Shortly after President Barack Obama ushered the Affordable Care Act through Congress, the U.S. states expanding Medicaid were for the most part Democratic-dominated states in the northeast and west coast with a sprinkling of left-leaning midwestern states.
There was, however, a notable exception: ruby red Arkansas.
To this day, most of the 10 states that have refused to expand Medicaid are located in the South, so Arkansas and a few other notable exceptions continue to stand out.
Still, in 2013, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe viewed expanding Medicaid as “a no-brainer” to provide health care coverage to primarily the working poor.
“But it was Obamacare and nearly every Republican opposes Obamacare philosophically, especially those in Southern states,” Beebe, who is now retired from politics and living in his hometown of Searcy in north central Arkansas, recently told Mississippi Today in an interview.
When Beebe proposed being one of the first states to expand Medicaid in 2013, he was a second-term Democratic governor with a Republican-majority Legislature. And to make matters even more difficult, the Arkansas Constitution requires a three-fourths vote of each legislative chamber to pass an appropriations bill, meaning a high threshold was needed to pass Medicaid expansion.
Still, Beebe set his sights on doing something historic in 2013 by expanding Medicaid.
“It is a no-brainer whether you are Democratic or Republican if you care about your people,” the veteran Arkansas politician said.
In the South, only Kentucky and Louisiana have followed Arkansas’ lead in expanding Medicaid. North Carolina has recently expanded Medicaid, though it has not yet been enacted.
In Mississippi, Brandon Presley, who is trying to become the first Democrat elected governor since 1999, said if elected he will work to expand Medicaid despite having a Republican Legislature.
If elected, Presley might study how Beebe succeeded in expanding Medicaid despite some difficult obstacles.
In 2013, Beebe said he was able to prevail by first approaching moderate Republican businessmen and making the argument that Medicaid expansion was good for the state’s economy and its people — "people I called the working poor, who worked but could not afford health care and their employers did not provide it," he said.
Beebe can still rattle off all the arguments he used in 2013 to convince lawmakers to expand Medicaid. Many of those arguments have been used – unsuccessfully – in Mississippi.
But there has been no one advocating for expanding Medicaid in Mississippi with the bully pulpit that Beebe had in Arkansas as governor. Current Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves and Phil Bryant, his predecessor, were vocal in their opposition to Medicaid expansion.
Besides having the bully pulpit, Beebe had a vast knowledge of the workings of state government. He previously served as attorney general and for 20 years in the state Senate, including 10 of the 12 years that future President Bill Clinton served as governor. For many of those years, he was the leader of the Senate.
"I knew how to work the Legislature because I had been worked by the best," Beebe said matter of factly. "But I think the arguments carried the day."
Still, Beebe said, getting the expansion bill through the legislative process was difficult and took several votes. In the 100-member House the proposal, needing 75 votes, garnered 72 or 73 multiple times.
“I believe it finally passed with 77,” Beebe recalled. “It was the same in the Senate where there were 35 members.”
It passed in 2013 and went into effect in 2014.
A key to passage was the unique form of Medicaid expansion proposed by Beebe. Recognizing the difficulty in getting the proposal needing a three-quarters vote, through the Arkansas Legislature, Beebe proposed Medicaid expansion be offered through private health insurance companies instead of by a government entity.
Instead of money going to the government entity to pay the health care costs of those covered through expansion, the money would go to the private insurance companies that provided the health care coverage. Some Republicans could support the proposal under the pretense it was not expanding a government program.
The state of Arkansas would need a waiver from the federal government to approve such a unique plan.
“The Obama administration needed a win in a Southern state so they approved it,” Beebe said. Plus, it helped that Obama’s Health and Human Services Secretary was Kathleen Sebelius, whom Beebe knew from her time as governor of Kansas.
Beebe said the plan helped to attract more insurance companies to Arkansas, resulting in insurance premiums not skyrocketing in costs at a time when they were rising dramatically in the rest of the South. He reasoned that health care providers were not having to pass on costs to people who had insurance to pay for the people who received treatment, but had no means to pay for it.
He said that provided a powerful argument for expanding Medicaid. Another strong argument, Beebe said, is that if Arkansas did not expand Medicaid the citizens of the state would still be paying for the expansion in states like California and New York.
Expansion helped Arkansas hospitals and actually resulted in less costs for the state.
A lot has changed in Arkansas since Beebe was elected to his second term as the only governor in Arkansas history to win every county. Now, former Donald Trump spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders is governor, but Beebe said he is not hearing anything about repealing Medicaid expansion, though it continues to be tweaked.
“They changed the name,” he said.
Beebe said it would be difficult to remove coverage for 300,000 Arkansans.
“Plus, the budget could not afford it,” Beebe said.
Two-term Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards calls expanding Medicaid as he took office in 2016 “the easiest big decision I have ever made” — and one that has had clear and convincing positive results for Louisianans.
“To me it was an obvious no-brainer, and maybe it’s easier for me to say that than others because I believe in making government work,” Edwards said in a recent interview with Mississippi Today. “I don’t believe in just saying, ‘Well, we just don’t want to expand government.’ Quite frankly, I don’t expect St. Peter to ask that question one day: Did you expand government? But I do expect him to ask what I did for the least fortunate among us.”
Louisiana, like other states nationwide, was at the time facing a health care crisis. It led the nation in rates of uninsured people — 22%-23%, mostly the “working poor.”
“We had many hospitals, especially rural hospitals, that were in danger of closing when I became governor,” Edwards said. “But because we have expanded Medicaid, we have not lost a single one.
“I’m not going to try to tell you that it fixed all of our problems and that all of a sudden we have the best health outcomes in the country,” Edwards continued. “What I can tell you is it addressed our most pressing problems, and it has created an environment where we can more easily produce better health outcomes because you just have more people with the ability to go to a doctor.”
Edwards said that when he became governor of Louisiana in 2016, the politics of Medicaid expansion "were probably about the same" as they are now in neighboring Mississippi, and so was the dire health care situation. He would unequivocally recommend Mississippi leaders take advantage of the federal program designed to help poor states with health care.
Edwards notes the politics on expansion have changed in Louisiana.
"In Louisiana we have a gubernatorial campaign underway, and I don't believe there is a single major candidate of either party who says anything other than they will leave the Medicaid expansion in place."
Mississippi Today interviewed the term-limited Gov. Edwards on Medicaid expansion as the end of his term nears, on a policy he says "ranks at the very top" of his accomplishments. The interview is below, edited for brevity.
Mississippi Today: Could you give a brief/broad overview of the situation when you took office, and of the impact Medicaid expansion has had in Louisiana since 2016.
Gov. John Bel Edwards: First, I'll talk about the impact it's had on our overall state budget. Secondly, individuals and families — many for the first time — have health insurance. And thirdly, we saw positive impact on the financial bottom line of hospitals across our state.
When I became governor, we had the largest general fund budget deficit in our state's history. It exceeded $2 billion for the first full fiscal year that started July 1, 2016, and that was a little more than 20% of all our state general fund. And that deficit occurred after several years of leading the nation in cuts to higher education, and cuts to basic health care delivery systems in our state.
And the cuts were just horrible with respect to Medicaid ... You have optional programs, but the optional programs were like hospice, end-stage renal disease care — things that most people would never consider optional, like things that would impact a person's ability to stay in a nursing home.
The people who were caught uninsured were working poor people. The poorest of the poor qualified for Medicaid. Those who worked and made enough money had private insurance or employer sponsored insurance. Working poor people were left out of that equation, and our uninsured rate among working aged adults was the highest in the country, around 22%-23%.
If someone is uninsured and they have access to any health care, it's likely to be an emergency room, which is the most costly way to receive health care. It's also the least effective way to manage disease ... That care either went totally uncompensated by the health care provider, meaning they had to pay for its themselves, or it might have been compensated in part by the (federal-state Disproportionate Share Hospitals) program.
But the DiSH program costs the state about 40 cents on the dollar. Medicaid expansion has never cost more than 10 cents on the dollar, and in Louisiana, the 10 cents is actually borne by the health care providers themselves because the hospitals realized their bottom lines would benefit so much that they assessed themselves.
This has produced an awful lot of compensation for these hospitals. Their bottom line is so much better — and this is all hospitals, our community hospitals, our very large hospitals like Ochsner, like Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady, like Children's Hospitals of New Orleans. But also, and I suspect most importantly, rural hospitals, because they were the ones struggling the most just to keep their doors open and routinely cutting programs and reducing staff to stay afloat.
We were able to address all of that through the Medicaid expansion, and it helped our state budget tremendously. My predecessor said he refused to expand Medicaid because we couldn't afford it. The truth is we couldn't afford not to do it. It actually helped our bottom line and allowed us to shore up the financing of our hospitals.
But it also helped these working poor people because many of them for the first time in their lives had an insurance card in their pockets ... As the medical community here has told me many times, it saved a lot of lives here in Louisiana ... I believe that Medicaid expansion is a pro-life position.
MT: Did Louisiana see an increase in gross domestic product from Medicaid expansion?
Edwards: We had GDP gains. I can't say it's because of Medicaid expansion or that it's responsible for X percentage of that, but I can tell you we have had the highest personal income ever. We have had the lowest unemployment rates ever and we have had the most people working ever. We have had tremendous growth in our GDP, and I just intuitively know it helped.
... By getting away from all that uncompensated care and the matching payments we had to put up, and because hospitals assessed themselves to cover the 10% costs, we were then able to use the budget savings and the money we had to address other pressing concerns that we inherited after a long period of disinvestment in our state. It allowed us to invest in other critical priorities.
MT: How has expansion affected Louisiana’s workforce?
Edwards: So, you have a relationship with a primary care physician. You have routine appointments and diagnostic evaluations, breast cancer screenings, prostate cancer screenings ... Your disease gets diagnosed earlier. Your treatment starts sooner, and it comes with a prescription benefit, so you have a way to be healthier. You're a more productive worker. You're less likely to be laid off. You're more likely to be able to support your family. That business has a healthier employee who shows up to work more often and is more productive — and the business didn't have to pay for it.
I’ve had employers tell me they had good employees, but they weren’t necessarily healthy. They had a disease. They didn’t have health insurance, so they had to miss work to go and wait around an emergency room. They would have to call in sick more often. These employers benefit from having a healthier, more productive workforce that doesn’t come at their expense.
When you expand Medicaid for the working poor, you also work with the health care providers so that they don’t just have appointments 9-5 Monday through Friday, but you work with them so they have appointments after hours during the week, have places they can go on the weekends so that they don’t have to miss work in order to access basic care.
Now we have the advent of telehealth, which can be covered through the Medicaid program and allow them to see doctors and even specialists without having to travel. That is particularly onerous for poor people in rural areas that lack the resources and also are furthest away from the nearest physicians that they need to see.
MT: Has expansion had an impact on mental health and-or substance abuse?
Edwards: It comes with behavioral health benefits for mental health, and it also comes with benefits for those people who have addiction disorders, and those benefits both in patient and outpatient. That's clearly something we still don’t have enough of, but we have a lot more services available now than we ever did before.
MT: What is your take on Mississippi's battle over expanding Medicaid and its ongoing hospital/health care crisis? What advice would you give to Mississippi – particularly its politicians and leaders – on Medicaid expansion?
Edwards: I don’t think the whole time I have been governor I have addressed comments critical to another state or the leadership of another state. I will say the situation there, the one that I read about and the one that I know a little bit about firsthand — my wife is from Wayne County, Mississippi, and all of her family is still up there — it looks an awful lot like the situation we had here. The politics were probably about the same here.
... Here in Louisiana, we decided that decision was made by the federal government when they passed the Affordable Care Act — otherwise known as Obamacare — a feature of which was Medicaid expansion. So that decision was made by the Obama administration and the Congress at that time. It hasn’t been repealed, so it remains available to states, although not mandatory as it was originally intended. I believe that we should try to make government work for those who need it the most. The working poor people certainly need health care.
I believe that you should make available to your state federal programs that not only do that, but provide a benefit to your budget so that you can then have the flexibility to address other pressing concerns as well. We were able to do that here. Obviously the situation as it exists in Mississippi to the extent that I am familiar with it — I'm rather familiar — looks an awful lot like what we had here in Louisiana.
I would certainly recommend Medicaid expansion to the Legislature there, to the governor there, to the people who are running for governor there. I would recommend it to Gov. Reeves, to Brandon Presley and to everyone else.
MT: How is expansion viewed across the aisle now in Louisiana? What level of opposition remains there? Any chance Louisiana voters would go along with undoing expansion?
Edwards: Obviously people might expect me to give a full throated defense of Medicaid expansion. I was a champion of it while Gov. Jindal was in office and refused to do it. I ran for office saying I was going to do it, and I have since done it. I would just invite anybody to come over here and talk to the hospital association, talk to hospital medical directors and CEOs.
Go to the most rural isolated, poorest parts of our state ask them about Medicaid expansion, and then go talk to employers in those areas and see what a difference its made for them.
The opposition has just melted away here. It's virtually nonexistent. I think that’s borne out by the campaign that’s underway where not a single candidate says they would undo the Medicaid expansion, and it would be a perilous position for them to take in the campaign if they said that.
Abdul Mohsin Mohamed, 17, was last seen at around 8 p.m. Sunday leaving King Smokers on Mississippi Drive headed to the Burger King up the road. He never made it to the restaurant and hasn’t been heard from since.
He was last seen wearing a black hoodie, black shorts and shoes. He’s described as 5-foot-10, with a slender build with a mustache and black curly hair.
Anyone with information should contact the Waynesboro Police Department at (601) 735-2323 and ask for Cmdr. Lt. Don Hopkins.
The provost of Delta State University suddenly stepped down Monday afternoon, according to an internal email obtained by Mississippi Today.
Andy Novobilski, who came to the regional college in the Mississippi Delta in 2021, will move into a faculty position as a tenured professor of computer information systems in the spring, wrote the new president, Daniel Ennis, in an email to faculty and staff.
Novobilski will also stay on as a special assistant to the president for the remainder of the school year.
Andy Novobilski, stepped down Monday, Aug. 21, 2023, as Delta State University provost. Credit: Courtesy of Delta State University
Ennis emphasized in the email that Novobilski’s transition was due to “family reasons” and is “not an indictment of anyone, nor a reaction to any particular set of circumstances, rather, the result of my own assessment of Delta State University’s direction and my expectations for the President’s Cabinet.”
“Dr. Novobilski ably led Academic Affairs through the pandemic and worked with skill and diligence under three presidents with very different styles and priorities,” Ennis wrote. “He is welcome to serve as a valued member of Delta State University’s professoriate.”
Reached for comment Tuesday morning, Novobilski said he wasn’t ready to share more information about his transition out of the provost role.
“At this point I really have nothing to say, but I tell you what, I do have some really important and really cool family things going on right now,” Novobilski said.
“It’s seriously impacting my time for good reason,” he added.
The move, which was not announced outside of the university, comes as Delta State has started the fall semester in the wake of public uproar over the hiring of an interim band director who made transphobic comments on a now-deleted podcast.
It also may not be the last personnel move Ennis will make this year, he intimated in the email. He has been tasked with improving Delta State’s budget and enrollment, both of which still seem to be struggling.
Last week, faculty were briefed on a cabin “retreat” that Ennis held to focus on the “direction/future of DSU,” according to a faculty senate report to the music department that was obtained by Mississippi Today. The main focus was on recruitment and retention.
The budget for the last school year resulted in yet another shortfall — more than $1.5 million.
This was due to a number of issues, per the faculty senate report: An initial budget forecast that was too high, improperly encumbered funds, and a misconceived sidewalk replacement project the university thought the Mississippi Department of Transportation was covering. It turned out Delta State was responsible for putting 20% toward the project.
But there was some good news: Enrollment, including dual enrollment, was up about 5%.
Novobilski’s transition will mean the university is now searching for an interim provost and a permanent replacement, which Ennis wrote he hopes to have in place by June 2024.
As provost, Novobilski was the university’s chief academic officer — essentially second-in-command. He had earned a reputation as a stickler for the hierarchy of academia, according to multiple faculty members.
Novobilski entered academia, which he has called an “accidental career” after working as a software engineer and starting his own software design consulting firm, NovoTech.
Bear Bryant gets a victory ride after the last game of his remarkable coaching career in December, 1982. (Photo courtesy University of Alabama)
Someone recently asked me: Who is the most unforgettable coach you have encountered in your long sports writing career?
The answer was and easy one, but requires some background. Indeed, it requires a story, which follows.
Rick Cleveland
This was back in September of 1971. I was an 18-year-old sports reporter, who could easily have passed for 13, for my hometown newspaper The Hattiesburg American. My beat was the Southern Miss football team, and they were about to play Bear Bryant’s Alabama Crimson Tide juggernaut. I was assigned to do a feature story on Bryant and was dispatched to Tuscaloosa for his weekly Tuesday press conference.
The Bear, as everyone called him then, had just unveiled a surprise Wishbone offense and stunned No. 3 Southern Cal at the Coliseum in Los Angeles, reversing a three-touchdown defeat the year before. Younger readers need to know that back in the the 1960s and 70s, Bryant was practically deity in the Deep South. The word “legendary” doesn’t begin to describe the hold he had on football fans in this part of the country. Some folks in Alabama claimed Bryant could walk on water. I was not so sure he couldn’t. I was in awe of him.
Five years into my sports writing career, I was finally making just enough money to purchase a new car — just not much of one. My 1971 Ford Pinto sounded like a sewing machine and maneuvered only slightly better. I left 30 minutes early to make the 180-mile trip with time to spare. Just across the state line, my left rear tire blew. This was during a September heat wave. I struggled and struggled to get the lug nuts off, and then had problems with the flimsy jack. So I sweated and I cussed and I got grease all over me. Then I sweated some more and cussed some more, knowing I was late and knowing I couldn’t make up time in my sewing machine.
Greasy, sweaty and quite embarrassed, I arrived at the Alabama athletic offices a few minutes after the press conference ended. Charley Thornton, Alabama’s splendid sports publicist, took one look at me and asked what happened. I told him, and added, “Mr. Thornton, if I don’t get an interview with Coach Bryant, they might fire me back home.”
Thornton said he’d see what he could do and he walked down the hallway. Then he came back and told me to follow him, and I did. We walked into this spacious office, filled with huge trophies and with a desk that seemed about as big as an end zone. Behind that mammoth desk, leaning back in his chair, eating a barbecue rib with his huge, socked feet propped up, was the man himself.
He might as well have been God.
Mr. Thornton said, “Coach said he has 10 minutes for you,” and then he left. It was Bear and me, all alone. He shoved a box of sweet-smelling ribs over and said in that deep, gravelly voice of his, “Charley tells me you’re Ace Cleveland’s boy. Is your mama as pretty as she always was? Here, son, have a rib…”
I would have choked on it. I was still hot and sweaty with a parched throat, and now I was nervous as all Hades. I said no thanks, but that I really appreciated him letting me interrupt his lunch.
“Suit yourself,” he said. “They’re mighty good. What can I do for you?”
I had prepared questions the night before, rehearsed them on my way over. In my haste, I had left all that in the sewing machine. I opened my mouth and . . . nothing came out. I froze. I choked.
Bryant waited several seconds, and then his lips curled into a smile. This is what he said: “Aw, shit, son, spit it out.”
It was as if he knew just what to say. My brain freeze ended instantly. I got a splendid interview that was more like a conversation and lasted much longer than 10 minutes. He of course told me he was really worried about Southern because they always played Alabama tough and he knew his boys might be cocky after winning at Southern Cal. He made USM, an average team at best, sound like the Green Bay Packers.
After a while, the great man asked, “Are you in a hurry to get back to Hattiesburg? Why don’t you come out to practice with me?” And then he drove us out to practice in his golf cart. And then he took me up on his tower with him. I noticed several veteran Alabama writers, who had covered the Tide for years, down below. I am pretty sure they were glaring up at me thinking, “Who the hell is that greasy little kid?”
Bear Bryant in his customary pre-game position: Leaning on a goal post. (Photo courtesy University of Alabama)
After a while, I told Coach Bryant I really did have to go home and get to work. He told me to hand him my notebook, and then he wrote down a man’s name and the tire store where he worked. “Tell Joe I sent you,” he said. And so I did. Joe put on a new tire and wouldn’t let me pay. “If Coach Bryant sent you, the tire’s on us,” the guy said.
Five days later, I returned to Tuscaloosa — in somebody else’s car — and watched Bryant’s boys dismantle Southern Miss 42 to 6. It could have been 70 to nothing had Bryant not been such a benevolent gentleman. I covered many more of Bryant’s games over the years, games against Ole Miss, State and Southern Miss and also in bowl games that won national championships. I was standing right next to Bryant at his press conference after the 1979 Sugar Bowl when No. 2 Bama defeated No. 1 Penn State 14-7 for the national championship. Bill Lumpkin, a longtime Birmingham sports writer, asked Bryant how close a Penn State running back came to scoring a game-tying fourth quarter touchdown. Answered Bryant, smiling and holding his index finger and his thumb about an inch apart, “Bill, he was about as close as the length of your ying-yang.”
I also covered Bear’s last game at the Liberty Bowl in December of 1982, silently pulling hard for the Crimson Tide to beat Illinois, which they did. And I covered his funeral a month later. Trust me, presidents and kings have been buried with less fanfare. I, as hundreds of others, cried.
Many believe Bear Bryant was the greatest coach ever. I agree. I know this for certain: Nearly 52 years later, he remains my all-time favorite.
Dr. LouAnn Woodward will continue to lead the University of Mississippi Medical Center, one of the state’s largest employers and its only academic health science center, for another four years.
Trustees on the Institutions of Higher Learning board, which governs all universities and colleges in Mississippi, unanimously approved the Chancellor of the University of Mississippi’s request to give Woodward another four-year contract in executive session at the board’s June meeting.
“Under Dr. LouAnn Woodward’s tremendous leadership, the University of Mississippi Medical Center plays a vital and growing role in serving the health care needs for all Mississippians,” said Chancellor Glenn Boyce in an emailed statement. “I’m deeply grateful for her guidance, commitment and talent, and how she continues to empower her home state and shape UMMC for an even brighter future.”
The new four-year contract began July 1 and will be in place until June 30, 2027,confirmed Jacob Batte, the director of news and media relations for the University of Mississippi.
Batte could not answer why Woodward requested another four-year contract renewal while her previous contract, which began in 2021, was still in place. Marc Rolph, UMMC’s executive director of communications and marketing, also declined to answer.
“I am grateful to Chancellor Glenn Boyce and the IHL Board for their leadership and support,” said Woodward in an emailed statement. “I’m excited about the future of the state’s only academic medical center, and I’m honored to lead it for another four years, advancing our tri-part mission of education, research and patient care.”
Woodward, whose official title is UMMC’s vice chancellor of health affairs and the dean of the school of medicine, became the first woman to lead the medical center and school when she was appointed in 2015.
She was trained as an emergency room physician at UMMC after graduating from Mississippi State University. Woodward is also a tenured professor in the academic center’s Department of Emergency Medicine, according to UMMC’s website.
Woodward has led the health system, which includes seven health science schools and the state’s only Level 1 trauma center, through the COVID-19 pandemic, changes in university leadership and a major dispute with the state’s largest private insurer, Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi.
In the coming years, she’ll oversee the creation of a state-accredited burn center.
“The University of Mississippi Medical Center is an essential part of the health care landscape of our state, and the work done here makes a tangible difference for all Mississippians,” Woodward continued in the statement. “Each day, I am inspired by our dedicated and compassionate faculty, staff and students, who pour their hearts and souls into their work and learning, all with the purpose and vision of a healthier Mississippi.”
Batte would not say how much Woodward would be paid in the new contract, citing state law that prohibits the disclosure of certain public hospital records.
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.
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.
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.”
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?”
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.
A statue of Elizabeth Freeman on display in the National Museum of African American History and Culture’s Slavery and Freedom exhibition. Credit: Courtesy of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture
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.
