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Whether Gov. Tate Reeves was involved in the multimillion dollar welfare scandal has emerged as one of the top issues of the 2023 campaign for governor — and Mississippians across the state are being deluged with advertisements and attacks about it.

Brandon Presley, the Democrat running for governor against Reeves in November, has anchored his candidacy on the scandal, in which at least $77 million in federal funds intended for the state’s poorest residents were misspent or directed to wealthy, politically-connected Mississippians between at least 2017 and 2020.

For weeks, Presley has blanketed the state with a TV advertisement alleging: “Under Tate Reeves, millions were steered from education and job programs to help his rich friends.”

Reeves, the first-term Republican, has strongly denied any wrongdoing related to the scandal. After Presley began airing the TV ad, Reeves quickly responded with his own ad that counters Presley’s claim.

“Tate Reeves had nothing to do with the scandal,” the Reeves ad narrator says. “… It all happened before he was governor.”

Just last week, Presley held a press conference outside the welfare agency office building to reiterate his attacks against Reeves for his involvement in the scandal. And Reeves, who as governor is leading the state’s civil lawsuit and ongoing investigation of the welfare scandal, has not been charged with any crime and maintains he played no role in the misspending.

So who’s right? Was Reeves really involved in the scandal? Is Presley overstating Reeves’ role?

Mississippi Today, which won a 2023 Pulitzer Prize for its investigation into the welfare scandal, compiled key context about Reeves’ involvement. 

‘The Lt. Gov’s fitness issue’

When Reeves ran for his first term as governor in 2019, well-known Mississippi fitness trainer Paul Lacoste — a close personal friend of Reeves, Lacoste said at the time — endorsed him. Reeves was one of several state officials who had taken fitness boot camp classes led by Lacoste.

Today, Lacoste is one of dozens of people being sued by the state of Mississippi to recoup millions in misspent welfare funds from the time. The state’s welfare department, in court documents, alleged that Lacoste improperly received $1.3 million in welfare funds.

How Lacoste received that money has been probed by investigators and in court documents, and this is where Reeves’ involvement is being scrutinized.

Mississippi Today reported in its 2022 “The Backchannel” investigation that Lacoste had a 2019 meeting with Reeves, who was then the lieutenant governor, and John Davis, the former director of the Mississippi Department of Human Services who has since pleaded guilty to federal and state charges related to the scandal.

READ MORE: Gov. Tate Reeves inspired welfare payment targeted in civil suit, texts show

By 2019, Lacoste had already secured a $1.4 million contract with a well connected nonprofit to receive MSDH funds for his boot camp program. Lacoste says then-Gov. Phil Bryant directed Davis to execute the agreement. But after a few months, MDHS apparently hadn’t provided the nonprofit with the funds to actually pay Lacoste. That’s until Davis met with Reeves.

Two days after the 2019 scheduled meeting — which Lacoste described to Davis by saying, “Tate wants us all to himself!” — Davis texted his deputy at the welfare agency and asked him to find a way to send a large sum of federal welfare money to the nonprofit without triggering a red flag in an audit so that the nonprofit could fund Lacoste’s boot camp.

Davis, in the text message, referred to the project as “the Lt. Gov’s fitness issue.”

The deputy issued the payment to the nonprofit that day, according to an audit that was later used to bring criminal charges against several defendants including Davis.

When Mississippi Today asked Reeves’ office about the text messages and Lacoste’s receipt of federal welfare funds, a staffer replied: “It’s entirely possible that — before the abuse was uncovered — Tate Reeves said nice things in passing about people he is now suing and/or the stated goals of DHS. This was all before the fraud was revealed. How is he supposed to remember inconsequential conversations from years ago?”

Reeves, as governor and statutory head of the welfare agency, is leading the state’s ongoing civil lawsuit that is seeking to recoup the misspent millions. The governor’s decisions about the lawsuit management has also pulled him into the spotlight.

Reeves fired attorney leading state’s welfare scandal lawsuit 

In 2021, the welfare agency, which is under the statutory purview of Gov. Tate Reeves’ office, hired well-known attorney Brad Pigott to lead the state’s effort to claw back as many of the millions in misspent welfare funds as possible.

Pigott, a former federal prosecutor who was appointed U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi by former President Bill Clinton, has a successful record with high-profile cases. In the 1980s and 90s, he led cases that took down the Dixie Mafia organized crime syndicate.

For about a year, he led the state’s welfare case and brought civil charges against dozens of people who had received federal funds. But in July 2022, shortly after Pigott subpoenaed the University of Southern Mississippi Athletic Foundation for communications with former Gov. Phil Bryant, Bryant’s wife Deborah, and former NFL star Brett Favre over $5 million in welfare dollars spent on a volleyball stadium, Reeves’ administration abruptly fired the attorney.

Pigott said plainly that his firing was a politically motivated response to him looking into the roles of former Republican governor Bryant, the USM Athletic Foundation and other powerful and connected people or entities Reeves and others didn’t want him looking at. 

“All I did, and I believe all that caused me to be terminated from representing the department or having anything to do with the litigation, was to try to get the truth about all of that,” Pigott told Mississippi Today hours after his firing. “People are going to go to jail over this, at least the state should be willing to find out the truth of what happened.”

Reeves’ welfare agency leader quickly said that Pigott was fired because he blind-sided them with the USM Foundation subpoena. But Mississippi Today obtained records that showed Pigott gave welfare agency leaders a 10-day heads up before he filed the subpoena in court.

READ MORE: Welfare head says surprise subpoena led to attorney’s firing. Emails show it wasn’t a surprise.

A few days after the story had become a full-blown scandal for Reeves, he confirmed to reporters that Pigott’s firing was political in nature.

“I think the way in which (Pigott) … has acted since they chose not to renew his contract shows exactly why many of us were concerned about the way in which he conducted himself in the year in which he was employed,” Reeves said at the 2022 Neshoba County Fair. “He seemed much more focused on the political side of things. He seemed much more interested in getting his name in print and hopefully bigger and bigger print, not just Mississippi stories. He wants this to go national, wants to talk to the press.”

READ MORE: Gov. Tate Reeves says ousted welfare scandal lawyer had ‘political agenda,’ wanted media spotlight

The USM Athletic Foundation is comprised of many business and political leaders, including several large donors to Reeves’ campaign coffers.

To date, Reeves is still the elected official atop the state’s ongoing civil lawsuit. His welfare agency has since hired attorneys at Jones Walker, a law firm that has donated thousands of dollars to his past campaigns.

Favre lobbied Reeves for USM volleyball funds

One of the largest purchases at the center of the scandal is a state-of-the-art volleyball stadium at University of Southern Mississippi, a project Favre pushed welfare officials to fund.

Asked about the stadium at Neshoba County Fair in the summer of 2022, Reeves suggested he didn’t support the idea of using any taxpayer funds to build sports facilities. 

At the time, Reeves’ staff had opted not to include the volleyball stadium in the MDHS civil suit to claw back misspent funds — and he had just fired Pigott.

“Look, I don’t know all the details as to how that came about,” Reeves said. “What I do know is that it doesn’t seem like an expense that I would personally support for TANF dollars. I don’t even like the state building stadiums with general tax dollars.”

But texts that wouldn’t be made public until months later revealed that Reeves did talk with Favre about finding public funding to finish construction on the stadium early in his governorship, right before the February 2020 indictments. Favre had endorsed Reeves for governor in 2019.

Reeves was apparently eager to please Favre. When Favre asked Reeves to appoint a former classmate of his to the Mississippi Board of Chiropractic Examiners, the new governor readily agreed, according to texts Mississippi Today retrieved through a public records request. In the same text on Feb. 5, 2020, Favre said he and his wife Deanna wanted to show Reeves the volleyball facility “and it would only be us. I want you to see what your (sic) trying to help me for.”

“Oh Todd (Gov. Reeves’ brother) said y’all may go to the concert Friday if so we may tag along and if time permits we show you facility,” Favre added.

It’s unclear how hard Reeves actually pushed to include funding for the facility in a legislative appropriation, but he and his brother certainly gave Favre the impression that he would. 

“He (Reeves) said he was gonna get with his team and figure something out,” Favre texted Bryant on Feb. 6, 2020, as the fallout from the arrests was still materializing. 

“I think the angle Tate is looking at is a bond bill according to Todd his brother,” Favre texted Bryant on Feb. 7.

Though Mississippi Today requested them, Reeves has not produced any texts he might have exchanged with Favre or other key figures prior to January of 2020 before he became governor.

Lack of legislative oversight of welfare funds

Former Gov. Phil Bryant, who led the state’s welfare department during the height of the scandal, suggested in a 2022 interview with Mississippi Today that the state Legislature, where then-Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves had an outsized leadership role, failed to meet its statutory obligation to monitor welfare agency spending.

Bryant, who has not been charged with any crime but has faced accusations of wrongdoing from numerous criminal and civil case defendants, did not name Reeves in the interview but did attempt to put the onus on legislative oversight committees. 

“I didn’t have the capacity to do that,” Bryant said in 2022 when asked why the misspending was not discovered earlier. “I didn’t have the personnel to go and do that. That’s why we depend on oversight committees from the Legislature. So, every year there was a budget that went to Human Services. Wouldn’t the oversight committee of the Legislature say, ‘Okay, we want to see how your spending is going. Show us where you’re spending your money. Show us all the grants that you have.’ Don’t they do that?” 

As lieutenant governor between 2012-2020, Reeves served a pivotal leadership role in the Legislature — including during the years of 2017-2020, when the brunt of the known welfare misspending occurred.

Though Reeves was never a member of the legislative committee created by state law to provide oversight of the Department of Human Services, he has often boasted his direct control of the state budget during his time at the Capitol. Reeves served as chair or vice chair of the powerful Legislative Budget Committee that does provide oversight of agency budgets. 

Bryant, in the same interview with Mississippi Today in 2022, said that legislative oversight was not fulfilled when the welfare misspending occurred. He recalled the oversight that he said used to occur during his time in the Legislature as a member of the House and later as lieutenant governor. 

“But even the appropriations process,” Bryant said. “When I used to sit on the (House) Ways and Means Committee, and the joint legislative budget process, they would come in with stacks, not just Human Services, but every agency, ‘Here’s my expenditures. Here’s where it’s going. Here’s the cars that we bought.’ And you could review them. 

“So, no one caught that during the appropriations process, during the audit process, the attorney general, but I was supposed to catch it? None of them caught it, but I’m, being governor, and I’m supposed to catch it?”

READ MORE: Phil Bryant discusses his nephew, favored welfare vendors, failures and successes 

In response to several written questions from Mississippi Today, Elliott Husbands, campaign manager for Reeves, again reiterated that Reeves played no role in the scandal and attacked Mississippi Today as being “a Democrat dark money group.” Husbands did not respond directly to what Bryant said in April 2022.

“Tate Reeves has obviously not been questioned by law enforcement because the scandal in question occurred entirely during the administration of a different governor, and the Reeves administration has worked to recoup the funds, supporting the prosecution and suing the guilty individuals,” Husbands said. “Mississippians deserve honesty, and not the lying fairy tales you publish.”

Reeves’ political connections to other high-profile defendants

In a February 2020 press conference, Reeves acknowledged receiving campaign contributions from people associated with the welfare scandal and ongoing investigation, including Nancy New and her son Zach, both of whom have pleaded guilty to state and federal criminal charges. The News ran the nonprofit that funded Lacoste’s contract and funneled $5 million to construct the volleyball stadium.

“I can tell you right now, anything they gave to the campaign is going to be moved to a separate bank account,” Reeves said in 2020. “… Anything they gave the campaign will be there waiting to be returned to the taxpayers and help the people it was intended for. If that doesn’t happen, the money will go to a deserving charity.” 

Mississippi Today and other outlets reported earlier this year, however, that there is no indication that the funds have been transferred to a separate bank account. In response to questions, the Reeves campaign gave no indication that a separate bank account had been established.

“The political donations from anyone who is connected to the TANF scandal will be donated to a worthy cause at the ultimate conclusion of the legal proceedings. Those cases are ongoing,” said Husbands, Reeves’ campaign manager, referring to the continuing investigation of the misspending of $77 million in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families welfare funds.

In Reeves’ 2019 gubernatorial campaign, he also filmed public education commercials touting his public school teacher pay plan at the News’ now shuttered private New Summit School in Jackson. Private school students and teachers were used for the commercial.

Video from the 2019 New Summit advertisement has been used again this campaign cycle by Reeves in two commercials. 

In addition to other charges and guilty pleas, federal prosecutors have alleged that Nancy New bilked the state out of $4 million in public education dollars, of which at least $76,889 that were supposed to pay for teachers at New Summit School she used to purchase a house.

READ MORE: Reeves campaign uses video from shuttered private school linked to welfare scandal

The post What exactly is Gov. Tate Reeves’ involvement in the welfare scandal? appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Aug. 21, 1781

More than 80 years before the Emancipation Proclamation, an enslaved woman known as Elizabeth Freeman sued for her freedom in Massachusetts. The odds against her winning her case before a dozen white men seemed impossible. 

Freeman worked for Col. John Ashley, whose wife was unkind to those enslaved. When she attacked Freeman’s daughter with a hot shovel, Freeman blocked the blow, leaving a deep scar on her arm. She left the scar exposed as proof of abuse. 

She heard first of freedom from Col. Ashley, who moderated the committee that wrote the Sheffield Declaration that said all of mankind was equal and free — language later used in the Declaration of Independence and the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780. Upon hearing that all people were born free and equal, she turned to a neighbor, attorney Theodore Sedgwick, who agreed to represent her and a man enslaved by Ashley. 

The jury ruled in favor of them and awarded them 30 shillings in damages. She gave herself the name of Elizabeth Freeman and explained, “Any time while I was a slave, if one minute’s freedom had been offered to me, and I had been told I must die at the end of that minute, I would have taken it — just to stand one minute on God’s earth a free woman.” 

Ashley tried to get her to return to his home as a paid servant. She worked instead for Sedgwick, who became speaker of the House in Congress. 

Her case and others led to the Massachusetts Supreme Court to declare that slavery was incompatible with the state constitution. After 20 years, she bought her own house on 20 acres and was buried in the Sedgwick family plot in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. 

Her headstone includes the words: “She was born a slave and remained a slave for nearly thirty years. She could neither read nor write, yet in her own sphere she had no superior or equal.” 

A statue now honors her in the National Museum of African American History and Culture’s Slavery and Freedom exhibition.

The post On this day in 1781 appeared first on Mississippi Today.

U.S. District Judge Mike Mills joins Mississippi Today’s Adam Ganucheau and Bobby Harrison to discuss his storied career in politics and the state and federal judiciary. He discusses his time in the Legislature, on the Mississippi Supreme Court, and in the federal court.

The post Podcast: Federal judge Mike Mills discusses his political and judicial career appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The vaccine with the poorest track record in the U.S. has its worst uptake in Mississippi. Nearly 20 years after the first FDA-approved HPV vaccine was introduced to the public, Mississippi has one of the highest rates of cervical cancer deaths in the country.

The Human Papillomavirus, or HPV, vaccine protects against the nine most common and high-risk strains of the virus that cause cancers and genital warts in both males and females. Despite its efficacy, it has one of the lowest immunization records of recommended vaccines in the country, with a national average of only 63% of teens up to date on their two-dose vaccine. 

In Mississippi, only 39% of teens are up to date on immunization. Practitioners say the biggest barriers to immunization against the virus are the stigma around how the virus is thought to be transmitted and misunderstanding about who the vaccine is for.

Dr. Anita Henderson, pediatrician at Hattiesburg Clinic and the former president of the Mississippi chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said that it has taken time for the public to understand that the vaccine is not simply preventing a sexually transmitted disease. 

“That is not what the HPV vaccine was developed for – it was developed to prevent cancers,” Henderson said. “And unfortunately, I think the misinformation around this vaccine has played a significant role in its poor uptake.”

In fact, despite the longstanding definition of HPV as a “sexually transmitted disease,” research is now bringing to light instances of non-sexual contact transmission. Some pediatricians are seeing HPV transmission from mother to baby during birth.

“We have had several babies with HPV in their airways causing stridor and difficulty breathing,” Henderson said. “The pediatric ENT made the diagnosis of HPV warts in the airway with diagnosis and treatment via upper airway endoscopy.”

For parents who associate the virus with sexual behavior, it can be confusing why practitioners recommend the vaccine at such a young age. But the impact of age on efficacy of the vaccine is also misunderstood. 

“The vaccine is about 90% effective against cervical cancer when given at the age of 12 or 13, it is about 60% effective if given at the age of 14 to 16, and it is about 30 or 35% effective if given at the age of 16 to 18,” Henderson explained.

According to Henderson, that has to do not only with the fact that earlier immunization increases one’s chances of vaccinating prior to exposure, but also with the fact that “when you’re younger, your immune system does a better job of developing the appropriate antibodies to the vaccine.”

The HPV vaccine has been an outlier in childhood vaccines in Mississippi. The state has been at the forefront of childhood immunization for years, often ranking first for vaccination in young children – a title that only now could be challenged as Mississippi joined other states in allowing religious exemption for childhood vaccination last month. 

The widespread association of the HPV vaccine with sexual activity is part of what makes HPV vaccine hesitancy so unique and pervasive in the state, explained the Mississippi HPV Roundtable Coordinator Amy Ellis.

The Mississippi HPV Roundtable works to increase HPV vaccination rates by offering online resources for parents and coordinating health initiatives across the state. Member organizations come from a diversity of sectors including academia and state and local agencies. 

“If it was a vaccine to prevent any other type of cancer that wasn’t sexually transmitted, I don’t think it would be this controversial,” Ellis said. 

And while some parents might fear that the vaccine encourages sexual behavior, studies show there is no evidence to support that claim. 

“A misconception that some parents have is that if their kids get the HPV vaccine, that that is going to give them permission to have sex, and that has just not proven to be the case,” Ellis continued. “Kids don’t even know what vaccine they’re getting.”

While the state has the worst HPV vaccine rates, there are a number of Mississippi initiatives to change that statistic that Ellis is excited to see play out. One of the most successful so far, she said, is the college campus initiative, that aims to inform college students who never received the vaccine, for whatever reason, about the HPV virus and vaccine. 

“Ole Miss is taking the lead on that and doing an amazing job,” Ellis said, “educating students about the vaccine, and then if they want to get it, they can go get it at a clinic on site.”

The Mississippi Board of Dental Examiners also ruled in April 2021 to allow licensed dentists in the state to administer the vaccine, according to the board minutes. Currently, there are no dentists who have completed the process to store and administer the vaccine on site, but the policy is in place for that to happen in the future. 

“We are ahead of the game there,” Ellis said. “There are not many states that have dentists that are able to give the vaccine, so that is exciting for Mississippi.”

Cervical cancer is a more known example of HPV-related cancer because there are so many studies and an abundance of data and marketing highlighting the connection to the HPV virus. But Tara Smith, an epidemiologist and professor at Kent State University College of Public Health whose research is rooted in science denial and vaccine hesitancy, noted there are also several debilitating cancers for males.

HPV can cause penile, anal and oral cancers in men, the last of which has been on the rise in recent years. 

“I don’t think some people have gotten past the idea that the only reason to get it for boys is to protect their female partners,” Smith said. “I think that that education campaign has been kind of lacking.”

Smith also said that one of the biggest causes of this miseducation is the reluctance to talk about these topics – both on the part of parents and practitioners. 

“I think there is a lot of misunderstanding that if teens behave in a manner that the parents would like them to, as far as abstaining, that that will protect them, which unfortunately, it really doesn’t,” she explained. 

Even teens who abstain from intercourse might end up engaging in other forms of sexual activity, all of which can transmit the virus. For those who do abstain entirely, Smith said, “you still don’t know who they’re going to marry.”

What makes these conversations even more trying for parents, Smith explained, is that they “can sometimes bring up more uncomfortable topics about things like rape and sexual assault, where your child may not be protected, and it may not be their choice to engage in sexual activity.”

But for Smith, there is nothing more important than setting up the dialogue between parents and practitioners as early as age 9, which is the youngest age the HPV vaccine can be administered.

“We need to be talking about it, and talking about it earlier,” she said. “When you get to the time when kids are recommended for the vaccine, which is generally around 12 or so, parents are starting to think about things like their child growing up, and bringing in that conversation about sex is sometimes difficult. So I really think it’s about the dialogue, and starting early, and not being afraid to talk about these things.”

The post Mississippi has the worst HPV vaccine uptake in the nation, and women are dying of preventable cancer appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Aug. 20, 1619

More than 20 Africans, kidnapped by Portuguese forces from what is now Angola, landed in Point Comfort (now Hampton Roads, Virginia) on a 160-ton English ship known as the White Lion. They were the first recorded Africans to arrive in England’s American colonies. They included Anthony and Isabela whose son, William, became the first African child born in English North America. By the time slavery ended, nearly 15 million Africans had landed in the Americas.

The post On this day in 1619 appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The issue of abortion is in a kind of limbo in Mississippi despite the state being viewed as perhaps the most staunchly anti-abortion state in the nation.

Many state politicians like to make that claim.

Because of bills passed by the Legislature and signed into law by multiple governors, abortion is prohibited in nearly every circumstance in Mississippi. Yet there is a 1990s state Supreme Court ruling that provides a right to an abortion under the Mississippi Constitution. That ruling, in theory, would trump those laws.

But still, no provider is willing to provide abortions in Mississippi because of the fear that law enforcement and state courts would ignore that basic legal tenet that the constitution trumps laws.

The abortion conflict could be solved by one of two ways: by the state Supreme Court overturning its earlier ruling, or by lawmakers amending the Mississippi Constitution.

But it appears staunchly anti-abortion Mississippi legislative leaders are afraid to try to amend the Constitution because to do so would require allowing the people to vote.

Polls over the past several months surprisingly show Mississippians almost evenly divided on the emotional and contentious issue, with some polls even saying a plurality supports abortion rights.

In every state where abortion has been on the ballot during the past year, including conservative controlled states, proposals to expand abortion rights have prevailed.

The latest Republican, anti-abortion state where voters might approve abortion rights is Ohio. On the same day earlier this month that Mississippi held its party primary elections, Ohioans rejected a proposal to make it more difficult to pass initiatives placed on the ballot by voters. That vote was directly related to abortion.

Ohio’s state Republican leaders, who like their counterparts in Mississippi are anti-abortion, were trying to make it more difficult for voters to approve a proposal to place in their constitution a right to an abortion by requiring approval by 60% instead of a simple majority of voters. An initiative that Ohio voters gathered the mandated number of signatures will be on the November ballot to guarantee that right to an abortion. Ohio voters overwhelmingly rejected the proposal to make it more difficult to pass that initiative and any future ones.

That vote in Ohio underscores the fact that while the initiative process is alive and well and being protected in some states, it was taken away from Mississippians and politicians have refused to restore it. That refusal could be directly related to abortion.

Mississippi’s initiative process was ruled unconstitutional on a technicality by the state Supreme Court in 2021. In both the 2022 and 2023 sessions, lawmakers did not restore it even though legislative leaders had committed multiple times to doing so.

Mississippians who support abortion rights should not expect any relief from the upcoming November election. Republicans, who generally are against abortion, are expected to win and maintain their legislative supermajorities.

And both major gubernatorial candidates say they are anti-abortion. Republican incumbent Gov. Tate Reeves is a vocal abortion opponent. Challenger Brandon Presley, like many recent statewide Democratic candidates, says he is also anti-abortion.

Perhaps the Legislature in the upcoming 2024 session will put a proposal before voters to restore the initiative process. If they do, and voters do the expected and vote to restore the initiative, they in theory could then bypass the Legislature and place an initiative on the ballot to let the public decide the abortion issue.

Presley has even called on his opponent, the incumbent Reeves, to call a special session and try to get reluctant legislators to approve restoring the initiative immediately.

But abortion supporters should not get too excited about a chance to vote on abortion even if the initiative is restored. Before the Senate under Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann killed the restoration of the initiative during the 2023 session, the House had passed an initiative proposal that would have prohibited voters from using the process to place abortion on the ballot.

To highlight the changing dynamics of the abortion issue, it should be pointed out that the ban on a vote on abortion was the brainchild of House Speaker Philip Gunn. Before then, in 2012, Gunn had proposed placing before voters an amendment to the Constitution to ban abortion.

Now he and other Mississippi politicians appear afraid to let the public vote on abortion.

It would, no doubt, be embarrassing to those politicians if voters in the state that brought to the U.S. Supreme Court the case that overturned the national right to an abortion ended up approving abortion rights at the ballot box.

The post Mississippi politicians appear afraid to let citizens vote on abortion like in other states appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Slightly more Mississippi students passed state tests than before the pandemic in nearly all grades, a result education leaders celebrated Thursday when test scores were released. 

The Mississippi Academic Assessment Program measures student performance in English, math, science, and U.S. history. Results for the 2022-23 school year were released Thursday and showed the state average in most subjects increasing one or two percentage points since 2019. The U.S. history assessment was reworked during the pandemic, so pre-COVID comparisons are not available. 

Last year, students approached pre-pandemic levels but did not meet them. Education officials lauded the new scores for both improving over last year and the 2019 scores, which had previously been the highest scoring year. 

“We were very pleased with the test scores,” said Paula Vanderford, chief accountability officer for the education department. “We saw increases from last year to this year across all subject areas at all grade levels, and that’s what we’re looking for is continuous improvement.” 

The Mississippi Department of Education sets a goal of having all students meet proficiency, which refers to students who scored a level 4 or 5 (proficient or advanced) on a 1 through 5 scale. Many school districts also use the number of students scoring a 3 (passing) or above to measure their performance.

The 2023 test scores show more students hitting both passing and proficient over 2019. The number of students hitting passing increased a little across the grades and subjects, while the number of students meeting proficiency increased more significantly. 

Referencing the education department’s goal of having all students meet proficiency, Vanderford said the goal is to carry on the momentum the state regained since the pandemic, using the tools already in place. 

“We need to continue to do what we’re doing because we are continually seeing those gains,” Vanderford said. 

The post Mississippi students reach pre-pandemic levels in state test results appeared first on Mississippi Today.

New data shows Mississippi children could be the group most affected by Medicaid’s continuous unwinding.

According to the Mississippi Division of Medicaid’s monthly enrollment reports, 18,710 children have recently been dropped from Medicaid, most of them due to unwinding.

“It’s very troubling to see that children are the vast majority of those losing Medicaid coverage in Mississippi,” said Joan Alker, executive director of Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families.

Federal law prohibited state divisions of Medicaid from terminating beneficiaries starting in March 2020, due to the COVID-19 public health emergency. However, the emergency order ended in May, and agencies are now reviewing their rolls for the first time in more than three years. 

During the most recent wave of disenrollments in July, more than 22,000 Mississippians were dropped, joining more than 29,000 terminated during the first wave in June. New data shows that more than half of the people dropped in June were children. 

July’s enrollment numbers, which reflect disenrollments that occurred in June, shows that the number of kids enrolled in Medicaid plummeted from 456,314 in June to 437,604 in July. 

In the meantime, the number of children in Mississippi enrolled in Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) remained relatively stable, increasing by 120 children during the same time period. 

CHIP provides health care for children whose families are low-income but do not qualify for Medicaid. Medicaid coverage is determined by family income, but the threshold for Mississippi kids to qualify is higher than their parents and other adults. 

“This suggests that many of these children will become uninsured because their parents are working in low wage jobs that don’t offer affordable health insurance for their children,” Alker said. 

Medicaid spokesperson Matt Westerfield confirmed that most of those terminations were due to the unwinding.

Federal research predicts that children and young adults will be affected disproportionately during Medicaid unwinding nationwide, and the majority of those children may still be eligible. 

Mississippi has a high percentage of procedural terminations, meaning many people have been dropped because of failure to return paperwork or similar reasons — reasons that have nothing to do with their eligibility.

Kids in low-income families make up more than half of Mississippi’s overall Medicaid beneficiaries. 

In a state without Medicaid expansion, such as Mississippi, it’s especially devastating, Alker said.

“Children are the single largest group, and procedural terminations for children are a problem because they’re mostly still eligible,” she said.

According to Alker’s organization, only four states, Connecticut, Kansas, Missouri and West Virginia, have reported the number of kids disenrolled for procedural reasons, even though they’re at high risk of becoming uninsured during unwinding. Mississippi’s monthly unwinding reports do not show what number of terminations were children.

Enrollment numbers for August, which will reveal how many children were dropped in July, won’t be posted until early September, Westerfield said. 

So far, about 50,000 Mississippians in total have been dropped from Medicaid during the unwinding, which is set to continue until May 2024. Millions have been dropped nationally, with those numbers predicted to steadily rise.

The post Mississippi Medicaid drops more than 18,000 kids from its rolls appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The Mississippi Division of Medicaid removed another 22,000 Mississippians from its rolls in July in the second wave of disenrollments after the end of pandemic-era protections. 

That brings the agency up to 51,967 disenrollments total during the unwinding process, with those numbers set to increase.

Beginning in March 2020, federal law prohibited state divisions of Medicaid from removing people from their rolls due to the COVID-19 public health emergency.  

The emergency ended in May, and now agencies are reviewing the eligibility of their beneficiaries for the first time in more than three years.

According to one expert, Mississippi’s total number of disenrollments is not the most concerning statistic: It’s the fact that 80% of the people dropped so far have been disenrolled because of issues with their paperwork, which could mean many of them were still eligible. 

“It’s very high,” said Joan Alker, executive director of Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families.  “Yeah, that’s very problematic.”

Many of the people who have been procedurally disenrolled could be children. Kids in low-income families make up more than half of Mississippi’s overall Medicaid beneficiaries. 

According to Mississippi Medicaid’s enrollment reports, 18,710 children have lost Medicaid coverage from June of this year to July. It’s unclear how many children have been dropped since — the agency has not yet updated its August numbers.

Mississippi is one of only three states that does not have Medicaid online accounts as of January 2023, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, though people do have the option to complete their renewal online.

According to a July press release, Mississippi Medicaid enrollment increased by 187,894 people, or 26%, from March 2020 to June 2023, bringing Mississippi’s Medicaid rolls over 900,000 people for the first time in the agency’s history.

In June, Mississippi Medicaid was set to examine the records of 67,695 Mississippians whose coverage was up for review.

It found that a little under half of those, or 29,460, were no longer eligible. According to the agency, about 60% of the people who were removed had remained insured during the pandemic because of the extended eligibility rules.

The latest data release shows that of the 75,110 Mississippians who had their eligibility evaluated in July, 22,507, or 30%, were unenrolled. 

The majority of those were terminated because of “procedural reasons,” meaning they lost coverage for not returning paperwork or related reasons. 

That means many of the people dropped so far could be people who are still eligible. 

Alker said Mississippi’s ex-parte rate was “relatively low” — ex-parte renewals are automatic renewals, and the best case scenario during unwinding. Mississippi Medicaid spokesman Matt Westerfield said that the agency is focused on increasing those ex-parte approval rates. 

“If individuals qualify for Medicaid coverage, we’d rather make that determination without having to mail a form that they have to fill out and that a Medicaid specialist then has to process,” he said. 

Combined with the high rate of procedural terminations — only 11 states have higher percentages, according to Alker’s organization — it’s cause for concern, she said, enough that she suggested Gov. Tate Reeves should step in. 

“The governor should absolutely pause these procedural terminations and figure out what’s going on,” Alker said. 

According to Westerfield, the Division requested permission from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Aug. 7 for “four additional flexibilities that could help reduce procedural disenrollments while increasing ex-parte renewals.”

A letter provided to Mississippi Today by the Division shows that those “flexibilities” included permitting managed care plans to help beneficiaries submit renewal forms, renewing coverage for people whose information “is not returned or is not returned within a reasonable amount of time” and reinstating eligibility for people who were previously unenrolled more quickly. These allowances have not yet been approved, but Westerfield said the agency anticipates that soon.

People who were dropped because they didn’t submit the needed information can be reconsidered without a new application if they submit that information within 120 days of the disenrollment. 

Though Mississippi Medicaid launched the “Stay Covered” outreach campaign that included postcard mailing, flyers and text and email blasts to make people aware of the unwinding process, the leader of a local health advocacy organization that has partnered with the agency previously told Mississippi Today that he doesn’t believe Mississippi Medicaid is doing enough to inform beneficiaries. Additionally, it’s not clear how many emails or letters have been disseminated — Westerfield previously did not respond to that question.

Westerfield did say the Division did not process renewals for a few months for beneficiaries in the Delta affected by tornadoes this spring, though it’s not clear if the agency is doing anything in particular to reach those people — who may be displaced — now.

The new data also reveals a growing backlog in Mississippi.

In June, about 5,000 renewals that were up for review were not completed. The new numbers show that an additional 15,000 reviews went uncompleted last month. Westerfield blamed it on the larger review group in the July reporting period compared to June.

Alker says the backlog isn’t uncommon, and it’s neither good nor bad news. 

“We want states to take their time, and they still have a lot of time,” she said. States have until May 2024 to complete the unwinding process.

“But it speaks to the backlog and the system, and the fact that they don’t have enough staff to begin with in many states, including Mississippi,” Alker said. “The backlog will keep getting bigger, and that’s going to be a problem.”

And as unwinding continues and a mounting number of Mississippians are potentially without health care coverage, stress continues to mount on Mississippi’s health care infrastructure. 

As Reeves and other Republican state leaders continue to oppose expanding Medicaid to the working poor, one report puts almost half of the state’s rural hospitals at risk of closure, and data from Alker’s organization shows that rural populations will be the ones most affected by unwinding.

“If there’s a big unwinding problem, it’s going to be really devastating for these rural communities,” she said. 

CMS sent letters to all state Medicaid division directors last week, including Mississippi’s director Drew Snyder. Because Mississippi started disenrollments in June, CMS did not have comments about Mississippi’s procedural termination rate — they analyzed states’ May numbers in their letters. 

However, the letter indicated they would continue to keep an eye on deficiencies in individual states’ unwinding processes. 

“I think what was important about the letters is that CMS, this is the first time that they’ve done something publicly like this,” Alker said. “I took it as a sign that they’re stepping up their enforcement.”

As of August, almost 5 million people have been disenrolled from Medicaid nationwide, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The organization says up to 24 million people could end up losing coverage during the unwinding.  

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Brandon Presley, the Democratic nominee for governor, hammered Republican Gov. Tate Reeves on Thursday for not doing enough to prevent the state’s massive welfare scandal while Reeves served eight years as lieutenant governor. 

Speaking in front of the state Department of Human Services building in downtown Jackson, Presley told reporters that Reeves could have used the lieutenant governor’s role as state Senate president to push lawmakers to conduct more robust hearings over state agencies, including MDHS, which was at the center of the scandal. 

“Because it’s politically convenient for him, Tate Reeves now wants to deflect blame on his own failure to protect millions of dollars that were under his so-called watch as lieutenant governor,” Presley said. “He will say or do anything to get elected.” 

Reeves’ campaign did not respond to a request for comment, but the governor has repeatedly said that he had no role in the roughly $77 million previous state agency leaders squandered and that the misspending occurred before he was elected governor. 

READ MORE: Gov. Tate Reeves airs ad responding to Brandon Presley welfare scandal attack

But Presley said the very fact that the misspending occurred before Reeves entered the Governor’s Mansion deserves an explanation on why elected officials within the state Capitol never discovered the impropriety. 

“When he first ran for lieutenant governor, Tate Reeves said a watchdog is exactly what they’re about to get,” Presley said. “The truth of the matter is, in 12 years of Tate Reeves’ reign in state government, he’s been a lapdog for his buddies, special interests and his campaign contributors.” 

State and federal prosecutors have not charged the first-term governor with a crime. But as lieutenant governor between 2012-2020, Reeves served a pivotal leadership role in the Legislature — including during the years of 2017-2020, when the bulk of the known welfare misspending happened.

Legislative committee leaders have broad power to conduct oversight of state agencies and compel state agency leaders to testify about their organizations. 

To date, no legislative committee has held a hearing to scrutinize the actions of the state welfare agency, though some Democratic lawmakers have organized their own hearings. 

Though Reeves was never a member of the legislative committee created by state law to provide oversight of the Department of Human Services, he has often boasted about his direct control of the state budget during his time at the Capitol. Reeves served as chair or vice chair of the powerful Legislative Budget Committee that does provide oversight of agency budgets. 

Presley has seized on the state’s welfare scandal and used it as a focal point of his gubernatorial campaign. He previously said he would call lawmakers into a special legislative session to reform state ethics laws to prevent a similar scandal from occurring in the future.

READ MORE: New Brandon Presley ad claims Tate Reeves helped ‘rich friends’ in welfare scandal

The post Brandon Presley condemns Gov. Tate Reeves for not providing more oversight of welfare agency appeared first on Mississippi Today.