A federal appeals court has allowed a separate court system to be created in Jackson, paving the way for state officials to appoint a judge and prosecutors to the new court.
The Capitol Complex Improvement District Court is now live, several days after it was initially meant to go into effect. Its start date had been delayed by a temporary administrative stay granted by a panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, but on Thursday the court vacated the stay.
In a lawsuit brought by the NAACP on behalf of several Jackson residents, the plaintiffs asked for an injunction to stop the court appointments and creation of the court, but U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate denied it. The same day, Dec. 31, the plaintiffs appealed to the 5th Circuit.
On Thursday, the 5th Circuit sided with Wingate and said the plaintiffs didn’t have standing for an injunction because they couldn’t prove imminent and actual risk of harm.
“The NAACP is profoundly disappointed by today’s ruling,” Janette McCarthy Wallace, general counsel for the NAACP, said in a statement. “Despite any obstacles we may face, the fight continues. Our case will proceed, with more briefing and arguments to come. The NAACP remains committed to upholding democracy and putting power back in the hands of Jackson residents.”
House Bill 1020 was signed into law in April 2023. Many lawmakers said they supported it as a way to address violent crime and bolster public safety in Jackson, while those against the legislation saw it as state control over the local criminal justice system.
Among the plaintiffs’ arguments was that the CCID court would dilute the vote of Jackson residents and take power away from local government.
“Nothing has been taken away from Jackson’s local governing authority,” the 5th Circuit wrote in its order, noting that the argument was not based in fact.
The ruling paves the way for white and Republican state officials to make appointments for the court in Jackson, which is predominately Black and Democratic.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Michael Randolph will appoint one CCID court judge and Attorney General Lynn Fitch will appoint two prosecutors. As of Friday morning, those appointments have not been made.
Under the law, Randolph also was required to appoint four temporary judges to the Hinds County Circuit Court to work alongside appointed judges – an effort to help with the court’s case backlog.
In a separate lawsuit in state court, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled that these appointments were unconstitutional.
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Reports To: Director, Growth & Innovation, Deep South Today
About the Team
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When the five-member Hinds County Election Commission failed to provide enough ballots to voters in the state’s most populous county last November, it created intense frustration with voters and mass chaos on the night of a statewide election.
But the incident has also renewed calls from candidates and local election officials for the state Legislature to pass a law creating early voting.
Sharon Moman, an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for a Hinds County legislative seat, told Mississippi Today that if the state had some form of early voting, it would assure voters that their vote would count and circumvent Election Day mistakes.
“The silver lining in this is hopefully we can champion early voting for the state of Mississippi,” Moman said.
Mississippi, along with Alabama and New Hampshire, is one of only three states that does not offer early voting or no-excuse absentee voting, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
To vote absentee in Mississippi, a voter must list one of one of about 10 legal excuses for why they cannot cast an in-person vote on the election date. For example, a voter can cast an absentee ballot if they plan to be out of town on Election Day or if they are a college student.
These stringent voting options mean that most Mississippians are forced to cast an in-person vote at polling precincts, making it critical for local election workers to conduct Election Day without errors.
Members of the Hinds County commission, all of whom are elected Democrats, acknowledged in a meeting last month that they mistakenly sent the wrong type of voter file to the company they contracted with to print ballots.
The error caused some Hinds County voting precincts to run out of ballots throughout the day. The county is majority Black, Mississippi’s largest county and a Democratic Party stronghold.
People waited in line for hours to vote as local officials attempted to replenish ballots and deliver them to polling places. It’s unclear how many people left without voting or decided not to travel to polling precincts because of the confusion from the shortages.
Democratic Rep. Zakiya Summers of Jackson is a former Hinds County election commissioner, and she told Mississippi Today that regardless of how the county officials conducted the election, early voting should be a no-brainer in the Magnolia State.
“It doesn’t matter which political party you’re part of,” Summers said. “This tool would give you the opportunity to vote when it’s convenient for you.”
The Jackson lawmaker said if her colleagues oppose early voting, she thinks a viable alternative would be to enact no-excuse absentee voting.
Neither House Speaker Jason White nor Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, both Republicans, have appointed leaders of legislative committees, including the respective Election Committees. But efforts in prior legislative sessions to establish early voting or no-excuse absentee voting were unsuccessful.
Republican Secretary of State Michael Watson is responsible for administrating parts of the state’s elections and provides training to county election officials.
The secretary recently told Mississippi Today that every other county in the state conducted successful elections without early voting and reiterated to reporters on Wednesday that he is not proposing any major changes to the state’s election laws, including early voting.
“As far as I’m aware we have a really good system here in Mississippi,” Watson said.
White said he intends to finalize committee chair appointments by Jan. 12. Lawmakers have until Feb. 19 to file legislation.
Washington’s Dillon Johnson blows a kiss to the crowd after scoring a touchdown during the Sugar Bowl playoff game between Texas and Washington at the Superdome in New Orleans, LA. (Photo by Nick Tre. Smith/Icon Sportswire) (Icon Sportswire via AP Images)
Amid the delirium near the end of Washington’s heart-stopping 37-31 Sugar Bowl victory over Texas was one sobering moment with just under a minute to play. Huskies running back Dillon Johnson, a Greenville native, carried the ball into the line on a third down play. Johnson was swarmed and tackled for no gain.
Rick Cleveland
Afterward, Johnson could not get up. When finally helped to his feet, he could not put any weight on his right foot.
Johnson, who scored the game’s first two touchdowns, has led the Huskies with nearly 1,200 yards rushing. He leads the team in touchdowns with 16. He protects wunderkind quarterback Michael Penix from blitzing pass rushers with bone-jarring regularity. Put it this way: The Huskies would not be 14-0 and headed to Monday night’s national championship game without Dillon Johnson, who was helped off the field and finally carted to the locker room.
It surely looked as if Washington would be forced to play No. 1 ranked Michigan without one of its key players. But, as Lee Corso would say, “Not so fast my friend…”
Greenville dentist Gwen Moore, who treats inmates at the Mississippi State Prison at Parchman, knew better. She is Dillon Johnson’s mother and his biggest fan. “Dill has an amazing pain threshold,” she said by telephone Thursday. “If he’s in it, he’s in it to win it. When I talked to him yesterday, he said, ‘Don’t worry about me, Mama. I’ll be fine. I’ll be ready to play. You just worry about getting to Houston.’ Dill has played through injuries all his life. He has played hurt for the last couple months. He focuses on the task and not the pain.”
Dillon Johnson smiles despite an injury that caused him to be carted off the field after Washington’s Sugar Bowl victory.
Washington coach Kellen DeBoer has said he expects Johnson to play. Greenville St. Joseph coach John Baker, Johnson’s high school coach, would be shocked if Johnson did not play.
“Dillon’s just special, always has been,” Baker said. “He has all the intangibles, including a competitiveness I have rarely seen. I mean, you can see it in his eyes. The thing about Dillon is he demands everybody around him play with the same intensity and toughness that he plays with.”
When Johnson was home over the Christmas holidays, he visited the St. Joe football facility for workouts and ice baths for his injured shoulder and foot. Said Baker, “He actually has a fractured bone in that right foot. He hurt it in the Oregon State game (Nov. 18).”
But that didn’t keep him from running for 152 yards and two touchdowns in the Pac-12 Championship Game victory over Oregon two weeks later. Not bad — right? – 152 yards and two scores with a broken bone in his right foot.
Nothing Johnson achieves surprises Baker, who coached him from the seventh grade through his high school career. “I remember one game when he was in the eighth grade when he played every play at running back on offense and middle linebacker on defense,” Baker said. “He won the game by himself. I mean, he made every tackle on defense and scored every touchdown. We were out-manned everywhere else, but Dillon just took over and won it.”
Johnson moved to the varsity in the ninth grade and helped St. Joe to three straight state championships beginning his sophomore year. He played running back as a sophomore, quarterback as a junior and running back and quarterback as a senior.
“The thing a lot of people don’t realize about Dillon is he can really throw the ball, too,” Baker said. Indeed, Johnson completed both the passes he threw for Washington this season. One went for a touchdown.
Seems almost impossible to believe Baker had Dillon Johnson and Florida State star Trey Benson in the same backfield for two seasons at a tiny private school in the Mississippi Delta. He did. Joe Moorhead, then the head coach at Mississippi State, recruited both. He landed Johnson, but Benson went first to Oregon and then to FSU.
“None of what is happening with Dillon at Washington surprises me,” said Moorhead, now the head coach at Akron. “I’m incredibly happy for his success. It’s all well-deserved and the result of hard work, dedication and being a good person.”
There was nothing not to like about Johnson as a football player, Moorhead said before listing the superlatives. “Great size and length,” Moorhead said. “Tremendous speed and acceleration. Excellent change of direction. Very physical running the ball and in pass protection. Great basketball player, too.”
Moorhead went on: “As good as Dillon is as a player, he’s an equally good person, engaging and always had a smile on his face, incredibly positive. Very well respected by his coaches, teachers and classmates. He comes from a tremendous family. His mother Gwen was incredibly supportive throughout the recruiting process and you could tell she had a significant impact on Dillon as a young man.”
Dillon Johnson, left, and his mother Gwen Moore.
Moorhead never got to coach him at State. When he was fired, Mike Leach brought in his Air Raid offense, which ran the ball only as an occasional change of pace. In three seasons at State, Johnson ran for about as many yards as he did in one season at Washington. Yes, Johnson caught 149 passes over those three seasons, but what he really wanted was to run the football. So he entered the portal.
“Probably the hardest decision Dill ever made,” said his mother, Gwen Moore. “He had grown up wanting to be a Mississippi State Bulldog.”
Once in the portal, Johnson heard from many schools, Washington among them. “Washington probably recruited him hardest,” Moore said. “They had won 11 games and lost just two the year before and their pitch was that Dillon was the missing link, that he was what they needed to go win a national championship. He visited and really loved it.”
The rest is history. And now, he apparently will play for that national championship, broken foot or not, determined as ever.
Delbert Hosemann, moments after being sworn in for his second term as lieutenant governor, cited three issues he said must be addressed during the next four-year term for Mississippi to prosper.
Those issues are:
Improving Mississippi’s workforce participation rate, which at 53.8% is the worst in the county.
Ensuring the state’s public pension plan is financially viable.
Addressing the state’s health care crisis. He said addressing the crisis in “a shotgun approach is not the answer. A comprehensive approach is.”
On Thursday afternoon during a joint session of the Mississippi Legislature, the seven statewide elected officials other than the governor were sworn in for a new four-year term. Gov. Tate Reeves, who attended the pomp and circumstance Thursday, will be sworn in Tuesday afternoon during another joint session on the grounds of the state Capitol.
It is tradition for the lieutenant governor to offer comments to the joint session after he is sworn in. Hosemann kept his remarks short, but used them to challenge legislators to tackle problems he cited. He said, based on their accomplishments during the past four years, that they could solve those problems.
He said Mississippi’s low workforce participation rate — people able to work who are not — is not economically sustainable. The key, he said, is educating people and imposing workforce skills.
“Economic development will wilt without an educated work force to sustain it,” Hosemann said. He said education must be adequately funded from pre-kindergarten up. He again proposed “the last dollar tuition program” that will ensure all students who meet a certain grade point average and other requirements will be able to attend community college tuition free.
Hosemann addressed education and health care, but made no direct comment on some of the big issues that could be debated during the legislative session – such as providing vouchers for students to attend private school or expanding Medicaid to provide health care for primarily the working poor.
But Hosemann did say that it was the responsibility of the Legislature to ensure the Public Employees Retirement System remains viable. PERS provides retirement benefits for most state and local government employees, including schoolteachers.
“This absolute obligation of the state will drive most of your decisions this year and in the future,” Hosemann told legislators. Providing more state funds for PERS is expected to be a major issue during the 2024 session.
In ending the joint assembly, Hosemann told legislators, “We have a bright future … It is just whether we are going to achieve it or not. I see in this room the ability to do that.”
Hosemann also reiterated his comments from four years ago, saying that too often in the past the rotunda has been a roadblock keeping the House and Senate from working together. He said four years ago there were walkways around that rotunda that go both ways.
“We will continue to use those walkways,” Hosemann said.
The other statewide officials sworn in were:
Secretary of State Michael Watson
Attorney General Lynn Fitch
Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney
Auditor Shad White
Treasurer David McRae
Agriculture Commissioner Andy Gipson
All eight elected statewide officials are incumbents.
UPDATE: The Mississippi Department of Public Safety cleared the Mississippi State Capitol building and the Mississippi Supreme Court building around 10:30 a.m. on Thursday after sweeping the buildings following a bomb threat early in the morning, according to officials with DPS and the Administrative Office of the Courts
Judges, legislators and Capitol staffers lined the sidewalks in downtown Jackson Thursday morning after the Mississippi Supreme Court received a bomb threat, a spokesperson for the state Department of Public Safety said.
“Precautionary measures are being taken at the Mississippi State Capitol and Supreme Court buildings,” DPS spokesperson Bailey Martin said in a statement. “Standard emergency procedures are being followed.”
This is the second day in a row that a government building in the state has received a bomb threat. The Mississippi State Capitol, which is across High Street from the Supreme Court, received a bomb threat Wednesday. Law enforcement agencies swept the building and did not detect any explosive or suspicious material inside the building.
The Mississippi Legislature is in the middle of its 2024 legislative session, and most of Mississippi’s statewide officials are slated to be sworn into office at 2 p.m. today.
Jack Fredericks is investing in new teachers because he wants to help them stay in the classroom for the long haul.
He serves as the program coordinator for the new teacher mentorship program in the West Tallahatchie School District, something he worked with his superintendent to create after researching mentorship as a Teach Plus Mississippi policy fellow.
Jack Fredericks created a teacher mentorship program in the West Tallahatchie School District to support new teachers and keep them in the profession. Credit: Courtesy of Jack Fredericks
“It’s kind of a weird measurement to say, ‘Well the program is successful because the teachers haven’t quit,’ but a lot of new teachers do quit in the middle of the year,” he said.
Fredericks said their program relies heavily on the mentoring toolkit created by the education department, tweaking it only to limit extra paperwork for teachers. Courtney Van Cleve, MDE director of teacher acquisition and effectiveness, said that the toolkit was borne out of the Mississippi Teacher Residency, an alternate route teaching certification program.
“We were creating a lot of these resources along the way… and thought that it would be a great opportunity to expand the reach of those resources,” she said.
Those resources cover mentor selection, observation schedules, professional development powerpoints and surveys for feedback.
Fredericks, who is in his fifth year teaching in the West Tallahatchie School District, said he relied on the principals at the elementary and high school to identify mentors and mentees. This year, there are three mentor pairs at the elementary school and five at the high school.
Each month, mentor pairs focus their conversations and observations on a new topic. So far, they’ve covered classroom setup and management, managing instructional time, collaboration and working with your data.
Laura Hoseman, a mentee in the program, said she appreciates the structured nature. Hoseman teaches junior and senior English at West Tallahatchie High School and said she particularly appreciated her mentor’s guidance on developing engaging lessons since students can lose interest after they pass the 10th-grade state test.
She also highlighted the sense of community among program participants and said it is a community “geared toward solutions.”
“Yes we can be critical about what I’m not, as a teacher, doing well, but not in a way where I’m going to feel undervalued,” she said. “I actually feel quite valued.”
Fredericks pointed to state and national research showing the positive impact of mentorship in keeping teachers in the classroom, citing the Mississippi Department of Education’s 2022 teacher retention survey. In it, 23% of respondents said having a formally assigned mentor when they were new teachers was the biggest reason they remained in the profession, the most popular of the responses.
Van Cleve also cited this survey, pointing to mentorship’s positive impact for the mentor teachers as well.
“Mentoring is in itself a teacher retention strategy for a lot of mentor teachers,” she said. “It’s another connection, it’s another reason, it’s another person to (expand) their school network that continues to encourage them to stay in the profession, that they have experiences and insights to offer.”
Van Cleve said a financial incentive to be a mentor can help retain teachers. The West Tallahatchie program is using federal pandemic relief money to pay mentor teachers a $2,750 stipend over the school year.
Angela Wilson, a math teacher at R.H. Bearden Elementary and a mentor in the program, said she was excited about the opportunity to build new relationships in her school and help new teachers through a hard and overwhelming time. She said she has watched significant turnover in the district and hopes this program can help stem it.
“If we have more teachers that are struggling that are afraid to say something, if we could get more people involved it would be great because that’s how we’re going to keep our teachers in the schools,” she said.
House Speaker Jason White, in his first public speech after being elected on Tuesday, proposed reforming Mississippi’s public school funding formula — the subject of years of debate at the Capitol and across the state.
The funding formula used to allocate money to public schools, the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, was established by the Legislature in 1997 and has been consistently underfunded every year since 2008. MAEP funding provides the state’s share of funding for the basic operations of local school districts, ranging from teacher salaries to textbooks to utilities.
Allocations under the formula multiply attendance by the base student cost, a number calculated by the Mississippi Department of Education that reflects the amount necessary to “adequately” educate a student. Local school districts are required to pay a portion of their allocation based on property taxes, but state law guarantees that no district will pay more than 27%. This provision, known as “the 27% rule”, primarily benefits wealthier districts since their property taxes generate more funds.
In his speech, White did not advance specific policy proposals but identified the 27% rule as needing further scrutiny.
“We are certainly spending plenty,” he said. “Let’s be sure we’re spending wisely.”
White confirmed to reporters he is not looking to cut public education funding, but instead evaluate where it is spent. He continued by identifying underperforming school districts as a priority and said he would like to work with local superintendents to improve outcomes.
White also discussed his interest in career and technical education programs, which place high school students in certificate programs instead of college prep courses. White linked this issue to other voucher and school choice debates, framing it as a form of choice for parents and students to be able to select their diploma track.
Last year, Senate leaders introduced a plan in early March to give an additional $181 million to public schools by slightly modifying the MAEP formula and fully funding the new version. Despite the plan passing the Senate unanimously, House leadership refused to put more money into the formula, saying they believed it would be used for increased administrative spending and would not benefit students. Instead, House leaders wanted to direct additional funding into specific programs, like the capital improvements loan fund or an assistant teacher pay raise.
Neither proposal triumphed, with lawmakers eventually agreeing to give an additional $100 million to school districts outside of the funding formula. The additional money could be spent similarly to MAEP and was also distributed based on attendance, save that it could not be used for superintendent, assistant superintendent or principal raises.
Secretary of State Michael Watson on Wednesday outlined his legislative agenda, continuing his call for campaign finance reform, voicing support for reinstated ballot initiative rights and vowing to be “a wrecking ball” for business regulations.
Watson also confirmed that his office received the email bomb threat that closed the Capitol for a few hours Wednesday morning, although he deferred further questions to law enforcement.
During last year’s statewide elections, Watson’s office flagged several potential campaign finance violations and fielded numerous complaints as millions of dollars of dark money flowed into Mississippi races amid what appeared to be flagrant disregard for the law. The election cycle showed again that Mississippi has weak campaign finance laws and nearly nonexistent enforcement. Watson said at the time his office has no enforcement authority over violations.
“We sent 10, 11, 12 campaign issues, some of which we felt were fraud, to the attorney general’s office, and we saw no enforcement of that,” Watson said.
Watson said he is pushing for his office to have authority to issue fines for campaign finance violations and a revamping of laws.
He said he also is pushing lawmakers to approve – and pay for — a new campaign finance reporting system, so voters can easily view and search campaign donations to candidates as is the case in most other states. Watson has previously estimated such a digital system would cost $2 million to $3 million.
Watson also said he wants to end the “grandfathering” in state law of candidates being able to spend money from pre-2018 campaign accounts on personal expenses. Reforms passed in 2017 allowed candidates to keep the old accounts provided they didn’t accept new donations and kept them separate from new accounts, from which personal spending is prohibited. Watson said about 40 politicians still have such legacy accounts totaling about $5 million. He said Gov. Tate Reeves’ is most notable, containing about $1.9 million, and is drawing thousands of dollars in interest each year.
“I’m not trying to point fingers at anybody with this,” Watson said, “… but I think it’s just wrong.”
Watson said he also wants lawmakers to change law to prohibit political action committees from donating to each other as a way to obfuscate the source of donations to politicians.
“I want to eliminate PAC to PAC contributions,” Watson said.
Watson said he also wants lawmakers to restructure the Occupational Licensure Review Board on which he serves with the governor and attorney general. Watson proposes adding several other state officials, but removing the attorney general because that office also legally represents the boards and commissions the OLRC is monitoring.
The OLRC was created by lawmakers in recent years as a way to rein in the many agencies, boards and commissions that regulate and license many businesses in Mississippi. The Magnolia State ranks high nationwide in the number of occupations that require special licensure, and many GOP leaders including Watson have called for less regulation.
Watson said Wednesday he plans to be “a wrecking ball” for such boards and commissions and red tape.
Watson also said he supports lawmakers reinstating voters’ right to ballot initiative — to take matters in hand and sidestep lawmakers with a statewide vote.
“We govern by the consent of those who are governed,” Watson said.
Watson said he is not proposing any major changes to the state’s voting system, such as expanded early voting.
“No, but there are more conversations every day about such issues,” Watson said. “As far as I’m aware we have a really good system here in Mississippi.”
