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ROLLING FORK – Many of the survivors of the devastating March tornado in Rolling Fork are still uncertain of how they’ll enter the next phase of their lives. They only know, over four months later, that it won’t happen soon. 

Jannett Barnes, 63, keeps her belongings in the trunk of her car while she sleeps on her sister’s couch in Anguilla, just north of Rolling Fork. 

“Everything I own is in the backseat of my car, my trunk,” she said. “It doesn’t look like I’m going to have anywhere to call home soon, so it’s not looking good at all.”

Barnes, like, according to Census data, 41% of the city was a renter, making it harder to move back to where she lived. While property owners can work directly with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to have a temporary mobile home brought to them, renters have to go through their landlords, or wait for FEMA to find other available land. 

“The house was destroyed, totally,” she said. “I asked (her landlord), ‘Could I put a trailer house here?’ I rented from there for about 10 years. And she said no. People are just mean, just don’t care.”

The landlord didn’t respond to phone calls from Mississippi Today for this story. 

Dianne Shelton, 53, ran into a similar issue: after having to leave when the tornado wrecked her home, Shelton said her landlord sold the underlying property.

“Ain’t nobody doing nothing for me,” she said. Shelton, whose only income is from disability payments, said she hasn’t been able to get any financial aid from FEMA, and the agency’s deadline for its Individual Assistance program has passed. 

FEMA told Mississippi Today it has so far approved 96 households in Sharkey County – where Rolling Fork is the county seat – for temporary homes, meaning that they meet the agency’s criteria. But even after approval, the agency has to ensure there’s a suitable property to put the trailer on. So far, only 12 of those approved households have been allowed to move in. Displaced survivors can stay in the trailers for up to 18 months. 

“FEMA continues to work with disaster survivors to determine their best temporary housing option, which in turn will allow them to work toward a permanent housing solution,” Jim Homstad, a spokesperson with the agency, said in a statement. 

Even some of those who did own their homes have been frustrated with how long the process has drawn out. Cynthia Prestianni, 62, lost her house of almost 41 years in the tornado.

“That was going to be my forever home,” Prestianni said. “It was paid for, it was ours.”

She said she first met with FEMA assistance officials in April, and it wasn’t until last week when she got the go-ahead to have a trailer put on her land. 

“I called about every two or three days, ‘What’s the status of the trailer?’” she said on Aug. 3. “And I’m agitated. Tomorrow will be 19 weeks since the tornado.”

City officials, though, are urging residents to be patient.

“I’m trying to get people to understand that you got an almost EF-5 tornado that tore up 85% of the city,” said City Alderman Undray Williams. “(Residents) think it should come back in six months, eight months. Ain’t no way, that’s not going to happen. It might be two, three, four, five years before you get back to some normalcy.” 

He added that, amid organizing the city’s rebuilding effort, city officials are dealing with their own issues: three of the city’s board members, including himself, lost their homes in the tornado. Williams, who inherited his home from his family about five years ago, was trapped in the rubble of his house until being rescued, as he told Reuters in March. Since then, he and hundreds of other survivors across the state who lost their homes have been moving from hotel to hotel. 

In the week after the March tornados that also struck Carroll, Humphreys and Monroe counties, there were about 900 survivors staying in shelters, including at least 300 from Rolling Fork, according to the Red Cross. Now, those numbers have fallen to around 260 total, including 65 from Rolling Fork, and since March the Red Cross has moved them into hotels across north Mississippi. The nonprofit told Mississippi Today that its case workers are working with each of those survivors to find long-term housing solutions. 

Williams, who just moved into a FEMA trailer a week ago, said the city officials have been meeting in mobile offices since March, and it wasn’t until the last few days that the wrecked city hall building was torn down. 

As residents and officials alike navigate the bureaucracy involved in claiming assistance, their trauma still lingers. 

“You tell people what happened, but they don’t know the real feeling,” Williams said. 

For Rolling Fork, where one in five residents live below the poverty line, FEMA has approved over $5 million in Individual Assistance to survivors, and over $6 million to Sharkey County for debris removal.

The post Officials urge patience to despairing survivors four months after a tornado ravaged Rolling Fork appeared first on Mississippi Today.

In this episode of Mississippi Stories, Mississippi Today Editor-at-Large and Cartoonist Marshall Ramsey continues his series of author interviews leading up to the Mississippi Book Festival on August 19, 2023 at the State Capitol.

J J Sherman, who is a pharmacist himself, writes his first novel “Scorching Secrets: An Addison Best Pharmacy Mystery”. Addison Best has hit crisis-time in her early forties and fresh from a divorce with a philandering husband. Now, her father seeks help taking over duties at his independent pharmacy in small-town Preachers Rest in the Mississippi Delta. Enter a hard-nosed Dr. Stone who picks up her prescription. In what could only be described as a rookie mistake, Addison gives Dr. Stone her husband’s Viagra prescription. When Dr. Stone’s husband dies, Preachers Rest snaps into a place where nobody rests. Addison investigates – and finds that small-town Preachers Rest isn’t the wholesome critter it’s pretending to be.

The post Mississippi Stories: J J Sherman appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Aug. 12, 2005

Edgar Ray Killen, sentenced to 60 years in prison for the 1964 killings of three civil rights workers in Mississippi, was freed on an appeal bond after a hearing in which he swore he was permanently confined to his wheelchair. Less than a month later, a deputy sheriff saw Killen walking around, filling up his truck with gas “with no problem.” After a hearing, Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon ordered Killen back to prison, saying he believed a fraud had been committed against the court.

The post On this day in 2005 appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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As public pressure mounts to reduce the threat of PFAS in drinking water, local utilities around the country are unsure how soon they can comply with pending regulations from the federal government. 

The Environmental Protection Agency, which legally enforces water quality standards in the United States, recently proposed its first limit on PFAS, sometimes referred to in the news as “forever chemicals.” The EPA expects to finalize a rule around the end of 2023, giving local water systems three years from then to come into compliance. 

But those in the water utility world fear the agency’s proposal is asking for too much, too soon, especially from smaller, rural systems. Chris Moody, regulatory technical manager with the American Water Works Association, said the proposal could mean rate increases that disproportionately affect customers of those utilities. 

“If you’re in a really metropolitan area, your utility bill(s) might go up $60 to $100 (over) the course of a year, which doesn’t seem as daunting,” said Moody, whose association represents the interests of over 4,300 utilities nationwide. “Whereas if you are in a smaller utility or in a smaller community, that’s maybe a rural community in Mississippi or Florida or wherever that’s a town of a couple thousand people, you’re talking about thousands of dollars a year (in bill increases).”

In Mississippi, about 70% of the water and sewer systems in the state are rural utilities that serve a population of 3,300 or less, according to the Mississippi Rural Water Association. 

How utilities will handle new PFAS rules largely depends on what funding the state and federal governments make available. Jason Barrett, a Mississippi State University professor who specializes in water utilities, said the new regulations might force smaller systems to consolidate if there’s not enough financial support. 

“That may just be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, and they go, ‘Alright…we just need to merge with the adjacent system,’” Barrett said. 

In March, the EPA proposed the first federal limit on PFAS in residents’ tap water, which includes a cap of 4 ppt, or parts per trillion, on PFOA and PFOS, two of the more common types of PFAS, as well as limits on four other variants.

As of now, only a dozen states, not including Mississippi, either enforce PFAS limits in drinking water or have proposals to do so, according to Safe States. But over 30 states have some kind of policy aimed at reducing PFAS, such as in manufacturing. Mississippi, again, is not one of them. The state, though, is one of the many suing the manufacturers of PFAS, such as 3M and DuPont, for contaminating natural resources. 

Utilities will get some relief from lawsuits against those companies to help filter out PFAS. In June, 3M reached a proposed $10.3 billion settlement over PFAS contamination, just after DuPont, Chemours and Corteva settled their own lawsuit for $1.19 billion. Those funds will go towards cleaning local water supplies. 

It’s too early to tell who’s getting what. Exact details of the settlements haven’t been finalized, and utilities are still submitting claims for the money.

The EPA also recently announced $2 billion in funds, including nearly $21 million for Mississippi, for small and disadvantaged communities nationwide to help reduce “emerging contaminants,” such as PFAS.  

But some estimates suggest that funding might not be nearly enough. Engineering firm Black & Veatch, on behalf of the American Water Works Association, estimated the cost for utilities around the country to comply with the EPA’s proposal is around $50 billion. 

It’s unclear how widespread PFAS are in Mississippi’s drinking water, largely due to the fact the state doesn’t require testing. A Consumer Reports study of 149 connections and well water samples from around the state found some level of the contaminants in almost every sample, although only one of them – taken from Corinth – exceeded the limits the EPA proposed. 

One Ridgeland-based attorney, though, is working with rural utilities around the state to understand their PFAS levels, and confirmed to Mississippi Today that some of them had levels exceeding the EPA proposal. 

“We’ve seen some water providers that are going to have issues with the (proposed PFAS limit),” lawyer John Davidson said, without disclosing specific places or amounts. “Based on our testing, there are some that are going to have to do something, they’re going to have to figure out mitigation protocol for their water supply.” 

Moody with the American Water Works Association said if the EPA were to increase the limit to 10 ppt from 4, it would allow smaller utilities to better meet the EPA’s three-year timeline for incorporating the rule. The EPA based its proposed standard on identified cancer risks, water treatment costs and feasibility.

“The compliance window of three years is just not going to happen. Even if (the utilities) are sprinting, it’ll probably take them five years,” he said, before adding it could take small, rural systems closer to seven years. 

Caroline Ingram, an environmental specialist with Communities Unlimited who works with rural water systems in Mississippi on their finances, said smaller utilities can struggle getting the funding needed to make infrastructure improvements. 

“Some of these smaller systems do slip between the cracks,” she said. “I’ve got systems that are 100 people, and they just don’t have the capacity to pursue funding.” 

Ingram emphasized, though, that managers of those systems will work with what they have to enforce public health standards. 

“There might be a little education that needs to be completed,” she said. “But I know that the operators will be on board because there are so many that care about providing quality water. They’re public health workers.”

This investigation was conducted by Consumer Reports in partnership with Mississippi Spotlight, a collaboration between Mississippi Today, the Clarion Ledger and Mississippi Public Broadcasting. 

The post How will PFAS regulations affect Mississippi’s water providers, ratepayers? appeared first on Mississippi Today.

BILOXI — A candidate’s concession speech usually reveals a lot about how a person will handle an election loss. They can use their words to graciously accept the will of voters or work to assure their supporters that despite the loss, there are better days ahead.

But when the Associated Press at 11:30 p.m. on Tuesday declared that firebrand state Sen. Chris McDaniel had lost his bid for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor, there was no one at McDaniel’s election night party to hear such a speech.

The uber-conservative state senator’s supporters had gone home, TV journalists had returned to their broadcast stations and the rock band who entertained guests earlier in the evening had broken its equipment down.

McDaniel, aided by more than $1 million in dark money spending by out-of-state groups, spent weeks attacking incumbent Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann for not being conservative enough for Mississippi Republican voters. By the time McDaniel’s election party had cleared Tuesday night, it was apparent that those very voters decisively disagreed.

READ MORE: Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann defeats Chris McDaniel, will face Democratic newcomer in November

It was an anticlimactic end for McDaniel’s fiery statewide campaign, but the effect of the evening was much more significant to Mississippi politics: For the first time since 2008, Mississippi’s far-right conservative movement had no clear leader. And to make matters worse for the group, Republican voters had soundly rejected its coordinated effort to grow in 2023.

For more than a decade, McDaniel worked hard to pull his fellow Republican elected officials farther to the right. In this endeavor, he was successful. He built and leveraged a sizable base of conservative voters who followed his lead and lived in the minds of establishment Republican elected officials. McDaniel might not have won a statewide election, but those GOP leaders long feared the effects of his political organization and ideology.

But on Tuesday night, after his third statewide loss in a row, McDaniel conceded his race against Hosemann and conceded much more. Appearing visibly tired and speaking with a clear tone of dejection, he suggested to reporters he would step away from public life and that it was time for a fresh face to carry his far-right wing of the Republican Party forward.

“I think it’s on life support,” McDaniel told Mississippi Today of the movement he’s led. “It doesn’t have to be me that brings it back. Anybody can that delivers the message well.”

But the movement suffered a much bigger blow Tuesday night than just McDaniel. Numerous representatives of far-right conservatives in Mississippi circulated an endorsement list on social media that included 11 candidates for statewide, regional commission, or legislative seats. 

These candidates were all challenging Republicans who the faction deemed “not conservative enough.” As one leader wrote of the endorsements in an email the night before Election Day, “This election is Mississippi’s fight for conservative government. If the liberal Hosemann side of the Republican party wins tomorrow, I believe Mississippi will return to a Democrat controlled government within a few years.”

The warnings and coordination fell flat, to say the least. All but one of those endorsed candidates, listed below in bold, lost their primaries — and most by substantial vote margins.

• Chris McDaniel lost to incumbent Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann by 9 percentage points.
• Incumbent Southern District Public Service Commissioner Dane Maxwell lost to Nelson Carr by 8 points.
• Lauren Smith lost to incumbent state Sen. Chad McMahan for the Senate District 6 seat by 14 points.
• Ricky Caldwell lost to incumbent state Sen. Nicole Boyd for the Senate District 9 seat by 52 points.
• Alan Sibley lost to incumbent state Sen. Bart Williams for the Senate District 15 seat by 18 points.
• Walter Hopper lost to incumbent state Sen. Kevin Blackwell for the Senate District 19 seat by 18 points.
• Don Hartness lost to state Rep. Robin Robinson for the Senate District 42 seat, previously held by McDaniel, by 12 points.
• Jamey Goodkind lost to Kimberly Remak for the House District 7 seat by 5 points (provisional votes are still being counted as of Friday afternoon, and it’s possible Goodkind will face Remak in an Aug. 29 runoff).
• John Williams lost to W.I. Harris for the House District 28 seat by 34 points.
• Phil Harding lost to two candidates, Zachary Grady and Felix Gines, for the House District 115 seat after earning just 258 votes.

The only candidate on the endorsement list who won his primary was former state Rep. Chris Brown, who handily beat political newcomer Tanner Newman for the Northern District Public Service Commission seat.

Steven Utroska, the Mississippi director for the State Freedom Caucus Network which helped distribute the endorsement list, attended McDaniel’s party in Biloxi on Tuesday. While McDaniel was never a member of the Freedom Caucus, an organization of House members who support conservative policies, the Jones County senator is broadly respected by the members of the organization.

Utroska, in an interview with Mississippi Today in Biloxi, struck a somber tone when discussing the election results.

“It certainly seems like there’s a conservative vacuum, and we’re losing strong conservatives,” he said.

With McDaniel’s loss and the loss of his fellow far-right hopefuls, the future of the faction is unclear. Mississippi, of course, has no shortage of Republican officials, given the state GOP will continue to make up a supermajority of the legislative seats in both chambers of the state Capitol. But the faction McDaniel has led for the last decade now has no clear leader.

Election night results show that Republican state Sen. Kathy Chism of New Albany will be the only ultra-conservative and McDaniel ally to return to the state Senate in January. Several House Freedom Caucus members appear to have survived the primary election carnage, but there is no clear leader of the far-right conservative movement.

But the handful of ultraconservative members returning to the Capitol will have even less influence than they wielded in recent years.

Rep. Jason White is expected to become speaker of the House in January, and most Capitol observers predict he will continue the role of his predecessor, Philip Gunn, in appointing primarily mainstream conservatives to lead powerful committees and largely shutting out the right-wing crowd.

And if Hosemann defeats his Democratic opponent in the November election, the lieutenant governor will almost certainly wield his power to relegate the few members of the far-right faction to the back benches of the 52-member chamber, leaving them with little influence over policy.

Over the next four years in state government, the Freedom Caucus and like-minded lawmakers will have to start from scratch to chart out a new path for their faction and determine what their organization will look like in a new state government.

“I think in the next few months we’ll be reaching out to new members who have been elected to get to know them and their beliefs,” Utroska said. “And after that, we’ll just have to see where it goes.”

The post Republican voters deliver fatal blow to Mississippi’s far-right conservative movement appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The state Health Department deemed Mississippi Baptist Medical Center qualified to host a burn center, health system officials announced at a press conference Thursday.

But with almost half of Baptist’s burn center requirements not fully met and millions from the state Legislature in flux, there’s still a long way to go.

Since the state’s only accredited burn center housed at Merit Health Central closed in October, both Baptist and the University of Mississippi Medical Center have been vying for the designation. Merit’s former burn director, Dr. Derek Culnan, now leads the burn unit at Baptist.

UMMC got its approval in April, while Baptist formally received its designation on July 24.

“I came to this hospital and this community and asked them to take us in, and I said, ‘I have thousands of people who need help here, and they need it now, not years from now,’” Culnan said at the press conference. “And (Baptist) said yes.”

Baptist has treated 927 burn patients since last November when they received their first, according to CEO Bobbie Ware. 

“Today is just the beginning of the development of a premier burn program in this region,” Ware said at the press conference.

After some back and forth, the Legislature ultimately gave the state Health Department the responsibility of choosing Mississippi’s next burn center and appropriated $4 million for whatever facility was chosen to defray expenses. However, nothing in the bill prevents the money from going to more than one center. 

But now that two facilities have been approved, no one is quite sure how the money will get split.  

Baptist’s results versus UMMC

Before Baptist received its designation, a team of experts assessed the facility to determine the health system’s compliance with burn center standards. 

The team — Dr. William Hickerson, who helped establish Memphis’ Firefighters Regional Burn Center and served as the past president of the American Burn Association; Terry Collins, a nurse who directs the trauma program for the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences; and Teresa Windham, a trauma system nurse in the state Health Department’s Bureau of Acute Care Systems — visited Baptist on July 18. 

Out of 155 categories, the team found that Baptist fully met criteria in 90 categories, but fell short in 61. Another three were not applicable, and one ranking was missing. 

The findings of the two facilities’ site surveys show that while UMMC fully met more categories, Baptist partially met more criteria. Fewer than 20 categories were not met at all by both facilities, showing similar levels of compliance.

Hickerson said UMMC and Baptist had differing strengths and weaknesses, but both showed that they could correct their problems.

“A burn center is not necessarily that you build it, and they’ll come, and you’ll have just absolutely wonderful results,” he said. “It’s developing the team and doing things where it’s going to be safe for the patient. And that’s something that can be challenging when you’re starting out with a new team.”

While UMMC appeared to struggle more with ongoing burn education and training and recruitment, Baptist was docked in several categories for a lack of documentation. 

For example, under the continuity of care category, Baptist “partially met” the criteria for providing support for family members or other significant people. However, the facility only had a verbalized plan in place, and the assessment team was “unable to verify the implementation with current documentation.”

Both facilities need stronger policies and procedures around burn care, the reports found, and the burn directors at both health systems only “partially met” requirements. 

Baptist’s team in particular shined in the report— their burn program manager was noted as a strength of their center.

“This team’s just amazing,” Culnan said at the press conference.

However, while Baptist seems to have a more complete staff compared to UMMC at the time of the survey report, it appears that the director, Culnan, is the only attending surgeon. Hickerson said that might be a problem. 

“One individual a team does not make. Dr. Culnan will need assistance to prevent burnout,” Hickerson said. “He’s going to need to go to meetings, he’s going to need to take vacations with the family. So you’ve got to have someone that’s going to be very qualified to step in during those times.”

On the other hand, UMMC has multiple options because of a good working relationship between their plastics and general surgery department, Hickerson said.

One category was missing a ranking: the inclusion of physician specialists on Baptist’s burn team, which Hickerson said was likely a mistake. 

Baptist spokesperson Kimberly Alexander could not answer whether the facility has made any improvements since the site survey, including the addition of more attending surgeons.

The state Department of Health also could not answer by press time why Baptist was approved while meeting just over half of the burn center requirements. 

Hickerson was hopeful that the facilities could correct their shortfalls, and said ideally, there could be collaboration.

“It seems like with both pursuing having a burn center that it would be nice to have a working relationship between the two,” Hickerson said. 

Baptist has 30 days from the date of the site survey report’s submission to develop a corrective action plan that addresses the burn center’s deficiencies. According to Alexander, it has not yet been created. 

Baptist moves from Level 4 to Level 3 trauma center

In addition to its burn center designation announcement, Baptist also unveiled its upgraded trauma center designation at the Thursday press conference. 

Baptist has recently been deemed a Level 3 facility, which means it can “provide initial resuscitation” and treat the majority of trauma injuries but lack neurological services.

Baptist is now also a primary pediatric trauma care facility, a requirement of all trauma centers in Mississippi. It’s not clear why they didn’t have this designation previously, when the health system operated as a Level 4 trauma center, the lowest ranking from the state Department of Health. The agency annually assesses hospitals’ trauma care capacity. 

Mississippi Today found in 2019 that Baptist was qualified to care for patients as a Level 2 trauma center, but the health system was paying $1.5 million annually to opt out through a non-participation fee. Baptist had been paying the state millions since 2008 to avoid treating certain trauma patients. 

Ware defended the decision to Mississippi Today in 2019 by saying it was what Baptist leaders felt the facility had the ability for, based on the availability of specialists. 

UMMC is the state’s only Level 1 trauma center.

Ware said Thursday, though, that the health system decided to pursue the higher designation because leaders finally felt it was prepared for it.

“We just felt we were at a point … with our general surgery and our orthopedic surgeons, they were committed to supporting that,” Ware said. “We were taking care of trauma patients anyway, they come here through our (emergency department). There are people in Mississippi that want to receive care here, and we felt like it was important to be able to confirm that designation and be able to provide their care.”

While it’s not clear if Baptist plans to pursue a Level 1 designation, Ware said they’re continuing to evaluate whether they should attempt to be designated as a Level 2 facility, which would require recruiting neurosurgeons. Ware said leaders have not yet made a decision.

However, Ware said the burn center is their primary focus right now. 

“We’re going to start moving forward with working on our American Burn Association designation and getting our programming in order to be a leading program not just within the state, but within the country and within the world,” Culnan said.

Millions at stake

Both UMMC and Baptist are eligible to receive funds from the $4 million the Legislative has allocated toward the state’s next burn center.

How it’ll be split, though, isn’t yet clear. 

House Bill 1626, which outlines how the Health Department is funded by the state, says $4 million is intended to “defray the expense of establishing and equipping a burn center” in Mississippi. 

It goes on to say that the funds will be disbursed by the state Health Department as a reimbursable grant to the entities where a burn center is established.

Legislators involved in the bill’s creation, however, either could not be reached or were unclear about how the funds would be allocated. The bill’s principal author, Rep. John Read, said he was under the impression the state Health Department would handle the money’s allocation.

“I have not seen anything from the Department of Health yet,” he said.

A spokesperson from the state Health Department initially said the agency would follow the bill’s instructions. After more inquiries, however, a spokesperson replied that because both facilities are now designated as burn centers, they can now both access the funding. However, they’ll have to bid for the funds through a request for proposal, or RFP. 

On Thursday, Ware was unaware of details. Baptist plans to move forward with the development of its burn center through funds derived from operations and other capital funding and grants. 

“I’m sure (the state Health Department) is working on a plan, and they’ll communicate with me when they have more information available,” she said. 

The post Mississippi now has two designated burn centers. What happens next? appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Roberta Bell, a 58-year-old grandmother who lives in Vicksburg, was fired from her job as a women’s correctional officer at the Louisiana Transition Center for Women because she agreed to raise the baby of a pregnant woman jailed at her workplace.

Katie Bourgeois was set to give birth before her sentence ended, and Bell, recognizing that Bourgeois was trying to turn her life around, didn’t think it was right that the baby would be turned over to CPS and potentially forever lost to its mother.

Now, about two months after the baby was born and Bell cared for it in its first few weeks of life, the child and mother are reunited after Bourgeois was released from prison.

And Bell, who sacrificed her job and her own financial livelihood to raise a baby who was not her own, wants to use the experience to help others in need.

‘I’m going to get that baby’

Before the COVID-19 pandemic began, Bell was living in Jackson. It was a difficult and chaotic time for the mother of three. Her father was ill and her mother was struggling as his primary caregiver.

Most days, Bell drove from Jackson to Vicksburg, picking up her parents and driving them back to Jackson for doctor’s appointments before driving them home to Vicksburg and then returning home to Jackson herself. 

She knew she needed to find a job closer to home, so she took her daughter’s advice and applied for a job at the Madison Parish LTCW, also known as the Louisiana Transitional Center for Women, across the Mississippi River. She was hired not too long afterwards.

Working at the prison not only helped alleviate some of Bell’s stress while helping care for her parents, but it allowed her to do something that has long been important to her: minister to incarcerated women.

“God had already tried to put on my heart to minister to women and to get them to know and start serving Christ,” she said. “Doing the right thing instead of doing the wrong thing. Once I got hired and I started working over there, I was ministering to the young ladies.”

Unbeknownst to Bell, one of the incarcerated women in the facility was facing a serious problem: She would give birth before she was released from prison. 

The woman, Katie Bourgeois, didn’t have many options. Her own mother was struggling through a divorce, so she didn’t think she would be able to get the baby. Without anyone else to help, Bourgeois knew her child would go into Child Protective Services, at which point she may never see her baby again. She anguished over what she could do, talking to some of the other women in the facility about her situation.

Then some of the other women in the facility had an idea: “Mama Bell,” as they called her, should take the baby.

Bell happened to be standing on the walk when the women arrived at this conclusion. One woman noticed Bell and called out to her.

“She said, ‘Ms. Bell, Ms. Bell! You’ll keep her baby for her, won’t you, Ms. Bell? Won’t you keep her baby? She just doesn’t want her baby to go to CPS,’” Bell recalled.

On a whim, Bell agreed to keep the baby, not realizing that they were serious about asking her to do so or that the woman legitimately did not have anyone to help out. But when she later realized the seriousness of the question, Bell’s answer remained the same: she would take care of the baby. 

Bell talked to Bourgeois, who was at the time about five-and-a-half months pregnant, to learn more details about her release and to confirm she truly wanted Bell to keep her baby. Immediately after talking to Bourgeois, Bell said she met with her commanding officer. Gossip travels quickly at the facility, and Bell didn’t want her supervisor to find out about the situation from someone else before hearing about it from her.

“I told him that I didn’t want to do anything against the policy and procedures,” Bell said. “(I said), ‘I want to come to you and let you know that I don’t want to see this child’s baby go to CPS.’”

She says the officer told her that it was “a sad situation,” and that he’d get back to her about it. Bell recalled that at least three months passed between the time Bell spoke with her supervisor and Bourgeois gave birth. As time passed, she heard nothing else about it from the officer — Bell thinks that, with everything happening at the facility, the officer forgot about Bourgeois and her baby. She decided to ask a maintenance worker to give her contact information to the owner of the prison, so that she could talk to him about the situation before going ahead on her own. She says the owner never responded to her or called her.

In the meantime, Bourgeois’ pregnancy continued. When it was almost time for her to deliver, she told Bell that she had to give her contact information to the hospital in order for them to allow her to leave with the baby.

Bell gave her information to Bourgeois. She’s not exactly sure who is responsible for what happened next, but Bell says it transpired like this: On Mother’s Day weekend, Bell was enjoying a rare day off. While she was away, prison authorities authorized a shake down of Bourgeois’ room. They found Bell’s information among Bourgeois’ belongings. Afterwards, the commanding officer told Bell that he wanted to see her. Bell says she received a call from an anonymous woman with a New Orleans area code who warned her about her information being found during the shake down.

“I told her, ‘I’m not worried about that. I can handle what I’ve done. It’s not secret because the major already knew… he knew I was thinking about trying to get the baby,’” she said.

When she arrived at work, she was told to stay in the lobby instead of proceeding through to the prison. The commanding officer told her that he was aware she had released her information to an inmate and that, in doing so, she had violated prison rules. Bell says she explained that she did so because the hospital needed the information, not because she wanted Bourgeois to have it for personal use.

Bell says the officer doubled down, saying that it was a violation regardless. She told him that she understood and was prepared to accept the consequences. Bell assumed she would be disciplined in some way, but she was not prepared for the end of the conversation. The officer  asked her if she intended on still going through with receiving the baby.

“I said, ‘Major, if the hospital calls me to come get that baby, I’m going to get that baby because I gave her my word,’” she said.

Bell says the officer terminated her on the spot and she left. The interaction took place days before Bourgeois was scheduled to deliver, despite the facility knowing Bell’s plans for months. Because of the delay in getting back to her, by the time the shake down occurred, it would have been too late for Bourgeois and Bell to figure out an alternative to Bell taking the baby. 

“It’s a difference if you want your baby and you want to take care of your baby than if you don’t want your baby and you don’t mind somebody else taking care of it,” Bell said. “She’s really trying to turn her life around … I look at it as if you’re trying, you’re taking a step. Once you take a step, God moves on your behalf.”

Bell and her family believe she was targeted for trying to do the right thing. For three years, Bell went above the call of duty as a worker, her daughter Amesha West, said. 

“My mom has missed so many birthday parties, family gatherings, holidays because she was dedicated to her job,” she said. “Some days my mom would go into work at two in the morning, get off at one in the evening. If no one showed up on the second shift once she made it home, she’d literally put the uniform back on and drive back across the river to Tallulah.”

Bell says she loved her job because it allowed her to “give God glory to be able to spread his love throughout that prison system.”

Madison Parish LTCW declined to comment.

‘I wouldn’t give it up for nothing’

Though talking about her former job still causes her pain, Bell lights up when talking about raising Kayson.

“I love him as if he’s my own grandbaby,” she said. 

Kayson was immediately absorbed into Bell’s family. West and her husband drove from Jackson to help take care of the baby. West’s son, Kason, particularly took to the newborn, with whom he shares a name, while Bell’s other grandchildren were also eager to help. Bell’s ex-husband, along with her siblings and other children, also helped out with the baby. 

Raising a newborn can be difficult at any stage, but especially when dealing with unemployment. The family started a GoFundMe to help with expenses and an Amazon wish list to help with items. Since Kayson’s birth, Bell says that she has been “overwhelmed” by how her community, friends and family have supported her, gifting her diapers, baby bathtubs and other items.

“It’s just been tremendously a blessing, and I thank God for them,” she said. “I’m barely making it myself. I don’t make no money, and I’m here trying to maintain my bills the best I know how.”

Bourgeois, in an interview with WLBT in early July shortly after she was released, said she planned to focus on finding a job and embrace her new role as a mother.

“I can’t thank (Bell) enough for everything she’s done. Kayson’s doing great,” Bourgeois said.

Since Bourgeois was reunited with her baby, she and Bell have not communicated very much and she has only seen Kayson in person once. After finding out Bourgeois was not allowed to cross state lines as a condition of her parole, Bell drove back to Vicksburg, loaded her car with items for the baby and drove back to Louisiana. Otherwise, she says that she has been sent a couple of photos of Kayson.

“(Katie) said that everything was good and fine there, so I didn’t push the issue,” Bell said. “I didn’t want her to feel like I was gone be mad or anything because that’s not the issue. The decision was hers and I have to accept that. I think about him all the time, he’s constantly on my mind. I think about him all the time … I don’t have any bad feelings about it. I just pray and hope that everything is still going good.”

Bell says that Bourgeois and her mother have invited her to visit whenever she is able to do so, but Bell’s time immediately post-Kayson was occupied with trying to find a new job and trying to open The Serenity Center, a recovery home for unhoused and formerly incarcerated women.

She hopes to open The Serenity Center before the year is out. Through the center, she plans to help secure safe and supportive housing for women who don’t have it. Through her daughter, Bell started a GoFundMe for the center. So far, she has raised nearly 30% of her goal.

More presently, though, she hopes that her situation will inspire others to do the same if they are in a position to help people, no matter the cost.

And even though it cost her her livelihood, Bell says she would make the decision to take Kayson again.

“I wouldn’t give it up for nothing because of the love that I want to spread abroad on this earth,” she said. “It’s the love that God wants us all to have. It’s a beautiful thing when you can love God and love all the people that come on your path whether they treat you good or not.”

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The Lauderdale County Board of Supervisors decided this year not to award over $200,000 to the state health agency for the operation of the county health department as it had done the previous year.

But Lauderdale officials say that’s not because they don’t care about public health — in fact, they’re spending more than $2 million of their pandemic relief funds upgrading the facility’s air-conditioning system. 

They say it’s because the Mississippi State Department of Health couldn’t adequately answer what that money was going toward. 

County health departments are funded by a mixture of state and county money. Usually, the county provides a building, while the Health Department provides staffing, according to State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney. The facilities provide essential public health services such as vaccinations, STI testing, diabetes and hypertension care, pap smears, pregnancy testing and more. 

And as hospitals struggle amid a statewide health care crisis and more of the state’s wellbeing may fall on publicly funded health care, Edney has stressed the importance of these local clinics. 

The state Department of Health has been tasked with mounting responsibilities over the years, but their state funding has remained relatively stable. Health officials are still reeling from the pandemic, and 40% of positions at the agency were unfilled as of May.  

Edney acknowledged at last month’s state Board of Health meeting that his agency had dropped the ball with Lauderdale, and it may not be an isolated incident. 

“We did not do a good enough job with that board,” he said. “Fires break out — I personally have been going and putting those fires out — but we’re already talking internally about doing a better job on our regional level of our folks being at board of supervisors meetings, just going and saying, ‘Hello.’”

Chris Lafferty, administrator of Lauderdale County, isn’t aware of any changes at the county health department, so he didn’t realize there was a “fire.” His conversations with Mississippi Today this week was the first time he had heard of any issues, he said.

“The question of need comes up — was the money really needed? If it was, why didn’t they articulate that?” Lafferty said. “None of the local leadership has contacted us. Now they’re all over it. They’ve had a year.”

In 2022, Lafferty sent a letter to Susan Rigdon, a division director at the agency, informing her that the Board of Supervisors didn’t approve any funding for the agency. The previous year, the board had allocated $242,100 in its $65 million budget to the Department of Health.

Lafferty said he hadn’t heard back from the agency, nor did he hear any complaints, until Mississippi Today recounted a quote from Edney at a state Board of Health meeting on July 12, more than nine months later. 

“It was a $200,000-a-year appropriation that (Lauderdale County) defunded,” Edney said at the meeting. “They took us out of their budget totally.”

According to Lafferty, it wasn’t an easy decision. More than a year ago, the Board of Supervisors was determined to avoid a tax increase in Lauderdale, and Lafferty started looking at how to save dollars. 

So, he called David Caulfield, the Health Department’s regional administrator for the Central Public Health Region which includes Lauderdale and 27 other counties. Lafferty wanted him to explain where the nearly quarter of a million dollars was going – whether it was staying in Lauderdale County and what services it was funding. Caulfield couldn’t tell him, Lafferty said.

“I think those are reasonable questions,” he said. “I cannot in good conscience … ask the Board of Supervisors to give money to an organization that could not answer simple questions.”

Lafferty recommended to the Board of Supervisors, then, that the funding be cut, and Lauderdale County did not have a tax hike last year, he said.

According to Lafferty, no services have been cut or reduced at the county health department as a result – which begged the question, what did the Department of Health do with the $242,100 last year?

Mississippi Today reached out to the Health Department on July 31 with questions about Lauderdale County’s funding to their agency.

The agency replied with an emailed statement that said it provided the same information to Lauderdale County last year as it had in prior years, but it’s unclear what specific information that included. 

“Each year, information is provided to each county board of supervisors that includes overall budget information of each county health department and the services these funds support,” the emailed statement from spokesperson Liz Sharlot reads. “Our local administrators also meet with county officials, as needed, to answer any questions and provide additional information. This information was provided to Lauderdale last year as it had been provided in years past.”

The statement goes on to say that the money from Lauderdale was funding county health department personnel as well as equipment and supplies. 

Mississippi Today reached out to the state Health Department again on Tuesday with follow-up questions, including whether the Health Department provided the county officials with the information they sought regarding how the money was spent and how the supervisors’ decision not to award the agency any money impacted the county health department’s operations. 

Spokesperson Elizabeth Grey did not answer any specific questions, including if and how the Lauderdale County Health Department was impacted. She said on Thursday that Edney and Caulfield were working to schedule a meeting with the Lauderdale County Board of Supervisors to rectify the situation — after that meeting, the agency would respond to Mississippi Today’s questions, she said.  

Mississippi state law mandates that county supervisors “shall be authorized” to make necessary appropriations to the Department of Health to pay the salary of the employees of the county health department, as well as supplies. It goes on to say more clearly that the board “shall provide” an office, or building, for the health department. 

It’s not clear if most counties are providing additional funding beyond building costs for their health departments — the state Health Department did not respond to that question from Mississippi Today.

Jonathan Wells, president of the Lauderdale County Board of Supervisors, says the county provides a building — and more. 

“So, the Legislature says — and I would call it an unfunded mandate — that we supply the Department of Health a building,” he said. “Not only are we doing that, but we’re putting $2.5 million in ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) money into a new HVAC system for that building.”

The county continues to pay for utilities in that building, security services as well as other general upkeep, Wells said. 

That won’t change next year, according to Lafferty — but neither will their zero-dollar allocation toward the State Health Department. 

On Wednesday, Caulfield visited Lafferty in his office, holding a budget request for the upcoming year in his hands, he said. Lafferty says he is still unclear what the county’s funding responsibilities are and will recommend that the Board of Supervisors continue to withhold funding to the state Department of Health.

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