi’s elected leaders to ensure that our current parole law is reauthorized without a repealer and advance the real public safety solutions our state deserves.”
House Bill 844 was the only parole-related bill to survive the legislative session after being approved by the Corrections Committee.
The legislation would require the Parole Board to solicit recommendations from members of the criminal justice system, including the original judge and prosecutor in the case and the attorney general’s office, when a person applies for parole.
Before a hearing, notification would need to be sent to the original prosecuting attorney and judge and the police chief and sheriff of the municipality and county where the conviction happened.
Bills aimed to keep parole eligibility reforms passed through both chambers’ Judiciary B committees.
A pair of bills, Senate Bill 2022 and House Bill 1440 would allow alternative sentencing and the possibility of parole for those who were under the age of 18 when they committed an offense.
According to a 2020report by the Office of the State Defender, 87 people in Mississippi were sentenced to an automatic life without parole sentence for crimes committed while they were under the age of 18, a practice found unconstitutional by several U.S. Supreme Court cases.
In the absence of legislative guidance, there aren’t procedures in place to review and resentence juvenile life without parole defendants, the report states.
Bills that died
HB 1540, which sought to punish law enforcement officers who sexually abuse those detained or on supervised release, failed to make it out of the Judiciary B Committee.Under Mississippi law, it is a crime for officers to have sex with those behind bars, but the law does nothing to prohibit officers from sexually exploiting those they arrest or detain. The bill sought to close that loophole, said the sponsor, state Rep. Dana McLean, R-Columbus. “Someone in a position of trust should be held to a higher standard.”
HB 1536 would have made it a felony for therapists, clergy and doctors to have sexual contact with those they treat, but the measure never made it out of the Judiciary B Committee. Mississippi Today reported that two women have told Hattiesburg police that counselor Wade Wicht sexually abused them during counseling sessions, but he may never face criminal charges because it’s not against the law in Mississippi for counselors to have sexual contact with their clients. Wicht has already admitted to having sex with two women he counseled, a violation of the ethical code that prompted the loss of his license before the State Board of Examiners for Licensed Professional Counselors, which oversees and licenses counselors.
Senate Bill 2353 proposed winding down the use of the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman over four years by sending incarcerated people, staff and programs to other prison facilities in the state. The bill was approved by the Correction Committee, which Barnett chairs, late last week and needed approval from the Appropriations Committee. It was never brought up. A major part of the bill was the purchase of the Tallahatchie Correctional Facility in Tutwiler, which is owned and operated by CoreCivic.
Two bills that proposed dissolving the current five-member Parole Board and reappointing them with those with certain experience, such as law enforcement or law, died in committee: House Bill 114 and Senate Bill 2352. The Senate bill also called for parole hearings to be broadcast live on the Department of Corrections website and open to the public. Information about upcoming hearings for violent offenders, parole and revocation outcomes and guidance documents the Parole Board uses would have also been required to be posted online.
House Bill 828 would have created a public database of law enforcement misconduct incidents.
House Bill 842 would have formed a domestic violence fatality review team within the State Medical Examiner’s office.
Republican Gov. Tate Reeves last week allowed a measure that regulates how insurance companies decide which prescription drugs and medical procedures to cover for a consumer to become law without his signature.
Reeves wrote on social media that he allowed Senate Bill 2140 to become law because reform for the process, called prior authorization, is needed. But didn’t give his full stamp of approval because he believes it could increase insurance premiums for state employees.
“Over the past couple of years, Mississippi has made significant gains in closing the pay gap between private and public sector employees,” Reeves wrote. “Senate Bill 2140, however, represents a step in the wrong direction and will have the likely unintended consequence of widening that pay gap again.”
When the Legislature is in session, the Mississippi Constitution gives the governor five days to either sign or veto legislation that passed both chambers of the Capitol. If the governor does neither after five days, the bill automatically becomes law.
This is the first time during Reeves’ second term and during the 2024 session that the governor has not signed a bill into law.
Prior authorization is when physicians have to seek approval from an insurance company before the company will cover a prescribed procedure, service or medication that is not an emergency.
If an insurance organization denies a prior authorization claim, a consumer could be forced to pay for a prescription or medical procedure out of pocket.
Insurance companies typically believe prior authorization helps ensure doctors provide only medically necessary services. Doctors argue the process is typically handled by clerical insurance staffers ill-equipped to understand medical procedures.
The bipartisan proposal would require insurance companies to create a “portal” or website by January 2025 for doctors to submit prior authorization applications.
For emergency services such as treating serious injuries from a car accident, prior authorization is not required under the new measure. For urgent services or procedures that can help treat someone in intense pain, insurance companies have 48 hours to process requests. For non-urgent services, insurance companies have seven days to process requests.
The measure overwhelmingly passed both chambers of the Legislature. Both House Public Health Chairman Sam Creekmore and Senate Insurance Committee Chairman Walter Michel, said they’re glad the bill became law because they believe it will help thousands of consumers and patients.
“These are real life issues,” Creekmore said. “This is a great solution to a real problem that affects many Mississippians.”
Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney’s office will be responsible for regulating insurance companies’ compliance with the new law.
Rick and Tyler Cleveland recount the week that was at the MHSAA and MAIS state basketball championships and take a look ahead at the upcoming college baseball and basketball weekend.
