The House passed a bill that would no longer prohibit Mississippi’s small towns from selling liquor and wine — a Prohibition-era carryover still enforced for municipalities in many “dry” counties.
The measure, which passed the House on Tuesday by a vote of 93-21, which would automatically legalize the sale and manufacture of wine and liquor in all municipalities in the state that have 5,000 or fewer residents. Currently, many of those small municipalities cannot sell liquor or wine at all.
House State Affairs Chairman Hank Zuber III, a Republican from Ocean Springs, said the law is intended to support tourism in smaller areas and add some level of conformity to the state’s hodgepodge network of alcohol laws.
“This is just a matter of bringing Mississippi into the 21st century,” Zuber said on Tuesday.
The majority of Mississippi’s 82 counties, commonly called “wet” counties, allow liquor and wine sales. But approximately 30 counties in the state do not allow hard liquor sales and are typically referred to as “dry” counties. Some large cities inside those dry counties, however, do allow spirit and wine sales, leading to the nickname of “moist” counties.
Municipalities with more than 5,000 residents inside of dry counties already have the option to conduct a local election to allow liquor and wine sales.
The House proposal would not change the restrictions in dry counties, but it would make municipalities with 5,000 or fewer residents inside the dry counties wet.
If the measure becomes law, it would allow the small towns to conduct a referendum to become dry again. To trigger a local election, a total of 1,500 residents or 20% of the citizens — whichever is less — must sign a petition.
The state’s byzantine and sometimes contradicting alcohol laws date back to the early 19th century. Mississippi became the first state to ratify the 18th Amendment that instituted Prohibition.
During Mississippi’s Prohibition period, the state’s policies became so hypocritical that it once established a State Tax Collector office, where the main goal of the agency was to collect a “black market” tax on illegal whiskey.
In 1966, Mississippi became the last state to repeal its statewide Prohibition law and pass the current law allowing counties to decide for themselves whether they wanted to legalize liquor sales.
The distribution of alcohol in Mississippi is now state-controlled. The Mississippi Department of Alcohol Beverage Control imports, stores and sells millions of cases of spirits and wines each year.
The House measure now heads to a Senate committee for consideration. If passed into law, the bill would take effect on Jan. 1, 2025.
Attorneys for public school advocates said in oral arguments Tuesday before the Mississippi Supreme Court that the state constitutional provision that prevents public funds from going to private schools is “ironclad.”
Attorneys Rob McDuff and Will Bardwell, representing Parents for Public Schools, said at the time of the writing of the 1890 Mississippi Constitution that public funds were being spent on private schools and the framers of the constitution sought to prevent that from occurring. Section 208 of the constitution says, in part, that public funds shall not be provided to any school “not conducted as a free school.”
The Parents for Public Schools organization filed a lawsuit in 2022 challenging the constitutionality of a $10 million state legislative appropriation made to the Midsouth Association of Independents Schools.
“Section 208 expresses a simple principle: public money shall go to public schools,” McDuff told a three-justice panel of the nine-member Supreme Court on Tuesday.
Only justices Leslie King of the Central District, Robert Chamberlin of the Northern District and David Ishee of the Southern District heard the oral arguments, though it is possible that all nine justices will rule on the issue. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court by state Attorney General Lynn Fitch after Hinds County Chancellor Crystal Wise Mastin ruled the Legislature’s action was unconstitutional.
Justin Matheny of the Attorney General’s Office argued Tuesday that it was OK for the Legislature to appropriate the money to the state’s private schools for infrastructure repairs because the funds were not state money but were part of the more than $1 billion in federal funds provided to the state for COVID-19 relief.
Additionally, Matheny pointed out the funds were not directly appropriated to the private schools by the Legislature, but to the state Department of Finance and Administration with the instruction to send the money to the private schools in the form of grants. King of the Central District, who presided over the three-justice panel, told Matheny that it was the custom of the Legislature to appropriate most funds to state agencies with instructions to provide the money to the entity that the Legislature intended to receive the funds.
Matheny also argued that the Parents for Public Schools was not directly harmed by the Legislature’s action so the advocacy group did not have standing to bring the case. Bardwell argued that the group as taxpayers, including taxpaying parents of public school students, did have standing.
King asked Matheny if he was arguing that sometimes there is no one with standing to file a lawsuit challenging a legislative action as unconstitutional.
Matheny replied, “It is possible and it should not bother anyone” since no one was harmed by the legislative action. He said the appropriated money was not state funds reserved for public schools, so no one was harmed.
Chamberlin then posed a hypothetical to McDuff: If Congress earmarked money specifically for private schools, would the Mississippi Legislature be able to appropriate it to the private schools then? McDuff replied the Legislature would not under Section 208 of the state constitution. Of course, under Chamberlin’s hypothetical, Congress could bypass the Legislature and send money directly to the private schools just as it did to public schools as part of some of the COVID-19 relief funds.
The money the Legislature appropriated to the private schools in 2022 was part of a pot of federal discretionary funds that were sent to the states to be used in numerous areas, including on infrastructure improvements. But since the money was public, Bardwell and McDuff argued, in Mississippi it could not go to private schools.
Buck Dougherty of the Liberty Justice Center argued that the private schools should be allowed to intervene in the case. The private schools were not allowed to intervene in the lower Hinds County Chancery Court. Martin, the judge in the original case, ruled that the request to intervene was made too late.
In addition, Dougherty argued that Section 208 of the state constitution violates the U.S. Constitution. He said that constitutional provisions in various states prohibiting public money from going to private religious schools have been ruled as unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.
But Bardwell pointed out that the issue is not public money going to religious schools.
He said the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that “the state is not obligated to fund private schools.” But if a state is providing funds to a private school, it cannot discriminate against religious schools. The key difference, Bardwell said, is that Mississippi Constitution’s Section 208 prohibited public funds from going to all private schools.
Numerous people on both sides of the issue attended the Tuesday oral arguments in downtown Jackson.
As of a year ago, about 30 states had a state-led initiative meant to help curb greenhouse gas emissions and avoid the worst-case, irreversible effects of global warming.
Mississippi, as much of the South, including Alabama, Tennessee, Texas and Georgia, does not have what’s called a “climate action plan.” Louisiana released its plan in 2022.
But soon, almost every state, including Mississippi, will have one thanks to recent financial incentives from the Environmental Protection Agency. As part of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the EPA is giving states $3 million each to develop an initial climate action plan by March.
The plan has to include an inventory of greenhouse gas emissions, a list of measures to reduce emissions over the next five years, and an analysis of benefits for low-income and disadvantaged communities. Then, by 2025, states have to develop a comprehensive plan detailing specific projects as well as long-term goals for reducing emissions by 2050.
Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) CEO Chris Wells, discusses the potential for future projects at MDEQ headquarters, Monday, Feb. 5, 2024 in Jackson. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
The EPA is making another $4.6 billion available for specific climate pollution projects through competitive grants, but states have to apply for those by April.
The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, which is in charge of submitting the state’s plan, is inviting the public to submit ideas and feedback through a new survey on its website.
MDEQ Executive Director Chris Wells told Mississippi Today that the $3 million planning grant will go a long way towards brainstorming and pitching future projects, but was critical of the EPA’s funding process.
“The process they’ve laid out is very odd and convoluted, I’ll just be very candid,” Wells said.
He called it a “head-scratcher” to have a deadline for the $4.6 billion a year before the state has come up with its comprehensive plan, and also so soon after submitting the much broader, initial climate action plan. Wells added, though, that MDEQ, in working with other agencies and the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, will still plan to submit what project ideas it has in hopes of getting some of the large pot of funding.
As far as the biggest greenhouse gas polluters, the director said they’re likely the same in Mississippi as elsewhere in the country: power generation and transportation.
“That’s not me casting shade on the power generation industry. It’s just that that’s a source of pollutants,” he said. “And then mobile sources. Particularly with all the economic activity going on, post COVID, things have ramped back up, and we’re back to pre-pandemic levels of traffic on the roads.”
The chart below shows a 2021 breakdown from the EPA of Mississippi’s pollution sources:
So far, MDEQ has a list of ideas for types of projects that could take shape with the state's new climate action plan: increasing solar capacity, electrification of trucks and school buses, using biofuel, energy efficiency upgrades through building codes, refrigerant replacement, appliance electrification, forest carbon management, agricultural best practices, and capturing and electrifying methane from landfill and wastewater.
But Wells emphasized that MDEQ, with its limited capacity and authority, would need outside support to enact large scale changes, like changing local building codes.
"A big need for us is beefing up our (electric vehicle) charging infrastructure," he said. "We're not in a position to unilaterally implement a project like that, so we have to other agencies, whether it's (the Mississippi Department of Transportation) or (the Mississippi Development Authority), and/or the private sector. I think the opportunity here for public-private partnerships is huge, because even if the government goes out and builds a charging station, someone's got to maintain it."
Wells said he hadn't had any conversations with any lawmakers to gauge their interest in supporting such projects.
While there's not a full inventory of Mississippi's greenhouse gas emitters, the EPA does track data on the top emitting facilities. Below is a map of some of the top polluters in Mississippi, which are largely comprised of power plants and chemical facilities:
In addition to taking MDEQ's survey, members of the public can e-mail project ideas to the agency at camp@mdeq.ms.gov. Wells said the agency will make the initial action plan due in March available to the public.
The decision to use $1.3 million in Mississippi’s federal welfare dollars to fund a boot camp-style fitness program in 2018 didn’t occur entirely off the books or in secret.
It was allegedly part of a state-sanctioned initiative that exploited the social safety net — a national trend that federal officials are trying to reverse through several policy changes it recently proposed.
Auditors later deemed expenditures on the exercise program unlawful, lumping it within a sprawling welfare fraud scheme to which seven people have pleaded guilty, and the state has demanded the money returned. But at the time, Mississippi and federal officials were all on board, according to the fitness instructor Paul Lacoste.
In fact, Lacoste recalls that before he received his contract for welfare funds, the state agency director John Davis, his boss then-Gov. Phil Bryant, and federal officials were at the table and supported the idea. Davis has pleaded guilty to several felonies and potentially faces years in prison, Lacoste has not been charged criminally but he is facing civil litigation, and Bryant is not facing criminal or civil charges.
The federal grant that supplied the funds, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or TANF, is a work and family stabilization program, not a health-related program.
Leaders may have theoretically justified the purchase by arguing that helping low-income people get fit would help them enter or maintain their employment. In other words, a healthy population equals a strong workforce. It may be a stretch, but it’s arguably the kind of mental leap states have made since welfare reform in the 1990’s in order to spend federal welfare funds on virtually anything but cash assistance to needy families.
But it’s unclear if that’s how leaders justified the fitness classes or if that explanation would even fly. Mississippi didn’t necessarily have to explain their logic because the federal government didn’t require it. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which administers the program, exercises no authority to scrutinize state spending or determine whether the uses actually align with the program’s intended purposes.
Enter the Mississippi welfare scandal, where state officials used politically-connected nonprofits and dubious legal loopholes to funnel welfare money to the construction of a volleyball stadium, a pharmaceutical startup company, a wrestling ministry, and countless other questionable programs.
Under U.S. President Joe Biden, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is attempting to clarify what kinds of programs states can support with TANF funds. The rules say that states may no longer be able to use the grant to support afterschool programs, college scholarships for recent high school graduates from middle-class families, or child welfare investigations — all things Mississippi currently does within its TANF program.
“It would be premature for DHS to comment on a proposed rule,” a spokesperson for Mississippi Department of Human Services said in an emailed statement to Mississippi Today. “ACF (the Office of Family Assistance at the U.S. Department of Human Services) has only issued a notice of a proposed rule. There could be changes before a final rule is adopted.”
HHS similarly said it “cannot speculate on the application of a rule that is a proposed rule and has not yet been finalized” as it reviews more than 7,000 public comments on the proposal.
If it takes effect as proposed in coming months, the federal government will also finally have the leeway to determine, after the state makes an expenditure, if purchases were “reasonably calculated,” meaning a “reasonable person” would find that it accomplished one of the goals of the TANF program.
If state and federal officials disagree, the state must provide evidence or academic research to justify their spending — something the federal government has never before required.
The notice of proposed rule changes, released in October, acknowledges that states have been spending federal public assistance funds “on a wide range of benefits and services, including some with tenuous connections to a TANF purpose.”
The notice comes on the heels of Mississippi’s scandal, including Mississippi Today’s Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting on the subject, which helped place a national spotlight on the failings of the program.
“I think this is HHS right now realizing, because of Mississippi, ‘We don’t have clarity on our enforcement authority as an agency to determine when costs are unallowable,’” said Matt Williams, director of research for the Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative. “They’re trying to introduce reason. They’re acknowledging that states can justify so much that has no connection to getting resources in the hands of families below poverty. … Because of that flexibility in those four purposes, they need some kind of mechanism to say back to the states, ‘Hey, this is wrong. This does not pass muster.’”
When Congress replaced the nation’s former welfare entitlement program Aid to Families with Dependent Children in 1996 with TANF, a block grant, it gave states broad flexibility to spend the funds on four vague purposes. Those are:
Provide assistance to needy families so children can be cared for in their home;
Reduce the dependence of needy parents by promoting job preparation, work and marriage;
Prevent out-of-wedlock pregnancies;
Encourage two-parent families.
“Among the purposes, you do not see the purpose being to reduce poverty, which has been a shocking omission,” said Heather Hahn, a national TANF expert with the Urban Institute. “But it was a highly political change, and earlier versions had not passed and this one did.”
The ability of states to create their own welfare programs is central to the law; removing that flexibility would require an act of Congress.
Hahn told Mississippi Today she thinks HHS is “still really walking a fine line between flexibility and accountability.”
Authors of “The Injustice of Place: Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America,” released in August, explain that the federal government did more than just authorize states to spend the money however they wanted. By placing tough restrictions on administering the monthly welfare check to poor families, and virtually no limitations around the spending on ancillary programs, it actually incentivized states to direct the funding elsewhere. The federal government allotted states the same amount of money no matter how many needy families they served.
“To spend the funds to help needy families, the states must navigate myriad rules and reporting requirements. But to use the money for other purposes, they need only justify that the expense is relevant to one of the core purposes of the program,” write the authors and national poverty researchers Luke Shaefer, Kathryn Edin and Timothy Nelson. “These criteria leave a lot of wiggle room, to say the least. Mississippi, a state that ranks among the most corrupt by any measure, took that wiggle room to the extreme.”
Much of the scrutiny around Mississippi’s spending relates to a state rule that allows non-cash TANF programs to serve families who earn up to 350% of the federal poverty line — about $87,000 for a family of three — meaning the funds benefitted many middle-class families.
The new federal rules would require states to define “needy” as families earning under 200% of the federal poverty line. But this new requirement would only apply to cash assistance — which Mississippi already caps far below the poverty line — and workforce training and support programs.
According to the four TANF purposes, the federal government does not require that programs related to pregnancy and parenthood be reserved for the needy.
States have been using the TANF program to support college scholarships for adults without children, many from middle class families, under the argument that they reduce out-of-wedlock pregnancy. The federal agency specified that this would not likely meet the “reasonable person standard.”
In its most recent reports, Mississippi counts more than $15 million in state spending on college scholarships as part of its required state match to draw down federal TANF funds. The state labels this expenditure under the goal of ending the dependency of needy parents on government benefits — though the recipients are most often neither parents nor needy. Mississippi Today’s ongoing investigation into the welfare program found in 2019 that 40% of those scholarships went to middle-class families, and the vast majority were traditional students between the ages of 17 and 24.
The rules also say that states will likely no longer be able to use TANF to fund after school programs, which received a total of $925 million nationally in 2021. Most recently, Mississippi was spending about $13 million in TANF funds on these services annually.
For years, Mississippi has used TANF funds to plug budget holes at the Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services, the agency that investigates child abuse and neglect and conducts family separations — the antithesis of the TANF program. The payments were interagency transfers, hidden from public view. But recently, MDHS entered a TANF subgrant agreement with MDCPS, which spelled out for the first time what the funds were actually meant to support.
Under that agreement, MDHS supplies MDCPS nearly $30 million, primarily to pay for social workers who investigate child abuse and neglect reports, as well as in-home family preservation services and the child abuse hotline. HHS said states will likely no longer be allowed to use TANF funds for child welfare investigations.
As written, the rule also aims to prevent states from using TANF funds to support crisis pregnancy centers – a policy that Republican lawmakers, including Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, have decried. Mississippi does not, however, currently use TANF dollars for these programs.
Through these new rules, the federal welfare agency appears to encourage — but not require — states to revert back to providing poor families with monthly payments.
“More than 27 years after the establishment of TANF, state programs have shifted away from a focus on direct cash and employment assistance,” reads the federal notice. “Although states are permitted under the statute to determine how much funding to expend on cash assistance, we remind states that there is a large body of research that shows that cash assistance is a critically important tool for reducing family and child poverty.”
But there’s no federal data of individual expenditures under those spending categories. The federal government doesn’t require state welfare agencies to provide actual documentation detailing this spending.
The only tool HHS has to hold states accountable for these purchases is an annual audit, which states must have conducted each year. In Mississippi, the entity that performs that audit is the State Auditor, an elected politician.
Mississippi’s auditor found repeated deficiencies in MDHS spending controls that went unaddressed for years. The reports may only test a fraction of purchases each year, and they occur retroactively, meaning by the time HHS learns about potential misspending, the money is already gone.
Even under the new requirements for a TANF program to be “reasonably calculated,” the federal government wouldn’t have prior approval. The analysis and enforcement would still happen retroactively, experts said.
“I think HHS is trying to be as strong as they can within their statutory authority to hold states’ feet to the fire and require actual evidence,” Williams said.
But what Williams said might actually happen in practice is that states like Mississippi will be in a constant back-and-forth bureaucratic corrective action plan with the federal government. A state that made unallowable purchases could face a future reduction of their federal TANF grant, which it would be required to make up with state funds, but Williams questions how the federal government would enforce that.
Williams said there are more impactful policy changes that may require action by Congress, such as requiring states to spend a certain percentage of their TANF grant on assistance — not just cash, but other direct supports like child care — or ease eligibility requirements so that more families would qualify for assistance.
Currently, a family of three in Mississippi must earn under 25% of the federal poverty line, about $457 a month, to be eligible for cash assistance. In 2022, the state only spent about 5% of its annual grant on these monthly payments to poor families — about $4.3 million out of $86.5 million. However, this is up from $3.5 million, or about 4%, in 2021.
The state’s largest current TANF subgrant, a $5 million subgrant with Canopy Children’s Solutions, is for a program under the state’s “Parenthood Initiative” called LINK, which is supposed to help families “navigate the difficulties of locating and accessing basic needs, educating families on how to access these resources on their own, educating and promoting healthy family values and building resilience and self-sufficiency to ensure long term permanency.”
States are allowed to transfer up to 30% of their TANF grant to the low-income child care voucher program. While Mississippi had chosen not to do this for the past several years, MDHS Director Bob Anderson recently told state lawmakers the agency had decided to begin making this transfer.
Williams is hopeful the new regulations signal a step toward “acknowledging that states have too much flexibility, and that that flexibility has eviscerated the social safety net as we know it.”
But many questions remain in Mississippi. For example, auditors and lawyers have come to different conclusions about what, exactly, was wrong about Lacoste’s welfare-funded boot camp program.
While Lacoste represented to the public that his fitness classes were part of a partnership with MDHS and Families First for Mississippi — the initiative to which the state outsourced its TANF program — he did not set any requirements for participants to be low-income, according to audits.
Lawyers hired by the state to file civil charges argue that Lacoste and his organization Victory Sports Foundation must return the funds because his program did not achieve a lawful TANF purpose.
But neither of the audits on which the lawsuit was based appeared to actually analyze whether fitness and nutrition services would fit within the TANF purposes.
The audit report by the State Auditor’s Office, conducted on behalf of the federal government, said the payments to Victory Sports violated federal law, not because fitness classes are inherently unaligned with a TANF goal, but primarily because the program was not reserved for the needy.
Forensic auditors hired by the state said the payments were improper for neither of those reasons, but because they were made under undue influence by then MDHS director Davis.
Officials from the U.S. Department of Human Services have not made any public statements to clear this up, providing a canned response to Mississippi Today for this story.
So would an exercise program meet the new “reasonable person” standard?
“No,” Williams said, before pausing and then clarifying, “Whose definition of ‘reasonable’?”
LORMAN — Alcorn State University’s next president must advocate for economic development in rural southwest Mississippi, boost enrollment, raise funds, inspire students to achieve their hopes and dreams, be familiar with the school’s rich history and, above all, stay.
Preferably for at least five years.
That was the message students, faculty, staff and alumni delivered to the Institutions of Higher Learning commissioner and five members of the Board of Trustees during listening sessions Monday on Alcorn State’s campus, the first step in the governing board’s search process for a new president at the oldest public historical Black land-grant institution in the U.S.
In the last 10 years, the historic university has seen seven acting and permanent presidents come and go, experiencing, as the school’s director of religious life put it, a “visionary whiplash” that is beginning to erode core qualities of the campus culture, like its homey, familial vibe.
“When I first got here 10 years ago, Alcorn was like a family, like a big porch,” said C.J. Rhodes. “In the last few years, that cultural-aspect piece has sort of been jeopardized in some way, so we need a person who can come in and ensure that that part is there.”
IHL fired the university’s former president, Felecia Nave, last year without providing a reason. She had faced criticism for widespread issues like declining enrollment, dozens of employee resignations and “deplorable” conditions in athletic facilities.
The search for Nave’s replacement comes after IHL finished searches for new presidents at Delta State and Jackson State universities. Those previous searches were led by trustees who graduated from those universities. No IHL board trustee is an Alcorn graduate.
But IHL does have Al Rankins, the commissioner of higher education, who is an alumnus and the university’s 19th president. During the listening sessions, he invited several people by name to address the trustees, even shouting out his English professor.
Several people cited Rankins’ leadership as a model for whoever becomes the university’s next president.
“Not to toot Dr. Rankins’ horn,” said Andre Young, a 1976 graduate. “When he was here, he took the Alcorn show on the road. As a result we didn’t have an empty dorm bed here.”
Though Rankins said the listening sessions were intended to help trustees create a candidate profile — and not to identify specific applicants — multiple students said they wanted to see Tracy Cook, the interim president, remain on permanently, garnering chuckles from the audience.
“The student body was given a questionnaire, and it was highly expressed that we would like Dr. Cook as our next president,” said Jordan Buck, the student government association president.
Amid increased competition for college students in Mississippi, expected to get even tougher once the “enrollment cliff” of a decline in high school graduates hits, a good leader at Alcorn State is more important than ever, speakers shared. The next president will need to recruit nationally for students and boost the university’s positive qualities, several speakers shared.
But that’s not all. The next president will also need to address the issues facing the aging campus that could dissuade students from attending, such as the deteriorating buildings and dormitories and the impoverished surrounding area.
The university’s enrollment has fallen from more than 3,200 full-time equivalent students in 2010 to roughly 2,470 in 2022, according to federal data.
“Even if they’re legacy, they aren’t going to put up with mold,” Rhodes said. “They’ll just go down the street to another university in the IHL system.”
One student who spoke mentioned her dorm’s water is shut off at least once a week. A faculty member in the English department said his students are constantly talking about the conditions in their dorms, which may not be apparent from a tour of the campus.
“I hope that you can find a president who can walk among us holy folk, who goes from day to day without dryers or without working washing machines or with rooms full of mold,” said Nigel Caesar, a sophomore business major. “I wish for a president who knows about those things, who knows how to talk to the people who can get those things fixed, who won’t forget that those problems exist. And there’s many more. But please, find a president who can help with that.”
Located in Lorman, an unincorporated community in Jefferson County with just 2,000 residents, Alcorn State is mainly surrounded by forest and farmland. The two closest cities — Natchez and Vicksburg — are each roughly 50 minutes away.
There are no department stores, and the nearest airport is two hours away, said Wiley Jones, a notable alumni who was the first graduate of the Alcorn School of Business.
“An unhappy wife is gonna make for an unhappy president,” Jones said.
Densel Fleming, the alumni association president, said the lack of economic development in the communities surrounding Alcorn State puts the university leadership at a competitive disadvantage.
Fleming noted that more alumni wanted to speak at the listening sessions but weren’t able to take time off work on an 11-day notice. He had flown in from Charlotte, North Carolina.
“My question is to you, and it’s rhetorical, is if you as a board of trustees were able to place the most qualified, well-trained, administratively skilled professional for the next president of Alcorn State University, how successful would you expect them to be without your advocacy — direct advocacy — for economic development to the state of Mississippi?” Fleming asked.
Recurring among speakers was the feeling that Alcorn State had strayed from its heyday.
Norris Edney II told trustees about how he grew up on Alcorn State’s campus, which had some of the most beautiful cows. He didn’t realize cows elsewhere didn’t grow as big.
But the university’s dairy is now shuttered, Edney said. It hurts to see.
One reason for that, Edney suggested, was inequitable funding from the state of Mississippi. As an 1890 land-grant institution, Alcorn State is supposed to receive equitable funds to the state’s other agriculture college, Mississippi State University.
But it hasn’t. Last year, the Biden administration calculated the state of Mississippi owes Alcorn State more than $250 million in the last 30 years alone.
“Everything that is in Starkville should be here in Lorman on the same scale,” Edney said. “That is not just my opinion. That is federal law. This community hasn’t been treated fairly. We’re not trying to get reparations. We’re just trying to be treated fairly.”
Donna Hayden, a community member, got a high-five after she spoke.
“This is God’s country,” she said, “but God’s country needs some updating. God’s country needs someone who can take the 2,000-plus acres and create an oasis.”
Student engagement at Alcorn State, which counts slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers among its alumni, is low, said Jhada Wade, a student. She said she thought Cook, who speakers said shares his personal phone with students and makes a point to eat in the cafeteria, will be able to do that.
Earlier that day, Wade said her professor asked her class if they were going to the listening session.
“And my classmates responded, ‘what is that?’” she said.
Some familiar and storied Mississippi athletic bloodlines were on well-played display at sparkling Duease Hall/Gymnasium on the campus of Madison Ridgeland Academy Thursday night.
The MRA girls team defeated Jackson Academy 46-39 and the Jackson boys returned the favor in the nightcap, dominating the fourth quarter in a 59-45 victory much closer than the final score would indicate.
Rick Cleveland
At one point in the girls game, MRA sophomore point guard Presley Hughes dribbled through the JA defense, drew a double team, and neatly dished a perfect bounce pass to 6-foot, 5-inch sophomore Alyssa Dampier for an easy layup. Dampier, the long-limbed daughter of 16-year NBA veteran Erick Dampier, didn’t have to reach far to lay it in. Hughes is the daughter of Whit Hughes, Erick Dampier’s teammate and sixth man on the fabulous 1996 Mississippi State SEC Champion and Final Four team.
There’s lots more: In the boys game, Mike and Mason Williams, sons of the great NBA star Mo Williams, combined for 40 points, 25 rebounds and seven assists to lead the JA boys to their 28th victory against one defeat this season. Like father, like sons. Mo, now Jackson State’s head coach, averaged 13 points and five assists over a 15-year NBA career. Mike, a junior, scored 29 points, many on assists from Mason, a sophomore, who scored 11. Both are highly skilled, tremendously athletic youngsters who look and play a whole lot like their daddy. That’s a good thing, especially for second-year JA head coach Jesse Taylor.
And that’s not all. The most amazing part of the evening was watching 13-year-old eighth grader Erick Dampier Jr. who scored 18 points, grabbed nine rebounds and blocked three shots in a losing cause for MRA, where his famous father serves as an assistant coach. Yes, Erick Jr. is 13 years young. Yes, he’s in the eighth grade (straight A student), playing on the varsity team against guys anywhere from three to five years older. Did I mention he is 6 feet, 9 inches tall and growing like a springtime Mississippi weed?
Madison-Ridgeland Academy’s Erick Dampier Jr. grabs a rebound over Jackson Academy’s Mason Williams (15) and Mike Williams (2) during a game held at MRA on Thursday, Feb. 1, 2024 in Madison. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Says MRA boys coach Richard Duease, the second winningest high school hoops coach in America and namesake of the gymnasium: “Erick was the top-ranked seventh grader in the entire country last year. He’ll be the top-ranked eighth grader this year. You ought to see him when he plays against kids his age. It’s not fair.”
You can look for much more in the coming days and weeks and years on young Dampier, but there was something else on clear display at MRA on the first day of February 2024, and that’s just how much better private school (MAIS) basketball has become in recent years. That’s largely because MAIS basketball has become exceedingly more racially integrated.
Madison-Ridgeland Academy’s Erick Dampier, Jr. (25), an eighth graders, lays in a basketagainst Jackson Academy’s Fisher Waldrop, during a game held at MRA, Thursday, Feb. 1, 2024 in Madison. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
You can make a good case that two of the best three high school basketball teams in Mississippi are private school teams. JA appears the best. MRA isn’t far behind. Pascagoula, which handed JA its only loss this season, is top-ranked by most polls.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that MAIS basketball is the best it’s ever been,” said Duease, who will enter the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame this summer. Duease would surely qualify as an expert, his teams having won 33 state championships in his 49-year career in the private schools league. “Obviously, JA is really good, and we’re good, but this league is tough everywhere you go. Prep’s good, Hartfield is really good. St. Joe is good. There are good teams outside the metro area, as well. There are no easy outs. The entire landscape of high school basketball in Mississippi has changed.”
No question, in games matching public and private schools this season, the latter have won by far more games. That’s new. In the recent Rumble in the South at Mississippi College, Jackson Academy blew out Class 7A public school powerhouse Madison Central 80-48, MRA knocked off perennial Class 4A power Raymond 50-48, and Presbyterian Christian of Hattiesburg defeated Provine 60-55.
It’s not just in boys basketball either. The MRA girls have defeated Gulfport twice, Hattiesburg and Raymond and own three victories over Memphis city schools.
Jackson Academy’s Mike Williams (2), shoots a jumper from the corner over MRA’s Erick Dampier, Jr., during a game held at MRA, Thursday, Feb. 1, 2025 in Madison. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
In the academy league, nearly everywhere you look, Black players are making a huge difference for winning teams. Back when Whit Hughes starred at Jackson Prep in the 1990s, the only time he played against African Americans was in the summer leagues.
MRA got its first Black player in 1995. Duease received a call from Chareck “CC” Cable, who played at Clinton High School but wasn’t getting the playing time he desired. He told Duease he’d like to transfer to MRA. Duease talked to both Cable and his mother, explaining that he would need to take an entrance exam and what the costs would be should he make the needed score. Cable, who is now the assistant principal at Clinton Junior High, easily passed the exam, entered MRA and became one of the Patriots’ best players.
Nearly three decades later, Cable is back in Clinton as an administrator and remembers that time between his junior and senior years of high school. “I just wanted to play basketball, and if I transferred to another public school I had to sit out a year, which I didn’t have,” he says. “It turned out well for me. I was accepted and treated well.”
Duease remembers Cable’s first game as an MRA Patriot at East Holmes Academy, which had actually threatened a couple years before to cancel a football game because a rival had welcomed a Black player.
“We were playing at East Holmes and I told our players on our first possession I wanted to set up a for a backside screen for C.C., and I wanted him to tear that rim down,” Duease said, chuckling at the memory. “Well, he darn near did tear it down. Got everybody’s attention. I think he dunked it five times in that one game.”
The integration of athletics in the private schools league, spotty at first, has become exceedingly more common in recent years. The result is a much higher level of play, from mostly below the rim to now often high above it.
Democratic representatives will file a bill to expand Medicaid eligibility to working-class Mississippians — after years of failed attempts and as rural hospitals reach their breaking point.
Though Democrats have fought for years to expand Medicaid, they hope their more pragmatic proposal this session and the new House speaker’s pledge to seek a bipartisan solution on health coverage will finally yield a realistic plan to expand coverage.
“I think a majority of people in Mississippi would like to see … coverage for working Mississippians who don’t have coverage and providing the uncompensated care funding that hospitals need to stay open,” House Democratic Leader Robert Johnson III said.
The bill, the first major Medicaid expansion proposal this year, would expand traditional Medicaid coverage eligibility and includes a private insurance option for Mississippians who make up to twice as much as the federal poverty level.
There’s also a component that would help subsidize premiums for people who are on or are offered insurance through their jobs.
It’s a plan that, Democrats say, favors women and small businesses. It would cover more people than traditional expansion because it’ll be easier to qualify for coverage, but more people would be partially paying premiums in a tiered system, dependent on income.
The Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, increased health insurance coverage for millions of low-income people across the country by expanding eligibility to qualify for Medicaid, a federal-state program that provides health coverage to millions of people.
Since 2014, states have had the option to expand Medicaid eligibility even further to the working poor. In states that have not done so, it’s challenging to qualify for Medicaid coverage solely based on income. In Mississippi, non-disabled adults without children are not eligible for Medicaid coverage, regardless of their income. Parents in Mississippi are eligible only if their incomes don’t exceed 24% of the federal poverty level — for context, that’s at most $587 monthly for a family of four, according to the Mississippi Division of Medicaid website.
Mississippi is one of 10 states that has not expanded Medicaid coverage to the working poor. Meanwhile, the state’s hospitals are foundering.
One report puts nearly half of Mississippi’s rural hospitals at risk of closure, largely due to uncompensated care costs, or money spent treating patients who are uninsured. Because emergency rooms cannot legally turn down patients, regardless of their insurance status, it’s often the only resort for health care for uninsured people.
That means without health insurance, preventative care is generally out of reach.
Research shows expansion would insure the approximately 250,000 people who fall into the state’s coverage gap, meaning they make too much to qualify for Medicaid now but too little to afford private insurance. The policy’s adoption would also generate billions of dollars for Mississippi, directing much-needed money to the state’s struggling hospitals, and allow for more timely health care, likely improving health outcomes in one of the country’s sickest states.
Democratic Rep. Zakiya Summers of Jackson said that Mississippi’s abysmal health outcomes are well documented, and the state cannot afford to “kick the can down the road” any further on expanding coverage to more people.
“I think we’ve heard a lot of talk about wanting to do something around Medicaid expansion, but we haven’t actually seen pen being put to paper,” Summers said. “What we have developed is a really good opportunity to say, ‘Here is something that we can take a look at and have conversations about.’”
But the Democrats’ latest plan is not a typical Medicaid expansion bill.
The measure both expands eligibility for traditional Medicaid coverage and includes a private insurance option for people who fall into a certain federal poverty level threshold. If passed, the hybrid policy would cover more Mississippians than a traditional Medicaid expansion bill, which usually covers people up to 138% of the federal poverty level.
“Our program is going to incorporate people up to 200% of the federal poverty level,” Johnson said.
Rationalizing the private option, he said, “Asking the government to pay all of the funds to make sure we cover people up to 200% of the poverty level is I don’t think reasonable and I don’t think it’s acceptable or winnable.”
The bill would:
Expand Medicaid coverage eligibility for all adults who are at or below 95% of the federal poverty level. In 2024, that is $14,307 gross annual income for a childless individual.
Allow adults with no children who make more than that, up to 200% of the federal poverty level or $30,120 grossannual income, to qualify for private health plans through the federal marketplace or offered by the state.
If they’re employed and make between 96% and 200% of the federal poverty level, their premiums would be covered at varying degrees by the division.
Democratic leaders are hopeful the plan — which includes incentives to join the workforce — will gain traction in the Capitol, but they know the Republicans who hold a supermajority in both chambers won’t outright adopt their bill in the coming weeks.
Instead, Johnson hopes that Republicans will at least realize the minority party’s proposal is sensible and include portions of it in a final version and pass it.
“If it ever gets passed in its final form, it’ll probably have my name nowhere near it,” Johnson said. “But if it means that we get a plan that really provides coverage to people in the state of Mississippi, I don’t care what they call it or whose name is on it.”
The person who wields the most immediate power over the Legislature’s solution to giving health insurance to more Mississippians is House Speaker Jason White, a Republican whose rural district is majority-white and financially disadvantaged.
The speaker has been candid about the need for Mississippi, one of the poorest and sickest states in the country, to consider expanding Medicaid and has said state Republicans deserve criticism for refusing to debate the merits of the program.
Johnson told Mississippi Today that he and the speaker have maintained an open dialogue this session about Medicaid policy, and he believes White truly wants to shepherd meaningful legislation through the House.
White told Mississippi Today last week that he and other House leaders are forming a Medicaid plan of their own, but he intends to examine Johnson’s plan to see where the two parties can agree.
“I think we’ll find bipartisanship,” White said. “I’m going to be disappointed if we don’t.”
Arkansas in 2013 voted to adopt a version of Medicaid expansion that includes a private insurance option. As other Southern states consider expansion, the Arkansas model is often referenced.
Though echoes of Arkansas’ version of Medicaid expansion are obvious in the Democrats’ proposal, Johnson said their bill caters to Mississippi’s specific health care and population factors.
Adam Searing, an associate professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy’s Center for Children and Families whose work focuses on Medicaid, said the Democrats’ bill is a “perfectly reasonable starting place.”
“Expanding Medicaid is a political debate,” he said. “In states that haven’t already done it, there are going to be some compromises.”
Searing said that while Georgia’s initial attempt at expansion only covered part of the population in their coverage gap — subsequently making them ineligible for full federal financial rewards — Mississippi’s bill takes everyone into account.
The federal government will pay 90% of the cost to expand Medicaid to people who are at or below 138% of the federal poverty level, and for people up to 200%, they will pay the federal medical assistance percentage match of the expansion costs. Mississippi has the highest FMAP in the country at 76.9% because of the state’s high poverty rate.
Additionally, the federal government would pay Mississippi more than $600 million over two years as an incentive for expanding Medicaid.
There’s no estimate yet for how much the Democrats’ plan would cost the state because the bill hasn’t made it to the Legislative Budget Office, but researchers estimate that Medicaid expansion would generally bring in $1 billion a year in federal money to Mississippi.
“What I look for in these plans, what makes this one nice, is that the goal is to cover everyone in the coverage gap,” Searing said. “This is where you want to start. I think it’s exciting that someone is putting in a plan, and it’s realistic.”
A significant part of this coverage gap is small business owners who sometimes cannot afford to provide health insurance to their employees.
Democratic Rep. Bryant Clark, D-Pickens, believes if the proposal were to become law, it would save business owners in his district, most of which is in the impoverished Delta, from paying hundreds of dollars each month in an employer-sponsored health plan.
“That might not mean much to Amazon or Nissan, but for a mom-and-pop business, that can make a difference in whether you’re in the black or in the red,” Clark said. “If you raise the limit up to 200% in my district, that will probably cover the vast majority of people that are employed in District 47.”
Democrats said their proposal gives special consideration to women’s health.
Mississippi is one of the most dangerous states in the country to give birth, both for mothers and their babies. A lack of timely preventative and prenatal care is a driving cause of these abysmal outcomes.
Democrats say upwards of 20,000 more women would be eligible for Medicaid under their plan compared to traditional Medicaid expansion.
“Instead of only addressing women’s health when it comes to taking away their choice, or saying the issues they face aren’t real, let’s come together on a bipartisan level and say we’re going to prioritize women this time … and make sure they have their needs met in this state,” Summers said. “We want to make sure women don’t just survive in Mississippi, but they thrive in Mississippi.”
As evidenced by the Medicaid expansion bill, maternal, infant and reproductive health remain a top issue for lawmakers. But the head of Medicaid, an agency under Reeves’ purview, and other political allies have tried to thwart those efforts.
An additional bill the Democrats are filing could shift that power — the legislation seeks to establish a commission that would manage the agency, allowing it to be run in a way that’s “apolitical,” Johnson said.
The proposal is currently being vetted by attorneys in the Legislature. Once the bill is introduced, the speaker will refer it to a legislative committee for consideration.
It’s unlikely legislative leaders will embrace the Democrats’ plan, and White has suggested Republicans will introduce a Medicaid plan of their own. The process for the House and Senate to agree on a final Medicaid expansion bill will likely take months if they agree at all.
Mississippians’ health and financially bleeding hospitals can’t wait much longer, Johnson said.
“It’s a broken record, but we have the worst health outcomes in the country … we ought to be flooded with doctors because there’s such a need,” he said. “We’re losing population and losing opportunity.”
I do not know about you but starting a new year, setting new goals, and staying focused can be stressful. If you are like me, the holidays packed my schedule and left me feeling exhausted. Then, suddenly, I was hit with a New Year and a strong desire to do things better.
Unfortunately, I am not alone when I share that I rarely finish the resolutions that I start – if I even try to make any. As the year and daily duties increase, I find myself on the same old path of a wild – dare I say, out of control – ride in life!
During the first sermon of the year, my pastor suggested choosing a single word to stick to. That seems simple and achievable, right?
What if all of us reading this article chose the word kindness? What difference might we make for our fellow mankind!
A co-worker, Choir Director Amy Twilley, was telling me about an experience with the people of Crystal Springs United Methodist Church and Baddour residents who participate in The Miracles, an audition choir.
Before the choir’s performance, the congregation collected bios and a Christmas wish list for each choir member, and they prayed and shopped for them. Even resident choir members were surprised. One told Amy she was amazed that strangers were so loving and kind and generous to them.
What a wonderful thought: to choose to be kind to people we do not know and may never see again. That warms my heart. Doesn’t it feel good when someone is kind to us?
Many of the men and women with intellectual and developmental disabilities and autism who live at The Baddour Center have experienced difficulties throughout their lives, such as bullying or the inability to have meaningful employment. They know the opposite feeling of kindness.
I often say that the population we serve at Baddour are “my people” because they love big and make me feel like a rockstar whenever I arrive at work, a wonderful reprieve from the cruelty of the world.
For 2024, let’s not overcomplicate our New Year’s resolutions; let’s continue laughter and the generous spirit of the holidays that makes the season so bright and joyful.
Let’s learn from strangers and actively be kind to the people around us – whether we know them or not. Who will you show kindness to today?
From all of us at The Baddour Center, Happy New Year, and thank you to those of you who have been kind to residents of The Baddour Center throughout our 45-year history!
