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Lawmakers are considering an override of Gov. Tate Reeves’ veto of a bill to provide low-interest loans to Mississippi communities hit by the winter ice storm.
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Lawmakers sent a bill to Gov. Tate Reeves for consideration Monday that seeks to ensure federal funding for rural health care is directed toward rural communities and the spending is reported to the Legislature.
The bill is a diluted version of oversight legislation passed by both chambers earlier in the session, which would have required a competitive bidding process for the distribution of hundreds of millions of dollars given to Mississippi by the federal government.
In December, Mississippi was awarded nearly $206 million as a part of the Rural Health Transformation Program. States will receive payments over five years as a part of the $50 billion program, which was designed to support rural health care and offset the disproportionate impact already-struggling rural hospitals are expected to bear as a result of federal spending cuts Congress passed into law last summer.
Lawmakers have publicly expressed frustration with the limited role they have played in the funding application and distribution process, which is being led by Reeves’ office.
Reeves posted the state’s program application on his website in December, but funding estimates are redacted, creating uncertainty about precisely how the money will be spent.
“This is all about transparency and prioritization of where this $206 million goes over the next five years,” said House Public Health and Human Services Chairman Sam Creekmore, a Republican from New Albany, on March 10 after offering amendments to the bill.
Senators unanimously agreed to the House’s amendments Monday. The bill will next go to Reeves’ desk. He can choose to sign the bill, veto it or allow it to become law without his signature. The bill would take effect immediately if it becomes law.
Has the governor already selected vendors?
A vendor for professional accounting, auditing, administration and consulting services was selected in January, before lawmakers crafted legislation to increase oversight of the funds.
The Department of Finance and Administration on Jan. 9 published a notice of intent to award a contract on behalf of the governor’s office for assistance administering the funds, showing that the highest score was awarded to state and local government consulting firm BDO Government Services, formerly HORNE. Respondents had less than a month to respond to the request for qualifications.
The contract went into effect the same day, according to the notice. The contract does not appear in the Department of Finance and Administration’s online registry of state contracts, even though the request for qualifications specified it should be publicly available in the database.
Reeves did not respond to a request for comment from Mississippi Today about whether vendors have been selected for the funds or if the administrative support contract has been executed.
How lawmakers say the rural health funding bill could enhance transparency
The legislation passed Monday puts “a few guardrails” on the use of funds distributed to the state as a part of the Rural Health Transformation Program, said Senate Public Health and Welfare Chairman Hob Bryan, a Democrat from Amory.
The bill calls for priority to be given to the following recipients when structuring grants or applications for the funding:
Rural areas and the Delta region.
Programs that provide direct assistance to Mississippi providers and patients, rather than vendors.
Grant recipients that have not received state or federal assistance for facility improvements or medical equipment in the past three years.
It also requires each agency awarding grants or funding to provide quarterly reports to the Legislature.
The bill also requires a competitive procurement process for establishing a statewide health information exchange to support real-time data sharing between providers, and sets requirements for the program.
The original text of the bill passed by both chambers required vendors or subcontractors, including those tasked with providing medical equipment or creating workforce programming, to be selected by a competitive bidding process.
A separate bill, which retains this language, was sent to final negotiations by the House on March 17. Lawmakers could still choose to pass procurement regulations for the funds.
During a Senate Public Health Committee meeting March 3, members expressed concerns that the requirement could slow the disbursement of funds to rural communities in need. States must spend the funds within two years.
Sen. Rod Hickman, a Democrat from Macon, said the legislation was not intended to slow down the process.
“We want the process to move forward as quickly as possible,” he said. “We just wanted to put some guard rails to make sure that the state is protected and the state’s most needy places and hospitals are protected.”
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Mississippi Today Ideas is a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share their ideas about our state’s past, present and future. Opinions expressed in guest essays are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of Mississippi Today. You can read more about the section here.
When Maria walked across the stage at her high school graduation, I sat in the audience proud of her perseverance. I had taught her for two years in high school special education, and I knew how hard she had worked to pass her classes and pass her state assessments despite her specific learning disorder in reading comprehension.
But later, Maria confided in me that instead of feeling proud and excited that night, her heart was racing and her stomach was in knots. The familiar walls of our school, where she had spent so many years learning and growing, would no longer hold her.
Ahead lay a world she did not understand and a future she did not know how to navigate. Friends were talking about college, vocational programs or jobs. Maria had no idea what her next step should be.
College and career readiness is about more than helping individual students. It strengthens our state’s economy, reduces unemployment and creates a workforce that can compete nationally, which is why this is the focus of the work I’m doing as a Teach Plus Policy fellow.
When students like Maria leave school without a plan, it is not just their future at risk, it is Mississippi’s future. Waiting until junior and senior year to start college and career readiness curriculum is not yielding the results we need. If Maria had been exposed to a variety of careers and options, she might have felt more prepared for life after high school.
Mississippi needs to do better for our students, and effectively prepare them for their next step. Maria’s trajectory, and the trajectory of countless other students, could have looked very different if we do the following:
Start career readiness early. If Maria had been introduced to career exploration in elementary school or middle school, she could have discovered her interests long before graduation. Career fairs, job shadowing opportunities and hands-on vocational programs would have given her direction instead of uncertainty. Early exposure helps students connect what they are learning in class to real opportunities beyond school.
Teach real-world skills alongside academics. Maria mastered reading, writing and math, but she left high school without knowing how to complete a job application, request college accommodations or navigate transportation to work. These are not extras. They are essentials.
Embedding life skills into daily lessons, such as interviewing, budgeting and workplace communication, would have given her confidence and independence. I now work one on one with my students on applying for a job, applying for college and choosing their future career. This little bit of personalized attention makes a world of difference.
Build individual success plans that grow with students. Schools work to support academic growth, but they often neglect long-term planning. If Maria’s Individual Success Plan had begun in elementary school and been revisited yearly with her family and teachers, she would have graduated with a clear roadmap tailored to her strengths, goals and needs. Consistent, individualized planning ensures that students do not leave school feeling lost but instead feel prepared and confident in their next step, whether that is college, vocational training or entering the workforce.
Our group of Teach Plus Policy fellows is advocating for the statewide standardization of the creation and implementation of Individual Success Plans to close equity gaps and ensure that every student in Mississippi has meaningful access to college and career readiness planning.
Mississippi has taken important steps to expand college and career readiness opportunities for students. Those efforts must be supported by systems that reach every learner. A standardized approach would help schools align academic planning, career exploration and progress monitoring in a coherent way. Most importantly, it would help ensure that a student’s future is not determined by geography, but by access to intentional and equitable planning.
Every student deserves to leave high school after graduation prepared for life, not left behind by a system that equates a diploma with readiness. As an educator who has walked alongside students at every grade level, I know we can do better and we must.
Schools, policymakers and communities must act now to ensure students like Maria are not left standing at the edge of uncertainty. We owe it to them to turn diplomas into opportunities and fear into hope.
Elizabeth Maxcey is a special education teacher at Biloxi High School in Biloxi, Mississippi. She is a 2025-2026 Teach Plus Mississippi Policy fellow.
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Mississippi’s Republican-controlled Legislature has agreed on a proposal to require local election officials to verify voters’ citizenship using a federal immigration database and to audit voter rolls for potential noncitizens.
Supporters say the measure will boost confidence in election results. Critics say it will suppress some U.S. citizens’ votes.
The agreement came on Monday when the Senate voted 33-18 along party lines to concur with the House on the Safeguard Honest Integrity in Elections for Lasting Democracy, or SHIELD, Act. The bill, which will now head to Republican Gov. Tate Reeves for his consideration, would require county registrars to conduct extra checks on people registering to vote.
The legislation drew vocal opposition from Democrats, who said it would make voting more time consuming and could even function as a “poll tax” because people might end up having to pay for extra documents, such as birth certificates, to prove their citizenship.
There is no evidence that noncitizens are voting in large numbers in Mississippi. But Republicans said the bill is a simple proposal that adds another layer of verification to the state’s process for ensuring only citizens vote.
“I want to be clear, this isn’t a bill to disenfranchise anyone. This is a bill to make sure that registered voters in Mississippi and the people voting in our elections are U.S. citizens,” said Senate Elections Chairman Jeremy England, a Republican from Vancleave. “To many of us in here, even one instance of someone that is caught voting that is not a U.S. citizen throws our entire election integrity into doubt.”
In a statement, Mississippi Democratic Party Chairman and state Rep. Cheikh Taylor from Starkville said millions of Americans lack a passport or immediate access to other documents proving citizenship, a reality that could prevent eligible Mississippians from voting.
“Republicans aren’t solving a problem, they’re creating one on purpose,” Taylor said. “There is no voter fraud crisis in Mississippi. There is a participation crisis, and instead of addressing it, they have made it worse. The SHIELD Act is a poll tax dressed up in modern language, and Mississippi Democrats will fight it with everything we have.”
Under the bill, if someone tries to register and can’t produce a driver’s license number or if the number doesn’t appear in the Statewide Elections Management System, a county registrar would have to verify whether the person appears in a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services database called SAVE.
Government agencies use the federal database to verify an applicant’s immigration status or citizenship. If a person is flagged in the SAVE database, the registrar would notify them and offer a chance to provide documents showing U.S. citizenship before their registration application is denied or canceled.
The legislation would also require the secretary of state’s office to run an annual comparison of the statewide voter registration system against the SAVE database to spot registered voters who may be ineligible. Any matches would be sent to local registrars for verification. The local registrars would also report a list to the secretary of state’s office every year, noting how many registered voters were flagged and how many were ultimately removed from the rolls.
The legislation in Mississippi arrives as the Trump administration pushes to “nationalize” elections with a federal bill that could potentially prevent millions of people from casting ballots. Both chambers of the Mississippi Legislature have also advanced bills this session aiming to crack down on immigration, despite some lawmakers raising concerns that the federal government is responsible for enforcement and that the proposals could inadvertently harm U.S. citizens.
If Reeves signs the SHIELD Act or allows it to become law without his signature, it will go into effect on July 1.
Teacher pay raise bills from the House and Senate are set to be negotiated over the final days of the legislative session.
It’s the latest in a session-long fight to pass a raise for Mississippi teachers, the lowest paid on average in the country. Mississippi teachers last got a meaningful pay raise in 2022.
Since January, the House and Senate have fought over education policy issues, including a teacher raise. Earlier this session, each chamber killed the other’s proposal, then revived their own.
The Senate’s plan would give teachers a $6,000 raise over three years, while the House plan would provide an immediate $5,000 raise.
Despite Senate Education Chairman Dennis DeBar, a Republican from Leakesville, previously telling reporters that the House’s teacher pay proposal would not be considered in his chamber, the legislation was brought up on the floor Tuesday morning and sent to further negotiations.
The House declined to agree to the Senate’s proposal that same morning, and did the same.
Now, legislative leaders will appoint three representatives and three senators to negotiate terms of a final proposal.
The House’s lengthy teacher pay bill, nearly 500 pages, has many other provisions, including changes to the state retirement system.
If the chambers come to an agreement, they’ll produce a negotiated bill to their full chambers for a vote.
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Across Mississippi, many of the thousands of water and sewer systems have struggled to stay compliant with federal public health and environmental laws. Often, those systems either delay raising rates for too long or lack the customer base to fund needed infrastructure improvements.
By virtue of being a rural state, Mississippi has gotten stuck with a large number of water and sewer systems serving very small populations — a median of 1,200 customers on the water side — making it less cost effective to keep those systems running.
This legislative session, state lawmakers took several steps to hold those systems more accountable. Sen. Bart Williams, a Republican from Starkville who worked on a few water and sewer bills, said this was by far the most the Legislature had accomplished in this area in a while. One of his bills, which is awaiting Gov. Tate Reeves’ consideration, would create a Rural Water Oversight Committee.
“We’re requiring water associations to do a rate study, capacity study and asset management,” Williams said of Senate Bill 2526. “That allows us to come check the temperature of the association.”
Water associations are board-run nonprofit utilities. The state has limited oversight over those boards, which instead are mainly accountable to the customers or members in their service area.
Water in a Black Bayou water treatment plant storage tank. Impurities settle at the bottom of the tank and are siphoned off, Friday, March 25, 2022. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
By December 2027, those utilities would need to submit rate and capacity studies and asset management plans to the committee. They would then need to complete rate and capacity studies every five years after that. The idea is to ensure providers have the resources and rates necessary to fund and maintain their systems.
“I think it’s needed because some of these (systems) are just derelict,” said Sen. Angela Burks Hill, a Republican from Picayune.
Hill pointed to the Pearl River Central Water Association in her district, which serves 11,830 people. Customers there waited years for leak repairs, she said, and board members refused to hold regular meetings. Recently, though, Hill helped organize residents to oust and replace the entire board.
“It’s taken a long time, our people have suffered for years with water problems, and nothing got better until legislators got involved,” she said.
Under SB 2526, the Mississippi State Department of Health would keep a list of systems in “financial distress,” and those systems would have to file an improvement plan with the Rural Water Oversight Committee. If such a system didn’t follow those steps, the state could then limit its financial assistance.
The seven-member committee would be made up of the following officials or their designees: state director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Dane Maxwell; director of MSDH’s Bureau of Public Water Supply Bill Moody; director of the state environmental department Chris Wells; a representative from the drinking water state revolving loan fund; Mississippi Rural Water Association CEO Kirby Mayfield; and one appointee each of the governor and lieutenant governor.
During discussion of the bill, lawmakers debated how much “teeth” it needed to ensure providers were following guidelines. Hill pointed to Senate Bill 2310, which the governor approved this month, as an example.
In that bill, lawmakers gave the state Public Service Commission power to cancel a city’s certificate to serve drinking water more than a mile outside its boundaries. Williams, who wrote that bill as well, said its genesis was complaints about Canton Municipal Utilities. Customers there were recently caught off guard by skyrocketing water bills, WLBT reported.
Sen. Angela Burks Hill, R-Picayune, listens during a Senate Education Committee meeting on Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2026, at the Capitol in Jackson. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
If the PSC finds a city’s service to be “inadequate,” it can petition a court to appoint a receiver over the system. The legislation mirrors what lawmakers did for electric utilities in 2024, paving the way for the PSC to intervene in Holly Springs’ power troubles last year.
Hill tried to amend the rural water oversight bill to give the PSC the same power over water associations. Her amendment passed in the Senate Energy Committee but didn’t make it into the bill’s final version.
“You know how bad Jackson water got,” she said. “People shouldn’t have to suffer through that. Now they’re putting in a fix for municipalities, but the same exact thing can happen with a rural water association, even if it’s member owned.”
Mayfield, of the Mississippi Rural Water Association, said there’s enough enforcement over those associations in the state’s Nonprofit Corporation Act. That law allows members of a water association to petition to replace their board members if they’re not meeting standards.
“I just told the Legislature: We’ve got the laws to deal with it, we just need to enforce what laws we already have,” he told Mississippi Today.
Lawmakers this session also passed House Bill 1632, creating the “Community Public Wastewater System Infrastructure Sustainability Act.” The bill, which is also awaiting the governor’s consideration, would require the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality to publish annual letter grades for each public sewer system in the state.
The law would also give the PSC authority over any wastewater system that receives a “D” or “F” grade, allowing the commission to hold a hearing over the utility’s performance and potentially revoke its certificate of service.
Those systems would then have to tell customers within 30 days what grade they received. MDEQ has until Jan. 1, 2028, to release the first set of grades. MSDH publishes similar evaluations of the state’s drinking water systems.
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Republican Gov. Tate Reeves on Monday vetoed a bill that sought to provide low-interest loans to local governments impacted by this year’s deadly winter storm and accused Senate staffers of committing unconstitutional and potentially criminal acts with the legislation.
But the basis for Reeves’s allegations of criminal action is inaccurate.
“The plainly unconstitutional (and possibly criminal) act of the person or persons that attempted to surreptitiously change a material (and negotiated) term of Senate Bill 2632 is unconscionable and calls into question the validity of every bill that I have signed into law this session,” Reeves wrote in his veto message.
The legislation Reeves vetoed attempted to give cities and counties devastated by Winter Storm Fern a loan using state tax dollars. The legislation stated that the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency was to give local governments loans at 1% at an annual interest rate after federal emergency relief is provided to the state.
But Reeves said he negotiated with legislators that it should have been a 1% monthly charge to local governments, instead of a 1% annual charge. Under what Reeves said he agreed to, governments would have been charged a 12% annual loan, instead of a 1% annual loan.
“Notably, without striking the word ‘monthly,’ the language would have resulted in a 12% interest rate charge to cities and counties rather than the clearly intended and unanimously adopted 1% rate,” Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said in a statement.
Reeves’ office on Tuesday appeared to continue to advocating for a higher loan rate to local governments.
Corey Custer, Reeves’ deputy chief of staff, said in a statement that if the House and Senate send the “exact same bill that 174 members had the opportunity to vote and passed, he will gladly sign it.” Custer said the governor communicated that to the lieutenant governor and the speaker on Monday evening.
After both chambers in the Capitol had already passed the legislation, legislative leaders told lawmakers that the word “monthly” was an inadvertent typo. Lawmakers unanimously voted to remove the word from the bill.
Sen. Rita Potts Parks is a Republican from Corinth in northeast Mississippi, which was one of the towns hit hardest by the storm. She told Mississippi Today on Tuesday that the Reeves’ veto is “crushing” for her district, and it “hurts your heart” to think people in her district may suffer without getting financial aid.
“You think about raining sleet for 36 hours,” Parks said. “We were over 72 hours with nothing because both transmission lines were down. We had people anywhere from five days to four weeks without power. That’s crushing. To think we can afford a 12% loan? I don’t have a county or a city who can afford that.”
Parks is one of three legislators who met with Reeves, Hosemann and House Speaker Jason White in the governor’s Capitol office on Monday afternoon. It’s not clear what the purpose of the meeting was, but Parks said the governor did not discuss his veto of the legislation during the meeting. She only found out about the veto after she left the meeting.
Reeves is also claiming the method legislators used to take out the word “monthly” was malicious.
The governor received the bill on March 17, with the word monthly already removed. He alleges that it should not have occurred because the House and Senate did not agree to remove the word “monthly” until later that same day, after he had already received the bill.
He inaccurately claims Sen. Hob Bryan, a Democrat from Amory, made the motion to remove the language on March 17.
But the person who asked the Senate to change the language was Sen. Tyler McCaughn, a Republican from Newton, on March 13. McCaughn, on March 13, clearly states the bill number and the reason for removing the word monthly.
On Tuesday, McCaughn said that for local governments hit by the storm, “charging 12% is like kicking somebody when they are down … I don’t get it.”
In the governor’s Tuesday afternoon statement to Mississippi Today, he did not address questions asking if he planned to recant his statement that Senate staffers may have committed criminal acts or correct his statement saying the wrong senator asked to correct the typo.
“Further, attacking and accusing a Senate staffer of committing a criminal act in a veto message is malicious, unnecessary and false,” Hosemann said.
Sen. Neil Whaley is a Republican from Potts Camp in north Mississippi, another area of the state that was hit hard by the storm. He said it’s unfortunate the governor did not discuss any of his concerns with legislators before vetoing the important bill.
“The inside baseball of all of this, everything that goes on in this chamber, the people back home don’t care about that,” Whaley said. “The only thing they’re looking for is results.”
Now that Reeves has vetoed the bill, it’s unclear if local governments still coping with damage and cleanup from the storm will receive any relief from the state. Lawmakers can override the governor’s veto, but it would require a two-thirds majority vote in both chambers to do so.
Update 3/24/26: This story has been updated to include further comments from the governor’s office.
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The Clarksdale Board of Commissioners voted Monday night to rezone a site for a potential data center along with a list of conditions for any developer.
“The vote that we’ve taken today does not approve a data center. It only is the beginning of the conversation regarding the possibility of data centers coming to Clarksdale,” said Mayor Orlando Paden.
Only the mayor and two other members of the board, Jimmy Harris and Eddie Earl, were present. Commissioners Ray Sykes and Linda Downing were absent. While there were calls from the crowd that this group was not a quorum, Melvin Miller, the city attorney, advised that it was.
City officials have said that there have been discussions with a data center developer, but no agreements have been signed and the project may or may not happen.
The conditions for a data center on the 648-acre site were read during the meeting and include a one-time, $5-million impact fee be paid to the city prior to any work being done by a developer, that the developer would pay for any public utility improvements required and that there would be an additional 1,000-foot setback from any residential areas.
Two weeks ago, the board voted to reconsider rezoning and the conditions. In a “very confusing and very unstructured” meeting that involved an errant call for a closed-door executive session. Monday’s meeting was held after the board held a town meeting last week.
At the town hall meeting last week where residents commented and questioned a data center and its impacts, opinions were mixed. Some residents were enthusiastic about the potential tax revenue but others, especially those who live close to the site, were concerned about negative impacts. On Monday night, the city published an FAQ page responding to questions brought up during the town hall.
“Hyperscale data center projects can be transformative for communities,” one slide says. The presentation lists benefits including tax revenue to fund public works projects and education, quality job creation, and helping fund activity programming for parks and recreation.
A slide showing projecting city property tax revenue says that in the first year of operation, a data center would bring in $15 million in property taxes. Last year, the city reported total general fund revenue of $9.2 million.
A vocal crowd was present Monday night, with many speaking against the proposal, in contrast to another recent public hearing where many spoke in favor. Amidst calls for a public discussion and to let people speak on the matter, the board allowed a comment to be entered into the public record.
“I have a problem with the lack of transparency of this whole process,” said one resident who called for a public hearing on the rezoning.
The elected officials at the meeting promised to continue to keep the public informed.
“If an application comes from a data center, I am going to insist that a detailed plan be given to the board and the public,” Paden said at the conclusion of the meeting.
A statewide program to help adults who have completed some university courses but never graduated was around for almost nine years before its funding ended in 2025.
Now the program, Complete 2 Compete, is getting a second life.
The Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees voted in January to revamp the program under a new name and a decentralized structure. Some of the state’s eight public universities will develop and operate their own versions of what’s now known as the Adult Degree Completion program.
Now, they will develop their own college completion program requirements and curriculum, and recruit eligible students. Adults who complete the program will earn a bachelor’s degree.
The program’s revival comes at a moment when Mississippi lawmakers and some colleges across the state are discussing ways to increase the number of residents who get a degree or credential before entering the state’s workforce. About 12% of Mississippi residents have some college experience but no degree.
Complete 2 Compete helped 4,119 adult learners complete their degree, Melissa Temple, IHL director of nursing education, told trustees.
Supporting degree completion
Complete 2 Compete launched in 2017 as a partnership between IHL and the state’s community college board. It focused on encouraging Mississippi adults to complete higher education. Participants had been out of college for at least two years without earning a degree or credential or had earned at least 90 credit hours.
The program also linked adults with college or university career coaches for help identifying the best path and academic courses for an associate or bachelor’s degree.
Complete 2 Compete received an initial $3.5 million from the Mississippi Department of Human Services, the Mississippi Department of Employment Security and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The funding covered $500 grants for eligible students at the beginning of each semester to help cover tuition, supplies and prior student loan debt. That grant amount increased to $1,000 a semester in 2018.
A $1.3 million grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation funded the program until 2023, IHL spokesperson John Sewell said. Then in fall of 2024, community colleges withdrew from the program, leaving only the state’s public universities as participants, he said.
Quality over quantity
The university studies program classes are primarily offered online to help adults fit school into their lives, said Lisa Rieger, associate director of pre-professional and exploratory programs at the University of Southern Mississippi, which runs a Complete 2 Compete program.
“Students returning to school have many challenges to overcome — accessing new university technological systems, navigating academic policies and deadlines that differ from their prior enrollment, ensuring prior coursework is applied to a degree,” Rieger said.
Earning a bachelor’s degree is also a point of pride for students, Rieger said.
The degree “opens the door for promotion and new pathways for many individuals, while others are thrilled to have attained a personal goal.”
College degree completion programs are good for society, said Josh Wyner, a vice president at the Aspen Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank and research organization, and founder of its higher education reform initiative, the College Excellence Program. But not every degree has equal value or can help students land a job and earn a living wage, he said.
Fifty-two percent of recent bachelor’s degree holders are underemployed a year after graduation, meaning they’re working a job that doesn’t require the degree, according to a 2024 report from The Burning Glass Institute and Strada Institute for the Future of Work, which both conduct workforce research. And nearly half of graduates are still underemployed a decade after college, the report said.
“When we’re bringing students back (to school), we need to ask ourselves not just how do we get them to a degree, but how do we get them to a degree of value,” Wyner said. “A degree that is actually needed in the labor markets and will help them get ahead in life, help them earn a decent living with benefits.”
The most successful programs are those that help students identify their courses and align them with potential job options, Wyner said.
Editor’s note: The W.K. Kellogg Foundation is a current funder of Mississippi Today. Donors to Mississippi Today have no influence or control over editorial decisions.
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State Health Officer Dr. Dan Edney is among the contenders to head the nation’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Washington Post reported Sunday.
The deadline to appoint a new director of the nation’s top public health agency is fast approaching, with the acting director’s position expiring Thursday unless the White House submits a formal nominee for the role.
The Trump administration is seriously considering about half a dozen people as its nominee for the position, including former Kentucky Republican governor Dr. Ernie Fletcher and Johns Hopkins cardiologist Dr. Joseph Marine, according to the Washington Post. Selection for the role requires Senate approval, a change that was implemented in 2025.
Edney has served as Mississippi’s state health officer since August 2022. He replaced former State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs. Edney previously served as the state agency’s deputy state health officer and chief medical officer and worked closely with Dobbs on the department’s COVID-19 response.
He is also a former president of the Mississippi State Medical Association and former board member of the Mississippi State Board of Medical Licensure. He was in private practice in Vicksburg for over 30 years, and is a board-certified general internist with a subspecialty board certification in addiction medicine.
Edney declined to comment on his nomination for the role.
During his tenure at the Mississippi State Department of Health, the agency has seen some improvements in public health, rising to 48th in one national ranking of 99 health measures released annually by United Health Foundation.
“The health of our population is not great, but it’s better than it was,” Edney said at a press conference Jan. 21 celebrating Mississippi’s improved state health ranking.
Mississippi has one of the highest rates of preventable diseases in the country, including heart disease, hypertension, obesity and diabetes. These conditions disproportionately affect Black Mississippians.
Edney has long been a vocal advocate for evidence-based policy and vaccination, particularly as childhood vaccination rates in Mississippi have declined following a 2023 federal court ruling that allowed parents to opt out of vaccinating their children on religious grounds.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who oversees the CDC, replaced the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel with a cohort of handpicked appointees and overhauled the childhood immunization schedule.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the director of the National Institutes of Health, has served as acting director of the agency since February, during the search for a new director.
President Donald J. Trump dismissed former CDC director Dr. Susan Monarez, a microbiologist and immunologist, in August, about a month after she was confirmed. She testified the following month that she was ousted because she resisted Kennedy’s orders to fire top scientists at the agency or pre-approve vaccine recommendations.
The agency can only be led by an acting director for 210 days unless a nomination for the role is submitted to pause the clock.
Edney’s time as state health officer has been marked by progress and controversy.
He has also worked to launch an obstetric system of care, promoted as a solution to the state’s persistently high rates of infant and maternal mortality, among the highest in the nation. In August, the health department declared a public health emergency over the state’s rising infant mortality rate.
At the same time, his leadership also drew scrutiny after he removed the directors of about a dozen preventive health programs from their posts last year with little public explanation. Those changes affected programs focused on chronic disease prevention, diabetes, cardiovascular health, cancer, school health, tobacco control, injury and violence prevention, heart disease and stroke prevention and oral health.
If Edney is confirmed as head of the CDC and steps down from his role as state health officer, his successor would be appointed by the 11-member Board of Health, whose members are selected by the governor. Two seats are currently vacant.
