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The Jackson City Council voted Tuesday in favor of taking the city’s water and sewer systems back from under third-party control.

In 2022, as part of a federal consent decree, U.S. District Court Judge Henry Wingate put the struggling water system under the control of now JXN Water manager Ted Henifin, who also took over Jackson’s sewer system in 2023. Henifin said repeatedly he planned to stay until 2027, although Wingate has the ultimate say over when and whether to transition control back to the city.

Tuesday’s resolution “encourages” Wingate to reverse the 2022 order. Longtime Ward 3 Councilman Kenneth Stokes introduced the measure and described a strained relationship between the utility and Jackson residents. Stokes characterized the utility as being “disrespectful” and having “talked down” to customers.

“The citizens are beginning to lose faith in JXN Water,” he said.

Specifically, Stokes claimed JXN Water is sending out inaccurate bills and then aggressively shutting off connections until customers make large down payments on their debt.

The council voted 6 to 1 to approve the resolution, with Ward 1 Councilman Ashby Foote the lone dissenting vote.

Later in the day, JXN Water responded in a statement that financial challenges with the water system need resolving before returning control to Jackson. The city, the utility added, is largely at fault for those challenges.

“Significant progress has been made in restoring and maintaining reliable operations,” the statement said. “However, achieving financial stability remains the greatest challenge and must be resolved before any transition can occur. Otherwise, Jackson risks returning to the same conditions that led to the federal government’s intervention.

“The failure of the City’s water and sewer systems can be directly tied to a lack of financial resources — largely due to the City’s past inability or unwillingness to set sustainable rates and ensure all users paid for the services they received. Without a long-term, financially sound plan, the system will inevitably deteriorate again.”

Before Tuesday’s vote, Ward 5 Councilman Vernon Hartley asked the city’s chief administrative officer, Pieter Teeuwissen, if there were plans to transition the system back under Jackson management. Teeuwissen said the court order over the water system says the parties need to have a transition plan in place in October 2026, but added he expects the transition to begin sooner than that.

“I suspect the timeline will be something sooner than what the city previously agreed to,” he said, noting that he, Mayor John Horhn and Henifin met last Friday and are “constantly” meeting to discuss transition options.

JXN Water confirmed they’ve met with the city, but said it will be “months before a viable proposal can be shared.” The statement also said a utility authority with appointed board members would likely need to temporarily run the systems after JXN Water while the city developed a transition plan.

While voting for the resolution, Council President and Ward 4 Councilman Brian Grizzell supported the idea of a separate utility authority. It would be more sustainable, Grizzell said, if the systems weren’t subject to the regular turnover in the mayoral and public works offices.

JXN Water communications officer Aisha Carson said multiple council members have reached out to the utility to request it restore water to connections it turned off due to nonpayment. Carson said the utility couldn’t “cherry pick” which accounts to shut off, and added that the city council had earlier this year asked JXN Water to ramp up collections to address revenue shortages.

“It’s very difficult for us to apply that collections policy when we experience pushback from City Council leaders who have actually told us to ramp up collections,” she said.

Carson said JXN Water is shutting off water connections to about 1,000 accounts a week, a rate its maintained for the last three to four weeks. Earlier in the year, the utility said in its financial plan that it found over 14,000 accounts that receive water but weren’t paying, and that they would be the focus of its collection efforts.

In another move, the council voted unanimously for another resolution to encourage JXN Water to offer bill adjustments. Stokes, who introduced that resolution as well, said customers who see discolored water from their taps should receive a discount.

In August, JXN Water said it was seeing increased levels of manganese, a naturally occurring mineral, in the Ross Barnett Reservoir. While the increase may turn tap water brown in some cases, the utility said, the effect is only “aesthetic,” meaning it’s not a health concern. The utility said at the time it was adjusting treatment techniques to reduce the effect, which Carson said adds to their expenses. But some customers, Stokes said Tuesday, are still not drinking the water when they see the discoloration and instead paying extra to buy bottled water.

A program that provides food and nutrition services to nearly 70,000 Mississippi caregivers and children is currently running but could close this month if the Health Department does not find state funds amid the federal government shutdown, according to the state department. 

The Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program is federally funded, according to Mississippi State Health Department spokesperson Greg Flynn. Enrollees can continue to use their current benefits until they run out. The department is exploring options to keep the program alive with state funds if the shutdown continues, Flynn said.

Tens of thousands of Mississippians rely on WIC each month. The program offers breastfeeding support and monthly vouchers for healthy foods to women who are pregnant, breastfeeding or postpartum, as well as infants and children under the age of 5. Statewide, there are about 300 WIC-approved grocery stores and pharmacies where members can use their benefits. 

While existing federal funds may keep the program open temporarily, the National WIC Association said in a Sept. 30 statement that immediate action by Congress is necessary to make sure essential services aren’t disrupted. 

“Failure to rapidly reopen the government could result in State WIC directors being put in the horrible position of trying to manage their programs with insufficient funds,” said Georgia Machell, president and CEO of the association, in the statement. 

During the government shutdown, new applicants will only be approved if they fall under “Priority 1” designation, which includes pregnant and breastfeeding women and high-risk infants. However, according to Flynn, officials will not require proof of pregnancy, breastfeeding or a high-risk infant to determine priority status, allowing people to get the help they need while it lasts. 

“Priority 1” applicants will still need to follow the guidelines for approval, including bringing proof of income, residence and identification to their initial WIC appointment. More information about the application process can be found on the state Health Department’s website. 

Federal shutdowns do not happen often. The last one occurred in December 2018 and lasted for 35 days. The current shutdown is a week old, and congressional Democrats and Republicans remain in gridlock over how to fund the government. 

The main point of contention between parties is the expiration of Biden-era subsidies that are making health insurance more affordable for millions of Americans, with Democrats pushing for their renewal. If they are not renewed, KFF estimates premiums on marketplace insurance plans will more than double next year.

In 2024, over 331,000 Mississippians relied on tax credits to make their insurance plans more affordable, according to an analysis by the American Cancer Society. Should those enhanced tax credits expire, annual premiums would increase by $2,571 on average for a family of four with an annual income of $64,000, according to Keep Americans Covered, a nonpartisan coalition of major health care groups, such as the American Academy of Family Physicians.

Meanwhile, state Health Department contract workers were given stop-work orders last week with the end of their pay period, and were notified their jobs and compensation were paused until the shutdown ended. The department has said it is prioritizing maintaining direct services such as WIC during the shutdown.

“WIC is a vital support system for thousands of Mississippi families,” according to the department’s last memo, shared on Oct. 2. “MSDH remains committed to minimizing the impact of the federal shutdown on the families we serve. We thank you for your trust and patience, and we will continue to provide updates as the situation evolves.” 

Leadership at the state Health Department is encouraging WIC applicants and enrollees to direct any questions to an agent at 1-800-338-6747. 

CLEVELAND — One text message in a group chat. 

That’s all it took for Mtume Matthews to gather hundreds of Delta State University students, faculty, staff and neighbors to a candlelight vigil on the night of Sept. 18. 

There they mourned 21-year-old Demartravion “Trey” Reed, the first-year student who took his life earlier that week. 

The death of the Black student jolted the city of Cleveland, a small college town in northwest Mississippi with a roughly 2,700-student population, into national headlines. A flurry of social media posts with conflicting information on Reed’s death led to confusion about campus safety. 

There was also public outcry — prompting a response informed by Mississippi’s history of racism and violence — where many disputed his death twice ruled as a suicide by state and county authorities. Reed’s body was found hanging from a tree on campus Sept. 15. Results of a second independent autopsy commissioned on behalf of Reed’s family have not been released.

But Matthews said that moment of solemnity and stillness on the campus quadrangle that night gave him an idea. 

“In those first few days, students just wanted answers. That was the biggest thing,” said Matthews, a junior studying flight operations. “But now, it’s like, ‘OK, where do we go next?’ How do we hold each other accountable and build a family?” 

In the weeks following the death of their classmate, students including Matthews, Jamaal Bryant and Maitlynn White have rallied their peers to process grief. They’ve created memorials and fundraisers for Reed’s family, launched new mental health initiatives for student groups and provided solutions and support on campus. 

And, university officials are taking notice. 

The day after the vigil, Bryant, president of DSU’s Divine Nine chapter, approached Matthews with a solution. He wanted Black male students to open up and express their feelings about loss. Having a safe space to do it would make everyone more comfortable, he said. 

“There’s a stigma that Black men don’t talk to anybody. That we handle things by ourselves or we don’t need anyone to lean on,” Bryant said. “That can build so much pressure within us. (Reed) could’ve been looking for someone or a community in his time of need.” 

In 2023, suicide was the third-leading cause of death for Black people between the ages of 15 and 35, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Death by suicide spiked for Black males ages 10-24 by 36% between 2018-2021. 

Black youth are also less likely to receive adequate access to care than peers in other demographic groups, in part because of “systemic inequities, including racism, poverty, as well as deeply rooted stigma around mental health and well-founded cultural mistrust of the health care system,” according to an April 2024 report from Pew Charitable Trust. Risk factors for suicide can often be misunderstood or ignored in African-Americans males. 

Starting this month, the African American Student Council and Delta State’s Divine Nine, a council for the historically Black fraternities and sororities on campus, is hosting biweekly discussions on mental wellness. They  aim to provide students with coping skills to care for their mental health, as well as “building a family away from home”. 

“That’s what college is really about, you know,” said Matthews, president of the African American Student Council. “We needed to come around each other because we don’t want anyone to be isolated during this time.” 

Forty percent of the students at Delta State are Black.

The sessions will be on Fridays from 1-2 p.m. for men and 2-3 p.m. for women in the Statesmen Room. 

Each talk will feature a guest speaker, most likely a university official on campus who can share wisdom and insight on how they manage their health. They will be followed with break-out sessions and include pamphlets, guides and resources from the university’s counseling services center. 

“After the vigil, everybody kind of got the reassurance like, ‘we got each other,’” Bryant said. “We’re just trying to make sure that everybody is OK on campus. You know, get us back on a positive foot. ” 

‘The Resolve and Resiliency’

It has been difficult for students and faculty to feel like they’ve emerged from this “dark moment,” said Eddie Lovin, vice president of student affairs. 

When he was first alerted to the news, he called Paula King, the director of health and counseling services. They began to strategize what outreach and support would look like for their students. 

They opened Sillers Chapel, the university’s church, for prayer and meditation knowing that students would lean into their faith. 

King’s office began receiving an outpouring of emails and phone calls from other Mississippi public universities and colleges, Cleveland school system’s therapists and Life and Health, a community mental health agency. All offered to assist with services. 

In trying to use lessons learned from the fatal shooting on campus of history professor Ethan Schmidt in September 2015, King said her staff knew how to manage that swell of support. 

They learned that support for students was needed in weeks following a traumatic event, rather than in that moment. 

Symptoms of grief like irritability and trouble sleeping and concentrating, can show up much later, she said. The goal for King and her staff these past few weeks has been to increase awareness around resources and services. 

“A lot of what we’ve done has been making sure people know what to expect when you experience something traumatic and that you did not have to know (Reed) to be affected by his death. That it is kind of a human thing to feel that way,” Paula King, director of health and counseling services.

“We have definitely seen an influx of traffic,” King said. “A lot of what we’ve done has been making sure people know what to expect when you experience something traumatic and that you did not have to know (Reed) to be affected by his death. That it is kind of a human thing to feel that way.” 

Lovin also received a text from Hayden Kirkhart, president of the student government association. Kirkhart told him the students were setting up tables in the lobby of the Union so peer counselors could connect and talk. It was the initiative within those first few hours that overwhelmed Lovin with admiration. 

“Our student leaders stepped into the trenches right there alongside administration, faculty and staff trying to provide that support knowing that they were also dealing with everything going on,” Lovin said. “The resolve and resiliency of them in the face of everything, I got strengthened every time I found out they were doing this for each other.” 

‘Strong minds, Strong Statesmen’ 

The announcement of Reed’s death hit close to home for Maitlynn White.

White, a senior studying elementary education, lost a childhood friend from suicide during her freshman year. The pain she felt in the moment was heavy and isolating. But, it was small, simple messages that reminded her that her friend “was in God’s arms, at peace.” 

“I realized how important it is to be there for others and  create spaces where students can support each other,” said White, president of College Panhellenic Council. “That experience inspired me to step into the role of being a student for students making sure no one has to grieve alone.” 

So White pulled a six-pack box of colorful sidewalk chalk from the trunk of her car. She walked to different spots on campus and wrote affirmations. 

“You got this,” said one note scrawled in blue chalk on the sidewalk near Cain-Tatum and Lawler-Hawkins Hall. It was accompanied by a big smiley face. 

“Strong minds, Strong Statesmen,” said another affirmation in white and black chalk, echoing school pride, colors and mascot. 

“You are loved,” one note said,  ‘o’ replaced with a pink heart. 

With an increase in mental health campaigns, students are encouraging open dialogue to create a campus culture where everyone is supported and valued, White said. 

The sidewalk messages to students were a break from the solitude, stress and confusion everyone was feeling at the time. Writing them became a reminder of her own strength in that moment. Everyone is processing this loss together, she said. 

“No college student wants to talk about how they’re really feeling,” White said. “Most of the students here are experiencing a loss of a peer for the first time. The mental health campaigns and initiatives we establish now will continue well after we graduate.”

Speaking of Reed, she said. “It’s to honor him and make sure that no Delta State student is left behind.” 

If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741.

Editor’s note: A program on music icon Bob Dylan’s connection to Mississippi and the Civil Rights Movement will be held at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics in Oxford. The panelists will be University of Mississippi professor R.J. Morgan, Mississippi Today’s Jerry Mitchell and Reena Evers-Everette, Medgar Evers’ daughter. The event will not be streamed live, but can be viewed in the coming days at https://youtube.com/@overbycenterforsouthernjou1739?si=zKUdKg3AIv4L_nzs.

Friends, let me just tell you, becoming a Bob Dylan scholar is not how I planned to spend my life.

In my previous careers, I was a sports journalist and a high school history teacher. I went to school to become an academic administrator. I teach media classes at the University of Mississippi, run two very successful scholastic press associations and serve nationally in a number of other capacities. I am deeply proud of this work. But unless you’re really into high school yearbooks and helping young adults find their voice (quick plug — you should be!), the story I’m about to tell is probably more interesting. 

I was a casual Dylan fan in college. Like many folks, I knew he was important, and mysterious, and his lyrics definitely helped me make sense of many social injustices and get over many lost loves. As a young history teacher, I assigned some of his protest songs to my students for projects, but personally I was more into Johnny Cash and what the Drive-By Truckers’ Patterson Hood calls, “the Southern Thing.” Dylan was too New York City, too distant. I was fascinated by New York, too, but I lived in Mississippi. The South was my home. 

By 2015, I was teaching at the University of Mississippi. Sensing time might be running out to see a legend live, I bought tickets for a series of Dylan shows, mostly just to pay my respects and visit a few friends spread out across the South.

I had low expectations. It was an excuse to travel. 

What I discovered instead was an artist who was still very much alive and vibrant. Most of the songs he performed were from recent albums, so I understood very little of what was being mumbled into the microphone, but when I dug into the songs later, many struck me as even more stunning, and scholarly in their depth, than his well-known masterpieces from the 1960s and ’70s. When he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, I realized this wasn’t just a popular American artist. This was a cultural icon who would one day be studied alongside Faulkner, Whitman and Hemingway.

I know that sounds a bit hokey. 

But I work on a college campus, and when I hear visiting Shakespeare scholars talk about the importance of preserving the Bard’s “First Folios” (the 235 surviving copies of the first collection of Shakespeare’s plays, published in 1623), it sounds a lot like the reverent whispers I hear “Dylanologists” use to discuss bootlegs of a pre-New York recording at a friend’s Minneapolis apartment or the marked-up pocketsize notebooks he used to sketch out lyrics for “Blood on the Tracks.”

Both camps analyze these artifacts as if they’re the Dead Sea Scrolls. That’s what scholars do. Every scrap of information preserved can offer new ways of seeing and understanding a historical figure, even one who does not want to be seen or understood, like Dylan.

Around this time I also ran across the short, famous video clip of Dylan performing in a cotton field outside of Greenwood “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” his song about the assassination of Medgar Evers.

The novelty of it caught my attention first. I was well acquainted with Evers and his heroism. I’d taught Mississippi studies. Now here was this song, and this poignant performance. I needed to know more. 

So I began casually accumulating any information I could find. The event turned out to be the Delta Folk Jubilee, a voter registration rally put on by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in July of 1963.

Folksingers Pete Seeger, Theo Bikel and Dylan — all white — came down and performed with the Freedom Singers as a way to show support for local Black people, who were fighting for the right to vote, and to help export their story back to the rest of America by generating news coverage.

SNCC’s press release claims it was the first integrated public gathering in the history of the Delta.

Future congressman John Lewis was there as SNCC’s newly-elected chairman. Local law enforcement put up “No Parking” signs along the road to deter attendance, then stood hovering across the street, armed, while sharecroppers traded stories of police brutality. 

Dylan played just two songs. “Pawn” was one, and this was its debut. Evers’ body had been buried for less than three weeks. The other song was “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

The whole affair was bold, risky and dangerous. The more research I accumulated, the more my reporter’s brain activated. This was a major historical event, not just for Dylan but for Mississippi. So I set out to try to document my little sliver of “Dylanology” by tracking down those who were there and recording their stories.

Among others, I’ve interviewed Courtland Cox, the SNCC worker who picked up Dylan at the airport in Jackson; Bob Moses, leader of the Greenwood movement and architect of Freedom Summer; and Dorie Ladner, who dined with Evers the night he was murdered and later became friendly enough with Dylan that he spoke of her in song:

I got a woman in Jackson

I ain’t gonna say her name

She’s a brown-skin woman, but I

Love her just the same

Both Moses and Ladner have now passed on, but my interviews are ongoing. If you know anyone who attended this event or has any information that might be useful, please reach out. 

Researching Dylan’s Greenwood trip led me to dig deeper into the rest of his career and catalog. He may be from Minnesota, but his roots run almost immediately to the South.

In addition to Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie and Hank Williams, Dylan cites Robert Johnson and other Delta Bluesmen as major early influences. According to my colleague Jason Cain, the radio waves carrying all that music up the Mississippi River to Dylan in Hibbing were the same ones falling on Turkey Scratch, Arkansas, and a young Levon Helm, Dylan’s future bandmate.

Beyond Evers, Dylan penned civil rights anthems about Emmett Till and James Meredith. He cut major, career-defining records in Nashville, Muscle Shoals and New Orleans. His latest studio album, “Rough and Rowdy Ways” (2020), is named after a song by Meridian’s Jimmie Rodgers. 

He wrote a song called “Mississippi” in the late 1990s that was first cut by Sheryl Crow. The hook comes from a 1947 prison work song on Parchman Farm:

Only one thing I did wrong

Stayed in Mississippi a day too long

I grew up just outside of Jackson in the tight-knit, working-class community of Pearl. As a native, these legacies are very important to me. Mississippi is the birthplace of America’s music, and as such, I believe it should be a leader in the study of America’s most consequential musical artist, which is Bob Dylan. 

So, I developed a course called “Bob Dylan and the South” last year for the School of Journalism and the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. It was extremely well-received, and faculty voted earlier this fall to make it a permanent part of the catalog. Registration for next spring’s section begins later this month.

Dylan has been the topic of academic study for more than 40 years. Harvard, Penn, Texas, Berkeley and countless others offer courses on him. The University of Tulsa houses the Institute for Bob Dylan Studies. But no other college campus in America could give its students a better education on Dylan’s southern connections than the University of Mississippi. 

We have Greg Johnson and the Mississippi Blues Archive, one of the largest collections of Blues holdings in the world. We have Scott Barretta, whose award-winning “Highway 61” Blues show airs every week on the Mississippi Public Broadcasting radio network. We have David Swider, the insanely knowledgeable musicologist who owns End of All Music record stores in Oxford and Jackson’s Fondren neighborhood.

We have professors Mark Dolan and Vanessa Charlot, who’ve researched Dylan’s lyrical and cultural connections to Florida and the Caribbean, respectively. Jacob Justice in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric presented his research on Dylan’s relationship with the Beatles at the World of Bob Dylan academic conference in Tulsa this summer, alongside myself and some 300 others.

Our very campus is tied to Dylan, who wrote “Oxford Town” about the riots resulting from Meredith’s enrollment as the first Black student in 1962. He sings: 

Two men died ’neath a Mississippi moon 

Somebody better investigate soon 

One of the two men who died was Paul Guihard, a French journalist. He was the only journalist, in fact, to die covering the Civil Rights Movement. My retired colleague Kathleen Wickham spent the bulk of her career researching Guihard and the integration riots. In 2010, the Society of Professional Journalists declared the Ole Miss campus an historic site in journalism. The plaque stands outside my building. 

Guihard’s murder has never been solved, but Wickham quite literally became the “somebody” Dylan called for in song back in 1962. When she shared her work with my students last spring, they could look down from our classroom windows at the riot site below. 

Everyone else mentioned above spoke with my students, too. The course culminated with students having to produce their own podcasts, with original interviews and research, on a Dylan-related topic. We aired their work on campus radio over the summer. Collectively, we used Dylan as a throughline to explore a variety of topics, crisscrossing disciplines and lenses. The contours of Bob Dylan and the American South are those of America itself. 

The music tells the story. 

At a time when the public is openly questioning the value of higher education, courses like this speak to the relevance of scholarship in everyday life. Where else and when would students, especially out-of-state students, learn this cultural heritage? 

And if they have fun along the way, so what? Universities shouldn’t only have fun on Saturdays.

College students are often painted as flighty and entitled (and some of them are). But those enrolled in my course last spring, hailing from more than a dozen majors across campus, were thoughtful and inspiring. 

In her final reflection essay for the semester, one student wrote:

“I was born and raised in Hernando. I wasn’t always proud of that fact. … I never even knew the culture that surrounded me before I made it to college. Mississippi is one of the most historically rich places in the entire country, and nobody talks about it. So much music originated here. It is the state of American Music. Where would we be without Mississippi musicians? There is so much new gained respect I have for this place, and I am lucky to have been born here.”

Mission accomplished.

Bio: R.J. Morgan  is an instructional associate professor in the School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi and executive director of both the Mississippi Scholastic Press Association and Integrated Marketing Communication Association. He was managing fellow of the Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics from 2022-2024.  He is a former high school educator and a finalist for Mississippi Teacher of the Year in 2011. He is working on a book project about the Delta Folk Jubilee of 1963. Morgan has a Ph.D. in education leadership from the University of Mississippi and earned undergraduate and master’s degrees at Mississippi State University. He lives in Oxford.

As conservative lawmakers promise to expand school choice next year, a handful of Mississippi cities are taking a public stand against the policy. 

The resolutions could signal a lack of support for school choice among everyday Mississippians, something opponents have previously noted. 

Municipal boards in Clinton, Pearl, Florence and Jackson all adopted anti-school choice resolutions in September, citing constituents’ disapproval.

READ MORE: Lawmakers want to expand ‘school choice’ in Mississippi. Here’s what it looks like in neighboring states

School choice refers to a number of policies that give more educational options to families outside of traditional public schools, often allowing them to use public dollars to fund this education. Despite the recent success of the state’s public education system, powerful state lawmakers such as House Speaker Jason White say the issue will headline the upcoming legislative session.

Gov. Tate Reeves has been a vocal supporter of increased school choice, which proponents say parents across the state have been demanding. 

But Nancy Loome, executive director of the public school advocacy organization The Parents’ Campaign, said the local ordinances are a testament to the opposite, and the role public schools play in Mississippi communities such as Clinton, where Loome lives. 

The Clinton Board of Aldermen adopted a resolution on Sept. 2 opposing school choice initiatives that “redirect critical public funds away from local public school districts and instead subsidize private, unaccountable education providers.”

“The board members believe, rightly, that it is one of the biggest threats to their communities — not just their public schools, but their whole communities,” Loome said. “They’re not going to sit by in silence while the folks we elect on the state level push through something that would be very detrimental to their cities.”

The Clinton resolution also notes that in other states, voucher programs often have not improved academic outcomes and that, in many cases, families with students who already attend private schools are the main beneficiaries. 

In Mississippi, school-choice advocates say the policies will improve access to quality education — in most cases, this means private schools or homeschooling — for low-income students. House leaders have insisted they will create a program that caters to the neediest students in Mississippi, and that it will be regulated, so it won’t bankrupt the state’s public schools. 

But Chip Wilbanks, a Clinton alderman, doesn’t think expanding school choice will have that outcome. 

He and his wife, like many of their neighbors, moved to Clinton to raise their family because of the strong public-school system, Wilbanks said. The district is consistently one of the highest rated in the state.

Wilbanks said he hasn’t yet encountered a Clinton resident who supports expanding school choice. 

“The public school district is the epicenter of our town, and the success of our city is tied to it,” he said. “I know there’s no current bill on the table, but we wanted to get out in front of it and say we’re not for this as a concept.”

Wilbanks said his main concern with school-choice policies is the diversion of funding from public schools. He hopes the city’s resolution will encourage more voters to inform themselves about the issue and investigate beyond party lines. 

“Clinton votes very Republican, and this is a Republican-pushed issue,” he said. “I just want people to look at the issue for themselves and see how they think it would affect small towns like Clinton that are dependent on public schools.” 

Florence, another conservative Jackson suburb, adopted an anti-school choice resolution for similar reasons, said Mayor Pro Tempore Brian Grantham. 

While he was campaigning for his seat on the Florence Board of Aldermen over the past few months, school choice kept coming up, Grantham said. 

“A lot of people I talked to were concerned about the impact on our schools in Rankin County and in Florence,” he said. “Most people really like the school system, and they really don’t want to see any major changes. When you have something good going, you want to keep it that way.” 

The story is more complicated in the state’s capital city. 

Jackson Public Schools, the only urban district in the state, most recently received a “C” rating from the state Department of Education and has struggled more than its neighboring districts.

Still, Jackson Councilman Kevin Parkinson, a former charter school administrator, helped lead the effort to adopt the Jackson City Council’s resolution, which he says is “anti-privatization,” rather than “anti-school choice.” 

Charter schools fall under the “school-choice” umbrella, but Parkinson said there’s a difference between supporting charters and supporting vouchers that use public dollars for private education, which Mississippi lawmakers are considering. 

Vouchers, he said, are not supported by his constituents in Jackson. Still, Parkinson is nervous it will happen anyway because of aggressive efforts from state lawmakers. 

“We’re not perfect, but for the first time, other states are modeling their education on what Mississippi is doing,” he said. “This would be a generational step backwards.”

The Board of Aldermen in Pearl adopted an anti-school choice resolution on Sept. 16. Board members did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

This coverage is supported by a grant from Press Forward Mississippi, part of a nationwide philanthropic effort to reinvigorate local news.

An alarming yet hazy remark during the latest Jackson Housing Task Force meeting caused some reporters to pull out their phones and start recording.

Brian Burns, an attorney who chairs the committee, said that about 9,000 Jacksonians live in rental properties with landlords who have past-due water bills. The disclosure signals to the large number of people who could be impacted by water shutoffs as private utility JXN Water continues its crackdown on delinquent accounts.

But it lacked much context. What kind of complexes? How many? Which ones and where are they located? How much does each complex owe? 

Committee members raised concerns about the figure.

“Do you think 9,000 is the number? Like we’re having a crisis with 9,000 tenants?” asked Jennifer Welch, a local property manager who co-chairs the taskforce. “Because we haven’t really said that number.” 

Members of the task force then learned that JXN Water had issued final notices last week to four apartment complexes with past-due bills, one of the last steps before the utility stops service if the owner does not pay within 21 days. But Carla Dazet, JXN Water’s representative on the task force, did not say the name of the complexes. 

Fewer than 1,000 residents live at those four complexes, but after the meeting ended, Burns and Welch would not say which four complexes were poised to lose water. 

“We are not releasing that information,” Welch said after the housing task force concluded its meeting. “If you would like to know that, you should contact JXN Water.”

JXN Water spokesperson Aisha Carson did not respond to a request for comment before press time. The private operator that manages the city’s water utility is not subject to the Public Records Act, and its administrator Ted Henifin has been selective about which information to share with the public.

READ MORE: After first publicized shutoff, JXN Water won’t say how many others have happened

Water shutoffs at apartment complexes with past-due bills totaling more than $200,000 began over the summer, displacing some residents. Jackson Mayor John Horhn had convened the task force in part to coordinate relocation assistance to tenants who were forced to find a new place to live. 

Some members of the committee seemed hopeful the owners of the four unnamed complexes would pay up and spare their tenants the same fate. During the meeting, Victoria Love, the manager of the city’s rental registry, said one of the complexes was federally funded with 156 units and three vacancies. The rest were market rate. 

“With Blossom Apartments being the example, I don’t feel like owners will press their luck,” Love said.

Soon after this discussion, the task force elected to go into executive session. Under the Open Meetings Act, an executive session is a legal justification that public bodies can use to limit members of the public from certain discussions, such as prospective litigation, personnel issues or confidential business decisions.

Welch said the task force was going to review a “delinquency sheet” and that she did not know the names of the four complexes.

“We do not know the answer to that,” Welch said prior to the closed portion of the meeting. “We are going to go into executive session to discuss that.”

But when two reporters sought the reason why the task force voted to go into executive session, city spokesperson, Nic Lott, said the task force was discussing “ongoing policy issues,” which is not a reason listed in the act. 

“There’s no action taken in executive session,” Lott said. “It’s just an ongoing discussion.” 

After a few minutes, Lott returned from the closed session and said that while he agreed the Open Meetings Act applied to the city’s housing task force, “our lawyers tell us that we don’t have to say anything about executive session.” 

“We’re told that we don’t have to reveal the discussion of the executive session,” he added. 

Toward the end of the closed meeting, from behind closed double doors, reporters could hear a member attending over Zoom ask the task force, “why not invite Ted to answer some questions?”

Lott then asked the reporters to sit in the lobby of the city’s administrative building, citing the fact that the Zoom could be heard outside the room. 

When the meeting ended, Burns said the task force had entered executive session to discuss “strategy related to the housing issue, the upcoming housing issue that might be occurring,” including the “water shutoff and humanitarian issues.” 

“If you displace Jackson residents out of apartment complexes, that is extraordinary,” Burns said. “So we’ve got to have the funding to help some of those people.” 

Welch said closer to 600 people may to be impacted, but she directed most questions to JXN Water. 

“It’s such a large, complicated problem that there are not great solutions with 600 people who are going to be affected from a lack of water,” she said, adding “whatever the number might be at these supposed four apartment complexes.”  

The task force is still working to understand JXN Water’s policies for notifying impacted tenants, which include putting a “sign in the yard,” Welch said.

Burns said that in the event JXN Water shuts off service to another complex, the city is looking to secure federal funds from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to help tenants who want to move to an apartment with water. He did not think the ongoing government shutdown would impact the funding. 

The task force is focusing on the complexes that are causing the biggest issues for the city, but Burns said there are more than 80 rental properties, ranging from multifamily properties to duplexes and single-family homes, with past-due water bills. 

“We don’t want to be putting out information from JXN Water for JXN Water,” Burns said. “We want that information coming directly from JXN Water.” 

Environment reporter Alex Rozier contributed to this report. 

CORRECTION 10/6/25: This story has been updated to reflect that Burns is an attorney.

One of the state’s two top public health lawmakers told Mississippi Today he plans to take legislative action to ensure cities and counties spend opioid settlement money on addressing mental health, an issue he said was brought to light by the newsroom’s recent investigation. 

In September, Mississippi Today revealed that of the over $15.5 million dollars local governments have received from corporations that helped catalyze an addiction epidemic that’s killed over 10,000 Mississippians, less than $1 million had been used to prevent more deaths. Spending on other purposes is allowed because Attorney General Lynn Fitch wrote a contract in 2021 that says towns, cities and counties can spend their settlement shares on any public purpose and don’t have to report what they do with the money.  

Communities across the state are expected to get an additional nearly $48 million over the next 15 years, according to the settlements and press releases from the Attorney General’s Office. Unlike Fitch, Rep. Sam Creekmore, the Republican House Public Health and Human Services chairman from New Albany, said he believes all opioid settlement money cities and counties are receiving should be for mental health. 

He said the comments on Mississippi Today’s “The Other Side” podcast, in which he also advocated for $5 million from separate state opioid settlement funds to research the addiction treatment potentials of the psychedelic drug ibogaine.

“They need to spend it, spend that money on abatement for opioid addiction, PTSD, TBI (traumatic brain injuries),” he said on the podcast. “And they need to be spending it now.”

Sen. Hob Bryan, the Democrat Senate Public Health and Welfare chair from Amory, said he would want to see this particular legislation before endorsing it. But in general, he said he supports Creekmore’s efforts to help local governments spend settlement money to address the crisis. 

Attorneys general and legislatures in some states have provided this type of guidance on settlement spending for their towns, cities and counties. Tricia Christensen, a Tennessee consultant who advises states on how to spend opioid settlement money to prevent more overdoses, said in August these types of guides are effective at encouraging local governments to address addiction. 

She said North Carolina’s version, a series of 90 detailed frequently asked questions, provides direct steps for how any local government could spend money for treatment, recovery and prevention. 

“That’s really clear guidance for folks,” she said. 

Fitch did not respond to a question Mississippi Today sent her in August asking whether she would consider creating these types of suggested guidelines. In a statement, her Chief of Staff Michelle Williams said the opioid lawsuits allow for some of states’ settlement money to be used for any public purpose, a “reimbursement” for the hundreds of billions of dollars American governments spent on the crisis throughout the 2000s and 2010s. 

Creekmore also said he would consider proposing a law that requires local governments to publicly report how they spend their settlement dollars. Maine passed a similar bill in May after years of local governments spending their money with minimal public reporting.  

Mississippi Today published some amount of city and county settlement spending information from all but one of the 147 local governments receiving money in its investigation, but the data is only current to the summer. Required public reporting for local settlement spending could reveal which localities have changed their plans since then. 

While local government leaders are the only people who are spending Mississippi’s opioid settlement money right now, the state Legislature controls the majority of the funds, which an August record from Fitch’s office shows was around $89 million after attorneys fees. Creekmore is helping to oversee most of that money through his role on the state’s Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Council. 

The council was only established this year despite receiving these funds periodically since 2022, and the Legislature will only start distributing money for overdose prevention when the next fiscal year starts in July 2026. The delay is a big reason why Mississippi has spent less settlement money for abatement than every other state, both in terms of share percentage and total dollars.

Bryan said as Mississippi lawmakers use state and local settlement dollars, he would like to see a more comprehensive plan to address addiction — starting with knowing what Mississippi’s addiction response needs are. 

Then, he said, he and other decision makers could know whether they should be focused on connecting people in recovery with jobs, expanding in-patient treatment services, supporting the Department of Mental Health’s response efforts or investing in other efforts. 

“The problems of addiction don’t stop at city limits or county lines. It’s a state problem,” he said “To me, it works better if all the money is spent in some sort of coordinated fashion.” 

Creekmore said he spent the week reviewing state opioid settlement applications to help end the addiction crisis, but getting to that point took longer than he intended when Mississippi received its first check. He and his fellow lawmakers have a responsibility to act quickly and effectively with the money to address a crisis that has led to the untimely deaths of Mississippians and grief from their loved ones, Creekmore said. 

“We’ve not done near enough.”

Roland Weeks Jr. was a leader among leaders, a man who cared deeply about the Mississippi Gulf Coast and helped shape the region through his 33-year stewardship as publisher of the regional newspaper, The Daily Herald and its successor, the Sun Herald.

Weeks died Saturday at age 89.

Weeks, who lived in Biloxi with wife Sharon Weeks, retired in 2001 as publisher, president and general manager of the Sun Herald. He remained active in the community, continued his adventures as a pilot and served for many years as a volunteer for the Salvation Army in Gulfport, showing up weekly to wash clothes for the homeless.

“He was just this unflinching friend to so many people,” said Ricky Mathews of Biloxi, who spent many years working under Weeks and succeeded him in the publisher’s job before his own retirement. “He loved people. I don’t know that we’ll ever meet anyone like him again.”

“Community leader is an understatement,” said Henry Laird of Pass Christian, who worked closely with Weeks as longtime attorney for the Sun Herald. “He unified the Coast.

“He ran the newspaper much like he lived his life. He was independent. He just stood up for what was right.”

Newspaper publishing in a hurricane

Weeks graduated from high school in Charleston, South Carolina, then attended The Citadel, followed by the executive program at Stanford Business School. He received his bachelor’s degree in engineering from Clemson University before joining the U.S. Air Force, where he served as a first lieutenant.

Weeks worked briefly as an engineer in the private sector but found his calling in the newspaper business. He started out at Columbia Newspapers in Columbia, South Carolina, where he worked as a management trainee.

He came to Mississippi Coast in 1968 — one year before Hurricane Camille — when the State Record Co., which owned the Columbia newspaper, bought The Daily Herald, then headquartered in Gulfport.

Weeks, his trusted editor Bob McHugh and several others rode out the Category 5 hurricane in The Daily Herald’s building. When water rose in the first floor, they moved upstairs.

“My car, as a matter of fact, was washing around in the water outside of several windows as we worked here,” Weeks said in a 2019 Sun Herald video. Weeks and McHugh called Columbia and got an agreement that The Daily Herald would publish there.

The Coast newspaper never missed a day of publication, a tradition that has continued through the years, including for the unprecedented Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when the newspaper won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, the industry’s highest honor.

The morning after Camille, The Daily Herald building was covered in debris. Weeks and McHugh cleared the front door. Employees began showing up to see how they could help.

Weeks said one of the first sights was a large sail boat washed up from the Gulf. “That told us what we could expect to find in other parts of the Gulf Coast,” Weeks said.

Weeks strove for excellence

Weeks oversaw construction of a new building on the Gulfport-Biloxi line, where the newspaper operated from 1970-2021. The building was made of concrete with narrow rectangular windows along both sides and large plate-glass windows that could be boarded up only in front.

Staff rode out subsequent storms, including Katrina, in that building.

As publisher, Weeks also set about modernizing the operation and transforming the newspaper from a community publication to a statewide force.

For the first time, he hired local columnists and photographers. He believed strongly in giving the news staff the editorial independence needed to gather and report the news.

“We became who we are because of Roland,” said Kat Bergeron, who worked full time for the Sun Herald for 32 years as a columnist and feature writer, and still writes her Gulf Coast Chronicles column for the newspaper. “He had the wherewithal to hire editors who brought us into the 21st century before we were really in the 21st Century.”

Bergeron said she was given the freedom to get to know the Coast and its history for her column.

“We took off and ran,” she said.

Weeks also brought a morning newspaper to the Coast, as The Daily Herald was an afternoon publication. The Sun and The Daily Herald eventually merged into The Sun Herald.

Publisher leaves strong legacy

Like any good leader, Weeks had the courage of his convictions, publishing news even when it was disagreeable to those in power.

He also had a long-range vision for the Coast, promoting consolidation of government services to increase efficiency and cut waste. He played a key role in consolidating five chambers into the Gulf Coast Chamber of Commerce.

“Roland was a giant in both of his principal capacities — newspaper publisher and community leader,” said Stan Tiner of Gulfport, who was executive editor when Weeks retired. “He was a visionary who recognized that the Coast would be more prosperous as a unified region, while giving great credit to each of the unique communities that were vital to his new home.

“As a publisher, he created a legacy of fairness and public service journalism that served the Coast and South Mississippi with distinction throughout his decades of leadership.”

Over the years, Weeks won many awards for his service to the community, including the John S. Knight Gold Medal, the top honor awarded an employee of the newspaper when it was owned by media company Knight Ridder, the Alvah Chapman Award for best-performing newspaper in Knight-Ridder, United Way of South Mississippi Philanthropist of the Year and the Gulf Coast Chamber’s Spirit of the Coast Award.

Weeks also was one of the major fundraisers and promoters of the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi, home to the works of renowned ceramist George Ohr and a replica of the home of Pleasant Reed, a former enslaved person who built his family’s original home in 1887.

“He had so many different causes over the years that he threw himself into,” said Jeff O’Keefe, son of deceased museum founder and former Biloxi Mayor Jerry O’Keefe. “We will be forever grateful for his work with the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art.”

Weeks was humble about his accomplishments. As a publisher, he created a culture of customer service. He considered his employees internal customers. Even after he retired, Weeks frequently stopped by the newspaper office to visit, encourage employees and tell them what a good job they were doing.

“His legacy?” Mathews wrote in a Facebook tribute. “It’s in the bridges he built between people, the resilience he instilled in our institutions, and the way he turned challenges into opportunities.”

Weeks stayed in touch with employees

His enthusiasm for the newspaper and news was contagious.

“I count myself very, very lucky to have worked for him,” said Pam Firmin, a former Sun Herald staff writer. “He made it fun. He made things exciting.

“He was so quick to be understanding and caring and to see the big picture. It was something that seemed to come natural to him.”

Firmin had taken a break from the newspaper when her husband, Pic Firmin, served as executive editor under Weeks. After his retirement, Pic Firmin had cancer. Weeks regularly picked up Firmin to take him for coffee and visited Firmin daily in the last weeks of his life.

“He was so quick to be understanding and caring and to see the big picture,” Pam Firmin said. “It was something that seemed to come natural to him. He did help make the Gulf Coast what it is, but he is so much more than it.”

Flying was one of his passions

After retirement, Weeks faithfully volunteered at the Salvation Army in Gulfport, where for years he washed clothes for the homeless alongside Pam Firmin, who said he was also “an awesome laundry mechanic.”

Weeks also found more time in retirement for his favorite hobby, flying airplanes. He was known as somewhat of a daredevil, but real talent accompanied his rolls and aeronautical stunts.

“I’ve got so many stories,” said Joe Pevey of Gulfport, who became a close friend of Weeks after they met at an airport. Pevey described himself at the time as a Cessna pilot with a Top Gun attitude. He bought a high-performance plane that he really didn’t know how to fly. Weeks studied the book where Pevey had logged his experience and told the younger man, “’Joe, you’re going to kill yourself with this plane.’”

Instead, Weeks taught Pevey to fly the plane. “Roland quite literally saved my life,” Pevey said. Pevey considers himself a technical aerobatics pilot who thinks through his moves ahead of time, while Weeks was a natural.

“He wasn’t a pilot,” Pevey said. “He was an aviator.”

Weeks once corralled Mathews to deliver newspapers from the plane to customers who had chartered Weeks’ boat for fishing at Chandeleur Island. Weeks tested Mathews’ seatbelt strap before they started their mission in Weeks’ twin-engine plane. Mathews was positioned in a seat facing the back of the plane, where the door had been removed.

They located the fishermen on skiffs deployed from the big boat and each time they approached a skiff, Weeks dipped sideways so Mathews could angle a newspaper toward them.

Mathews promised himself, “If I ever make it back to the airport, I’m never getting in an airplane with Roland again. And I didn’t.”

Weeks lived to see the internet change the newspaper business. His belief in a community’s need for strong journalism never wavered, a tradition he helped build on the Coast.

The building whose construction he had overseen came down in the spring, the Sun Herald having moved to quarters more suited to an online operation. He was moving slowly, but Weeks showed up to see some of his former employees for one last photograph on the front steps of the building.

“You’re wonderful people,” he told the group. “You just can’t imagine the excitement that I feel and the love that I feel for all of you.”

The leader of the Senate committee that oversees U.S. courts is asking a federal judge in Mississippi to explain whether his office used artificial intelligence to write a flawed order in a recent case.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, sent a letter to U.S. District Judge Henry T. Wingate on Monday that questioned whether the judge or his clerks used AI to write an order. He also asked why the order in question had been removed from the public docket and whether the judge planned to restore the original order to the docket.

The letter stems from an error-laden temporary restraining order Wingate issued July 20, which paused the enforcement of a state law that bans diversity, equity and inclusion programs in public schools.

After the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office raised concerns about mistakes in the order — which included naming defendants and plaintiffs that weren’t parties to the case, misquoting state law and referencing a case that doesn’t exist — the judge replaced the order with a corrected version, wiping the original from the public docket. 

Wingate denied the state’s request to restore the original order with errors to the public docket and refused to explain the errors, chalking them up to “clerical” mistakes. But attorneys have questioned whether artificial intelligence was used to prepare it. It’s hard to know for certain, experts say, but the original order did contain errors that are “hallmarks” of AI usage.

“These do not appear to be simple slips of the pen or mechanical oversights, but substantive errors that undermine confidence in the Court’s deliberative process,” Grassley wrote. 

The state attorney general’s office has since appealed Wingate’s orders prohibiting the state from enforcing the DEI laws to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. Judges from the appellate court could also ask Wingate to explain the errors in the order. 

Wingate did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Grassley’s letter. 

Grassley’s letter, which cited reporting from Mississippi Today, is a general oversight inquiry and not a subpoena. He has given Wingate until Oct. 13 to respond to his questions.

With a U.S. senator weighing in on Wingate’s recent case, the Mississippi judge may now be at the center of how the federal judiciary polices itself over AI usage. 

The legal profession has seen a rise in AI use in recent years, with people relying on software or processes that attempt to replicate aspects of human work. These are trained on vast amounts of data to accomplish tasks such as researching court cases and citing them in legal briefs.  

But these systems are not perfect and can “hallucinate,” or provide false information. 

It’s increasingly common for judges to sanction lawyers for suspected artificial intelligence usage. Attorneys have a professional and ethical responsibility to make truthful statements in court and in legal filings, but there’s little accountability when the roles are reversed. 

Grassley, though, wrote that federal judges should also be held to the “highest standards of integrity, candor, and factual accuracy.”

He sent a similar letter to a federal district judge in New Jersey.

The future makeup of the Mississippi judiciary and the state Legislature lies in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court. 

The nation’s highest court is considering three redistricting cases, including a Mississippi case, that could significantly alter the Voting Rights Act, a federal law stemming from the Civil Rights era that Black Mississippians have used for decades to prevent discrimination at the ballot box.

Attorney General Lynn Fitch last month appealed a ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Sharion Aycock of Mississippi. The ruling concluded that state lawmakers must redraw the state Supreme Court districts because they weaken Black voting strength. 

That ruling, which forbids the state from using those maps in future Mississippi Supreme Court elections, is pending before the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. However, the appellate court has paused all proceedings in the appeal until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on its redistricting cases.

The litigation over the Mississippi Supreme Court includes a group of Black voters and candidates who in 2022 sued state officials, alleging that Black candidates face unfair difficulties getting elected to the state’s high court.

However, while the U.S. Supreme Court considers other cases that could impact the Mississippi Supreme Court cases, Aycock’s lower court in the meantime can proceed with determining how and when lawmakers will need to change the state districts.

One of those three cases the nation’s highest court is considering is another Mississippi case involving state legislative districts. 

A federal three-judge panel last year ordered lawmakers to redraw their districts in three areas of the state to give Black voters a fairer shot at electing candidates of their choice. Special elections for these races are currently underway, with the general election scheduled for November. 

Fitch’s office also appealed this ruling and asked the U.S. Supreme Court to sharply curtail the federal Voting Rights Act by declaring private voters cannot sue to prevent discrimination at the ballot box. 

If the U.S. Supreme Court rules in Mississippi’s favor, it would mean only the Department of Justice could sue to enforce the Voting Rights Act. 

In both of the Mississippi redistricting lawsuits, private citizens — not the federal government — filed the lawsuit. So if the U.S. Supreme Court rules in Mississippi’s favor, it could prevent individual voters from filing future redistricting cases. 

Another case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court that could limit redistricting cases is Louisiana v. Callais, a suit over Louisiana’s congressional districts. The central question in the case is whether factoring race into the drawing of congressional districts violates the U.S. Constitution.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hold an oral argument in the Callais case on Oct. 15.