Since his withdrawal from the presidential race and endorsement of former President Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has pushed to have his name removed from the ballot in swing states — even suing North Carolina to try to force removal.
But his team in Mississippi is still working to get him on the ballot here.
On Friday, ahead of a Sept. 6 deadline, Kennedy’s campaign filed paperwork, including 1,000 registered voter signatures, to put Kennedy on the Nov. 5 ballot as an independent candidate in the Magnolia State. The ballot is still pending approval of candidates and their paperwork by the Mississippi State Board of Election Commissioners — comprised of the governor, attorney general and secretary of state.
The deadline for the secretary of state to publish a sample ballot for Mississippi is Sept. 11.
The Kennedy campaign contact did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.
Kennedy earlier this year was fighting legal hurdles that would have prevented him from being on the ballot in several states. Since his withdrawal from the race, he said he would push to have his name removed from the ballot in swing states, fearing he would be a “spoiler” that could hurt Trump and saying, “I would likely hand the election over to the Democrats, with whom I disagree on the most existential issues.”
Kennedy’s team has said it’s not concerned about him staying on the ballot in predominantly blue states, where he’s unlikely to hurt Trump’s performance. It’s unclear what the strategy would be for him being on the ballot in reliably red Mississippi.
Kennedy sued North Carolina’s election board on Friday, after it denied his request to remove his name. He’s also pushing to be removed from the ballot in the swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin.
In June, Kennedy’s campaign issued a press release saying it had completed paperwork and other requirements to get on the ballot in Mississippi. But the secretary of state’s office at the time responded that his paperwork had not been completed at that time.
The Mississippi State Department of Health will get nearly $4 million from the federal government to implement a home-visitation program for families in 16 counties with children up to five years of age.
Families that choose to participate in the Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visitation, or MIECHV, program can take advantage of free support from trained professionals including social workers and educators in areas such as breastfeeding, safe sleep for infants, and practices for language development.
The program uses a decades-old, evidence-based model called Parents as Teachers that focuses on educating parents in early childhood development, learning and health.
Professionals will also connect families to community resources such as affordable childcare and will conduct screenings for postpartum health – both physical and mental.
“MSDH is thrilled to receive this funding from HRSA that will focus on our children, zero to five, and families in their home settings,” AnnaLyn Whitt, director of health services at the state department of health, told Mississippi Today. “ … The counties were selected based on a needs assessment process that looked at access, social determinants of health and child health outcomes.”
Across the country, states have gotten $440 million to implement similar home visitation programs. The initiative is part of a larger effort by the Biden administration, which has spent more than $558 million addressing America’s maternal health crisis – in which women are dying at a higher rate than any other developed nation.
Mississippi continues to rank last in women’s health and reproductive care outcomes, and mental health is one of the leading causes of preventable maternal deaths, according to the latest Mississippi maternal mortality report.
Experts hope that making trained professionals available for home visits free of charge to parents will help mitigate these statistics in a holistic approach that also contributes to child success in school and beyond.
“Bringing home a baby can be stressful. Many new parents face additional challenges such as housing, or income insecurity, which can make the whole situation even more daunting,” Xavier Becerra, Health and Human Services secretary, said in a press release. “But we know from decades of research that home visits work – from helping with school readiness and achievement for children to improving health for women.”
While registration is not yet open, interested parents can reach out to state health department officials here to learn more.
Mississippi has the lowest labor force participation rate in the nation, and it’s impacting women and their families.
A recent report by the nonprofit Empower Mississippi found the state’s labor force participation rate – the percentage of working-age people who have jobs or are looking for jobs – is 53.9%. This is despite record economic growth and low unemployment.
The report found that the most important factors in labor force participation were education, age, gender and race.
Men have a higher labor force participation rate than women, 59.8% and 48.5%, respectively. This is despite there being more working-age women than men, and women’s and men’s labor force participation rates declining at similar levels.
Matt Williams from the Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative said the lack of affordable child care, lack of time and money for education and training, and low wages are barriers for women in the workforce.
With Mississippi having the nation’s highest number of single mom-headed households – 42% with 80% of them led by single moms – .Williams also emphasized the importance of policies that uplifted single mothers economically.
“What’s not happening is we’re not connecting families headed by moms to higher wage work,” he said.
But the Empower report’s focus on gender as a factor in the state’s low labor participation rate needs context, he said..
“…When we look at labor force participation for moms, for women with children in Mississippi, what we see is that it is really high relative to other categories and subcategories of the population,” he said.
Mississippi mothers with children ages 5 to 14 had a labor force participation rate of just over 77%. For mothers with kids under 14, it is 73%. Two-thirds of those women are married. For childless women, it is 68.5%.
State Economist Corey Miller. Miller said low educational attainment at high school and college levels and high rates of disability and incarceration also are major issues with labor force participation.
Empower Mississippi commissioned the National Strategic Planning & Analysis Research Center to conduct the quantitative research, which interviewed over 50 stakeholders, including legislators, professors and business leaders.
Miller was one of those interviewed. Like Williams, he said the lack of affordable childcare is a major issue for women in and out of the workforce. Another big overall challenge, he said, is bringing in companies that can bring jobs to the state.
“You kind of get a chicken and egg problem,” he said. “Can you get companies that want to hire college-educated workers to come to the state if you don’t have a big enough population of that? But at the same time, if you get a population educated with college degrees, how do you get them to stay in the state if they don’t have the job opportunities that they’re looking for?”
He believes having more remote work opportunities could be a solution. “It has the potential to increase labor force participation because it allows more flexibility, particularly for women who may have children at home,” he said.
He also pointed out the work being done to improve training and education such as AccelerateMS and the state’s workforce development agency.
Rebekah Staples, a fellow at Empower Mississippi, said this report was the first. An interim report is coming out next year that looks deeper into the issues raised in the first.
“The end goal is to be helpful and study the issues that policymakers want to look at so that perhaps they can use some of this data to act on,” she said.
In June, Lt. Gov. Hosemann announced the establishment of two Senate study committees. The Labor Force Participation Study Group is looking at why the labor force participation rate is so low. The Study Group on Women, Children, and Families, originally created in 2022, will address problems like women’s healthcare, access to childcare, the foster care system and more.
In a statement, Hosemann expects Empower Mississippi to testify for the Labor Force Participation Study Group, and said that the data would intersect with the other study group.
“When labor force participation increases, the entire state wins — we are more stable, healthier, and more likely to contribute to our families and communities. Supporting women who may need help with issues like childcare in order to go to school or get a job is critical to these efforts,” he said.
Comments and recommendations for the study groups can be sent to LaborStudyGroup@senate.ms.gov and WCPStudyGroup@senate.ms.gov. Empower Mississippi is taking comments about it’s report at research@empowerms.org.
Attorney General Lynn Fitch filed a lawsuit Thursday against pharmacy benefit managers that alleges the companies fueled the opioid epidemic by working with manufacturers to increase sales of the addictive drugs and magnify their profits.
“They colluded with the opioid manufacturers, placed profits over safety, and engaged in a clandestine scheme to increase the sale of prescription opioids, despite the known dangers of these drugs,” the filing states.
The suit names Optum, Evernorth Health, Express Scripts and several of the companies’ subsidiaries as defendants. Optum is owned by UnitedHealth Group, and Evernorth Health and Express Scripts are owned by The Cigna Group.
Pharmacy benefit managers are the middlemen between pharmacies, drug manufacturers and insurers that negotiate drug prices, process claims for prescriptions and manage retail pharmacy networks.
Attorney General Lynn Fitch speaking at the Neshoba County Fair, Thursday, July 28, 2022. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
The filing alleges that the companies conspired with Purdue Pharma and other opioid manufacturers to deceptively market and oversupply opioids to Mississippians. It also claims the defendants knew they were dispensing more prescription opioids than could be legitimate, contributing to an illegal secondary market.
Mississippi has the fourth-highest rate of opioid prescription rates in the nation. Sixty-four opioid prescriptions were dispensed per 100 people in the state in 2022, according to the CDC.
Mississippi is not the first state to file a lawsuit against pharmacy benefit managers for their alleged role in the opioid crisis. In June, Arkansas sued Express Scripts, Optum and their subsidiaries, citing similar claims.
Pharmacy benefit managers have faced increased scrutiny following a recent Federal Trade Commission report that suggested the companies “may be profiting by inflating drug costs and squeezing Main Street pharmacies.”
Consolidation within the industry has led to the three largest pharmacy benefit managers – UnitedHealth Group’s OptumRX, Cigna’s Express Scripts and CVS Health’s CVS Caremark – to manage nearly 80% of prescriptions filled in the U.S. in 2023, according to the report.
In June, Fitch joined an amicus brief in support of an Oklahoma law to strengthen regulations on pharmacy benefit managers, along with 31 other states.
Lawsuits filed by Fitch against companies that played a role in amplifying the opioid epidemic will yield $367 million in settlements over the next 18 years, according to the Attorney General’s Office.
“I will continue to hold these companies accountable for the role that they have played in destroying so many lives through their unfair, deceptive practices so that our state can heal from this crisis and guard against it ever happening again,” Fitch said.
A bill aimed at regulating pharmacy benefit managers in Mississippi failed during this year’s legislative session.
The Mississippi House of Representatives convened a committee aimed at studying possible changes to laws regulating pharmacy benefit managers. It will make recommendations to the Legislature for next year’s session. The committee is chaired by Rep. Jerry Turner (R-Lee) and Rep. Beth Waldo (R-Ponotoc) and began meeting this summer.
The prospect of Jackson again having its own, self-sustaining water system rests on its residents and their pocketbooks.
While the city is expected to receive around $800 million in federal funds for its water repairs, JXN Water head Ted Henifin knows that the money will one day dry out. So far, the utility has already spent about $100 million of that money, mainly on water line repairs ($45 million) and a contract to staff its treatment plants ($39 million), according to JXN Water’s last quarterly report.
Aisha Carson, lead communications officer at Jxn Water, gives a presentation during a Jackson utilities community meeting at the Mississippi E-Center at JSU in Jackson, Miss., Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2024. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
The goal, Henifin told Mississippi Today in an interview, is to get the water system’s finances to a point where it can pay for itself by 2029. Once the system is turning over consistent revenue, the city could supposedly take back control of its infrastructure, although state lawmakers may have something to say about it. Moreover, Jackson needs the revenue to pour into its broken sewer system, which has for years plagued the neighboring Pearl River with its pollution. But in order to get there, how well the city collects revenue and what citizens are paying has to drastically change.
The latest water bill collection rate from July was 73%, although the number’s fluctuated between the 50s and 70s over the last nine months. To reach the 2029 goal, Henifin said, they’ll need to reach 80% by next year and 90% by 2026.
“Our team’s feeling the pressure,” Henifin said. “It’s basically this (question of), how fast can we ramp this up without stumbling along the way.”
Trying to fill that gap, JXN Water first sent out warning letters about shutoffs last fall, and then began disconnecting non-paying customers over the last few months. The utility has primarily cut off water to homes getting service that don’t have accounts, meaning they aren’t receiving bills. Henifin said it’s typically taken about one to two days to reconnect a home’s service after shutting it off.
JXN Water recently estimated there were about 1,500 of those cases, and that after shutting off about 600 of those connections roughly 500 of them have since made accounts. Henifin said there are a number of reasons why someone might be in that situation, such as if someone moves into a place where the last account was closed but the utility never shut the service off.
Henifin believes another large chunk of properties are getting water for free. After working with an accounting firm to go over the city’s parcel data, Henifin said they found 5,000 to 7,000 properties that have addresses and get electricity but don’t have water meters, meaning JXN Water can’t tell if they’re using water.
“They’ve got an Entergy account, it’s a house that exists as a parcel in the city, and there’s no corresponding water account,” Henifin said. “There’s no meter, there’s nothing. So, it’s like, hmm, how are they living there without any water? So we still got to get to all those.”
JXN Water has also zeroed in on multifamily homes like apartment complexes with large outstanding debts. Henifin said they’ve disconnected water to about 10 complexes, but that their owners quickly made payments and had their water restored.
In Jackson, 51% of the city’s homes are occupied by renters, according to Census data. Rep. Ronnie Crudup, D-Jackson, said out-of-state landlords that aren’t keeping up with their properties, including the ones who had their water disconnected, are a known issue in the city.
“The sad part about it is the apartment complex, a lot of times they’re collecting the fees from the tenants but they just haven’t done their part,” Crudup said. “There’s been a lot of absentee landlords who are not taking very good care of their property. We’ve dealt with a lot of that in the city.”
Ashley Richardson, the director of Housing Law for the Mississippi Center for Justice, said it’s often convenient for tenants to have their utilities included in their rent. But with factors like absentee landlords, she encourages renters to put their utilities in their own names whenever possible.
“It is disheartening that the company is not taking the money that the clients are paying to pay their water bills,” she said. “The tenants are the ones reaping the consequences of the actions of the management company.”
Richardson added, if renters go without water for extended periods because their landlords didn’t pay their bills, they can reach out to her office at MCJ to learn about breaking their lease.
Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, left, listens as Ted Henifin speaks during a press conference at City Hall in Jackson, Miss., Monday, Dec. 5, 2022. Henifin was appointed as Jackson's water system's third-party administrator. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
Henifin acknowledged the impacts those shutoffs have on low-income renters, but he highlighted the large sums of money – over $400,000 in a couple cases – that the complexes’ owners owed. He added that JXN Water tried to give tenants there fair warning before shutting the water off.
“These big out-of-state conglomerates that are owning these real estate trusts or whatever across the country don't seem to have any conscience about their tenants and the challenges they create,” Henifin said.
Not only is JXN Water trying to boost the city’s water revenue, it’s trying to do so under a new billing structure that went into effect in February. When he introduced the new model at the end of last year, Henifin explained that the utility needed to increase rates on bills (which are now around $76 a month on average, or about $10 higher than before) to have enough money to put back into maintaining and upgrading its infrastructure.
To counter the rate hike, the model also included a discount for SNAP recipients (about 30% off for most), which would’ve been the first of its kind in the country. The idea was to ease the burden on low-income families in a city where one in four live in poverty, which is twice the national level.
However, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the benefits program, and the state attorney general are appealing a court order requiring the release of SNAP data, arguing JXN Water shouldn’t have access to that personal information. While recipients can still contact JXN Water to get the discount, Henifin said less than 10 people (of the roughly 6,000 eligible accounts in the city) have done so.
One recipient who spoke to Mississippi Today, Gabrielle McLaurin, said she didn’t know whether the SNAP discount ever went into effect and never reached out to JXN Water to ask.
“It would apply to me, and that’s the thing, I hadn’t said anything because I know they’re in a legal battle right now,” McLaurin said.
In a survey Mississippi Today put out in August, most residents who responded said they haven’t had any issues with the new billing system, and many applauded the work JXN Water is doing.
Ranjan Batra, a Jackson resident of 25 years, said he’s been really pleased with JXN Water’s service, and that he was dreading control of the system going back to the city.
JXN Water crews making repairs to the city's water distribution system. Credit: JXN Water
“There was a sewage leak in our backyard that had been going for probably eight or nine years, and (JXN Water) fixed that,” Batra said. “The only way to fix that stuff is to have the money to fix it.”
Batra’s experience lines up with the results of a “trust survey” that JXN Water has conducted over the last year or so, talking to over 2,000 Jackson residents. In the spring of 2023, the survey found that only 29% trusted the utility. But a year later, that number nearly doubled, reaching 56%.
McLaurin and others, though, talked about their lingering issues with their bills. She said that sometime around the COVID-19 pandemic, after not getting a bill for over a year, she received a new balance of over $2,000, despite having made payments in the meantime. McLaurin, who lives with her three children, doesn’t know where the $2,000 came from, although suspects some of it may be from her home’s previous occupant.
After using public assistance offered through the city, she got the balance cut in half. Now, though, she said JXN Water put her on a payment plan requiring her to pay $175 a month, in addition to the $130 in new charges that she sees.
“I don’t see how I’ll ever be able to cure this balance,” said McLaurin, who works as a volunteer coordinator for a hospice company.
A seemingly prominent issue for Jacksonians are leaks on their property that result in enormously higher water bills. JXN Water Communications Officer Aisha Carson said that, as of Aug. 27, there were 2,722 “leak or burst codes” coming from residents’ meters around the city. She explained that the new meters they’re installing around the city can detect if water usage is going up because of a leak in a home’s plumbing.
During a community meeting to discuss utility issues on Tuesday, Carson told residents that JXN Water would adjust residents’ bills when that happens, bringing the price down to what they typically owed before the leak happened.
A couple of people at the meeting, south Jackson residents Ruth Jumper and Shirley Harrington, both talked about the abnormally high bills they’d received, and that in each case JXN Water told them they had leaks on their property.
Ruth Jumper looking over water bills at her home in south Jackson on Aug. 29, 2024.
Harrington, for instance, said she got a bill in June for $7,400. After JXN Water told her that the amount was due to a leak, she said she hired a plumber who couldn’t find the issue. Later, she said JXN Water left a note on her door saying that the leak was resolved, and the utility adjusted her bill back to its normal amount.
“When I got (the bill), it blew my mind,” said Harrington, who lives by herself and says her usual monthly balance is about $130. “I was like where did this come from? And their explanation was, ‘You’ve had a leak ever since October last year.’ Nobody told me I had a leak, and I’ve been paying my bill.”
Jumper, like Harrington, said JXN Water told her she had a leak on her property, inflating the consumption shown on her water bill. Jumper showed Mississippi Today a note, dated July 10, that she said the utility left on her door saying there was no issue. But as far as she was aware, no one had been by to fix a leak. Whatever had happened, her bill for July showed a dramatic 75% decrease in her consumption. The utility also told Jumper it would adjust her bill back to its normal amount, she said.
Carson later talked about why some residents aren't seeing the leaks the meters are picking up.
"Leaks can be complicated, such as slab/foundation leaks or lateral line collapses, which are not always obvious," she said in an email. "While JXN Water is not responsible for leaks on private property, we can send a crew to investigate and confirm if the leak is on the customer’s side of the property line... Once the leak is fixed, customers can request a billing adjustment, and their meter will no longer generate high usage readings, resolving the issue."
A note that Ruth Jumper said JXN Water left on her door.
Another point of contention among residents has been a $40 “availability” fee that came with the new billing structure. Both the old and new structures charge customers in two ways: a fixed fee, as well as a variable cost based on consumption. The old fixed fee was much lower, at $11 a month.
But, Henifin pointed out, the new variable rate for water and sewer combined has gone down, going from $9 per hundred cubic feet, or CCF, to $6. The change, he explained, reflects that most of the cost of delivering water comes from the infrastructure, rather than how much a person consumes.
“If everyone in the city didn't use water today, those fixed costs would still be there, so we need to collect revenue to pay for that,” he said.
While JXN Water is more aggressively pushing customers to catch up on their bills, it’s also let go of a large chunk of past debt. When the utility took over, according to its quarterly report, it inherited $56 million in water bill arrearages. But a majority of that debt is disputed, the report says, and the cost of recovering that money would outweigh what the utility collects. JXN Water is nearly finished installing new meters to all of its customers, but Jacksonians for years dealt with unreliable billing thanks to faulty meters that the city received through a contract with Siemens.
Crudup, the lawmaker whose district includes south Jackson, said the $40 charge has been the main subject of concern he’s heard from his constituents. Otherwise, he says, the new billing model seems to be going smoothly, especially compared to the last decade of what Jackson has dealt with.
The city began its water metering contract with Siemens back in 2013, but as early as the following year residents and officials suspected faulty numbers in their water bills.
“For so long, Jackson was on sort of a moratorium on paying water bills, and there were certain people, and probably even businesses who probably saw paying the water bill as sort of optional,” Crudup said. “Jackson residents have gone so long, I would say probably the last seven to 10 years without paying pretty consistently.”
Mississippi’s plan to spend $1.2 billion in federal money to expand broadband internet access statewide has received approval from the Biden administration.
The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration on Thursday announced it has approved Mississippi and South Dakota’s initial proposals for the $42-billion federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment state grant program. BEAD is the cornerstone of the Biden administration’s “Internet for All” initiative. The state grant program is part of $62 billion included in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for expanding internet access.
The approval allows Mississippi to request $1.2 billion and go from planning to action on the BEAD program. South Dakota was cleared to request $207 million.
The award was based on the number of homes and businesses lacking high-speed internet and estimated costs of expanding it. Mississippi has an estimated 300,000 unserved and 200,000 underserved homes and businesses.
“In the 21st century, a reliable Internet connection is a necessity that enables access to jobs, health care, and education. Thanks to the Biden-Harris Administration’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Department of Commerce is committed to ensuring that everyone in Mississippi, South Dakota, and across the country has access to quality, affordable high-speed Internet,” U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said in a press release. “Congratulations to the teams in Mississippi and South Dakota. We look forward to working with you to ensure that everyone in the states is connected.”
The 56 states or territories eligible for BEAD submitted their proposals for the program by late December of 2023, outlining how they planned to spend money to deliver internet access to unserved and underserved locations.
One year from this approval, states must submit a final proposal that details the outcome of subgrantee selection and how the state will ensure universal coverage.
U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, who played a key role in securing internet funding for Mississippi in the infrastructure bill, in a statement said: “As the only person in the Mississippi Congressional Delegation who voted in support of broadband being available to the last mile, I support this initial step, but I expect the final outcome to be delivered to those who need it the most.”
Sally Doty, director of broadband expansion for Mississippi, in a statement said: “This approval in the BEAD program means we are one step closer to connecting all remaining unserved and underserved locations in the most rural areas of Mississippi. These are large construction projects that require a good deal of time for buildout and require careful evaluation and monitoring, but incredible progress is now being made. From Alligator, MS in the heart of the delta, to Woodville, MS in the extreme southwest corner of the state, and everywhere in between, reliable high-speed internet is on its way.”
Legendary restauranteur Bill Latham (Amerigo, Char, Table 100, Babalu) passed away this week leaving behind a legacy that will impact our community for years to come. Thank you, Bill.
Long-time Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney confirmed Wednesday he has met with legislative leadership about making his position appointed instead of elected.
The Republican Chaney, who was first elected to the statewide post in 2007, said he has come to the conclusion that a person who is appointed “can do a better job regulating the industry and protecting the consumers” than someone elected to the post.
“I have grave concerns about someone running for this as a stepping stone to another position,” said Chaney, age 80. “It is too important to do that.”
He said it “is borderline unethical” to take campaign funds from the industry being regulated.
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who presides over the Senate, has met with Chaney about making the post appointed. House Speaker Jason White and other legislative leaders also are aware of his suggestion, Chaney said.
In 39 states, Chaney said, the insurance industry is regulated by an appointed person.
Chaney said he has proposed an insurance commissioner be nominated by the governor and confirmed by the state Senate to serve a six-year term. There are other positions in Mississippi appointed for six-year terms, such as the commissioners of banking and of revenue.
Chaney said he is flexible as to when the Legislature might make the position appointed.
“I could leave July 1 if they wanted to make it effective then or I could stay until the end of my term in January 2028,” Chaney said. He admitted that he would lose money from his state pension if he did not finish out his term, but added, “It is not about the money. It is about doing what is right to regulate the industry and protect consumers.”
Chaney said he also would be willing to finish out his term as an appointed commissioner.
When he first ran for the post in 2007, Chaney recalled he said then the position should be appointed instead of elected.
“I am trying to do that now.” Chaney said.
Hosemann said earlier this month during an interview on Mississippi Today’s “The Other Side” podcast that legislators would be studying before the 2025 session begins whether some state posts should be appointed instead of elected.
Mississippi has eight statewide elected posts, including the position of insurance commissioner. Six of those posts are mandated by the state Constitution to be elected and would require a vote of the people to make them appointed.
It would just require a change in law by a vote of the Legislature and the signature of the governor to make the post of insurance commissioner elected.
Before being elected as insurance commissioner in 2007, Chaney served in the state Senate where he was at one point Education Committee chair. Before then, he served in the state House.
