Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann told Mississippi business leaders Thursday he wants to make the state’s 15 two-year colleges tuition free.
Speaking at the annual Mississippi Economic Council’s Hobnob event, designed to allow the state’s business leaders to hear from political leaders, Hosemann said providing free tuition for community college students would help grow the Mississippi economy. He said in recent years the Legislature has expanded public pre-kindergarten programs, and he believed expanding higher education opportunities is the next logical step.
“We want to have the best economic life we can have for our citizens,” said Hosemann after his Hobnob speech at the Mississippi Coliseum. “You do that by educational opportunities.”
According to Hosemann’s office, 28 counties already have put in place local programs to provide free community college tuition. Under Hosemann’s plan, those counties probably would be able to divert their funds to expanded educational opportunities for their citizens.
Many of the counties offering free community college tuition are located in northeast Mississippi. In the past, Rep. Jerry Turner, R-Baldwyn, who represents a portion of northeast Mississippi, offered a proposal similar to Hosemann’s, but it did not make it through the legislative process.
The program, which already is offered in some other states, is called “the Last Dollar” program. People entering community college are required to apply for any available grants and scholarships. The amount of the tuition not paid for by the grants and scholarships would be paid for by the state.
Hosemann said a bill will be drafted to be considered during the 2024 session.
The program would cost the state $25 million annually when fully enacted, Hosemann estimated.
He also said most likely students would be required to meet certain standards in high school to be eligible for the program. And he said it would most likely be fashioned in a way to enhance opportunities for those going into high demand areas, such as medical fields.
Hosemann already has met with the Community College Board to discuss the program.
Hoseman is seeking his second term as lieutenant governor. He is considered to be a heavy favorite for reelection on Nov. 7 against Democrat Ryan Grover, who did not speak Thursday at Hobnob.
A man paroled earlier this year after serving 18 years in prison for the double murder of his father and stepmother was arrested last week for driving under the influence. Now the family of one of his victims is questioning why the Parole Board decided to release him in the first place.
At the age of 17, James Williams III was sentenced in 2005 to two consecutive life sentences for the fatal shooting of his father, James Jr., and stepmother, Cindy Lassiter Mangum, in 2001.
A 2021 U.S. Supreme Court decision ruled that those who were juveniles should be eligible for parole. The Parole Board decided in April of this year, despite pushback from Mangum’s family and lawmakers, to grant Williams’ release.
“The family wants to know if the Mississippi State Parole board still feels that the community is better served to have James Williams in the community drinking and driving than be incarcerated for the double murders that he is guilty of committing,” her family said in a Thursday statement.
The Rankin County Sheriff’s Department confirmed Williams, now 38, was arrested Oct. 20 for a first offense DUI and released the next day on bond.
While nobody was injured while Williams allegedly drove while intoxicated, Mangum’s family said his arrest is an opportunity for the Parole Board to see that it made a mistake, and that mistake could have cost others their lives.
He is expected to appear before the Parole Board about whether the DUI arrest violated his parole. Mangum’s family hopes the board will return Williams to prison.
A representative from the Parole Board was not immediately available for comment Friday morning. A spokesperson from MDOC said any decision about Williams is up to the Parole Board.
Williams had been denied parole multiple times because of the nature of his crime and community opposition, but the current board found he was suitable for release and that there wasn’t opposition from the family, sheriff, district attorney or judge.
Mangum’s family said it wasn’t given notification to come before the Parole Board and express their opposition – a claim Chairman Jeffery Belk disputed in April after the board’s vote, saying multiple efforts were made before the hearing to contact them.
The family has also questioned whether Williams has changed while in prison. His attorney, Jake Howard, previously told Mississippi Today that Willams earned a GED and bachelor’s degree in Christian ministry and completed other educational and rehabilitation programs.
More than a year after Mississippi Medicaid announced it was contracting with three companies to manage the care of their beneficiaries, those contracts have not been awarded.
That’s because two companies that weren’t chosen say the selection process was unfair.
UnitedHealthcare and Amerigroup, two for-profit managed care companies, were not chosen by Mississippi Medicaid as one of its contracted companies entrusted with managing beneficiaries’ health care. The two organizations have subsequently filed protests with the state, alleging the selection process was flawed, leading to a months-long stalemate over who will manage Mississippi Medicaid beneficiaries’ care after next summer.
The stakes are high: the contracts, funded by state and federal dollars, are worth billions.
The majority of Medicaid recipients in most states are enrolled in managed care organizations. Through a lucrative contract agreement, divisions pay these companies to deliver services to beneficiaries.
In exchange for a monthly payments — regardless of whether services were or were not used by a beneficiary during that period — the managed care organization must maintain a network of providers for its enrollees and ensure enrollees are not billed for covered services.
Managed care for Mississippi Medicaid beneficiaries began in 2011 with the inception of the division’s “coordinated care program,” or its managed care system called MississippiCAN.
According to its website, MississippiCAN currently provides health insurance benefits for more than 480,000 of the state’s most vulnerable citizens, including poor adults and children, people who are disabled and pregnant people. Medicaid insures about 837,000 Mississippians total as of September.
The Mississippi Division of Medicaid is located in the Walter Sillers Building, seen here on Monday, Oct. 16, 2023, in Jackson, Miss. Credit: Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today
Though they’re theoretically well-intentioned — to increase services for beneficiaries and reduce costs for Medicaid — managed care organizations have been criticized by politicians, patients and health care leaders for prioritizing profit and hindering patient care.
Managed care organizations’ performances can vary greatly, and which ones the Medicaid agencies contract with is up to them. That’s decided through a process called procurement.
In December 2021, the Division of Medicaid began seeking new contracts and solicited “requests for qualifications” from managed care companies. Five prospective contractors submitted proposals in March 2022.
Mississippi Medicaid announced in August 2022 that it intended to award contracts to three of those: TrueCare, Magnolia Health and Molina Healthcare.
TrueCare, a not-for-profit company, was created by hospitals along with the state hospital association to provide what they believe is better care to patients, compared to traditional managed care organizations.
Molina Healthcare and Magnolia Health are both privately-owned companies that already administer services to Medicaid beneficiaries, along with UnitedHealthcare.
Magnolia has gotten the biggest contracts of all three — almost $9.3 billion for its contracts with Medicaid since 2017, which includes $1.2 billion in the emergency contract.
Magnolia is a subsidiary of health giant Centene. The St. Louis-based company is the nation’s largest Medicaid managed care company and one of Gov. Tate Reeves largest campaign donors.
Centene was previously investigated over suspicions it was over-inflating bills to Mississippi’s Medicaid division. The company never admitted wrongdoing, though Centene settled with the state in June of 2021 for $55.5 million.
Medicaid spokesperson Matt Westerfield said there were no “rules that would exclude Magnolia from the process due to the Centene settlement” when asked why, if the company was previously investigated, it was awarded one of the contracts.
Since 2017, Molina has been paid $2.8 billion to provide services for MississippiCAN and Medicaid’s Mississippi Children’s Health Insurance Program, according to the state’s contract database. In the most recent contract, the emergency contract that runs from 2023 until 2024, the company is getting paid more than half a billion dollars.
For the same services in the same time period, United received nearly $8.4 billion. The current emergency contract pays out more than a billion dollars for their services over the course of a year.
Companies involved in the process have seven days to file protests before the agency can officially award the contracts. Then, the contracts go to the state’s procurement review board for final approval.
Following Medicaid’s announcement about the new contracts in August, UnitedHealthcare, which had a contract with the agency the prior year, and Amerigroup, the two companies that were not chosen, submitted protests.
It’s unclear what United’s claims are. Mississippi Today did not have a copy of their protest at the time of publication.
Amerigroup’s protest alleges that Mississippi Medicaid failed to conduct a “blind” evaluation process, didn’t follow the state’s rules for contract procurement, the process was structurally flawed and “outside influences” affected its fairness.
Amerigroup cites several instances where it says companies shared identifying information. According to the protest, TrueCare revealed its connection to the Mississippi Hospital Association by mentioning the health information exchange program, which allows hospitals to share important information about patients with each other. It’s the only company with access to the exchange because of its association with hospitals.
Amerigroup also takes issue with Molina including a company-specific vaccine incentive program, “curved” graphics similar to their logo and “well-known” Molina food insecurity initiatives in its proposal. Magnolia’s proposal included mentions of its partnership with Adelade and AT&T, which would have been enough to identify them, the protest claims.
Magnolia and Molina did not respond to Mississippi Today’s requests for comment regarding these allegations. TrueCare’s CEO Richard Roberson declined to answer questions because “under the Division of Medicaid’s rules, all offerors are prohibited from making public disclosures to the media regarding the procurement.”
The “outside influences” cited by Amerigroup’s protest refers to a letter Sen. Kevin Blackwell, R-Southaven and chairman of the Senate Medicaid Committee, sent to Mississippi Medicaid Executive Director Drew Snyder on Dec. 3, 2021, a few weeks before the procurement process began. Blackwell in the letter vouches for TrueCare and criticizes the performances of the current managed care organizations.
Westerfield said the letter was “never seen by any evaluator, nor was any evaluator made aware that it had even been written.”
“It had no effect on the RFQ process or outcome,” he said.
The protest also includes a screenshot of texts between Drew Weiskopf, a consultant assisting with the evaluation, and Margaret Middleton, a lawyer for Mississippi Medicaid. In the texts, Weiskopf appears to insinuate that the evaluators were able to identify the companies — he refers to their “urge to standup (sic) and shout ‘I know who this is!’” and uses a GIF from the movie Elf in which a character identifies Santa Claus. The texts were allegedly sent during the evaluation meetings scoring the blind proposals.
“The texts do not reflect that any evaluator expressed knowledge of any Offeror, nor could the texts have done so, as no expression was ever made,” Westerfield said.
The Division of Medicaid’s response to the protests, which was to affirm its decision to award the contracts to the three managed care organizations, were issued this past summer. Both organizations appealed the agency’s decision to the procurement review board, and both of those protests are still pending.
As a result of the ongoing complaints, Medicaid extended the contracts of the current managed care organizations — United, Molina and Magnolia — and then issued one-year emergency contracts to them. Those contracts, which began in 2017, will be in place until June 2024.
Violations during the “blind” portion of the process have previously derailed Mississippi Medicaid’s procurement process.
Medicaid Executive Director Drew Snyder told lawmakers at a Senate Medicaid Committee hearing last February that “following theinstructions for blind evaluations is one of the perilous spots where procurements can go off the rails.”
“I’m sure more than one agency can share a story of a lengthy procurement that had to be terminated because every vendor revealed some kind of identifying information about itself,” he said.
During a Medicaid procurement for different services two years ago, the agency confirmed that a company’s name appeared in a footnote, which delayedthe process.
During the current procurement for managed care contracts, Medicaid said it took several steps to ensure the process was fair, including extensively reviewing submissions, including an independent review by a government office that plays a major role in state procurement processes, which found no problems. The agency also required mandatory training for procurement evaluators, who were “told repeatedly to inform [the Division] if they found any identifying information,” according to the agency.
“No evaluator ever notified DOM that he or she knew the identity of any Offeror, nor did any evaluator make any statement in the evaluation process inferring that he or she knew the identity of any Offeror,” Westerfield said via email.
The fate of the contracts now rests with the procurement review board, which has not yet set a date to hear the protests.
It felt more like church than a health summit at moments inside Duling Hall on Thursday.
The Better Health Summit, hosted by the poverty-focused nonprofit Together for Hope and the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, brought together faith leaders, medical experts and health care advocates in Fondren for one common cause: improving health care in Mississippi by expanding Medicaid.
Summit attendees, no matter their backgrounds, echoed versions of the same question: Why haven’t political leaders, in a majority-Christian state, seen Medicaid expansion as an issue of morality?
Though panels at the summit ranged from accessing community-based health care to retaining physicians in rural Mississippi, speakers framed the issues around Medicaid expansion, and how far the policy measure would go to improve the livelihoods of working-class Mississippians.
Dr. Daniel Jones, former president of the American Heart Association, former chancellor of the University of Mississippi, and dean and professor emeritus at the University of Mississippi School of Medicine, speaks during the Better Health Summit event at Duling Hall in Jackson, Miss., Thursday, Oct. 26, 2023. Credit: Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today
Dr. Dan Jones, the former president of the American Heart Association and former chancellor of the University of Mississippi and dean and professor emeritus at the University of Mississippi School of Medicine, spoke freely at the summit, finally without his ties to state institutions, he said.
He told stories from his stints in Iran, North Korea and South Korea as a medical missionary, and how it compared to the care he was able to provide under Mississippi’s health care system.
While abroad, when Jones diagnosed people with hypertension and diabetes, he knew they were going to be able to access long-term care and medications, he said.
In Mississippi, Jones had to tell a patient he’d need to get his leg amputated. The man, a logger, knew he’d had diabetes for three years but was unable to access health care because he couldn’t afford health insurance.
After the amputation, the logger, as a disabled person, finally became eligible for health insurance through Medicaid.
“In our country, you had to lose a leg before he had access to health care,” he said. “When I went home that night after seeing that patient, I was so frustrated … I said, ‘What an insane world we live in. Today, I told a man he was going to lose his leg for a condition that was absolutely 100% preventable. And it was our country, our state, who let him down and allowed that to happen to him.’”
He drew a contrast between those countries — where health care is generally considered a right, not a privilege — and Mississippi, a state where most of its residents are Christians, yet it took an amputation to get someone insured.
“It’s easy to think living where… people don’t have reasonable access to health care is okay, because it’s just the way it is,” he said. “It’s not.”
Jones echoed his faith and how he sees Medicaid expansion as a spiritual issue.
“I hope when I stand in the booth a few days from now that my first priority will not be what is going to be the economic impact on my family when I cast this vote,” he said. “I hope one of my thoughts is … are we going to do something that Jesus would approve of doing — to provide health care access to the most vulnerable in our community.
“It’s time for action.”
Medicaid expansion has remained a top issue in the upcoming election, perhaps most prevalently featured in the gubernatorial race.
Republican incumbent Gov. Tate Reeves has remained opposed to the policy change, reiterating his opposition as recently as last month, while Democratic challenger Brandon Presley has vowed repeatedly to expand Medicaid on his first day in office, if elected.
People in the faith community are increasingly calling for Medicaid expansion, including leaders at Reeves’ own church, which is hosting a series of lectures this weekend about how providing access to health care is a Christian value.
Mississippi is one of only 10 states that has not expanded Medicaid.
Research shows that over its first few years of implementation, expansion would bring in billions of dollars to Mississippi. That money is needed — the pandemic weakened an already-frail health care infrastructure, and now nearly half of the state’s rural hospitals are at risk of closure, partially due to money lost caring for uninsured patients.
Event-goers attend the Better Health Summit event at Duling Hall in Jackson, Miss., on Thursday, Oct. 26, 2023. Credit: Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today
Kimberly Hughes, the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network’s government relations director, stressed how critical insurance coverage is in the fight against cancer. Mississippi has one of the highest cancer mortality rates in the nation.
“Cancer is curable if it’s caught early, and it’s only caught early if it’s screened for, and screening requires appropriate health insurance,” she said.
Hughes described the types of Mississippians who expansion would cover — veterans, working parents and low-wage workers.
“Stop and think about people that you know, people that you love, people that are your neighbors that have no health insurance that could greatly benefit from it,” she said.
Rev. Jason Coker, a Baptist pastor and the president of Together for Hope, described his wife’s experience as a cancer survivor and wondered how other people could undergo the same thing without knowing they have access to treatment.
Though emergency rooms by law cannot turn down patients, other medical facilities can, making preventative treatment near-impossible to come by without health insurance.
“If we as the state of Mississippi are big Christians, super Baptist, if we can’t understand that as a moral issue, our religion is dead and worthless,” he said.
He described the connection between poverty and poor health outcomes, emphasizing the need for expansion.
According to Coker, 53 of the state’s 82 counties are in “persistent poverty,” and expansion would impact 200,000 to 300,000 Mississippians.
“People getting access to health care … We think that it is a moral obligation on our states to do that,” Coker said.
As Reeves and other state leaders who oppose expansion have derisively referred to Medicaid expansion as adding more people to “welfare rolls,” Coker warned Mississippians to take heed and reflect on themselves.
“So much of our politics in this day is bound up in that idea of who deserves state aid. Who deserves our help? You can only ask that question if you are standing in the seat of power,” Coker said. “We have elected officials in this state … who had the power to do something, and decided not to do it because they didn’t think someone else deserved it, or was worthy of it.
“And make no bones about it: That’s as deeply rooted in white superiority as anything that we know and our lived experience in the state of Mississippi. We call it racism. But it’s more than racism. It is white superiority.”
Gov. Tate Reeves’ campaign says a cease-and-desist letter from a solar energy company had nothing to do with changes made to a campaign advertisement that accused Democratic gubernatorial candidate Brandon Presley and the company of violating state law.
Two commercials, which have run on TV stations across the state and online, accuse Presley, a current Mississippi public service commissioner, of violating state law by taking campaign contributions from Silicon Ranch and other solar energy companies that generate electricity to sell to public utilities.
Earlier this month, Silicon Ranch, through Jackson attorney Will Manuel, sent a cease-and-desist letter to the Reeves campaign, arguing the company is not a public utility and has not violated any state law by donating to the Presley campaign.
After the letter was sent and reported by Mississippi Today and others, the Reeves campaign began running a slightly different commercial. The new ad still says Presley violated state law by taking donations from “green energy companies he regulates,” but the ad no longer uses the names of the Silicon Ranch officials who made the contributions or a prominent photo of a solar energy executive.
The Reeves campaign said on Wednesday it did not change the ad because of the cease-and-desist letter and the possibility of being sued.
“We stand by everything in the first ad,” a Reeves campaign spokesman said in a statement. “It was because the first ad had already been seen throughout the state. The second ad had been finalized before their letter. The story is about Brandon Presley’s obvious corruption, and the individual companies that he worked over are side characters. In the past, it was corrupt public service commissioners like Brandon Presley who were arrested — and the companies are not on the ballot.”
Both versions of the ad are still on the Reeves campaign’s YouTube page.
State law does prohibit public service commissioners from taking campaign donations from public utilities and their representatives.
Silicon Ranch has developed facilities in Mississippi to produce and sell electricity to public utilities. Public utilities are defined in state law and in general as entities that provide electricity for the public.
But the Silicon Ranch cease-and-desist letter to the Reeves campaign cited a 2017 Public Service Commission order approving Mississippi Power’s plan to purchase electricity generated in Lauderdale County from Silicon Ranch.
That PSC order states that “petitioner Silicon Ranch is not a public utility and the project is not utility property under the laws of the state of Mississippi. It is further ordered that petitioner Silicon Ranch is not subject to the Commission’s jurisdiction except for the requirement of obtaining a certificate of public convenience and necessity.”
Incumbent Republican Gov. Tate Reeves told business leaders Thursday that Mississippi is thriving, but that would change if voters don’t reelect him in two weeks as out-of-state, radical liberals would take over.
“Over 80% of my opponent’s money is coming from out-of-state,” Reeves told about 1,500 business leaders at the state chamber of commerce’s annual Hobnob event in Jackson. “… What do they think they are buying? It’s not just to change governors. They want to change Mississippi. If you are a radical liberal, a thriving Mississippi doesn’t work for you … Are we going to hand the state over to the Biden administration and let their guy take the keys?”
Democratic challenger Brandon Presley, a longtime state public service commissioner, former Nettleton mayor and cousin of Elvis, said Reeves is “petty and vindictive.” He said Reeves traffics in “cheap, partisan politics and corruption,” doesn’t work will with others and ignores major challenges the state faces.
“Partisan politics has got us in a ditch in Mississippi,” Presley said. “I don’t want to be governor for one political party — I want to be governor for everybody … When Brandon Presley is elected governor, you won’t have to write a campaign check to come see your governor … I’ll get along better with the Republican House and Senate than Tate Reeves does, because I respect them.”
Most candidates for statewide office spoke Thursday at the Mississippi Economic Council’s Hobnob, highlighted by the gubernatorial candidates. It’s likely the last major forum where the two will speak before their single televised debate on Nov. 1, with the general election Nov. 7. The debate promises to be a lively one, as the two hurled barbs at each other during and after their Hobnob speeches.
“My opponent doesn’t have any original thoughts,” Reeves said. “My opponent takes his talking points directly from the Democratic National Committee, and they poll test it and say, hey, do you think this will work in Mississippi? But what he’s often done, particularly on the transgender issue, is that he told people what he really believed … and started getting attacked not only by hard conservatives and strong conservatives and Republicans, he was getting attacked by independents and even left-leaning Democrats that his position on transgender surgeries for minors was the wrong position. He changed his position. It’s all poll tested by the Democratic National Committee.”
Reeves has made transgender issues a major focus of his campaign. In ads and campaign stumping, both Reeves and Presley have accused each other of lying on the issue.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Brandon Presley speaks during Mississippi Economic Council’s 2023 Hobnob at the Mississippi Coliseum in Jackson, Miss., Thursday, Oct. 26, 2023. Credit: Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today
Unlike Reeves’ rosy picture of the state of the state Thursday, Presley said, “We’ve got serious problems in Mississippi, problems that require the attention of a governor.” He said the state faces a health care crisis, with dozens of hospitals facing closure, and a corruption crisis — the welfare scandal in which tens of millions of dollars meant to help the poor in Mississippi were stolen or squandered.
“Tate doesn’t want to talk about it,” Presley said. “Thirty-four of our hospitals are at risk of closure … We have a solution staring us in the face, but for the pettiness of Tate Reeves. We have given our money away to 40 other states long enough. We will expand Medicaid as one of the first things I do. It’s not a partisan political issue … It’s called common sense.”
As for the welfare scandal, Presley told the crowd, “You as business owners ought to be as mad as anyone else. This was money that could have been used for workforce training programs, for child care for workers … But instead, his personal trainer, the guy that teaches Tate Reeves how to do jumping jacks, got $1.3 million in taxpayer dollars.”
Reeves, who served two terms as treasurer and two terms as lieutenant governor before being elected governor in 2020, told the business leaders Thursday the state has done better than ever under his watch.
“Our population is growing,” Reeves said. “Jobs and businesses are moving in to every region … In the old days, there were a lot of people out looking for jobs. But as people in this room can attest, now we have jobs looking for people.”
He said the state has also seen great gains in education, made record investment in infrastructure and enacted large tax cuts.
“It’s a clear indication that conservative policies work,” Reeves said. He reiterated his opposition to Medicaid expansion, referring to it as “welfare” and said his recently announced plan to tax hospitals more to draw down more federal Medicaid reimbursements is a better plan.
Reeves urged the crowd to get out Nov. 7 to make their choice for governor and said, “The billionaires in California and New York and Washington, D.C., have made their choice.”
Presley said the governor’s race is “tight as a tick … neck and neck,” according to recent polls, and he believes his campaign “has the wind at our back.”
“People in Mississippi are ready to turn the page on Tate Reeves and ready to turn the page on the corruption and ready to have a breath of fresh air in state government,” Presley said. “We are going to be working as hard over the next 12 days as we have the last 10 months. I’m going to be awake while Tate Reeves is sleeping, and I’m going to be where he is not.”
Two-time Super Bowl MVP Eli Manning, a consensus All-American quarterback at Ole Miss, heads a diverse list of eight former athletes and sports figures selected for induction into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame in August of 2024.
The Class of ’24 was announced at a press conference Wednesday afternoon at the MSHOF Museum, which will begin undergoing a $4 million renovation immediately.
Other 2024 inductees, in alphabetical order, include: Walter “Red” Barber, Baseball Hall of Fame broadcaster; Madison-Ridgeland Academy basketball coach Richard Duease, who has coached the second most basketball victories of any high school basketball coach in the U.S.; Laurel fisherman Paul Elias, 1982 Bassmasters Classic champion, and winner of five other national pro tournaments; former Jackson State and NFL wide receiver Jimmy Smith, a five-time Pro Bowler and the Jacksonville Jaguars’ all-time leading receiver; Jackson native Savante Stringellow, a former world champion long jumper who prepped at Provine and was an All American at Ole Miss; tennis champion Becky Vest, another Jackson Provine product, who competed on the Virginia Slims Tour, at Wimbledon, and the U.S. and French Opens; and Florence’s Jimmy Webb, a Mississippi State All American defensive lineman and first-round NFL Draft choice who played seven years of pro football in San Francisco and San Diego.
Brief bios of each follow:
Red Barber was born in Columbus, where he lived his first 10 years. His family left the state but his rich, Southern accent stayed with him throughout his Hall of Fame broadcasting career. He broke into Major League Baseball with the Cincinnati Reds and later famously broadcast the games of the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Yankees. He and Mel Allen were the first two broadcasters inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown.
Richard Duease, born and raised Indianola, attended Mississippi State where he first majored in business, planning to eventually run his family’s two department stores in the Delta. Instead, he went into coaching. That was 48 years, 1,801 victories and 33 state championships ago. “I can’t think of a greater honor than being inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame,” Duease said Wednesday.
Paul Elias said he was too small to play football, was “pretty good” at baseball but “was really, really good” at fishing while growing up in Laurel. “I praise the Lord every day for allowing me to make a good living doing what I love to do,” Elias, a Southern Miss graduate, said. He turned pro in 1979 and won the Bassmasters Classic in Montgomery in 1982. Twenty-six years later, he seta record that still stands for the largest four-da five-bass limit of 132 pounds, 8 ounces in a tournament at Lake Falcon in Texas.
Eli Manning follows his father, Archie, into the MSHOF, just as he followed him to Ole Miss. During his time at Oxford, he set or tied 47 records to become the most honored offensive player in school history. He was the first player selected in the 2004 NFL Draft and played 16 years for the New York Giants. His jersey No. 10 has been retired by both Ole Miss and the Giants. In 2016, he was chosen winner of the NFL’s Walter Payton Man of the Year Award, named after another Mississippi Sports Hall of Famer. Manning will enter the MSHOF in his first year of eligibility for the honor.
Jimmy Smith earned his nickname “Silk” at Callaway High School for how he made so many big plays so gracefully and with seemingly little effort. He then starred at Jackson State and began his professional career as a second round draft choice of the Dallas Cowboys. But he became one of the game’s most productive receivers with the Jacksonville Jaguars for whom he caught 862 passes, including 67 for touchdowns. He is in the Jaguars’ Ring of Honor but considers Wednesday’s announcement “my greatest honor, something I have wanted for a long, long time.”
Savanté Stringfellow played basketball and ran track at Provine, where he caught the eye of MSHOF track coach Joe Walker, then the coach at Ole Miss. He claimed three NCAA Championships as a Rebel All American became a U.S Olympian and follows in a long line of so many remarkable Mississippi long jumpers, including Hall of Famers Ralph Boston, Larry Myricks, Brittney Reese and Willye B. White. “I don’t know what it is about Mississippi and the long jump, but I’m just glad to be a part of it,” said Stringfellow, whose son, Kennedy, is a promising freshman long jumper at Mississippi State.
Becky Vest, another Jackson native and Provine grad, won five high school state tennis championships, two while still in junior high. She played collegiately at Trinity (Texas) University where she was a national champion. After college, she competed internationally as a professional and has become an acclaimed teacher. She follows her mother, Dorothy Vest, as the first mother/daughter combo in the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame.
Jimmy Webb of Florence became one of the greatest defensive players in Mississippi State football history, a consensus All American in the early-to -mid 1970s. A first round draft choice, he also starred in the NFL with both the San Francisco 49ers and San Diego Chargers. At State, he studied veterinary medicine, preparing for his post-football career as a veterinarian and a cattle rancher. “I have been so blessed,” Webb said. “I appreciate this state so much and am so thankful for his honor. At my age, the honors don’t seem to come around that much any more.”
The Class of ’24 will be inducted the weekend Aug. 2-3 in Jackson. Tickets will go on sale in January.
An “unexpected issue” is being blamed for the Mississippi Secretary of State’s website and several other state agency websites being down for several hours this week — just 12 days before the 2023 statewide election.
Basic voting info housed on the Secretary of State’s website like polling place locations, sample ballots and campaign finance reports were inaccessible for several hours between the evening of Oct. 25 through much of the morning on Oct. 26.
The Secretary of State’s office announced Thursday morning that “most” website services had been restored. As of about 11 a.m. on Thursday, most of the state’s websites appeared to be back online.
The Mississippi Information Technology Services agency, which manages the state’s website servers, issued a public statement Thursday around 12:30 p.m.
“Late in the afternoon on Wednesday, October 25, the state network which provides connectivity to many state agencies encountered an error that created an unexpected issue,” the statement said. “Since the initial event, the network has been intermittently unresponsive. Immediately, ITS engineers along with high level contract support began work to troubleshoot the issues. They have continued their work around the clock; however, the situation has yet to be fully resolved.”
Some state employees who manage state website domains received an email Thursday morning that said Tyler Technologies, a company the state contracts with to manage its servers, was aware of the outages.
The email, shared with Mississippi Today, said: “SERVICE INTERRUPTION: Please be advised, Tyler Mississippi is currently experiencing issues affecting connectivity to the following: MS.GOV hosted services including websites and .NET applications. All teams have been engaged to pinpoint and assist in resolving the underling (sic) issue.”
Earlier in the week, the state website managers had received notice that Tyler Mississippi would be installing updates for the websites from Oct. 25 8 p.m. until Oct. 26 at 12 a.m.
The state’s IT agency said in its Thursday statement that the problem was not related to cybersecurity or data integrity issues.
On Election Day in 2022, the Mississippi Secretary of State’s website was down for several hours because of a cyberattack. As many politicians have made claims of election irregularities in recent years, election agency websites across the country have proven susceptible to similar attacks.
“We want to be clear and (reassure) Mississippians our election system is secure and has not been compromised,” the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office said of last year’s cyberattack.
Three former Mississippi Department of Corrections staff members who pleaded guiltyto hitting and kicking an inmate while the person lay on the ground and striking the individual with a pepper spray canister in 2019 will serveup to threeyears in federal prison, the Justice Department announced.
Former corrections officers Jessica Hill and LaToya Richardson and case manager Nicole Moore, who were sentenced Wednesday, used excessive force against an incarcerated person identified as L.C. at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in July 2019.
The staff members assaulted L.C. while the inmate lay in the fetal position and didn’t resist, according to court records. Hill hit L.C. several times with the canister and punched her in the head. Richardson kicked L.C. four times in the head and upper torso, and Moore kicked her once in the back of the head. Hill continued to hit L.C. until another prison staff member intervened, according to court records.
“The defendants in this case ignored their sworn duty to protect inmates and chose violence instead,” U.S. Attorney Todd W. Gee for the Southern District of Mississippi said in a statement. “We will continue to prosecute those who abuse their positions of authority and violate the civil rights of inmates.”
Senior Judge Tom Leesentenced Hill and Richardson to three years and one month in federal prison with two years of supervised release, according to a news release from the DOJ. Moore received two years in prison and two years of supervised release. All were ordered to pay a $1,500 fine.
The maximum prison sentence they faced was 10 years with three years supervised release and a fine up to $250,000 and mandatory special assessment of $100, according to court records.
Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said the DOJ is committed to prosecuting prison officials who violate the law and their oaths and subject incarcerated people to cruel and unusual punishment – a violation of their 8th Amendment right.
Special Agent in Charge Jermicha Fomby of the FBI Jackson Field Office said incarcerated people are guaranteed protection from harm by the correctional officers responsible for their care. Hill’s actions were a deliberate violation of trust and a disservice to people in prison and other correctional staff.
