2024 Mississippi legislative session not good for private school voucher supporters
Despite a recent Mississippi Supreme Court ruling allowing $10 million in public money to be spent on private schools, 2024 has not been a good year for those supporting school vouchers.
School-choice supporters were hopeful during the 2024 legislative session, with new House Speaker Jason White at times indicating support for vouchers.
But the Legislature, which recently completed its session, did not pass any new voucher bills. In fact, it placed tighter restrictions on some of the limited laws the state has in place allowing public money to be spent on private schools.
Notably, the Legislature passed a bill that provides significantly more oversight of a program that provides a limited number of scholarships or vouchers for special-needs children to attend private schools.
Going forward, thanks to the new law, to receive the vouchers a parent must certify that their child will be attending a private school that offers the special needs educational services that will help the child. And the school must report information on the academic progress of the child receiving the funds.
Also, efforts to expand another state program that provides tax credits for the benefit of private schools was defeated. Legislation that would have expanded the tax credits offered by the Children’s Promise Act from $8 million a year to $24 million to benefit private schools was defeated. Private schools are supposed to educate low income students and students with special needs to receive the benefit of the tax credits. The legislation expanding the Children’s Promise Act was defeated after it was reported that no state agency knew how many students who fit into the categories of poverty and other specific needs were being educated in the schools receiving funds through the tax credits.
Interestingly, the Legislature did not expand the Children’s Promise Act but also did not place more oversight on the private schools receiving the tax credit funds.
The bright spot for those supporting vouchers was the early May state Supreme Court ruling. But, in reality, the Supreme Court ruling was not as good for supporters of vouchers as it might appear on the surface.
The Supreme Court did not say in the ruling whether school vouchers are constitutional. Instead, the state’s highest court ruled that the group that brought the lawsuit – Parents for Public Schools – did not have standing to pursue the legal action.
The Supreme Court justices did not give any indication that they were ready to say they were going to ignore the Mississippi Constitution’s plain language that prohibits public funds from being provided “to any school that at the time of receiving such appropriation is not conducted as a free school.”
In addition to finding Parents for Public Schools did not have standing to bring the lawsuit, the court said another key reason for its ruling was the fact that the funds the private schools were receiving were federal, not state funds. The public funds at the center of the lawsuit were federal COVID-19 relief dollars.
Right or wrong, The court appeared to make a distinction between federal money and state general funds. And in reality, the circumstances are unique in that seldom does the state receive federal money with so few strings attached that it can be awarded to private schools.
The majority opinion written by Northern District Supreme Justice Robert Chamberlin and joined by six justices states, “These specific federal funds were never earmarked by either the federal government or the state for educational purposes, have not been commingled with state education funds, are not for educational purposes and therefore cannot be said to have harmed PPS (Parents for Public Schools) by taking finite government educational funding away from public schools.”
And Southern District Supreme Court Justice Dawn Beam, who joined the majority opinion, wrote separately “ to reiterate that we are not ruling on state funds but American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds … The ARPA funds were given to the state to be used in four possible ways, three of which were directly related to the COVID -19 health emergency and one of which was to make necessary investments in water, sewer or broadband infrastructure.”
Granted, many public school advocates lamented the decision, pointing out that federal funds are indeed public or taxpayer money and those federal funds could have been used to help struggling public schools.
Two justices – James Kitchens and Leslie King, both of the Central District, agreed with that argument.
But, importantly, a decidedly conservative-leaning Mississippi Supreme Court stopped far short – at least for the time being – of circumventing state constitutional language that plainly states that public funds are not to go to private schools.
And a decidedly conservative Mississippi Legislature chose not to expand voucher programs during the 2024 session.
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Renada Stovall, chemist and entrepreneur
Renada Stovall sat on the back deck of her rural Arkansas home one evening, contemplating life when she had a life-altering epiphany…
“I gotta get out of these woods.”
She heard it as clear as lips to her ear and as deep as the trees surrounding her property. Stovall’s job as a chemist had taken her all over the country. In addition to Arkansas, there were stints in Atlanta, Dallas and Reno. But she was missing home, her parents and friends. She also knew, she needed something else to do.
“I thought, what kind of business can I start for myself,” said Stovall, as she watered herbs growing in a garden behind her south Jackson home. Some of those herbs are used in her all-natural products. “I know when I lived in Reno, Nevada, where it’s very hot and very dry, there really weren’t products available that worked for me, my hair, and my skin suffered. I’ve got a chemistry degree from Spelman College. I took the plunge and decided to create products for myself.”
In 2018, Stovall’s venture led to the creation of shea butter moisturizers and natural soaps. But she didn’t stop there, and in December 2022, she moved home to Mississippi and got to work, expanding her product line to include body balms and butters, and shampoos infused with avocado and palm, mango butter, coconut and olive oils.
Nadabutter, which incorporates Renada’s name, came to fruition.
Stovall sells her balms and moisturizers at what she calls, “pop-up markets,” across the state during the summer. She’s available via social media and also creates products depending on what of her ingredients a customer chooses. “My turmeric and honey is really popular,” Stovall added.
“The all-natural ingredients I use are great for conditioning the skin and hair. All of my products make you feel soft and luscious. The shea butter I use comes from West Africa. It’s my way of networking and supporting other women. And it’s my wish that other women can be inspired to be self-sufficient in starting their own businesses.”
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Marshall Ramsey: Fore!
“Unfortunately, some only support it when it equates to campaign contributions. Sadly, through the line-item veto of the appropriation, Mississippians will once again wait another year for the opportunity to benefit from state investments for the greater public good.” – Secretary of State Michael Watson. Read the whole article here.
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Federal panel prescribes new mental health strategy to curb maternal deaths
For help, call or text the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline at 1-833-TLC-MAMA (1-833-852-6262) or contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing or texting “988.” Spanish-language services are also available.
BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — Milagros Aquino was trying to find a new place to live and had been struggling to get used to new foods after she moved to Bridgeport from Peru with her husband and young son in 2023.
When Aquino, now 31, got pregnant in May 2023, “instantly everything got so much worse than before,” she said. “I was so sad and lying in bed all day. I was really lost and just surviving.”
Aquino has lots of company.
Perinatal depression affects as many as 20% of women in the United States during pregnancy, the postpartum period, or both, according to studies. In some states, anxiety or depression afflicts nearly a quarter of new mothers or pregnant women.
Many women in the U.S. go untreated because there is no widely deployed system to screen for mental illness in mothers, despite widespread recommendations to do so. Experts say the lack of screening has driven higher rates of mental illness, suicide, and drug overdoses that are now the leading causes of death in the first year after a woman gives birth.
“This is a systemic issue, a medical issue, and a human rights issue,” said Lindsay R. Standeven, a perinatal psychiatrist and the clinical and education director of the Johns Hopkins Reproductive Mental Health Center.
Standeven said the root causes of the problem include racial and socioeconomic disparities in maternal care and a lack of support systems for new mothers. She also pointed a finger at a shortage of mental health professionals, insufficient maternal mental health training for providers, and insufficient reimbursement for mental health services. Finally, Standeven said, the problem is exacerbated by the absence of national maternity leave policies, and the access to weapons.
Those factors helped drive a 105% increase in postpartum depression from 2010 to 2021, according to the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology.
For Aquino, it wasn’t until the last weeks of her pregnancy, when she signed up for acupuncture to relieve her stress, that a social worker helped her get care through the Emme Coalition, which connects girls and women with financial help, mental health counseling services, and other resources.
Mothers diagnosed with perinatal depression or anxiety during or after pregnancy are at about three times the risk of suicidal behavior and six times the risk of suicide compared with mothers without a mood disorder, according to recent U.S. and international studies in JAMA Network Open and The BMJ.
The toll of the maternal mental health crisis is particularly acute in rural communities that have become maternity care deserts, as small hospitals close their labor and delivery units because of plummeting birth rates, or because of financial or staffing issues.
This week, the Maternal Mental Health Task Force — co-led by the Office on Women’s Health and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and formed in September to respond to the problem — recommended creating maternity care centers that could serve as hubs of integrated care and birthing facilities by building upon the services and personnel already in communities.
The task force will soon determine what portions of the plan will require congressional action and funding to implement and what will be “low-hanging fruit,” said Joy Burkhard, a member of the task force and the executive director of the nonprofit Policy Center for Maternal Mental Health.
Burkhard said equitable access to care is essential. The task force recommended that federal officials identify areas where maternity centers should be placed based on data identifying the underserved. “Rural America,” she said, “is first and foremost.”
There are shortages of care in “unlikely areas,” including Los Angeles County, where some maternity wards have recently closed, said Burkhard. Urban areas that are underserved would also be eligible to get the new centers.
“All that mothers are asking for is maternity care that makes sense. Right now, none of that exists,” she said.
Several pilot programs are designed to help struggling mothers by training and equipping midwives and doulas, people who provide guidance and support to the mothers of newborns.
In Montana, rates of maternal depression before, during, and after pregnancy are higher than the national average. From 2017 to 2020, approximately 15% of mothers experienced postpartum depression and 27% experienced perinatal depression, according to the Montana Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System. The state had the sixth-highest maternal mortality rate in the country in 2019, when it received a federal grant to begin training doulas.
To date, the program has trained 108 doulas, many of whom are Native American. Native Americans make up 6.6% of Montana’s population. Indigenous people, particularly those in rural areas, have twice the national rate of severe maternal morbidity and mortality compared with white women, according to a study in Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Stephanie Fitch, grant manager at Montana Obstetrics & Maternal Support at Billings Clinic, said training doulas “has the potential to counter systemic barriers that disproportionately impact our tribal communities and improve overall community health.”
Twelve states and Washington, D.C., have Medicaid coverage for doula care, according to the National Health Law Program. They are California, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Virginia. Medicaid pays for about 41% of births in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Jacqueline Carrizo, a doula assigned to Aquino through the Emme Coalition, played an important role in Aquino’s recovery. Aquino said she couldn’t have imagined going through such a “dark time alone.” With Carrizo’s support, “I could make it,” she said.
Genetic and environmental factors, or a past mental health disorder, can increase the risk of depression or anxiety during pregnancy. But mood disorders can happen to anyone.
Teresa Martinez, 30, of Price, Utah, had struggled with anxiety and infertility for years before she conceived her first child. The joy and relief of giving birth to her son in 2012 were short-lived.
Without warning, “a dark cloud came over me,” she said.
Martinez was afraid to tell her husband. “As a woman, you feel so much pressure and you don’t want that stigma of not being a good mom,” she said.
In recent years, programs around the country have started to help doctors recognize mothers’ mood disorders and learn how to help them before any harm is done.
One of the most successful is the Massachusetts Child Psychiatry Access Program for Moms, which began a decade ago and has since spread to 29 states. The program, supported by federal and state funding, provides tools and training for physicians and other providers to screen and identify disorders, triage patients, and offer treatment options.
But the expansion of maternal mental health programs is taking place amid sparse resources in much of rural America. Many programs across the country have run out of money.
The federal task force proposed that Congress fund and create consultation programs similar to the one in Massachusetts, but not to replace the ones already in place, said Burkhard.
In April, Missouri became the latest state to adopt the Massachusetts model. Women on Medicaid in Missouri are 10 times as likely to die within one year of pregnancy as those with private insurance. From 2018 through 2020, an average of 70 Missouri women died each year while pregnant or within one year of giving birth, according to state government statistics.
Wendy Ell, executive director of the Maternal Health Access Project in Missouri, called her service a “lifesaving resource” that is free and easy to access for any health care provider in the state who sees patients in the perinatal period.
About 50 health care providers have signed up for Ell’s program since it began. Within 30 minutes of a request, the providers can consult over the phone with one of three perinatal psychiatrists. But while the doctors can get help from the psychiatrists, mental health resources for patients are not as readily available.
The task force called for federal funding to train more mental health providers and place them in high-need areas like Missouri. The task force also recommended training and certifying a more diverse workforce of community mental health workers, patient navigators, doulas, and peer support specialists in areas where they are most needed.
A new voluntary curriculum in reproductive psychiatry is designed to help psychiatry residents, fellows, and mental health practitioners who may have little or no training or education about the management of psychiatric illness in the perinatal period. A small study found that the curriculum significantly improved psychiatrists’ ability to treat perinatal women with mental illness, said Standeven, who contributed to the training program and is one of the study’s authors.
Nancy Byatt, a perinatal psychiatrist at the University of Massachusetts Chan School of Medicine who led the launch of the Massachusetts Child Psychiatry Access Program for Moms in 2014, said there is still a lot of work to do.
“I think that the most important thing is that we have made a lot of progress and, in that sense, I am kind of hopeful,” Byatt said.
Cheryl Platzman Weinstock’s reporting is supported by a grant from the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation. KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
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New law gives state board power to probe officer misconduct
The state’s officer certification and training board now has the power to investigate law enforcement misconduct.
Gov. Tate Reeves signed the bill making it official.
Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell, who pushed for the legislation, said that House Bill 691 authorizes the Board of Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Training “to launch its own investigations into officer misconduct. This change, along with the funding to hire two investigators, will improve the board’s ability to ensure officer professionalism and standards.”
The new law comes in the wake of an investigation by the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting at Mississippi Today and The New York Times into sheriffs and deputies across the state over allegations of sexual abuse, torture and corruption.
Tindell said the new law will “improve law-enforcement training in Mississippi by requiring all law enforcement officers to receive continuing training throughout an officer’s career.”
Under that law, deputies, sheriffs and state law enforcement officers will join police officers in the requirement to have up to 24 hours of continuing education training. Those who fail to train could lose their certifications.
Other changes will take place as well. Each year, the licensing board will have to report on its activities to the Legislature and the governor.
Tindell thanked Reeves “for signing this important piece of legislation and the legislative leaders who supported its passage, including the author of HB 691, Representative Fred Shanks.”
Shanks, R-Brandon, praised the “team effort with some very smart people who want a top-notch law enforcement community.”
The new law creates a 13-member board with the governor having six appointments – two police chiefs, two sheriffs, a district attorney and the director of the Mississippi Law Enforcement Officers’ Training Academy.
Other members would include the attorney general or a designee, the director of the Mississippi Highway Patrol, the public safety commissioner and the presidents of the Mississippi Association of Chiefs of Police, the Mississippi Constable Association, the Mississippi Campus Law Enforcement Association and the Mississippi Sheriffs’ Association (or their designees).
“We obviously need checks and balances on how law enforcement officers conduct themselves,” said state Sen. John Horhn, D-Jackson. “This is a good first step.”
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Lawmakers punt to next year efforts to expand college aid for low-income Mississippians
A bill to open a college financial aid program for the first time ever to Mississippians who are adult, part-time and very low-income students fell to the wayside in a legislative session dominated by fights over Medicaid and K-12 funding.
The effort to expand the Mississippi Resident Tuition Assistance Grant, called MTAG, died in conference after it was removed from House Bill 765, legislation to provide financial assistance to teachers in critical shortage areas. The Senate had attached MTAG’s code sections to that bill in an attempt to keep the expansion alive.
This takes Jennifer Rogers, the director of the Mississippi Office of Student Financial Aid, back to the drawing board after years of championing legislation to modernize the way the state helps Mississippians pay for college.
“At the end of the day, there was no appetite to spend any additional money on student financial aid,” Rogers said. “Obviously, I’m disappointed.”
All told, the original proposal would have resulted in the state spending upwards of $30 million extra each year, almost doubling OSFA’s roughly $50 million budget.
The increase derived from two aspects of the proposal: An estimated 37,000 Mississippians who have never been eligible for college financial aid would have become eligible to receive it, and the scholarship amounts would have increased.
While college students from millionaire families can get MTAG, the state’s poorest students are not eligible, Mississippi Today previously reported.
Rep. Kent McCarty, R-Hattiesburg, said he supports efforts to help low-income Mississippians afford college, but that HB 765 was not an appropriate vehicle to do so because it was not an appropriations bill. Attempting to expand MTAG through that legislation would have put the original subject of HB 765, the Mississippi Critical Teachers Shortage Act, at risk.
“We didn’t feel it was appropriate to include an appropriation in a bill that had not been through the appropriations process,” he said.
McCarty, a member of the House Universities and Colleges Committee, added that he is in favor of changing MTAG and doesn’t understand the logic behind excluding from state financial aid Mississippi college students who receive a full federal Pell Grant, meaning they come from the state’s poorest families.
“What is the purpose of financial aid? To aid those who need financial aid,” he said. “Excluding a group of students because they’re eligible for other financial aid doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.”
Ultimately, the Mississippi House deemed the proposal too expensive. It never passed out of that chamber’s Appropriations Committee.
READ MORE: ‘A thing called money:’ Bill to expand financial aid stalled after House lawmakers balk at price tag
Rogers said she plans to work with lawmakers to convince them that it is a good use of state dollars to invest in financial aid. She added that the support of the business community helped keep the bill alive as long as it did this session. The Mississippi Economic Council supported the legislation.
“I don’t understand why there is such a hesitancy to invest more in the future workforce of the state,” she said. “I don’t understand why there isn’t a willingness to invest in student financial aid as a way to help more Mississippians complete meaningful certificates or degrees, valuable certificates or degrees and improve the quality of the workforce.”
Senate Education Committee Chairman Dennis DeBar, R-Leakesville, told Mississippi Today that he hopes to take a closer look at MTAG this summer, noting that the Senate’s version of the proposal, which also included a last-dollar tuition scholarship, was a priority of the lieutenant governor on last year’s campaign trail.
“We had so many issues last session,” DeBar said. “Hopefully there won’t be as many next year so we can just focus this year and get it across the finish line.”
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PSC axes solar programs in light of EPA funds, advocates file lawsuit
Advocates from some of the state’s conservation groups — such as Audubon Delta, Mississippi Sierra Club and Steps Coalition — spoke out Wednesday against a recent decision by the Mississippi Public Service Commission to suspend several solar programs, including “Solar for Schools,” less than two years after the previous commission put them in place.
“This is particularly disappointing because the need for these incentives in the state of Mississippi is significant,” said Jonathan Green, executive director of Steps Coalition. “Energy costs in the South, and in particular the region known as the Black Belt, are higher than those in other parts of the country for a number of reasons. These regions tend to have older energy generation infrastructure, and housing that has not been weatherproofed to modern standards. For many low- to moderate-income residents in the state of Mississippi, energy burden and energy insecurity represent real daily economic challenges.”
The PSC voted 2-1 at its April docket meeting to do away with the programs, reasoning in part that new funds through the Inflation Reduction Act would be available to the state. About 10 days later, the Environmental Protection Agency awarded $62 million to the state, through the Hope Enterprise Corporation, to help low-income Mississippians afford adding solar power to their homes. The funds are part of the Biden Administration’s Solar for All program, one of the several recent federal initiatives aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The PSC decision ended three programs the previous commission put in place to encourage wider adoption of solar power through the two power companies it regulates, Entergy Mississippi and Mississippi Power: “Solar for Schools,” which allowed school districts to essentially build solar panels for free in exchange for tax credits, as well as incentives for low-income customers and battery storage.
Last Friday, the Sierra Club filed lawsuits in chancery courts in Hinds and Harrison counties against the commission, arguing the PSC broke state law by not providing sufficient reasoning or public notice before making the changes. Advocates also argued that new funding going to Hope Enterprise won’t go as far without the PSC’s low-income incentives.
The programs were part of a 2022 addition to the state’s net metering rule, a system that allows homeowners to generate their own solar power and earn credits for excess energy on their electric bills. Mississippi’s version is less beneficial to participants than net metering in most states, though, because it doesn’t reimburse users at the full retail cost. Mississippi’s net metering program itself is still in tact.
Northern District Commissioner Chris Brown said that, while he supported efforts to expand solar power, he didn’t think programs that offer incentives from energy companies were fair to other ratepayers.
“It’s the subsidy that we take issue with,” Brown said at the meeting. “It’s not the solar, it’s not the helping the schools. We just don’t think it’s good policy to spread that to the rest of the ratepayers.”
Brown and Southern District Commissioner Wayne Carr voted to end the programs, while Central District Commissioner De’Keither Stamps voted against the motion. All three are in their first terms on the PSC. Brown’s position is in line with what the power companies as well as Gov. Tate Reeves have argued, which is that programs like net metering forces non-participants to subsidize those who participate.
Robert Wiygul, an attorney for the Mississippi Sierra Club, countered that argument during Wednesday’s press conference, saying that net metering actually helps non-participants by adding more power to the grid and reducing the strain on the power companies’ other infrastructure. Moreover, he said, the PSC hasn’t offered actual numbers showing that non-participants are subsidizing the program.
“Look, if the commission wants to talk about that, we are ready to talk about it,” Wiygul said. “But what we got here is a situation where these two commissioners just decided they were going to do this. We don’t even know what that claim is really based on because it hasn’t been through the public notice and hasn’t been through the public comment process.”
While no schools had officially enrolled in “Solar for Schools,” which went into effect in January of last year, Stamps told Mississippi Today that there were places in his district getting ready to participate in the very programs the PSC voted to suspend.
“My issue was we should have talked to the entities that were going through the process to (understand what they were doing) to participate in the programs before you eliminate the programs,” he said.
Several school districts in the state are already using solar panels thanks to funding from a past settlement with Mississippi Power. Officials there told Mississippi Today that the extra power generated from the panels has freed up spending for other educational needs. During the public comment period for the 2022 net metering update, about a dozen school district superintendents from around the state wrote in to support the initiative. Ninety-five school districts in the state would have been eligible for the program because they receive power from Entergy Mississippi or Mississippi Power.
Former commissioner Brent Bailey, who lost a close reelection bid in November to Stamps, was an advocate for the schools program that the PSC created while he was there. At the April docket meeting, he pleaded with the new commission to reconsider, arguing that the new federal funding won’t have the same impact without those programs.
“My ask is to at least give this program a chance, see where it goes, and hear from stakeholders that have participated,” Bailey said. The solar programs, he added, weren’t just about expanding renewable energy, but taking advantage of a growing economy around solar power as well: “We can just stand by and watch it go by, or we can participate in this and bring economic development to the state.”
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Reeves again blocks funds for LeFleur’s Bluff project in Jackson
For the third consecutive year legislative efforts to direct state money to renovate LeFleur’s Bluff in Jackson have been stymied, thanks in large part to Gov. Tate Reeves.
Earlier this week, the Republican governor vetoed a portion of a bill that directed $14 million to the office of Secretary of State Michael Watson for work on developing and improving a nature trail connecting parks and museums and making other tourism-related improvements in the LeFleur’s Bluff area.
It is not clear whether the Legislature could take up the veto during the 2025 session, which begins in January, though, that’s not likely. The Legislature had the option to return to Jackson Tuesday to take up any veto, but chose not to do so.
Of the project, Watson said, “Our office was approached late in the session about helping with a project to revitalize LeFleur’s Bluff. As Mississippi’s state land commissioner, I was more than happy to help lead this effort not just because it’s a natural fit for our office, but also because I believe Mississippi needs a thriving capital city to retain our best and brightest. Investing state funds in state property on a project to enhance the quality of life in Jackson makes good sense.
“Unfortunately, some only support it when it equates to campaign contributions. Sadly, through the line-item veto of the appropriation, Mississippians will once again wait another year for the opportunity to benefit from state investments for the greater public good.”
Various groups, such as representatives of the Mississippi Children’s Museum and many other community leaders have been working on the project for years. The area already is the home of the Children’s Museum, Museum of Natural History, Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame and Museum, state Agriculture Museum and a state park.
The issues with LeFleur’s Bluff first arose in 2022 when Reeves vetoed a $14 million appropriation that in part was designed to redesign and create a new golf course in the area. Previously, there had been a nine-hole, state-owned golf course operated by the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks at LeFleur’s Bluff State Park.
In 2022, the LeFleur’s Bluff project was one of literally hundreds of projects funded by the Legislature – many of which was tourism projects like LeFleur’s Bluff. The governor only vetoed a handful of those projects.
When issuing the LeFleur’s Bluff veto, Reeves said the state should not be involved in funding golf courses.
Then last year $13 million was directed to the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks to spend on the LeFleur’s Bluff project. But legislative leaders said state money would not go toward a golf course.
Lawmakers opted to transfer the project to the Secretary of State’s office late in the 2024 session, apparently in part because they felt the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks had not made enough of an effort to begin the project.
Lynn Posey, executive director of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks, said that before moving forward with the project, “We felt like we needed to do engineering work and see what the situation was. We never got a chance to move forward” because the Legislature redirected the money.
Posey said an engineer’s report was needed because “it is a unique piece of land.” He said much of the land is prone to flooding.
He said before that work could begin the Legislature switched the authority to the Secretary of State’s office. Posey was appointed to his current position by Reeves, whose office had no comment on the veto.
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said after the governor’s veto, “Projects like the LeFleur’s Bluff development are critical to the Capital City, the wider metropolitan area, and our state. Public parks add to the quality of life for our citizens. I am hopeful the individuals involved in this project, including those at the Mississippi Children’s Museum, will continue their work to improve this state asset.”
While the Constitution instructs the governor to provide to the Legislature a reason for any veto, Reeves did not do so this year when vetoing the money going to the Secretary of State’s office.
On Monday, the governor also vetoed a portion of another bill dealing with appropriations for specific projects. But in this case, the veto was more of a technicality. The bill was making corrections to language passed in previous sessions. In that language were five projects the governor vetoed in 2022.
The language, as it was written, would not have revived those previously vetoed projects, the governor said. But Reeves said he vetoed the five projects out of caution. He did the same in 2023 when those five projects, which included money appropriated in 2022 for the Russell C. Davis Planetarium in Jackson, were carried forward in a bill also making corrections to previously passed legislation.
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