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In the aftermath of a revolving door of presidents at Jackson State University, members of Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning board tasked with naming a new leader sought to defuse alumni concerns. 

But after an hour-long Zoom meeting with dozens of JSU graduates last week, some alumni remained uneasy that the state’s college governing board would fall back on the same playbook.

“Even Ray Charles can see the failures,” Sen. Hillman Frazier,  D-Jackson, a member of the Universities and Colleges Committee, said. “They should be upfront on their intentions this time to have a fair and transparent search. They need to double down on their commitment to stabilize their credibility because it’s shot.” 

The state’s largest historically Black university will be embarking on its fourth leadership search this fall after more than three president turnovers in less than seven years. The IHL board, which oversees and selects the school’s presidents, announced the resignation of Marcus Thompson in May. 

No reason was given as to why he left his post as university president. 

Jackson State University National Alumni Association invited some of its members to an exclusive, hour-long Zoom conversation with two IHL board members on July 7 to address concerns surrounding the university’s forthcoming presidential search. 

Patrease Edwards, president of the national association, kicked off the conversation. Moderator Michael Jefferson, the group’s information, communications and technology chair, asked Steve Cunningham and Gee Ogletree a series of questions ranging from the college board’s vetting process to policies and procedures to ensure a fair and transparent search. 

The roughly 71 alumni association members who signed up for the conversation submitted 52 questions. Nearly 14 of those questions, which were screened by the national alumni association, were directed to board members (There was no chat feature available.) It’s unclear how many of those who signed up attended the call. Edwards said students also joined the call. 

In June, the national alumni association emailed its members inviting them to participate in the event. In the days leading up to the call, few details were shared. Alums who signed up to participate had questions about which IHL board members would be attending. Others said they didn’t know where to submit their questions. The link to the Zoom meeting was shared in an email from Edwards around noon on the day of the actual talk. Alums who said they signed up for the event said they didn’t get the email or missed it. 

Cunningham, vice president of the IHL board, said he and Ogletree couldn’t answer specific or personal questions about past presidents because of confidentiality and legal personnel constraints. 

He said a formal committee for the president search has not been named but that he anticipated more engagement with faculty, student groups and the alumni association during the board’s community listening sessions during the upcoming school year. 

In past presidential searches for Jackson State, IHL launched a national search, opened an online survey and provided community listening sessions to help write a candidate profile, all first steps in the process. Ultimately, it will be the board that will make the choice for the school’s next president, he said. 

“Of course it demands a delicate balance of transparency and solicitation of opinions and confidentiality for those going through the recruitment and interview process,” Cunningham said.  “IHL board of trustees reaffirms its commitment to an open and engaged process.” 

Criticism has dogged the board’s history of forgoing its own policies and appointing internal hires as top leaders, leading to protests, accusations of favoritism and bills to abolish the IHL board. 

Thompson worked as deputy commissioner and chief administrative officer at IHL from 2009 before becoming president. He had no experience leading a university. His appointment as president was reminiscent of IHL’s decision to hire Glenn Boyce to head the University of Mississippi. Boyce had led IHL’s leadership search for Ole Miss. Both decisions eschewed search candidates in favor of an internal hire. 

Board members were asked if Denise Jones Gregory, now the interim president, would get a fair shot for the permanent position. Gregory, a JSU alum, is a native of Columbus Mississippi, as is Cunningham. 

Ogletree explained interim or acting presidents would have to step down to apply for the job if they wanted to apply for the role. However, if a number of supporters expressed their favor for Gregory as a top choice for leadership, the board could waive its policies to ensure she remains in the role. Olegtree said it’s too early to discuss how this process would go for Gregory. 

“When we have found good, strong interims and when we hear from the various constituencies that they are the person that fits the criteria… then we haven’t hesitated to hire that person,” Ogletree said.  “I will tell you Ole Miss is thrilled with Dr. Boyce now and Alcorn with Dr. Cook and we certainly have every expectation Jackson State is  going to be thrilled with its next leader.” 

Last year, IHL used this provision to appoint Tracy Cook, president of Alcorn State University, marking the board’s ninth time in 10 years it has hired an internal candidate as a top leader. 

The board also suspended its search to hire Joe Paul, then the interim president at the University of Southern Mississippi, after he received support during the listening sessions. The appointment came with criticism from faculty and staff about the lack of transparency with IHL’s presidential search process. 

Nora Miller served as Mississippi University for Women’s acting president, senior vice president for administration and chief financial officer before the board permanently appointed her the day of the listening sessions, another example of an internal hire by the board. 

The biggest batch of questions alums submitted revolved around the board’s vetting process. Board members explained they obtain references and/or hire consulting firms to contact references. 

They said the 12 trustees try to line up resumes and job requirements with the characteristics needed for president. They run background checks — inquiring about motor vehicles, criminal records and credit checks as well as internet and article information — but they’re not “foolproof.”

“It almost implies like we have some type of magic wand where we should be able to predict a human being’s behavior after they are appointed to a position of power, and we know that that is just impossible,” Cunningham said. 

Ultimately, the board members said they will stick to its policies and “maybe make more calls this time.” 

“We’re certainly aware of the need to do all that we can do,” Olegtree said. 

Tim Rush, a 1986 JSU alum and former dean of students at Holmes Community College, said he appreciated the conversation but wanted to make it clear that all alumni do not share the same views and opinions as the national alumni association. He said IHL needs to truly listen to all stakeholders when making this next appointment. 

“The best leaders will emerge from an open and transparent process that includes valued input from all stakeholders, and we will be able to support and rally around whoever that may be,” said Rush, a member of Thee 1877 Project, a small group of alums not affiliated with the national association who have been advocating for school issues around student housing, philanthropy and funding. 

Mark Dawson, chairman of the 1877 project, said he felt the board members had an overall “cavalier” attitude when answering alumni questions, particularly whether they have learned lessons or will examine new approaches for their next search. Board members need to recognize their past failures have left a festering wound of trust for supporters of the university. 

“Have you looked at what this turnover has done to enrollment, institutional giving, expansion of academic programs or our inability to move from an R2 to R1 research status?” Dawson asked. “Not examining the wrongdoings with this process has been damaging to your bottom line: students, faculty and community.” 

Others question the impact of the board’s decisions on Jackson State University’s overall growth and economic impact on the state’s capital city. 

“In the end, the state is the one who is suffering to grow a really strong institution based in the state’s capital,” Frazier said. “Students want a viable option. They’re beginning to look elsewhere to fulfill their dreams. (The board’s) decisions have been costly. They need to follow their plans and don’t deviate from them. Stick with the game plan and don’t waste alums’ and taxpayers’ time this time around.” 

Vicksburg National Military Park is receiving over $5 million toward restoring a key monument and removing a building that previously was used as a visitors’ center.

Friends of the Vicksburg National Military Park recently announced a $2.8 million private donation to the park by John L. Nau III, a Texas businessman and philanthropist who was a founding board member of the nonprofit Friends organization.

The National Park Service’s Centennial Challenge program will match the donation with $2.5 million in federal funds.

The money will go to restoring the Illinois Memorial and removing an unrelated building that was “erroneously constructed on core battlefield ground — an intrusion that obscures the story and sacrifices of the men who fought and died there in 1863,” according to the Friends.

“Standing on restored battlefield ground gives visitors a chance to truly understand the story of Vicksburg — not just read about it, but feel it,” Bess Averett, executive director of the Friends of Vicksburg National Military Park, said in a press release. “Visitors deserve to walk this hallowed ground and see it as Union and Confederate soldiers saw it during the siege.”

In 1863, Union forces led by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant laid siege to Vicksburg. After 47 days, the Confederate army surrendered, and the defeat turned the tide of the Civil War as the Union gained control of the Mississippi River.

Vicksburg National Military Park was established in 1899 at the battleground. It commemorates the siege and its role in the Civil War, as well as those who fought.

The Illinois Memorial is dedicated to more than 36,000 soldiers from that state who fought in Vicksburg. Both the stone and the inscriptions inside the building have worn down from weather exposure.

In the release, Friends of Vicksburg National Military Park said the park needs both public and private support, as the National Park Service manages over 400 units nationwide.

“We need donors and volunteers now more than ever before,” Averett said.

The Kirksey Middle School bleachers were packed on Thursday evening with nearly 200 people looking for a job at Jackson Public Schools. 

Among the crowd was Sade Montgomery, who was nervously thumbing through copies of her resume. Even though she isn’t certified to teach, Montgomery was looking for a job that would let her spend more time with her 5-year-old daughter. She thought the fair was a good place to start.

Devante Horton, just a few bleachers down, had a similar idea. The 22-year-old — suited up, with a Jackson State University pin gleaming on his chest — attended Jim Hill High School and later studied political science in college. But after graduating, he’d had some trouble finding a job. He decided he wanted to try his hand at teaching.

“I want to give back to my city and the district that I came from,” Horton said. “I’m nervous, but I feel like I’m going to leave here with a job.”

Both Montgomery and Horton had a lot of options in front of them — nearly all of the district’s schools were represented at the job fair, as well as several central office departments. And as they went from table to table, Tommy Nalls, who’s in charge of recruitment at JPS, stood off to the side, watching.

As of last week, about one in four Jackson Public Schools teaching positions remained unfilled. Though district officials noted that count includes jobs that are pending hires, that’s higher than the state’s teacher vacancy rate, which sits at about 16%, according to the most recent data.

Nationally, teachers have been in short supply for years. The issue, worsened by the pandemic, stems from a combination of factors, including low compensation and difficult workloads. It can be even harder to staff classrooms in districts such as Jackson Public Schools, Nalls said, which faces unique challenges because it serves a high population of students from marginalized communities. 

One way JPS is combatting the shortage: Taking advantage of alternate routes for people to become certified teachers. Nalls took advantage of one such pathway himself when he entered the education field two decades ago. 

“Honestly, at first, I was a lot like these people here,” he said, gesturing to the job fair attendees around him. “I needed a new job.”

Nalls, who has a biology degree from Tougaloo College, worked at the University of Mississippi Medical Center and AT&T before a friend suggested he should look into becoming a teacher. He happened to be at the right place at the right time — Nalls was dropping off his information at the district’s administrative offices when Murrah High School’s assistant principal walked in and said they needed a science teacher. 

Nalls got his start in teaching after the district requested a provisional license for him — which is what the district will do for job fair hirees without teaching certifications. 

“What we do as a district is once we get them hired in a position they’re qualified for, we request a provisional license from the State Department of Education,” he said. “Then, during the year, we coach the teachers on certification, so we advise them on what tests they need to take and where the programs are that they can complete in order to become certified. And if they need assistance with the Praxis test in some of our hard to staff areas, we even provide vouchers and preparation to help them study for those exams to become properly certified.” 

According to Nalls, the district’s strategies are working, but they’re up against more than low pay and worsening student behavior. Teaching, he said, is no longer a sought-after profession.

A few years ago, he asked a group of educators to raise their hands if they spoke to their own child about becoming a teacher. Out of a room of 30, just four or five people raised their hands. 

“I’ll never forget that,” he said. “We have to do a better job of championing education within our community … There are issues, of course, but we have to help people realize that it’s just not as bad as they make it out to be.”

After about an hour, Montgomery hadn’t gotten a job offer, but several schools had expressed interest — she was especially excited about one in particular that was just down the road from her daughter’s school. 

“The only thing that I’m a little nervous about is the pay because I know it will probably be a pay cut,” she said. “But I think it’s worth it to be able to be with my daughter.”

Even as the crowd thinned out, Horton stuck around, diligently visiting every table. By the end of the two-hour job fair, Horton had received a couple of job offers. 

And after mulling it over, Horton on Friday accepted a position teaching 9th grade social studies at Jim Hill — his alma mater. He said he’s most looking forward to bonding with his students when school starts in a few weeks.

“For me to be able to go back and show them that somebody actually came from the same seat that you all are in, went to college, got his degree, and is now working in a professional field, I can show them that you can do it as well,” Horton said. “It’s a surreal feeling.”

A Jackson County Chancery Court judge is denying the public access to a case that involves several politically connected Mississippians and their failed venture to ticket uninsured motorists using cameras and artificial intelligence.

Media companies Mississippi Today and the Sun Herald have filed for relief with the state Supreme Court, arguing that Chancery Judge Neil Harris improperly closed the court file without notice and a hearing to consider alternatives. The media outlets say the court file should be opened.

Mississippi Today in June filed its motion asking that Harris unseal the case, which he denied six days later. 

Gulfport attorney Henry Laird writes in the media companies’ petition for state Supreme Court review, “The Chancery Court sealing the entire court file both before and after Mississippi Today’s motion to unseal the file violates the public and press’ cherished right of openness and access to its public court system and records.” 

Mississippi judges have long followed a 1990 state Supreme Court decision that says, “A hearing must be held in which the press is allowed to intervene on behalf of the public and present argument, if any, against closure.” 

Instead, Harris said he found no hearing necessary after reviewing the pleadings to open the file. The case, he said, is between two private companies.

“There are no public entities included as parties,” he wrote, “and there are no public funds at issue. Other than curiosity regarding issues between private parties, there is no public interest involved.”

The case involves what is usually a public function: Issuing tickets to the owners of uninsured vehicles.  And, according to one party to the case, the Mississippi Department of Public Safety is owed $345,000 from the uninsured motorist program.

READ MORE: Private business ticketed uninsured Mississippi vehicle owners. Then the program blew up.

Since the entire court file is closed, the public is unable to see why the judge sealed the case. The Mississippians said in the Chancery Court case that they have  “substantial” business interests to protect and “a lot of political importance,” an attorney opposing them said in a related federal case that is not sealed.

Georgia-based Securix LLC signed up its first Mississippi client in 2021, the city of Ocean Springs, an agreement with the city showed. Securix developed a program that uses traffic cameras, artificial intelligence and bulk data on insured motorists to identify the owners of vehicles without insurance.

To sign on other Mississippi cities, Securix enlisted three well-known consultants, Quinton Dickerson, Josh Gregory and Robert Wilkinson. Dickerson and Gregory are Republican political operatives in Jackson who have run numerous state and local campaigns and advise many of the state’s top elected officials. Wilkinson, a Coast attorney, has represented local governments and government agencies, including the city of Ocean Springs.

MS business partnership sours

In 2023, the Mississippians formed QJR LLC. Their company entered a 50-50 partnership with Securix called Securix Mississippi.

Securix Mississippi sold the cities of Biloxi, Pearl and Senatobia on the uninsured driver program. 

Fees collected from uninsured drivers were apportioned to the company, the cities and the Department of Public Safety, the operating agreement with Biloxi showed.

The citations offered three options, according to copies included in a federal lawsuit filed by three Mississippi residents who received them:

• Call a toll-free number and provide proof of insurance.
• Enter a diversion program that charges a $300 fee and includes a short online course and requires agreement that the vehicle will not be driven uninsured on public roadways.
• Contest the ticket in court and risk $510 in fines and fees, plus the potential of a one-year driver’s license suspension.

The Securix Mississippi partnership soon soured.

Securix Chairman Jonathan Miller of Georgia said in a sworn court declaration submitted in the federal case that he was subjected around March 2024 to a “freeze out” by members and/or employees of QJR. They stopped giving him information, Miller said.

The Department of Public Safety in August pulled the plug on the controversial ticketing program, shutting off the company’s access to the insured driver database.

In September, QJR filed its Chancery Court lawsuit against Securix LLC. 

What is known about the case comes from documents in the federal court file. QJR claims the company and its members have been defamed by Miller and Securix and wants their 50-50 business partnership dissolved.

The Chancery Court case does not even show up when the parties are searched for by name. 

With a case number gleaned from the federal court file, a search of chancery records shows only that the case is under seal.

Normally, when a case is under seal, the docket would still be available. A docket lists all records and proceedings in a case. While sealed records are listed and described, they can’t be viewed. 

“There is no court file,” attorney Laird said in asking the Supreme Court to review Judge Harris’ decision to leave the file sealed. “There is no docket sheet. There is absolutely no access on the part of the public or press to their public court file in this case.”

Judge closes file without public notice

All Mississippi court files are presumed open unless they are closed with notice and a hearing under guidelines established in the 1990 case Gannett River States Publishing Co. vs. Hand.

“It appears that the judge ignored what has been settled law in Mississippi since 1990,” said retired Jackson attorney Leonard Van Slyke, who represented Gannett in the case and still advises the media.

He added, “Since that time, there have not been many efforts to close a courtroom or a court file because the rules are pretty clear as to when that can be done. It is obvious from the rules that this would be a rare occurrence.”

 A court file can be closed only if a party in the case requesting closure can show an “overriding interest” that would be prejudiced by publicity.

The Supreme Court said in 1990 that the public is entitled to at least 24 hours’ notice — on the court docket — before a judge considers closure. As a representative of the public, the media has a right to a hearing before a court file or proceeding is closed.

At the hearing, the judge must consider the least restrictive closure possible and reasonable alternatives. The judge also must make findings that explain why alternatives to closure were rejected.

The court wrote in Gannett vs. Hand:

“A transcript of the closure hearing should be made public and if a petition for extraordinary relief concerning a closure order is filed in this Court, it should be accompanied by the transcript, the court’s findings of fact and conclusions of law, and the evidence adduced at the hearing upon which the judge bases the findings and conclusions.”

Because Judge Harris held no hearing, the high court will have a scant record on which to base its review. Without a court record, Laird pointed out in his filing, the public can have no confidence the judge made a sound decision.

Kevin Goldberg, an attorney who serves as vice president and First Amendment expert at the nonpartisan, nonprofit Freedom Forum, said the First Amendment guarantees the public access to courts.

In the Securix case, he said, a private business was doing work normally performed by a police department or other public agency, and residents could be snared into legal proceedings when they received tickets and public funds were involved.

“These are not private people in a small town, going about their business,” Goldberg said. “These people’s business is the public’s business . . . I think that means they need to accept that they’re going to be scrutinized all the time, including when they voluntarily make a decision to go to court.”

This article was produced in partnership between the Sun Herald and Mississippi Today.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released in early July a revised study on potential flood controls for the part of the Pearl River that runs along Jackson. The Corps has narrowed its focus to two proposals, and only one of them would resemble the long-debated “One Lake” plan.

READ MORE: Corps revises Pearl River flood study, sets new comment period

Superintendent Errick Greene wanted to be very clear with the roughly 50 parents who attended Thursday night’s community listening session: Jackson Public Schools already has a policy banning students from using cellphones at school. 

But the leadership of Mississippi’s third-largest school district has decided that a new approach is in order, citing a series of incidents in recent years involving students using their cellphones to bully others, organize fights or text their parents inaccurate information about violence happening at or near their school.

“To be clear, it’s not the majority of our scholars, but I can’t look at a class and know who’s gonna be bullying today, who’s gonna be scheduling a meetup to cut up today,” Greene said toward the end of the hour-long meeting held at the JPS board room. “I can’t look at a group of scholars and say, ‘OK, yeah, you’re the one, let me take your phone, the rest of you can keep it.’”

Under the rewritten policy, students who take their phone out of their backpacks during the instructional day will lose it for five days for the first infraction, 10 days for the second and 45 days for the third. Currently, the longest the school will hold a phone is 10 days.

The Jackson school board is expected to consider the new policy at its meeting next week and the district hopes to implement the change when the new school year starts later this month, said Sherwin Johnson, the district’s communications director.

Students also currently have the option to pay up to a $25 fine to get their phone back, but the district wants to rescind that aspect of the policy. 

“We’ve discovered that’s not equitable,” said Larrisa Harris, the JPS general counsel. “Not everybody has the resources to come and pay the fine.”

Support for the new policy among the parents who spoke at the listening session varied, but all had questions. How will students access the internet on their laptops if the WiFi is spotty at their school and they need to use their cellphone hotspot? If students are required to keep their phones in their backpacks during lunch, how will teachers prevent stealing? How will JPS enforce the ban on using cellphones on the bus?

One mother said she watches her daughter’s location while she rides the bus to Jim Hill High School so she knows her daughter made it safely. 

“If they can’t have it on the bus, who’s gonna enforce that?” she said. “I’m just gonna be real, the bus driver got to drive.” 

A common theme among parents was anxiety at the prospect of losing direct contact with their kids in the event of an emergency. A Pew Research survey found that most adults, regardless of political affiliation, support cellphone bans in middle and high school classes. But those who don’t say it’s because their child can use their phone during emergencies.

“If something happened, will we get an automatic alert to notify us? Because a lot of the time we see things on social media first,” said Ashley McIntyre, a mother of three JPS students. She attended the meeting with her eldest daughter, Aaliyah, who recently graduated from Powell Middle School.

Though JPS does have an alert system for parents, McIntyre said she didn’t know if it existed. She cited a bomb threat at Powell last year that she found out about because Aaliyah texted her, not through a school alert. 

“We didn’t know what was going on, and she texted me, ‘Mom, I’m scared,’ so I went up there,” McIntyre said. “So that puts us on edge.” 

Aaliyah said she uses her phone to text her mom and watch TikTok, but she feels like her classmates use their phones to be popular or to fit in. When a fight happens, she said many students pull out their phones to record instead of trying to get an adult who can stop it. Then the videos end up on Instagram pages dedicated to posting fights in JPS. 

“Once the principal found out about the fight pages, they came around looking inside our videos and camera rolls,” she said. “It happened to me last year. They thought I had a fight on my phone.” 

Toward the end of the meeting, Laketia Marshall-Thomas, the assistant superintendent for high schools, took the mic to respond to one parent who said she was concerned that older students would not come to school if they knew their phone could be taken. 

“What we have seen is, it’s the older students—” Marshall-Thomas began. 

“They are the problem,” someone from the audience chimed in. 

“We’re not saying they cannot have them,” she continued. “We know that they have after school activities and they need to communicate with their moms … but we have had major, major issues with cellphones and issues that have even resulted in criminal outcomes for our scholars, but most importantly, our students … have experienced a lot of learning loss.” 

While the district leadership did not go into detail about the criminal incidents, several pointed to instances where students have texted their parents inaccurate information, such as an unsubstantiated rumor there was a gun during a fight at Callaway High School or that a shooting outside Whitten Middle School occurred on school property. 

“Having phones actually creates far more chaos than they help anyone,” Greene said. 

While cellphones have been banned to varying degrees in U.S. schools for decades, youth mental health concerns have renewed interest in more widespread bans across the country. Cellphone and social media usage among school-aged kids is linked to negative mental health outcomes and instances of cyberbullying, research shows.

At least 11 states restrict or ban cellphone use in schools. After Mississippi’s youth mental health task force recommended that all school districts implement policies that limited cellphone and social media usage in classrooms, a bill that would’ve required school boards to create cellphone policies died during the legislative session. Still, several Mississippi school districts have passed their own policies, including Marshall County and Madison County.

Another concern about the ban was a belief among a couple of speakers at the meeting that cellphones can help parents hold the district accountable for misdeeds it may want to hide. 

“I just saw a video today. It was not in JPS, but it was a child being yelled at by the teacher and had he not recorded it, his momma would have never known that this sweet lady that they go to church with is degrading her child like that,” one mother said. 

Statements like these prompted responses from teachers and other parents who urged the skeptical attendees to be more trusting or to make sure the district has updated contact information for them in case school officials need to reach parents during an emergency. 

“I think we have to trust the people watching over our children,” said one of the few fathers who spoke. “When I grew up, what the teacher said was gold.”

One teacher asked the audience, “Will you trust us?” 

The committee tasked with overseeing most of Mississippi’s opioid settlement dollars may struggle to keep up with the tight timeline the Legislature prescribed last spring, a plan that lawmakers finalized years after most states enacted their settlement spending plans.

In Jackson on Wednesday, the Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Council met for the first time to discuss how Mississippi should go about distributing hundreds of millions of settlement dollars, money paid out by pharmaceutical companies for their roles in catalyzing hundreds of thousands of overdose deaths. 

Before the meeting started, council chair and Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch provided the 15 voting members and 22 nonvoting participants draft documents of how the committee could operate. The proposals included rules the advisory committee should follow, information to provide groups looking to apply for settlement dollars the state is dedicating to address addiction and an application for making that request. 

Council members raised concerns about Fitch’s documents. Mississippi Supreme Court Chief Justice Michael Randolph, one of the voting council members, said he worried the materials were missing important information and could lead to the state not addressing the public health catastrophe at hand. 

Randolph joined over a video call, and he told Mississippi Today after the meeting that severe technical difficulties made it hard for him to hear what was happening in Jackson. 

But he affirmed that his biggest priorities for the council are helping Mississippi families who’ve suffered most from the addiction crisis and ensuring this public money isn’t spent on expenses unrelated to the public health crisis at hand, as Mississippi had done with its tobacco settlement funds and federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Family dollars.

 He said he didn’t think the documents as proposed would address the opioid crisis.

“We have to make sure we do not make the mistakes of the past,” Randolph told the other council members. “We have to make sure we don’t end up with no accountability.”

While some local governments have started spending their settlement dollars, the state government, which is  responsible for a share of Mississippi opioid settlements that could total around $360 million, has yet to start using its dollars to address and prevent addiction. Every state that borders Mississippi has started distributing the largest portion of their opioid dollars, some over a year ago. 

In 2021, Fitch’s office developed a plan to send 70% of Mississippi’s total opioid settlement dollars – which could now be around $300 million – to the University of Mississippi Medical Center for a proposed addiction treatment center. But the plan was never realized, and the Legislature passed its bill this year to create an advisory council tasked with making recommendations on how lawmakers should spend the funds. 

The law mandates the council solicits, reviews and makes recommendations on applications for opioid abatement projects by Dec. 1 of each year.

Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and House Speaker Jason White did not respond to emailed questions asking why the lawmakers waited years to initiate their plan for distributing the state’s opioid settlements and why they created a rapid timeline for the attorney general’s office to develop a grant application, publish the form and review grants. 

At the advisory meeting, one of Fitch’s special assistants, Caleb Pracht, told the council members that they are overseeing $73.3 million of the state’s approximately $85 million of opioid settlement funds received so far. Fitch and state lawmakers have allowed for the remaining millions of dollars to be spent on non-addiction purposes. 

The original goal, according to Pracht, was to launch the application in mid-July and have interested groups apply for the grant by Aug. 29. 

But that timeline was pushed back shortly after Randolph and other members pointed out missing information in the attorney general’s material. Joseph Sclafani, a voting adviser and Gov. Tate Reeves’ attorney, expressed concern that while the proposed rules said all qualified applications must be reviewed, the document never defined who meets the qualification.

From the draft material, it was unclear whether individuals, nonprofit organizations, for-profit companies or local government agencies could apply for these funds. 

“I don’t think we should be determining on the fly what is qualified and what isn’t,” Sclafani told Pracht. “I think we should have a standard for what is a qualified applicant before we start looking.” 

The information for grant applicants defined eligible projects but only said they were those that address substance use disorder or other harmful effects of the opioid epidemic. Later in the meeting, Scalfani told the other advisers there should be a system to evaluate applications, and it should be made available to applicants. 

“I’ve never seen a grant you apply for that you don’t know the scoring rubric at the time you apply,” he said. 

By the end of the meeting, Pracht said both the launch of the settlement grant application and the deadline for applying would have to be delayed a few weeks. The council members agreed to meet again before publishing the application, this time entirely over video conference.

Michelle Williams, Fitch’s chief of staff, told the committee that it’s important for the council to evaluate all the applications by the end of November to meet the Legislature’s December deadline. 

After the meeting, Williams told Mississippi Today that while the council’s suggestions added more tasks for Fitch on a tight timeline, Fitch’s office would work to make sure the application publication and deadline wouldn’t be delayed more than a couple weeks. 

“We’re going to turn around as much as we can right now,” she said. “… Get them to do another meeting where they can discuss it, agree to something, and then we’ll push that out right away.”

Randolph told Mississippi Today that he thinks the council, the Legislature and Fitch want these dollars to be spent appropriately. If he and the other members need additional time with the application, he said, they’ll ask the Legislature for it. 

But he said as one member of the council, he will continue to vote against any part of the process that doesn’t ensure Mississippians who’ve suffered the most from the overdose epidemic benefit from the settlement dollars. To do that, the application process needs to be clear.

“I didn’t see that,” he said. “And I’m sure they’re working on that, but I don’t got that all. I’m not ready to sign off on anything until I’m satisfied.” 

Cindy Hyde-Smith did not appear to enjoy being approached in late April by voters who were concerned about reports that President Donald Trump’s administration was pushing to slash federal Medicaid spending.

“Medicaid is not going anywhere,” the U.S. senator assured a group of three constituents at a Ridgeland Chamber of Commerce event in April before being ushered away by a staffer, according to people who witnessed the exchange. “Nothing is going to happen to Medicaid. Why is everyone’s head exploding? I can’t understand why everyone’s head is exploding.”

Fast-forward two months, and Hyde-Smith gleefully voted to do exactly what she had so quickly dismissed that day: cut Medicaid funding.

In Washington, shielded by the Beltway and a perceived security blanket of Trump’s MAGA acolytes, Hyde-Smith and the other four Mississippi congressional Republicans in Congress gloated about their votes.

Back home in Mississippi, however, many heads did indeed explode — and with good reason.

Because of Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” that every state delegate except Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson voted to pass, an estimated tens of thousands of Mississippians will lose Medicaid coverage and rural hospitals will lose millions annually in federal funding. While wealthy individuals and corporations will see sizable tax cuts under the legislation, most Mississippians will barely benefit. The bill strips away much of the nation’s safety net for our poorest residents — of which there are obviously many in our poorest state in the nation — and it will add an estimated $3 trillion to our national debt.

For the thousands of Mississippians who had spent weeks trying to relay the long list of negative consequences of the bill to their Washington delegation, final passage felt like a punch to the gut.

It’s a tale as old as time in Mississippi: voters of any and all political persuasions were ignored by their Washington representatives. Mississippi’s congressional representatives have long been out of touch with their constituents once we send them to the halls of the U.S. Capitol, but their avoidance this time felt especially pronounced as valid concern after valid concern was raised about the bill. Their sustained promises to not cut Medicaid, to not significantly raise the national debt and to take good care of people in their home state were not remotely kept here.

If you’re an everyday Mississippi citizen and you want to lodge concerns to your congressional delegation, good luck. Unless you’re deemed important enough to land on their Washington office schedule, you’ll need to get creative. You can call their D.C. or district offices, but you’ll either be directed to a voicemail box or talk briefly with an intern or other low-level staffer whose mandate is to take some notes and move on.

Over the past few months, there has been a loosely coordinated statewide effort to get the attention of those leaders. Thousands of Mississippians took part.

They called. They emailed. They protested outside district offices. They rallied in front of the state Capitol and courthouses. They sent letters, knocked on doors and jammed phone lines. They followed our senators and representatives to luncheons and business forums. They told them — over and over — that they were afraid about the real harm the “Big Beautiful Bill” would do to health care access in one of the sickest, poorest states in America.

In many cases, though, their cries were likely never heard at all by the elected officials.

On June 30, the day before the Senate passed the bill, U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker’s Washington office was not accepting calls or even messages from constituents because “the voicemail inbox was full.” Five days earlier on June 25, an automated phone message at Wicker’s D.C. office said, “Calls to this number have been suspended.”

On July 3, the day of the final House vote to pass the bill, Mississippi Rep. Michael Guest’s D.C. office phone line had a busy signal most of the day. When a group of about a dozen people showed up to Guest’s district office in Brandon on July 3, the doors were locked and a sign was taped to the door with a number to call. An organizer of the protest called the number and spoke for a few minutes by phone with a Guest staffer, who some attendees believed to be inside the Brandon office all along.

Since February, groups of Mississippi constituents made three trips to Wicker’s Jackson office and three trips to Hyde-Smith’s Jackson office. Each time, they were either locked out of the offices or granted just a few minutes with staffers inside who worked to downplay their concerns.

So why, exactly, do our elected officials feel so confident ignoring the will of so many constituents or transparently voting against our state’s interests?

There’s certainly a long conversation to have about how special interest groups, led by the uber-wealthy who have never stepped foot in Mississippi, have commandeered our representative democracy. There’s even more to say about how our nation’s shadowy campaign finance regulations, successful efforts to gerrymander congressional districts and a slew of shady election laws allow D.C. incumbents to cling to power.

But in this instance, the answer could be a lot less about our government systems and a lot more about what’s right in front of us.

“They’re more afraid of Trump than they are of their own constituents,” surmised Kathleen O’Beirne, one of the people who confronted Hyde-Smith about the Medicaid cuts back in April. “Looking specifically at their votes on Medicaid, it sure seems like their disdain and hatred for poor people and people of color is stronger than their love for Mississippi. There’s no other explanation, especially if you understand how health insurance works. And I’d assume and hope they all do.”

O’Beirne, a retired attorney and mother of two in Ridgeland, has helped organize nine Mississippi rallies since February. She’s emerged as a leader for thousands of Mississippians who are feeling more than overlooked or slighted right now by our elected officials.

“It’s definitely frustrating at times,” she acknowledged of not being able to get through to congressional leaders. “But we aren’t going to stop. We’re not easily deterred. We’re seeing what’s happening, and we’re adding more Mississippians who are tired of this. If they (members of the congressional delegation) aren’t going to listen, we’re making it our job to be a thorn in their sides.”

As the negative effects of the legislation will become clearer in Mississippi over the next few months and years, it’s worth closely observing whether our state’s congressional delegation starts feeling a prick from that thorn. For now, they don’t seem to notice it.

Mississippi hospitals could lose up to $1 billion over the next decade under the sweeping, multitrillion-dollar tax and policy bill President Donald Trump signed into law last week, according to leaders at the Mississippi Hospital Association.

The leaders say the cuts could force some already-struggling rural hospitals to reduce services or close their doors.

The law includes the largest reduction in federal health and social safety net programs in history. It passed 218-214, with all Democrats voting against the measure and all but five Republicans voting for it. 

In the short term, these cuts will make health care less accessible to poor Mississippians by making the eligibility requirements for Medicaid insurance stiffer, likely increasing people’s medical debt. 

In the long run, the cuts could lead to worsening chronic health conditions such as diabetes and obesity for which Mississippi already leads the nation, and making private insurance more expensive for many people, experts say. 

“We’ve got about a billion dollars that are potentially hanging in the balance over the next 10 years,” Mississippi Hospital Association President Richard Roberson said Wednesday during a panel discussion at his organization’s headquarters. 

“If folks were being honest, the entire system depends on those rural hospitals,” he said.

Mississippi’s uninsured population could increase by 160,000 people as a combined result of the new law and the expiration of Biden-era enhanced subsidies that made marketplace insurance affordable – and which Trump is not expected to renew – according to KFF, a health policy research group. 

That could make things even worse for those who are left on the marketplace plans. 

“Younger, healthier people are going to leave the risk pool, and that’s going to mean it’s more expensive to insure the patients that remain,” said Lucy Dagneau, senior director of state and local campaigns at the American Cancer Society. 

Among the biggest changes facing Medicaid-eligible patients are stiffer eligibility requirements, including proof of work. The new law requires able-bodied adults ages 19 to 64 to work, do community service or attend an educational program at least 80 hours a month to qualify for, or keep, Medicaid coverage and federal food aid. 

Opponents say qualified recipients could be stripped of benefits if they lose a job or fail to complete paperwork attesting to their time commitment.

Georgia became the case study for work requirements with a program called Pathways to Coverage, which was touted as a conservative alternative to Medicaid expansion. 

Ironically, the 54-year-old mechanic chosen by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to be the face of the program got so fed up with the work requirements he went from praising the program on television to saying “I’m done with it” after his benefits were allegedly cancelled twice due to red tape. 

Roberson sent several letters to Mississippi’s congressional members in weeks leading up to the final vote on the sweeping federal legislation, sounding the alarm on what it would mean for hospitals and patients.

Among Roberson’s chief concerns is a change in the mechanism called state directed payments, which allows states to beef up Medicaid reimbursement rates – typically the lowest among insurance payors. The new law will reduce those enhanced rates to nearly as low as the Medicare rate, costing the state at least $500 million and putting rural hospitals in a bind, Roberson told Mississippi Today. 

That change will happen over 10 years starting in 2028. That, in conjunction with the new law’s  one-time payment program called the Rural Health Care Fund, means if the next few years look normal, it doesn’t mean Mississippi is safe, stakeholders warn. 

“We’re going to have a sort of deceiving situation in Mississippi where we look a little flush with cash with the rural fund and the state directed payments in 2027 and 2028, and then all of a sudden our state directed payments start going down and that fund ends and then we’re going to start dipping,” said Leah Rupp Smith, vice president for policy and advocacy at the Mississippi Hospital Association. 

Even with that buffer time, immediate changes are on the horizon for health care in Mississippi because of fear and uncertainty around ever-changing rules. 

“Hospitals can’t budget when we have these one-off programs that start and stop and the rules change – and there’s a cost to administering a program like this,” Smith said.

Since hospitals are major employers – and they also provide a sense of safety for incoming businesses –  their closure, especially in rural areas, affects not just patients but local economies and communities. 

U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson is the only Democrat in Mississippi’s congressional delegation. He voted against the bill, while the state’s two Republican senators and three Republican House members voted for it. Thompson said in a statement that the new law does not bode well for the Delta, one of the poorest regions in the U.S. 

“For my district, this means closed hospitals, nursing homes, families struggling to afford groceries, and educational opportunities deferred,” Thompson said. “Republicans’ priorities are very simple: tax cuts for (the) wealthy and nothing for the people who make this country work.”

While still colloquially referred to as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the name was changed by Democrats invoking a maneuver that has been used by lawmakers in both chambers to oppose a bill on principle. 

“Democrats are forcing Republicans to delete their farcical bill name,” Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer of New York said in a statement. “Nothing about this bill is beautiful — it’s a betrayal to American families and it’s undeserving of such a stupid name.”

The law is expected to add at least $3.3 trillion to the nation’s debt over the next 10 years, according to the most recent estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.