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In a memory quilt by Hystercine Rankin at the Mississippi Museum of Art, National Endowment for the Arts Chair Maria Rosario Jackson found a touchstone for a phrase that echoed throughout her recent Jackson visit: “the opportunity to live an artful life.”

“It’s always available to us,” Jackson said, and not limited to designated places but alive in opportunities to make, teach and learn, and even in traditions handed down in families. “That quilting tradition, and how it shows up — from a living culture to something that is hung with so much pride on the walls of an esteemed cultural institution — there’s something in that, that demonstrates the breadth of what can encompass an artful life.

“If we have artful lives, and we’re able to see each other’s humanity, it’s such a pre-condition for all of the other things we say we want to do as a nation of opportunity and justice,” Jackson said.

Read: Ravi Lovett, healing quilter and art therapist

National Endowment for the Humanities Chair Shelly Lowe, a citizen of the Navajo Nation, found a welcome grounding at the Choctaw Chahta Immi Cultural Center in Philadelphia, the first site in her first visit to Mississippi. Conversations about the Choctaw dictionary project, and the importance of maintaining their language and cultural teachings, resonated. As did the commitment of smaller organizations she visited, such as the Smith Robertson Museum in Jackson, to confront and share histories that can sometimes be hard to face.

“This is what the humanities does,” Lowe said. “It helps us take this information, take difficult histories, and it allows us to pause and really think about those histories. To process that. The humanities, and I would argue the arts, give us the strength to move forward.”

Their recent visit, in company with leaders of other national and regional arts and culture groups, offered a firsthand look at work in Jackson and central Mississippi that fosters creative pursuits, cultural celebration, connection, conversations and community cohesion.

The 50th anniversary reconvening of the Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival, Nov. 1-4, was the core attraction, with its roster of illustrious Black women writers, including Alice Walker and Sonia Sanchez, who were also part of the original conference Margaret Walker organized at Jackson State University in 1973.

The 2023 conference at JSU and the Jackson Convention Complex pulled in the next generation of prominent Black women writers, with Jesmyn Ward and Angie Thomas among a host of keynote participants. With intergenerational conversations a big draw, the festival tapped elder wisdom and contemporary voices and vigor, to inspire and energize listeners in the continued uplift of Black excellence, and as a force to reckon with injustice and trauma both past and now.

The convening amplified arts’ and humanities’ central role in daily life in Jackson and far beyond, said Phoebe Stein, president of the Federation of State Humanities Councils. “Not a luxury, but central to how we understand ourselves, and how we relate and live in community with others.”

Difficult histories — unpacked, discussed and shared to unite and strengthen — were as much a thread as celebration and support during leaders’ jam-packed itinerary. Both endowment chairs were part of the poetry festival’s closing panel, a tribute to Margaret Walker, and their twin presence in Jackson offered a prime chance for show-and-tell by Mississippi’s cultural leaders.

Mississippi Arts Commission’s David Lewis and Mississippi Humanities Council’s Stuart Rockoff built out “Chair-a-paloosa,” as they informally dubbed the gathering, with a robust schedule highlighting grantees in action.

In addition to the poetry festival, tours and stops took in Sipp Culture in Utica, the Utica Institute Museum, the Choctaw Chahta Immi Cultural Center in Philadelphia, and in Jackson, JSU, the Two Mississippi Museums, Smith Robertson Museum, Mississippi Museum of Art, Tougaloo College, the Asylum Hill Research Project and more. At Tougaloo’s historic Woodworth Chapel, they saw a preview of New Stage Theatre’s “Anne & Emmett’ Arts in Education production, a “meeting in memory” between Anne Frank and Emmett Till.

It’s rare to get that many national arts and humanities figures together, and rarer still to host them in such a small-town setting, noted Carlton Turner, co-director of Sipp Culture, which harnesses food and story to reimagine their community and outfit it for the future. “For them to take an interest in a small, rural community and the work that we’re doing there, is remarkable, but it’s also remarkable for the state of Mississippi, because it just shows that there are a lot of things happening here that don’t necessarily show by the way that people think about the state from a national perspective.”

South Arts President and CEO Susie Surkamer praised the “incredible amount of really substantial work going on, and in all types of settings” in Mississippi, “and such high quality.” In much of it, the importance of involving the community also stood out. “That doesn’t always happen with every institution or organization, so that is wonderful to see.”

For the cadre of arts and humanities leaders, it was a chance to connect outside of a Zoom room or formal meetings, have cultural and historical experiences together “and really sit with the arc of American history and Mississippi’s place in that, and really consider the implications on our own work today,” said David Holland, co-chair of the Creative States Coalition and deputy director of WESTAF (Western States Arts Federation). “It really puts it into context … the significance of arts and culture to people’s lives, to healing, to understanding our history, to moving forward in a more just future together.”

“It is a treat for them and an opportunity for Mississippi to be a backdrop for larger conversations about our nation,” Lewis said. Plus, the showcase of daily arts-related work in both rural and metro settings in Mississippi can “really be a beacon … for the rest of the country.”

As well as the profile boost, it can bring benefits later on and inspire organizations to apply for funding, Rockoff said. “We hope, down the road, that it results in more grant funding coming to Mississippi.

“We’re a poor state. … In other states, there are plenty of other funders for these types of cultural activities. So, to have that support from the national endowments — that relatively small amount of money goes a long way here.”

There’s payoff, too, in the favorable impressions festival participants and visiting leaders pack up, take with them and spread back home.

On Lowe’s flight from Atlanta to Jackson last week, it was clear half the plane was bound for the Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival, she said. “This festival brought in so many young African-American women — scholars, artists, poets, writers — who are all across the country, but they’re here in Mississippi,” sharing the impact of the people, the place and the program here.

“And, they’re all going to leave here, right? Talking about how they were here in Mississippi and how Mississippi is playing such a big part in their lives,” Lowe said. “Things like that are a very good way to say, ‘This is our history. This is the power of what we’ve done. This is where we’re going to continue to keep doing it.’”

Correction 11/16/2023: This story has been updated to reflect that Carlton Turner is the co-director of Sipp Culture.

The post Arts and humanities leaders visit Mississippi, come away with stories, ideas, affirmations appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Nov. 16, 1972

A law enforcement officer shot and killed two students at Southern University in Baton Rouge after weeks of protests over inadequate services. 

When the students marched on University President Leon Netterville’s office, Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards sent scores of police officers in to break up the demonstrations. A still-unidentified officer shot and killed two 20-year-old students, Leonard Brown and Denver Smith, who weren’t among the protesters. No one was ever prosecuted in their slayings. 

They have since been awarded posthumous degrees, and the university’s Smith-Brown Memorial Union bears their names. Stanley Nelson’s documentary, “Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities,” featured a 10-minute segment on the killings. 

“They were exercising their constitutional rights. And they get killed for it,” former student Michael Cato said. “Nobody sent their child to school to die.” 

In 2022, Louisiana State University Cold Case Project reporters, utilizing nearly 2,700 pages of previously undisclosed documents, recreated the day of the shootings and showed how the FBI narrowed its search to several sheriff’s deputies but could not prove which one fired the fatal shot. The four-part series prompted Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards to apologize to the families of the victims on behalf of the state.

The post On this day in 1972 appeared first on Mississippi Today.

This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on  Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and Facebook.

Spencer Woods wanted to fight a crime that didn’t exist.

As a sheriff’s investigator in Monroe County, Mississippi, near the Alabama border, he would occasionally receive reports from his state’s child protection agency that a baby had tested positive for illegal drugs at birth.

To Woods, the mothers had endangered their fetuses and should face criminal charges. But unlike some other southern states, Mississippi law doesn’t define a fetus as a person; in fact, voters had rejected a ballot measure to do just that more than a decade ago.

So when Woods would receive these referrals, he had to effectively place them in the trash.

“We were coming across those type [of] things that I considered to be child abuse, but as far as the statute, the state wasn’t recognizing that as actual child abuse,” Woods said in an interview.

That’s until 2019, when Woods decided that his office would take matters into its own hands and pursue child endangerment cases against the women anyway. He argued that child abuse can, in fact, take place inside the womb, challenging anyone to prove otherwise.

Through news reports and court records, Mississippi Today identified 44 cases in which law enforcement officers in Mississippi have arrested women for a crime that, based on existing state law, they may not have actually committed.

“The state of Mississippi does not look at a child as being a child until it draws its first breath,” Woods said. “Well, when that child tests positive when it’s born, the abuse has already happened, and it didn’t happen to a ‘child.’ So it was a crack in the system, the way I looked at it. And that’s where we’re kind of playing.”

While medical experts warn against drug use during pregnancy, they point out that not all babies exposed to drugs in the womb are born with medical problems. But Woods said that he doesn’t need evidence of harm to the fetus — just a positive drug test — to pursue a child endangerment case.

Monroe County has accounted for 12 of the 44 cases we found. Woods said he was unaware that 200 miles to the south of his jurisdiction, officials in Jones County had already been filing similar charges against mothers for years, Mississippi Today reported in 2019. All but three of the cases Mississippi Today identified from 2015 to 2023 came from Monroe and Jones, two small rural counties.

While Monroe County has offered leniency in keeping these women out of prison, Jones County’s lone judge, Circuit Court Judge Dal Williamson, has given at least six women long prison sentences for using drugs while pregnant. The difference in sentencing stems in part from the counties charging women under different sections of the child abuse law. Monroe County has utilized the child endangerment section that bars parents from allowing their children to be present around drugs, such as in meth labs. Meanwhile, Jones County has charged women in similar circumstances with poisoning their fetuses. Williamson ordered the women to serve between two and 15 years in prison.

“I don’t understand how in the world a mother expecting a child would continue to pour this poison in their body,” Williamson said at a sentencing last year, according to the local newspaper Laurel Leader-Call. “Your baby can’t say, ‘No, mama, stop.’”

Some local investigators and prosecutors are pursuing similar cases in Alabama, Oklahoma and South Carolina. They are policing pregnant people under an expanded interpretation of child abuse and neglect laws — even if parents birthed healthy babies, according to an investigation by The Marshall Project, Mississippi Today, AL.com, The Frontier and The Post & Courier. 

Officials in Etowah County, Alabama, 185 miles to the east of Woods, are perhaps the champions of this approach, having arrested hundreds of women in the past several years.

Woods’ strategy has never been tested in court, because each of the 12 women his office has arrested have pleaded guilty under diversion or probation deals that keep them out of prison.

Defense lawyers said they would like to take a case to trial, but their clients are reluctant. “They’re not wanting to take that risk of going to trial and getting convicted because they’re all fighting to get their kids back,” said Luanne Thompson, one of two public defenders in Monroe County who has handled these cases. “That is the dilemma that they’re in.”

Most of Thompson’s clients have received “non-adjudicated” sentences, meaning they avoid prison and their records will be cleared if they satisfy the terms of their probation. 

Public health experts fear that the threat of prosecution could dissuade pregnant people from seeking prenatal care at a time when the state is facing growing threats to the health of newborns. Mississippi has the highest infant mortality rate in the nation, at roughly 9 deaths per 1,000 live births.

Cases of infant hospitalizations in Mississippi related to drug exposure in the womb have skyrocketed from more than 300 cases in 2015, when Jones County began prosecuting these cases, to four times that in 2021, at a high of more than 1,200.

State Health Officer Daniel Edney has vowed to address these issues. His department compiled a recent report that identified the uptick in drug-exposed newborns. The report blamed the increase on changes in diagnostic coding at hospitals, as well as rising substance abuse due to the isolation and reduced access to therapy people experienced during the coronavirus pandemic.

But Edney, a longtime addiction specialist, was shocked to learn from recent reporting by The Marshall Project and Mississippi Today about local prosecutions of mothers not unlike his own patients.

“I thought, ‘This is archaic,’” Edney said. “There are a lot of medical conditions that if a pregnant mom doesn't take care of herself, it hurts the baby. This is the one disease that we’ll incarcerate a woman for.”

He warns that prosecuting moms with substance use disorders as child abusers will only deter them from seeking care, making it harder for the medical community to do its job.

“We don't need law enforcement going in to arrest women who are trying to get help,” Edney said. “It has a chilling effect on the women out there who are trying to decide what they need to do.”

Though Mississippi officials enacted and defended the state abortion prohibition that ultimately led to the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade last year, the state does not recognize “fetal personhood.” In 2011, Mississippi voters rejected an amendment to the state constitution proposed by anti-abortion activists that would have defined a fertilized egg as a person. 

The Mississippi Supreme Court has twice taken up the issue — through two cases in which local officers charged women with murder or manslaughter after losing their pregnancies in 2006 and 2009. Both times, justices wrote ambiguous opinions, and the lower courts ultimately threw charges out in both cases.

Mississippi’s abortion prohibition doesn’t criminalize pregnant people, nor does it treat abortion as murder. The law stipulates prison terms only for the person who performed the abortion, not the woman who sought it. Bills filed in the Mississippi Legislature to criminalize drug use while pregnant under the state’s child abuse statute have died with little attention. Despite those failed efforts, the sheriff’s investigator in Monroe County decided his department needed to act.

“We're eventually gonna have to deal with possibly the Supreme Court or possibly the state Legislature on changing the law, hopefully,” Woods said.

He said he realizes that his tactic may have implications for reproductive rights. 

“I always had to keep that in the back of my mind, the Roe v. Wade type stuff, what women can do with their bodies,” Woods said. “That was never my argument. My argument was always what was best for the child. I discussed it with my assistant district attorney, who is a woman, and she had my back on this, and we went forward with it.”

But a growing body of research shows that what’s best for the health of newborns is critical bonding with their mother. 

“We have to balance the health and safety of that baby while also trying to make sure that family stays connected,” said Dr. Anita Henderson, a Hattiesburg pediatrician and president of the Mississippi chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. “If you’re trying to reunify families or make that mom or that family as healthy as possible, then the goal should be treatment. ... Incarceration and the threat of incarceration have proven to be ineffective.”

Christina Dent, who has cared for children in Mississippi’s foster care system as a result of their mothers’ drug addictions, supports the concept of fetal personhood and is personally against abortion. She’s also the founder of End It For Good, a nonprofit that advocates for the legalization of drugs. Dent’s group argues that criminalizing drugs only increases harm to people and society. She said that treating these mothers as criminals is “opposed to a pro-life ethic” and leads to worse outcomes for both the mother and baby. 

“I would say, yes, that [fetus] is a child,” Dent said, speaking for herself and not on behalf of her organization. “And because of that, shouldn’t we do everything possible to protect that child from further harm, help the mother access prenatal care, and protect the bond of this little family?”

Monroe County Sheriff Kevin Crook has earned a reputation for taking a compassionate approach to drug offenses, placing an emphasis on treatment and rehabilitation. In Crook’s view, though, the threat of prison motivates people to take recovery seriously.

“We gotta have something for these people to run into,” Crook said, “or they're not just gonna stop on their own.”

Woods agreed. “I'm not really trying to put these women in prison,” he said. “What I'm trying to do is correct the issue. We do offer counseling and rehab and those types of things.”

But the investigator acknowledged there’s never enough mental health services to cover the need. He also couldn’t say how effective his strategy is; he doesn’t have any data to show how many mothers he’s arrested have gotten clean or reunited with their children.

Woods said he also believes that smoking or drinking alcohol while pregnant — which can produce similar if not more harmful effects as controlled substances on a fetus’ development — constitutes child abuse.

He’s aware his approach could be applied to other activities that might endanger a fetus. “Of course, you keep going, ‘You're eating too much sugar. You’re ingesting too much caffeine.’ Where do you stop with it?” Woods said. 

He draws the line at illegal substances. “I have to go by statutes,” he said. “I can’t just decide what I want to.”

The post They Were Prosecuted for Using Drugs While Pregnant. But It May Not Have Been a Crime appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Officials from the Mississippi State Department of Health reported the state’s first pediatric flu death of the 2023-2024 flu season on Wednesday. 

Pediatric deaths are deaths occurring in individuals under the age of 18. 

There have been a total of 25 pediatric flu deaths, including this one, in the state since pediatric flu deaths were first reported during the 2008-2009 flu season. Flu season in Mississippi usually peaks between January and March, and the vaccine can take up to two weeks to provide immunity. 

The Health Department did not provide any further details about the circumstances of the death.

“Vaccination is the best protection against flu and the severe outcomes from flu infection,” interim State Epidemiologist Dr. Kathryn Taylor said in a press release. “All individuals 6 months of age and older are recommended to get an updated flu and COVID-19 vaccine this season.” 

For those 18 and under, flu shots are covered by insurance, Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Some children may be eligible for free vaccination under the Vaccines for Children Program (VFC) at qualifying locations. 

Uninsured and underinsured adults who meet certain high-risk criteria qualify for an adult influenza vaccination at county health department clinics. The vaccine is available for insured adults through pharmacies, retailers and private physicians throughout the state. 

The post Mississippi sees season’s first pediatric flu death appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Jackson Public Schools concluded its series of community meetings on proposed school closures Tuesday night with multiple parents saying they still lacked clarity about the specifics of how this plan will be implemented. 

“You came up with this plan, but you haven’t talked to anybody that it’s going to impact,” said Angela Samuels, a Casey Elementary parent. 

In October, JPS district leadership introduced a plan to close 16 school buildings because of declining enrollment in the district. The district has lost around 9,500 students between the 2015-16 and 2023-24 school years, about a third of its population. The district has also previously consolidated schools.

The following buildings are on the proposed closure list: 

• Clausell Elementary School
• Dawson Elementary School
• G. N. Smith Elementary School
• Green Elementary School
• Key Elementary School
• Lake Elementary School
• Lester Elementary School
• Oak Forest Elementary School
• Obama IB Elementary
• Raines Elementary School
• Shirley Elementary School
• Sykes Elementary School
• Wells APAC Elementary
• Chastain Middle School
• Whitten Middle School
• Wingfield High School

The district hosted four community meetings to receive public feedback on the plan and answer questions. The structure of these meetings changed multiple times as the district responded to time constraints and concerns about adequate opportunities for community participation.

Hundreds of people attended the first community meeting at Forest Hill High School, where concerns were raised about the social impact these mergers will have on students and communities as well as the large number of school closures in south Jackson. The meeting began with a presentation of the consolidation plan, which was followed by over an hour of concerns and questions from community members. 

READ MORE: ‘You’re breaking up a family’: Hundreds attend community meeting about proposed Jackson school closures

Since the first meeting ran over its 7:30 p.m. end time, JPS officials restructured the meetings at Callaway and Provine High Schools to have community members submit their questions via a QR code instead of giving them a microphone. At the Provine meeting on Nov. 6, attendees interrupted Superintendent Errick Greene to voice frustration that community members were not getting to speak directly, which resulted in a back-and-forth before the meeting was ended early. 

Sherwin Johnson, communications director for the district, said after the Nov. 6 meeting that the change was made for efficiency and they did consider the meeting to be engaging, but they would take the feedback under advisement for the final meeting. 

At the final meeting Tuesday at Murrah High School, Greene skipped the recap of the consolidation proposal and instead reviewed the feedback they had already received, reserving most of the time for speakers. Community members had a 90-second limit at the microphone and were told in advance their questions would not be answered tonight, instead having responses posted to the district’s FAQ page about the consolidation plan. 

Timothy Bracey with Operation Good, a community organization, had been one of the attendees to express frustration at the Nov. 6 meeting. While he still has concerns about the plan overall, he said the meeting Tuesday was an improvement. 

“It was better in the sense that they let the people ask their questions, but at the same time, if they are going to have these optimization plans, the questions that the community has, they should have answers for them,” Bracey said. 

Other parents also expressed concern about the lack of answers at the meeting and said they would like specificity from the district on how empty buildings will be used or maintained and how the district will work to build new school communities.

Samuels, the Casey Elementary parent, expressed disappointment with some of Greene’s comments, particularly his remarks regarding the timeline of the consolidation plan. Greene shared at the end of the meeting that he had initially intended to present this plan in the spring, allowing for almost a full year of discourse on the plan. 

“A full year of all of us doing this, imagine that,” he said. “As concerned, angsty as people are today, imagine a full year of this. I’m pretty convinced that that was not a good idea.”

Samuels said that she understands that change is uncomfortable but that it feels like the district is rushing the process.  

“Are you really valuing the community’s input if you want to condense the time we had to actually give you our input?” she said. 

The district did not respond to a follow-up question about Greene’s remarks by press time.

Some speakers at the Tuesday meeting expressed frustration with the amount of money the district loses in payments to charter schools, particularly given those schools’ recent poor performance. The district has lost $48 million in payments to charters since 2015 according to a handout distributed at the meeting, nearly half of the total funding loss. 

Greene also shared more details Tuesday about possible use for the buildings on the closure list, identifying some to be leased, others to be redeveloped in partnership with the Jackson Redevelopment Authority, and some to be demolished. He emphasized that none of these plans have been finalized.

• Lease: Siwell, Brinkley
• Redevelop: Poindexter, Enochs, George, Bradley, Brown, Rowan, Barr
• Demolish: French, Baxter, Key, Woodville Heights, Dawson, Raines

U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson has also offered to help the district identify federal funds that could be used to help repurpose closed buildings.

Kemba Taylor, a McWillie Elementary parent, said that she understands the district has shrunk and perhaps students need to be moved, but worries the district is not leaving itself room for growth if they sell off or demolish buildings.

“If people do leave the charter schools and then with all the new babies being born, I think in 10 more years we might find ourselves in a new kind of bind,” she said. “These kids went somewhere, they might come back.”

The post After series of community meetings, JPS parents still seek more information on proposed school closures appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Recently reelected Gov. Tate Reeves and legislative leaders could not agree Wednesday on an official estimate of how much money will be available as they begin setting next year’s state budget.

Reeves said he supports a higher revenue estimate because that would make it easier for legislators to approve his proposal to eliminate state income taxes during the 2024 session.

“For those of us very interested in cutting taxes during this legislative session, arbitrarily lowering the number for no apparent reason hurts our ability to justify those tax cuts,” Reeves told the legislative leaders, including newly reelected Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and outgoing House Speaker Philip Gunn. “I am a very strong proponent of cutting taxes during this session. I am going to be regardless of what this number is.”

Normally, the fall meeting of the governor and the 14 members of the Legislative Budget Committee is a routine event and adopting an estimate is pro forma. But such was not the case Wednesday morning as it soon became apparent Reeves was blindsided by his Republican legislative colleagues. They wanted to adopt a revenue estimate $117.8 million less than recommended by the group of five state financial experts whose recommendations are normally rubber-stamped by the politicians.

Reeves said he believed he was attending the meeting to adopt the recommendation of the experts of projected revenue $7.64 billion for the upcoming fiscal year. Instead, the committee members approved the lower number, the same estimate as for the current budget year.

“I guess I am kind of caught off guard. I did not anticipate there would be a change,” Reeves said.

Rep. Angela Cockerham, I-Magnolia, was the only member of the Budget Committee not to vote for the lower estimate.

Mississippi law mandates that the governor and members of the Legislative Budget Committee agree on a revenue estimate as a starting point in developing a state budget during the upcoming session. In 2002, then-Gov. Ronnie Musgrove and the committee did not agree on an estimate.

It is likely legislators will start work on a budget based on the estimate adopted by the budget committee members Wednesday. And importantly, state law allows committee members to meet at the end of the session to revise the estimate from the fall meeting they have with the governor.

In other words, the impact of Wednesday’s deadlock is most likely symbolic, highlighting the focus Reeves plans to place on eliminating the income tax during the 2024 session. In 2022, the Legislature passed a $525 million income tax cut phased in over four years. Reeves wants to fully eliminate the income tax, which accounts for about one-third of the state general fund revenue.

READ MORE: State revenue slows as phase-in of income tax cuts begins

House Pro Tem Jason White, R-West, who is expected to succeed Gunn as speaker, said he was supporting the lower revenue estimate, but that did not mean that the House would not be working to cut taxes during the 2024 session.

“I think that (cutting taxes) is the aim of most of the people around this table,” White said. “… I anticipate the House will be back with an income tax cut plan sometime in the very near future.”

Reeves told Hosemann he would support the lower estimate if he would say he anticipated the Senate passing an income tax cut during the upcoming session. Hosemann presides over the Senate.

READ MORE: Lawmakers pass largest budget in state history. No tax cuts or refunds, more for schools and roads

“We anticipate there will be tax relief this year,” Hosemann responded. “Now whether that is grocery tax (sales tax on food) income tax or other taxes, I can’t tell you that because … I don’t vote. They (senators) all vote. Whether I say it doesn’t make much difference.”

Hoseman said the Senate has passed tax cuts in the past and said there is no reason to think that will change going forward.

But he did say the lower estimate should be adopted because revenue for the past two months has been lower than the official estimate approved for the current budget year. If revenue falls too far below the estimate, the governor and-or Legislature would be forced to make cuts or dip into reserve funds to make mid-year adjustments.

State Economist Corey Miller, who is on the group of five state financial experts who provide a consensus estimate to the politicians, testified at the meeting that the anticipation is that the state economy will slow in 2024 and 2025, though, chances of a national recession are low.

The post Governor, legislative leaders deadlock on how much money the state has to spend next year appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Eight of 80 Mississippi hospitals that applied for money through the state’s new hospital grant program have finally received those funds after months of waiting. 

However, Mississippi State Health Department officials say the program’s kinks are still being ironed out. 

Gov. Tate Reeves signed the Mississippi Hospital Sustainability Grant program, which allotted state hospitals a cumulative one-time payment of $103 million, into law in April. The legislation was part of a package of bills introduced by Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann intended to help stem the state’s ongoing health care crisis. 

Nearly half of the state’s rural hospitals are at risk of closure, according to one report, and urban hospitals have been cutting services and struggling with recouping losses sustained during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

But the grant program has been riddled with trouble since its creation. 

For months, a legislative error prevented the money from being disbursed to struggling hospitals. During the bill’s creation, lawmakers chose to use federal pandemic relief money instead of state funds — it’s not clear if they knew the challenges that the source of funds could present. Federal money is highly regulated, which has complicated how the grant money can be disbursed. 

While the program was originally pitched as one-time grants, in actuality, hospitals must show financial loss due to the pandemic. One hospital administrator previously told Mississippi Today that made it more of a “reimbursement” program. 

State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney has given changing, and sometimes conflicting, statements about the grant program in public meetings and interviews, which agency officials have chalked up to the “fluid” nature of the situation. Edney declined to make himself available for this story, despite multiple interview requests over the course of five weeks. 

He told legislators at a tense Joint Legislative Budget Committee meeting in late September that two-thirds of hospitals had applied for the program, but only half of those hospitals were actually eligible for the money. Lawmakers — Hosemann and Rep. Trey Lamar, R-Senatobia, in particular — appeared frustrated at the health agency’s handling of the program. 

The state health department is being paid $700,000 to dole out the funds. 

Lamar at the meeting asked for a comprehensive list detailing hospitals’ eligibility for the grant money. Edney first said he had that list back at the office, but minutes later said he would get agency officials to draft a document explaining the program and send that information to committee members. 

Lamar nor Hosemann ever received that list or document, they said. A records request by Mississippi Today did not yield them, either. 

A few days after that meeting, Edney said in an interview with radio personality Paul Gallo that through a new workaround, he expected that 85% of hospitals would actually be eligible for the money. When Mississippi Today followed up with Edney to explain the sudden change, he offered no specifics.

“We’re all still working (on) the problem,” he said. 

Edney was adamant at the September Joint Legislative Budget Committee meeting that the agency needed legislative direction before they could disburse funds, and that he needed lawmakers to decide if they wanted to send out the money or wait until they fixed the program during the upcoming legislative session. 

Even though legislators say they haven’t received any new information, eight hospitals quietly received some money in the past few weeks.

As of Nov. 13, the only hospitals that have received money are Bolivar Medical Center, Greenwood Leflore Hospital, Baptist Memorial Hospital of Booneville, Diamond Grove Center and several Merit Health locations — River Oaks, Woman’s Hospital, Central and Biloxi. 

Each of those facilities got $1 million, except for Merit Health Woman’s Hospital and Diamond Grove, which received $500,000 each. 

Those amounts are generally less than what was initially allotted to those facilities at the time of the program’s passage, except for Greenwood, which received slightly more, and Diamond Grove, which was originally expected to receive nothing.

The Greenwood hospital has been facing steep financial difficulties for months. Interim CEO Gary Marchand said the money would be enough to cover hospital payroll for two weeks.

“Every little bit will help us continue to operate in our current situation,” he said. “Although this funding is just one piece of our short-term sustainability, we are appreciative of Dr. Edney, the Mississippi State Health Department and the Legislature.”

The news that money had been disbursed came as a surprise to Lamar when reached by phone on Tuesday. 

“Hopefully, this means we’re making some progress,” Lamar said. “That was certainly the intent — to get financial assistance to as many hospitals that will qualify as quickly as possible. It’s taken this long, but at the end of the day, if it gets where it’s supposed to go, that’s what we want to see happen.”

An official document provided by the agency showed that an additional 72 hospitals have applied for the money as of Nov. 14, which is about 70% of the state’s total hospitals. One of those facilities is Lamar’s local hospital, Highland Hills Medical Center in Senatobia. 

He said the facility got a “notice of approval” from the health department this week regarding the grant money but still needed to provide more information before being determined eligible. 

Now, instead of trying to estimate how many hospitals are generally eligible, health department officials would only say all hospitals can apply for the money — they just have to prove COVID losses. 

However, the entire $103 million will likely not be given out — that amount serves as a cap for the maximum amount of money that can be distributed. 

Hospitals can apply for the money until the end of the year, and if hospitals don’t get enough help, Hosemann said he’s committed to making changes to the program. 

“We have asked the Department of Health to provide us with information by early December detailing how much grant money has been distributed to date and how much is expected to be distributed by the beginning of session,” he said. “Once we have that information, we will start working on revisions to the program to ensure hospitals receive what we initially intended them to receive.”

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Last Saturday night, Texas A&M slaughtered Mississippi State 51-10. On Sunday, Texas A&M announced it was firing head coach Jimbo Fisher, who the Aggies will have to pay $76 million not to coach. On Monday, Mississippi State fired Zach Arnett. The Clevelands discuss college football’s crazy season, the upcoming weekend games and the high school playoffs.

Stream all episodes here.

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