Presumptive Medicaid eligibility for pregnant women passed overwhelmingly in the Senate on Thursday and now heads to the governor.
House Bill 539, authored by House Medicaid Chairwoman Missy McGee, R-Hattiesburg, allows pregnant women whose net family income is 194% or less of the federal poverty level to be presumed eligible for Medicaid and receive care before their Medicaid application is officially approved by the Mississippi division of Medicaid.
The bill does not introduce an additional eligibility category or expand coverage, McGee has explained. Rather, it simply allows pregnant women eligible for Medicaid to get into a doctor’s office earlier.
Under the bill, pregnant women will be able to receive care under presumed Medicaid eligibility for 60 days after their first doctor’s visit. The hope is that by the end of the 60-day window, they will have submitted their paperwork and been fully determined as eligible for Medicaid – since a regular Medicaid application only takes 45 days to process.
Presumptive eligibility would cost the state roughly $567,000, compared to the $1 million it can cost the state to care for just one extremely premature baby receiving care in a neonatal intensive care unit – “a minimal investment for a tremendous benefit to women in our state,” McGee said in committee.
Only four Senators voted No on the bill. They were: Angela Hill, R-Picayune; Kathy Chism, R-New Albany; Michael McLendon, R-Hernando and Mike Seymour, R-Vancleave.
At the time State Auditor Shad White announced arrests in what he called a historic public embezzlement bust, which involved officials funneling welfare funds to a pharmaceutical startup, White had information that Gov. Phil Bryant was a “key team member” in that company, a new lawsuit alleges.
In the four years since, the complaint from a defendant in the case alleges that White and the Mississippi Department of Human Services has “actively concealed Bryant’s role” in the scandal.
Investigators gathered text messages revealing that during Bryant’s last year in office, the governor consulted Jake Vanlandingham, the CEO of the experimental concussion drug firm called Prevacus, and former NFL quarterback Brett Favre while hundreds of thousands of federal welfare funds flowed to their project. Texts show Bryant, who as governor oversaw the welfare agency, then agreed to accept interest in the company after he left his post.
But officials withheld the relevant texts from Nancy New, who was charged with fraud for funneling the funds to Prevacus, for over two years, a new court filing alleges. New, who claims she was acting on the governor’s direction, didn’t even allegedly have access to the documents when she pleaded guilty to the state charges in April of 2022.
“Most damning perhaps, OSA (Office of the State Auditor) failed to produce Vanlandingham’s phone and text messages to Nancy New and Zach New in criminal discovery,” reads a new third-party complaint against Bryant from New’s son Jess New. “Instead, OSA withheld evidence from the News until long after a plea had been entered in state court.”
In response, a spokesperson for the auditor’s office said it would have been the responsibility of the prosecutor, in this case the Hinds County District Attorney’s Office, which secured the initial indictments, to release discovery materials.
“The Auditor’s Office turned over all evidence to the Hinds County District Attorney’s Office in a timely manner well before any guilty pleas were entered,” the auditor’s spokesperson Fletcher Freeman said in a statement. “This is a desperate attempt to try and discredit not only the State Auditor’s Office but also the Hinds County District Attorney’s Office, which together stopped the largest public fraud scheme in Mississippi history.”
Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens similarly said in an email that his office has a legal duty to serve all criminal defendants with discovery. “Despite Mr. New’s claims, the Hinds County District Attorney’s Office did not deviate from its discovery obligations in this case, and all material was timely disclosed pursuant to Mississippi law. Any claim to the contrary is simply false,” he wrote on Wednesday.
Jess New, a Jackson attorney and director of the Mississippi Oil and Gas Board, is a defendant in the extensive civil litigation MDHS has filed against 47 people or companies in an attempt to recoup the misspent funds. MDHS’s complaint alleges Jess New received welfare funds as a contractor for his mom’s nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center and attempted to profit from personal interest in the pharmaceutical project. While his mother and brother Zach New have pleaded guilty to state charges, Jess New has not been charged criminally.
On Wednesday, Jess New requested the judge allow him to file a third-party complaint against Bryant, who is not a defendant of the civil suit. While other defendants have asked that Bryant be added to the suit, this is the first time a defendant has attempted to actually bring a complaint against Bryant.
“MDHS has labeled the use of welfare grants to fund Prevacus as ‘an illegal transaction,’ yet MDHS continues to refuse to include Bryant as a Defendant despite overwhelming evidence of Bryant’s principal role in the ‘illegal’ transaction,” reads Jess News’ complaint, filed by his attorney Allen Smith.
An attorney for Bryant, who has not been charged in the state or federal welfare scandal-related cases, did not respond to Mississippi Today’s request for comment on Wednesday.
A gag order in the case has prevented parties or their counsel from providing any information or clarification to the public. The complaint details Bryant’s entanglement with Prevacus starting with their introduction in late 2018 until the arrests in 2020, using much of the same written communication included in countless news reports and court filings.
What’s unique about Jess New’s filing this week is how it describes the events leading up to the arrests and the flow of information afterwards — raising questions about exactly what law enforcement knew when.
White began quietly investigating the welfare agency in mid-2019 when he learned about suspicious payments by then-MDHS Director John Davis to professional wrestling brothers Brett and Teddy DiBiase.
Investigators eventually unearthed checks from New’s nonprofit to a concussion drug firm called Prevacus and subpoenaed Vanlandingham for documents in late December of 2019.
“On January 23, 2020, Vanlandingham responded by forwarding emails and documents to OSA that expressly mention Bryant and indicate his involvement with Prevacus since 2018,” Jess New’s complaint reads.
The email was dated Dec. 29, 2018 — just three days after Bryant attended a dinner for Prevacus and four days before Davis and New met with Vanlandingham and Favre “at Bryant’s direction,” the lawsuit alleges, to commit the funding.
“Governor Bryant is very supportive of future relations including drug clinical trials and manufacturing in the State of Mississippi,” Vanlandingham’s email reads. “I would like nothing more than to work with you all and Brett to bring benefit to Southern Miss University as well.”
The lawsuit alleges Vanlandingham attached a document listing “key” Prevacus “team members,” which included Bryant. In another email he produced to the auditor’s investigator, Vanlandingham told his investors that a “great deal of this has been funded with the help of folks in Mississippi including the Governor.”
“Bryant is a necessary party to this lawsuit, but the State of Mississippi, through MDHS and OSA, have actively concealed Bryant’s role. Bryant’s joinder as a Defendant is essential to Jess New’s ability to adequately defend himself,” Jess New’s complaint reads. “MDHS seeks to improperly blame Jess New for grant funds that Bryant directed to Prevacus. Jess New is entitled to show the jury that Bryant directed these grant funds to Prevacus while Governor in order to benefit himself, personally, and his business associates.”
In mid-January of 2020, while Vanlandingham was dealing with the subpoena from the auditor’s office, he was simultaneously making arrangements with Bryant to give him “a company package for all your help.” Bryant had just left office; texts indicate he was waiting until that date to enter into business with Prevacus. Shortly after, Bryant joined a new consulting firm and by Feb. 4, 2020, he was confirming a meeting date and location with Vanlandingham.
The same day, a Hinds County grand jury handed down indictments against the welfare officials. Equipped with at least some documents indicating Prevacus’ connection to welfare funds involved Bryant, White made his arrests the next day.
In response to the arrests, then-U.S. Attorney Mike Hurst’s office issued a release revealing that White had not included the FBI in his investigation, despite the scheme involving federal funds. White, a Republican, had previously worked on Bryant’s gubernatorial campaign and was appointed to his position by Bryant to fill a vacancy. White explained that he went to the Hinds County District Attorney’s Office, run by a Democrat, to avoid the appearance of political influence and for the ability to act quickly compared to the federal authorities.
But the arrests also resulted in another thing: Bryant ending talks with the company at the center of the scandal, texts show.
When news broke of the arrests, Bryant texted Vanlandingham to ask about the charges. The scientist told the former governor he’d been subpoenaed and “just gave them everything.”
“Not good…” Bryant wrote.
Five days later, White visited the local FBI offices to turn over his investigative file. Within hours, he also publicly named Bryant as the whistleblower of the case. To explain, White said that Bryant had relayed the initial intel about suspected fraud — the small tip regarding Davis and the wrestlers — in mid-2019.
The same morning, Bryant texted Vanlandingham, “I was unaware your company had ever received any TANIF funds. If some received anything of benefit personally then Legal issues certainly exists. I can have no further contact with your company. It is unfortunate to find ourselves at this point . I was hoping we could have somehow helped those who suffer from Brain Injuries. This has put that that hope on the sidelines.”
White’s office retrieved this and other texts from Vanlandingham’s phone after executing a search warrant on his Florida home on Feb. 19, 2020.
Defense attorneys for the News wouldn’t see these texts, according to the latest lawsuit, until Mississippi Today published them more than two years later.
Medicaid expansion, which for more than a decade has been blocked by legislative leaders, passed the House Wednesday 98-20 in less than 15 minutes and now advances to the Senate.
House Medicaid Chair Missy McGee, R-Hattiesburg, explained the policy as a “moral imperative” and said it “should transcend politics.” She also said that lawmakers have yet to propose a viable alternative to expansion to deal with Mississippi’s lack of health care access and poor health outcomes and that “‘No’ is not a policy that has helped.”
No questions followed McGee’s explanation of House Bill 1725. The bill passed with more than the two-thirds majority needed to override a potential veto from Republican Gov. Tate Reeves, who for years has opposed Medicaid expansion and reiterated his opposition multiple times during his successful reelection campaign last year.
The measure now heads to the Senate, which is also working on its own version of an expansion bill, as lawmakers consider making Mississippi the 41st state to expand Medicaid.
Authored by new House Speaker Jason White, R-West, and McGee, the bill would expand Medicaid eligibility to 138% of the federal poverty level or about $20,000 annually for an individual. The bill contains a work requirement for recipients of Medicaid expansion, but states that the expansion would go into effect even if the federal government does not approve the work requirement.
“Finding affordable access to health care is not only compassionate, but it is a smart investment in our workforce,” White said in a press conference after the floor vote. “As this bill is transmitted to the Senate for their consideration, I want to acknowledge that they, too, are drafting legislation that will provide health care accessibility options … Today we have sent them a conservative plan that addresses our shared goal to provide health care coverage for hardworking, low-income Mississippians.”
White expressed optimism the governor would sign the bill, saying he believed Reeves recognizes the importance of expanding health care access. Reeves has vehemently opposed Medicaid expansion, calling it “welfare” and “Obamacare.”
“A healthy workforce projects to a healthy economy,” White said. “… I’m not anticipating a veto at this point. I’m anticipating a business-minded, reasonable governor who weighs all options and all things and I think he is just that — in spite of what others may think.”
McGee in the press conference said: “Moving beyond a decade of simply saying ‘no’ to finding a workable solution to health access takes effort. But it’s a task I believe lawmakers from both parties in both chambers are up for … Most importantly I’m excited about the hundreds of thousands of working Mississippians that now and in the future could have a way toward a better, healthier quality of life.”
The federal government pays 90% of the cost for those covered by Medicaid expansion. Various studies have concluded Medicaid expansion in Mississippi would be a boon for the state economy and provide health care coverage for about 200,000 Mississippians — primarily the working poor. For the first four years, there is projected to be no cost to the state because of $600 million in additional federal funds, offered as an incentive to expand Medicaid.
The bill also has a built-in repealer, meaning the program would automatically end after four years — unless the Legislature chooses to renew it. This likely made it more palatable to Republicans on the fence.
McGee called it a “free pilot program” during a committee meeting and said “if it doesn’t work out, if we decide that our health outcomes have not improved, if it costs too much for the state, if for any reason we do not believe that it is doing the things that we want it to do, the program will simply repeal in 2029.”
Unlike the proposal Senate leaders say they are crafting, the House bill would not make expansion contingent on the Biden administration approving the work requirement. That’s important, since during the Biden administration CMS has rescinded work requirement waivers previously granted under the Trump administration, and has not approved new ones.
Every lawmaker who voted against the measure was a Republican. Several of those lawmakers refused comment after the vote, including Reps. Greg Haney, R-Gulfport; Stacey Hobgood-Wilkes, R-Picayune and Timmy Ladner, R-Poplarville.
Rep. Bill Kinkade, R-Byhalia, voted against the expansion bill, but said that could change if the measure is improved.
“I’m not convinced that the work component is as solid as they are saying it is,” Kinkade said. “I think this is a step in the right direction, and the conversation is going in the right direction on what we are trying to accomplish, but I was just not ready to vote for this measure right now. The narrative has got to change.”
Rep. Jill Ford, R-Madison, said, “It was an easy No vote for me … I represent one of the most conservative constituencies in the state, and my constituents do not support this. This was not about me. It was about the will of my constituents.”
On the other end of the spectrum, all the Democrats in the House, such as House minority leader Rep. Robert Johnson, D-Natchez, voted for the proposal.
“I kind of felt like it was going to be a great day,” Johnson said. Driving to the Capitol Wednesday morning, he said, he reminisced with former House Democrat leader Bobby Moak about how long they had been working to expand Medicaid.
While Johnson said he wished the bill included components of the House Democrats’ plan to provide more private insurance options for people who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid expansion, he said he told his fellow Democrats he would vote for the Republican bill and believed that it would help thousands of Mississippians.
Tamara Grace Butler-Washington, D-Jackson, is a freshman House member who worked years ago for the Mississippi Health Advocacy Program touting the need for Mississippi to expand Medicaid.
“It is a momentous occasion, especially for a freshman legislator to see this, knowing for how long it has been an issue,” she said.
Both Johnson and Butler-Washington praised the leadership of the House for passage of the bill.
Speaker White acknowledged his House colleagues for the overwhelming vote, his Republican colleagues for “strong support on an issue we have neglected for so long,” and the Senate for also drafting expansion legislation.
“In most uncomfortable times is where we make our best marks,” White said at the conclusion of the press conference.
BAY SAINT LOUIS — Mississippi Gulf Coast residents gathered at the Hancock County Library in Bay Saint Louis on Tuesday ready to voice their opposition over the use of the Bonnet Carré Spillway, which in recent years has plagued the Coast fisheries and the area’s overall economy.
But the public meeting, they learned, is part of a much broader effort by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to reevaluate how it manages the Lower Mississippi River, which stretches from Cape Girardeau, Missouri, to the Gulf of Mexico. The meeting on Tuesday was the first in a series the corps is holding over the next two weeks.
“It’s people, and it’s the environment, and it’s how do we balance all of our missions in this study considering the sediment and water budget in the Mississippi River, and how can we manage the overall study area in the best way possible for the next hundred years,” said Elizabeth Behrens, chief of the Environmental Studies Section for the corps’ New Orleans District.
Elizabeth Behrens, Chief of Environmental Studies Section for the Corps’ New Orleans District. Credit: Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today
The goal of the study, which will be a five-year effort, is to recommend specific projects around flood control, floodplain management, navigation, environmental restoration, hydropower and recreation, among other purposes.
General project ideas that the corps is already considering include: balancing water and sediment throughout the river and tributary system, reconnecting the river to its floodplain in certain areas, stabilizing channels, reducing flood risk for disadvantaged areas and changing the use of existing structure.
In the first stage of the study, the corps is traveling to cities throughout the Lower Mississippi River plain to hear what ideas residents have. Additional Mississippi meetings will take place in Stoneville on Feb. 28, Natchez on Feb. 29, and Vicksburg on March. 11 (visit the corps’ study website for details on meeting details and how to submit feedback).
One of the existing structures that the corps may reevaluate is the Bonnet Carré Spillway, which the agency built in the late 1920s and early 1930s as part of the federal government’s response to the Great Flood of 1927. The spillway’s purpose is to divert incoming flood waters from New Orleans. When the Mississippi River reaches a certain height, the corps opens the Bonnet Carré, sending water into Lake Ponchartrain that eventually flows into the Mississippi Sound.
The corps has operated the spillway for roughly 90 years, but never as frequently as the last decade. In 2019, for the first time ever, the it opened the spillway twice in a calendar year.
The resulting influx of freshwater into the Mississippi Sound has historically disrupted the habitats of species such oysters, shrimp, crabs and even dolphins. The 2019 spillway openings devastated the populations of those species in the Sound, and subsequently local fisheries and the tourist-driven economy on the Coast as well.
Former Biloxi mayor Gerald Blessey speaks at a meeting for the Army Corps’ Lower Mississippi River Comprehensive Management Study in Bay Saint Louis. Credit: Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today
Gerald Blessey, former mayor of Biloxi, said at Tuesday’s meeting that the corps needs to make changes to the spillway’s protocol before the end of the five-year study.
“We can expect more and more water (coming down the Mississippi River),” Blessey said. “There will be more floods. We can’t wait five years to start working on solutions.”
In response to the 2019 openings, Blessey and other Coast leaders organized the Mississippi Sound Coalition to call attention to the issue. Last month, the Coalition filed a lawsuit against the corps, alleging the agency violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act by lowering the salinity and causing “direct and indirect mortality of many resident bottleneck dolphins.”
On Wednesday, a Mississippi state Senate committee passed the “Mississippi Comprehensive Coastal Conservation and Restoration Act of 2024,” a bill that would create an advisory board to work with state agencies in restoring coastal habitats.
The corps will take input on its new Mississippi River study from the public until April 2.
Behrens, the corps staffer, said the study is a historic effort in developing how the federal government manages the Mississippi River.
“This is really unprecedented,” she said. “We’ve been operating on the river since the (1920s), and we’ve been operating it off of a consistent program for a while, so this is a monumental effort. A lot of people who are no longer even living looked forward to the day that we would look again at the Mississippi River and balancing it for all these missions.”
The Justice Department is accusing the state of Mississippi of violating the constitutional rights of those held in four prisons: the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility, the South Mississippi Correctional Institution and Wilkinson County Correctional Facility.
“Our work makes clear that people do not abandon their civil and constitutional rights at the jailhouse door,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division told reporters in a press conference Wednesday. “The unconstitutional conditions in Mississippi’s prisons have existed for far too long, and we hope that this announcement marks a turning point towards implementing sound, evidence-based solutions to these entrenched problems.”
Department officials released a 60-page report Wednesday that centers on the three prisons besides Parchman. The report concluded that the Mississippi Department of Corrections “does not adequately supervise incarcerated people, control contraband, and investigate incidents of harm and misconduct. These basic safety failures and the poor living conditions inside the facilities promote violence, including sexual assault. Gangs operate in the void left by staff and use violence to control people and traffic contraband.”
Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke speaks to media via Zoom during a press conference at the Thad Cochran U.S. District Courthouse in Jackson, Miss., after six law enforcement officers pleaded guilty to brutalizing and assaulting two Black men during a home raid that ended with an officer shooting one of the victims in the mouth. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
Clarke said one major reason for this problem is that vacancy rates for correctional officers run between 30% and 50% at these prisons.
“It should be corrections officers running prisons, not gangs,” said U.S. Attorney Todd Gee for the Southern District of Mississippi. “When inmates are forced to join gangs, they bring that violent culture with them when they are released.”
A former gang intelligence officer estimated that more than half of those inside the Central Mississippi prison belong to gangs, according to the report. In recent years, the percentage of validated gang members inside Wilkinson was as high as 90%.
“The strength of prison gangs inside the MDOC facilities that we investigated is so great that even some staff members have gang affiliations and are on the gangs’ payroll,” the report says.
A coordinator attributed the gangs’ strength “to staff corruption and estimated that more than half the staff are on the payroll of gangs,” according to the report.
Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain has repeatedly vowed to put the gangs out of business and replace them with faith-based alternatives. The Justice Department concluded that “these efforts are inadequate. MDOC’s statewide gang coordinator could not share any metrics that assess the effectiveness of their gang control strategy. Nor do MDOC’s measures appear from our review to have broken the gangs’ stranglehold over MDOC facilities.”
The report also alleged that housing practices at some prisons “create a substantial risk of serious harm. MDOC holds hundreds of people at Central Mississippi and Wilkinson [a private prison run by MTC] in restrictive housing for prolonged periods in appalling conditions. Restrictive housing units are unsanitary, hazardous, and chaotic, with little supervision. They are breeding grounds for suicide, self-inflicted injury, fires, and assaults.”
MDOC officials have not responded to a request for comment about the Justice Department report. MTC, which operates Wilkinson, said in an emailed response that the Justice Department’s conclusions about the Wilkinson prison were drawn from visits conducted nearly two years ago and it has made “many improvements since.”
“While some challenges are inherent in operating a correctional facility, especially at facilities that house high-security inmates like Wilkinson, we continue to enhance the services we provide,” MTC said.
“The report serves as a reminder of the broad challenges faced by most, if not all, correctional facilities in all jurisdictions. These include staffing, contraband, and inmate behavior.”
Management & Training Corporation (MTC) was founded on a mission to help people improve their lives through education, training, and rehabilitation. We invest often and heavily in programming.
These constitutional violations are “systemic problems that have been going on for years,” according to the report.
In 2019, the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting and ProPublica published a series of stories on these prisons, exposing grisly violence, gang control and subhuman living conditions, noting that lawmakers had known about these issues for years and had done little to fix Parchman and the other prisons.
After that reporting, U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and others called on the Justice Department to investigate. The department began to do that in February 2020, starting with Parchman, which the department concluded in April 2022 that those imprisoned were being subjected to violence, inadequate medical care and lack of suicide prevention.
Asked what steps those officials have taken on Parchman since the Justice Department’s 2022 report, Clarke replied, “We are aware of preliminary steps they have taken, but as laid out in great detail, the problems are severe, egregious and long-standing.”
In its latest report, Justice Department officials concluded that all four prisons are “riddled with violence. … Gross understaffing, poor supervision, and inadequate investigations create an environment where violent gang activity and dangerous contraband trafficking proliferate.”
Central Mississippi averages an assault every other day between September 2020 and June 2022, 23 of them requiring hospitalization, according to the report. South Mississippi reported nearly 100 assaults, about 4o of them requiring hospitalization. And a fifth of the more than 150 assaults at Wilkinson required hospitalization.
These numbers underestimate the violence, the report says. “In light of the large number of documented assaults …, MDOC officials cannot claim ignorance of the substantial threat of violence at these facilities.”
At Central Mississippi, camera footage showed an inmate choking and kicking a victim in the head at 3:41 a.m. on an unspecified date. Later, another assailant punched him in the face. By 8:43 a.m., the body was rigid.
It wasn’t until 8:45 a.m., five hours after the assault, that an officer ever came to the cell. It was the officer bringing the morning meal.
Medical help arrived 20 minutes later, but it was far too late. The victim, who wasn’t identified, died.
“The Warden’s report makes no mention of an officer being present on the housing unit at any point during the five hours between the assault and the [man] foaming at the mouth,” according to the report.
At South Mississippi, gang members attacked a man over $68 that he supposedly owed, the report says. “The assailants dragged the victim across different zones of the same housing unit, then after he lost consciousness, brought him to the showers and poured cold water from a garbage can on him to wake him up. Once the victim started coughing and spitting up water, the assailants continued the assault, pouring boiling hot water on him and beating him. The attackers reportedly prohibited anyone in the housing area from contacting medical [services] following the assault. After conferring with other gang members, the assailants agreed to request a security check from officers, because of the severity of the victim’s injuries. Responding staff found the victim lying on the floor behind benches. He was unable to stand up and moaned when asked questions. He had burns over 10–20% of his body, a nasal fracture, head injury, lack of cognitive response and encephalopathy (brain injury).”
The report details how often no one is monitoring the prisons’ video surveillance.
Violence at these prisons includes sexual assaults. The Prison Rape Elimination Act Manager for Central Mississippi receives between 20 and 25 complaints a month, and that number doesn’t include the attacks that go unreported.
Justice Department officials determined that staff could easily introduce contraband into these prisons.
“Drugs, cell phones, and weapons are the most common type of contraband found in the facilities,” the report says. “Many of the assaultive incidents at Central Mississippi, South Mississippi, and Wilkinson, involve contraband weapons. During one altercation at Wilkinson, an incarcerated individual sustained a laceration to his chest. Security staff recovered a piece of a kitchen knife from the scene. After an assault at Wilkinson that sent an incarcerated person to the hospital, staff recovered an eight-inch implement.”
In a single month in 2022, Wilkinson officials recovered 28 grams of meth, 8 ounces of marijuana and 10 cellphones. Over a 13-month period, South Mississippi found 1,200 cellphones, which are commonly used to “conduct business, including contraband trafficking,” according to the report.
The volume of these drugs “leads to extreme, drug-induced behaviors that contribute to violence and fatal overdoses,” according to the report. “An individual who died at Wilkinson after cutting himself and assaulting and choking his cellmate was found to have amphetamine and methamphetamine in his system.”
In addition to the lack of staff to monitor towers and videos, the report found officers “fail to do basic security tasks such as making rounds, counting incarcerated persons, and keeping doors secure. MDOC has long known about this gross understaffing and the harm it causes, but has failed to take reasonable, effective measures to fix the problem.”
Since 2020, when Gov. Tate Reeves appointed Cain, MDOC has raised starting pay for correctional officers, lowered eligibility requirements, shortened training and expedited hiring.
Despite that, the prisons are operating at “dangerously low staffing levels,” the report says. Despite significant pay raises, the pay remains lower than “other correctional agencies in the region and in other industries in Mississippi.”
MDOC also struggles to retain those it hires. One human resources officer said South Mississippi lost about half of its new hires from the previous year.
The reasons why? People aren’t prepared for the job, some have gang affiliations, and others help bring in contraband, sometimes “because of threats from incarcerated individuals,” sometimes because of “significant money being paid to officers.”
U.S. Attorney Clay Joyner for the Northern District of Mississippi said that ensuring “constitutional and humane conditions of confinement in our prisons is a key part of public safety. By allowing physical violence, illegal gang activity, and contraband to run rampant, Mississippi not only violates the rights of people incarcerated at these facilities, but also compromises the legitimacy of law enforcement efforts to protect our communities.”
UPDATE 2/28/24: This story has been updated to include MTC’s response to the report.
A lawmaker behind a controversial bill to close three public universities in Mississippi says its chances of becoming law this session are “slim.”
Sen. John Polk, R-Hattiesburg, told Mississippi Today that he just wanted to start a conversation when he filed Senate Bill 2726, which would require the governing board of Mississippi’s eight public universities to shutter three by 2028.
“It’s pretty out there,” Polk said.
Start a conversation, Polk did. Social media was a flurry the weekend after the bill dropped. ByWednesday, an online petition opposing the bill had gained more than 7,500signatures. A local newspaper serving Columbus, the northeastern city home to Mississippi University for Women, published an op-ed warning the bill would devastate the local economy.
And alumni of the state’s three historically black universities and colleges decried the bill as a do-over of former Gov. Haley Barbour’s plan tomerge those schools.
That isn’t his intention, Polk said. Any of the eight universities could be closed under his bill. And among the most vulnerable based on enrollment are three of the state’s regional colleges: MUW in Columbus, Delta State University in Cleveland and Mississippi Valley State University, a historically Black university in Itta Bena.
“If I were trying to close an HBCU, I would’ve put that in the bill,” Polk said.
The bill will likely die in the Senate Colleges and Universities Committee due to politics, Polk said, and the emotional ties that Mississippians have to their colleges. His bill is not on the committee’s agenda for Thursday.
Still, it comes at an inauspicious time for higher education in Mississippi as university officials are scrambling to contend with a dwindling number of high school graduates going to college, a trend that will hit the regional colleges the hardest. It also comes on the heels of a failed push this session to rename MUW, part of an effort to boost the college’s declining enrollment.
“You can see how changing the name of the W causes such angst,” Polk said. “This bill will cause much more, and I know that.”
A number of solutions have been offered to this problem. Sen. Nicole Boyd, R-Oxford, the chair of the Senate Colleges and Universities Committee, has introduced a bill that would create a legislative taskforce to study how the “enrollment cliff” will impact the state’s higher education system.
But Polk’s bill is the first to propose the state close universities instead of coming to their rescue.
“Sometimes you just have to pull the Band-Aid off the wound,” Polk said. “Until I introduced this bill, no one was talking about that.”
Polk said the bill was his idea and that he did not consult the 12-member Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees before filing it. An IHL spokesperson said the board does not comment on pending legislation.
If passed, IHL would be required to decide which three schools to close after conducting statewide listening sessions and evaluate criteria such as enrollment data; tuition rates; economic impact; additional services such as medical, agricultural, engineering or research; and “any other special factors that the board believes the institution offers that cannot be easily replaced or replicated.”
Involving IHL, Polk said, seemed like a way to make this process less political than if the Legislature decided which three to close. But many universities in Mississippi have felt overlooked by the board at various points in their history. Nine of the 12 trustees are graduates of Mississippi’s three largest research universities. Some are high-dollar donors to Gov. Tate Reeves, and all are gubernatorial appointees.
“IHL has the best interest of the education of students in higher education settings in Mississippi, and they’re the ones that can make the best decision for all of Mississippi,” Polk said.
Though Polk says his bill will save taxpayer dollars, he does not envision it reducing the annual funding IHL receives. He referred to an IHL handout showing the appropriations each school received last year.
If IHL closed the three schools with the smallest enrollments — Delta State, Valley State and MUW — the state could save $85 million, Polk said, money he sees as better off distributed among the remaining five.
“If they didn’t choose the three I just mentioned, the savings to the state would be better,” Polk said.
What would happen to the towns around these smaller colleges, like Itta Bena, Cleveland and Columbus? Polk said that’s not why the state universities exist.
But he noted his bill would not permit the closed campuses to become branches of the remaining five. The buildings would have to be sold or repurposed, he said.
“Our universities have a mission,” Polk said. “We forget sometimes their mission is to educate in a higher form than K-12. It is not economic development.”
If the University of Southern Mississippi closed, Polk said he would say he’s sorry, “but that’s what IHL thinks is best for the state of Mississippi.”
If Mississippians are allowed to vote to enact a new initiative process to allow citizens to bypass the Legislature and place issues on the ballot, it is likely to be much more restrictive than the process that was deemed invalid in 2021 by the state Supreme Court.
On Wednesday, the Senate Accountability, Efficiency, Transparency Committee passed a proposal to restore voters’ initiative rights. But the Committee proposal is significantly more restrictive than the one first enacted in the early 1990s and used until the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional. The Senate AET proposal would require double the number of voters’ signatures to put something on the ballot, and limit the issues that voters can take up.
The AET Committee measure most likely will be taken up in the coming weeks by the full Senate.
Earlier this session the House passed a proposal, now pending in the Senate, that also is more restrictive than the old process. If the Legislature does pass a proposal to finally renew the initiative, it still must be approved by the voters before it will be valid. But voters will have to accept or reject what the Legislature offers. They cannot change it.
Senate AET Chairman David Parker, R-Southaven, said any procedure allowing citizens to bypass the Legislature and change the state’s laws should be “onerous” and safeguards should be taken to limit out-of-state influence on the process.
Sen. David Blount, D-Jackson, pointed out that under the old process a limited number of initiatives garnered the necessary signatures needed to make the ballot. Blount said the fear that the process would be overly influenced by out-of-state interests “is a theory, but we have 30 years of evidence to show what the people of Mississippi did with the initiative process they used to have. And they voted for good things and voted against bad things.” Only three initiatives were approved by votes during those 30 years.
Both the House and Senate proposals prohibit the initiative process from being used to change the state’s near total ban on abortions. In other states, voters have rejected placing restrictions on abortions. Both House and Senate leaders say they do not want out-of-state interests influencing Mississippi’s abortion laws.
The Senate proposal passed out of committee Tuesday would require the signatures equal to 10% of the registered voters from the last presidential election – more than 200,000 signatures of registered voters – to place an issue on the ballot. The House plan would require the signatures of about 166,000. The proposal ruled invalid by the Supreme Court because of a technicality would have required about 100,000 signatures of registered voters.
Parker said the higher signature threshold is needed because technology has made it much easier to gather signatures than it was in the early 1990s.
The Senate bill would not remove the often-criticized provision in the old initiative process that allowed the Legislature to place a competing alternative to the citizen-sponsored initiative on the ballot, causing confusion among voters.
The Senate bill would require sponsors of an initiative to take money from another area of state government if their proposal cost money, Blount said. He said the process would be unworkable for a number of issues, such as expanding Medicaid. For instance, the Legislature is considering a proposal to require medical providers to pay for a portion of the cost of expanding Medicaid. Citizens could not offer such a proposal under the House and Senate initiative plans, Blount said.
In addition, the Senate proposal would require 60% of voters to approve an initiative in order for it to pass. Of the 26 states with initiatives, none have as high of voter threshold to change all general laws.
The Senate Elections Committee on Tuesday advanced legislation to eliminate the five days local elections workers have to count mail-in absentee ballots.
The majority-Republican committee passed Senate Bill 2579 with little debate, sending it to the full Senate.
“In my opinion, when we have votes that are being counted after Election Day like this, whether there’s any bad intent or not, it’s not received by the public well,” Senate Elections Committee Chairman Jeremy England, author of the bill, said.
To address concerns with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the GOP-dominated Legislature passed a law to allow local election workers to count mailed absentee ballots for up to five days after the election date, but only if the ballots were postmarked by the election date. Republican Gov. Tate Reeves signed the bill into law.
The legislation comes at a time when the Republican National Committee, the Mississippi GOP and the Libertarian Party of Mississippi have filed federal litigation against Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson and several local elections officials to prevent the five-day timeframe from being used in federal elections.
A veterans advocacy group and a disability rights organization are currently attempting to intervene in the litigation to argue the lawsuit should be dismissed. U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola Jr. has not issued any substantive rulings on the suit.
England, R-Vancleave, told Mississippi Today that the pending federal litigation did not have any influence over his decision to advance the legislation.
“It’s time to move this back to the way we had it before COVID,” England said.
The second-term lawmaker also said he plans to pass legislation out of the Senate committee that creates in-person absentee voting and reforms the state’s campaign finance laws.
