NFL legend Brett Favre maintains he did nothing wrong.
The recent focus on two of his projects that received welfare money during the biggest public corruption scandal in Mississippi history is just a pretext, his attorneys say, for blaming and smearing him in the media.
They say he never pledged his own money to build the widely publicized volleyball stadium at University of Southern Mississippi, so he couldn’t have personally benefitted from the taxpayer money used on the project.
And plus, there were many more state employees, attorneys and politicians who facilitated or approved of the legal loophole — which state prosecutors called a scheme to defraud the government — to funnel $5 million in federal grant funds from Mississippi Department of Human Services through a lease agreement between a private nonprofit and the university.
Favre, in the new filing, said former Gov. Phil Bryant knew that grant funding from the welfare department was behind the volleyball project.
“The agreement was reviewed and approved by the Attorney General, who recommended that the IHL Board of Trustees approve it, which they did,” Favre’s latest court motion reads. “The IHL Board of Trustees expressly noted that MCEC’s funding was via a block grant from MDHS. The Governor was aware of the source of the funding and supported it. Following final approval, Southern Miss publicly announced the plans for the State-owned Wellness Center and lauded MCEC’s support for the project. Not one public Mississippi official or lawyer expressed any objection to or concern about the funding and plan.”
Favre makes these new arguments in a recent motion to dismiss civil charges against him. Mississippi Department of Human Services alleges in its amended complaint filed in December that Favre is liable for more than $7 million that he helped funnel away from the poor or anti-poverty programs.
An email Favre’s attorneys entered into court appears to contain notes from assistant USM Athletic Director Daniel Feig about the MDHS funding proposal for the volleyball stadium. In the email, Feig acknowledged that the MDHS grant funds cannot be used on construction projects. But MDHS’s attorneys — Garrig Shields and Jacob Black, also defendants in the suit — advised that MDHS could give the money to a nonprofit called Mississippi Community Education Center, run by criminal defendant Nancy New, and she could give the money to USM Athletic Foundation through a lease. The notes suggest the theory that when MDHS money leaves the agency into the hands of the nonprofit, it becomes “private” money, and therefore federal regulations do not apply.
Feig did not immediately respond to a Facebook message Friday evening
Feig notes that other universities have entered similar lease agreements (“sub grants to do youth camps”) and that they could use those contracts as a model. He also wrote that even though they would be using MDHS funds, “Rather not have MDHS named.”
“If, as MDHS falsely alleges, Favre was part of a conspiracy, it was the most public and open conspiracy in Mississippi history, it was directed and carried out by MDHS itself to transfer funds from one public state entity to another, Southern Miss, and it was vetted and approved by numerous lawyers and State officials,” Favre’s motion reads. “To hold Favre responsible under these circumstances would have no legal or factual justification.”
Nancy New’s son Zach New, a nonprofit employee, pleaded guilty to defrauding the government for his role in the volleyball sham lease agreement. He is the only one facing criminal consequences over the scheme; Nancy New’s lengthy plea agreement does not include the USM Athletic Foundation payment.
In addition to the $5 million volleyball project, MDHS claims Favre was party to a sham agreement to funnel $2.1 million in welfare money to a pharmaceutical startup company that the athlete was investing in — an allegation Favre denies.
“The Amended Complaint, again, does not, as it cannot, allege that Favre was aware that the money given to Prevacus consisted of TANF funds, even assuming that it did,” Favre’s motion reads. “And, even if Favre knew that Prevacus received public funding, he would have had no reason to suspect that there was anything improper about it—state governments routinely give financial benefits to private businesses to entice them to do business within their states—precisely what is alleged as to Prevacus.”
Favre is just one of several dozen defendants from whom MDHS is attempting to recoup tens of millions in misspent funds. Friday was a major filing deadline in the lawsuit, so several defendants filed responses at the same time, including Favre.
The court also saw filings Friday from defendants University of Southern Mississippi Athletic Foundation; former state lawmaker Will Longwitz and his lobbying firm Inside Capitol; Nick Coughlin and his company NCC Ventures; former Family Resource Center employee Amy Harris; Williams, Weiss Hester & Company, the firm responsible for auditing Nancy New’s nonprofit; and former professional wrestler Brett DiBiase, who was the first to plead guilty in the separate criminal case in 2020. Several more were expected to file by the end of the evening.
In his motion, Favre called into question the involvement of former Gov. Bryant and current Gov. Tate Reeves in the funding structure that allowed for federal grants intended to alleviate poverty to flow unchecked through the nonprofit of their politically connected friend.
“Nancy New was well connected with numerous Mississippi officials, including Davis and then-Governor Bryant, and close friends with Governor Bryant’s wife Deborah Bryant,” the motion reads. “State officials like Davis, former Governor Bryant, and current Governor Tate Reeves were aware that New, through MCEC, used State money to provide services and funding to various State initiatives through, among other things, the Family First Initiative of Mississippi, an anti-poverty program started by Governor Bryant in conjunction with other State officials.”
The election qualification of Mandy Gunasekara, who filed to run for public service commissioner in the northern district of Mississippi, is being challenged before the Republican Party.
A letter sent to Republican Party Chairman Frank Bordeaux by Hernando attorney Matthew Barton, who is a Republican candidate this year for district attorney in DeSoto County, says that Gunasekara has not met the legal requirement of being a citizen of Mississippi for “five years preceding the day of election.”
The letter reads, “Mrs. Gunasekara fails to qualify and should be removed because she does not meet the requirements.”
Gunasekara, former chief of staff of the Environmental Protection Agency in the Trump administration, is vying for the open PSC seat in the Republican primary against state Rep. Chris Brown of Nettleton and Tanner Newman, a former staffer of U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker and now an administrator in the Tupelo city government.
Incumbent PSC Commissioner Brandon Presley is running as a Democrat for governor this election cycle. No Democrat or third party candidate has qualified for the open seat, meaning the winner of the August Republican primary will hold the seat.
The executive committee of the state Republican Party has the authority to rule on election challenges, such as residency requirements.
In a statement to Mississippi Today, Gunasekara, who now lives in Oxford, said she is qualified to vie for the PSC post.
“My heart, my home, and my family have always been in Mississippi,” she said. “My time fighting for conservative values with President Trump is why I’m the most qualified candidate and the subject of these attacks. I conferred with Mississippi election law experts, and I meet the requirements for PSC.”
In the letter to the state Republican Party, Barton documented where Gunasekara voted in the District of Columbia in 2018. She qualified to vote in Mississippi in January 2019.
She also owned a home in the District of Columbia and received a homestead exemption on her 2021 property taxes, the letter and public documents provided show.
The letter said the Office of Tax Revenue explains, “To qualify for the homestead deduction, you must be domiciled the District of Columbia and the property for which you are applying must be your principal residence.”
In addition, the letter points out that a mortgage document from 2020 said that Gunasekara “shall continue to occupy the property as borrower’s principal residence for at least one year after the occupancy.”
The letter to the state Republican Party is dated Feb. 9. The state parties have a June 9 deadline to submit to the Secretary of State’s office a list of qualified candidates for the August primary elections.
Spencer Ritchie, Gunasekara’s lawyer, said, “Under clearly established Mississippi law, citizenship and residency are not synonymous. To the extent Mandy ever lost her Mississippi citizenship during her time working in D.C., which is debatable, she certainly regained it once she took several concrete steps in 2018 to abandon D.C. and once again make Mississippi her permanent home … The Mississippi Republican Party State Executive Committee is very familiar with these fundamental concepts in Mississippi election law, and we are confident in how they will resolve the matter.”
The University of Mississippi Medical Center has announced it is filling a health care gap for burn care in Mississippi after the closure of the state’s only burn center.
But in the case of children with burns, the hospital is sending these patients out of state, according to an internal email from a UMMC Burn Committee member sent this week and obtained by Mississippi Today.
On at least one recent occasion, UMMC sent a pediatric burn patient to an out-of-state children’s hospital.
UMMC officials have publicly said they are caring for both adult and pediatric burn patients. At a Jan. 20 press conference announcing the creation of the burn center, the newly named medical director said the hospital has the necessary pediatric subspecialties to treat children with burns.
“We’ve got pediatric subspecialty-trained plastic surgeons and general surgeons that are 100% on board with managing that specific patient population,” said Dr. Peter Arnold, professor and division chief of plastic surgery at UMMC.
Over the weekend of Jan. 27, a child with a noncritical burn arrived at Winston Medical Center in Louisville, according to hospital officials. When the hospital attempted to transfer the patient to UMMC, the transfer was denied.
“The review I got was that everything was not ready for pediatric (burns) at UMMC,” Robert Turcotte, director of nursing at Winston Medical Center, told Mississippi Today.
Instead, the child was sent to LeBonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis – a three-hour drive from Louisville. LeBonheur is not a designated burn center but does provide care for kids with burns less than 30% of the total body surface area. It also provides follow-up care in a weekly trauma/burn clinic.
Burn injuries are particularly time sensitive, experts say – a delay in treatment can lead to worsened outcomes and increased mortality.
“I can confirm that UMMC continues to care for a large number of adult and pediatric patients with acute burns and that number increases every day,” an emailed statement from UMMC’s communications director attributed to Dr. Alan Jones, associate vice chancellor for clinical affairs at UMMC, said on Monday.
Jones, through the communications office, said the hospital cannot comment on specific patient information, but there are “many variables” considered when deciding on “the safest and most appropriate care for a patient.”
Later this week, however, a member of the newly formed Burn Committee at UMMC listed in an internal email obtained by Mississippi Today examples of burn patients the hospital is not admitting. Those include: patients with burns greater than 20% of total body surface area; inhalational injury; electric burns; burn lesions to face, hands, feet, genitals; and, finally, children.
In response to questions about the contents of the email, UMMC Director of Communications Patrice Guilfoyle sent an emailed statement: “As part of our ongoing work around the processes and and procedures of the new Burn Center, we will receive Mississippi burn patients transferred to UMMC and then the care team, upon evaluation, will make the decision on burn treatment that’s in the best interest of the patient. Our Emergency Department last week notified emergency care staff, including Mississippi MED-COM, that we would accept transfers of all burn patients.”
MED-COM is the emergency communications for UMMC and hospitals and emergency providers throughout Mississippi.
Lawmakers on Friday debated a bill regarding the establishment of a burn center in the state, and several appeared confused about UMMC’s status in caring for burn patients. One state senator quoted from UMMC’s press release stating the burn center had already been established at UMMC.
“I just went on the website for the University of Mississippi Medical Center, and I’m reading a release that just came out three weeks ago that says ‘I am pleased to announce the establishment of the Mississippi Burn Center,’” Sen. David Blount, D-Jackson, said during debate on the Senate floor.
Another senator pointed out the Institutions of Higher Learning had approved UMMC to become a burn center.
“The IHL board does not have the ability to name the burn center in Mississippi. The Health Department determines that,” responded Sen. John Polk, R-Hattiesburg.
After the burn center in Greenville closed in 2005, state lawmakers in 2006 approached then-Vice Chancellor of the University of Mississippi Medical Center Dr. Dan Jones about establishing a burn center at UMMC. Jones told Mississippi Today he asked lawmakers for a yearly commitment to help UMMC run the program, but lawmakers only offered one-time money.
UMMC walked away, citing financial constraints, but lawmakers nevertheless passed a bill in 2007, sans funding, authorizing the university to create the Mississippi Burn Center. The bill being debated Friday brings forward that code section for possible amendments. Polk wanted to change the language from UMMC “shall” establish the Mississippi Burn Center to “may” establish – in light of possible competition from Mississippi Baptist Medical Center.
According to the internal email, UMMC officials are uncertain of how long the process of becoming a burn center will take. The goal, it says, is for UMMC to become a burn center admitting complex cases by January of 2025.
It also said the committee is aware most providers at UMMC do not have experience treating burn patients but there will be burn care education and training offered. Only about three additional employees will be hired at this time.
The former medical director at Merit Health Central’s burn center, Dr. Derek Culnan, is currently treating burn patients at Baptist. Speaker of the House Philip Gunn authored a bill that would allocate $12 million to establish a burn center at Baptist in Jackson. That bill is still pending.
Culnan, a fellowship-trained burn surgeon, is being sued by his former employer and the operator of the center at Merit Health Central, Joseph M. Still (JMS) Burn Center Inc., for allegedly violating his employment contract by soliciting JMS employees to join his new company. He created the new company after Merit Health Central announced it would be closing the burn center.
Officials with Baptist declined to comment when asked about the lawsuit’s impact on a potential burn center.
“It would be inappropriate for us to discuss an active lawsuit or any related plans. However, as always, we can confirm that we are committed to providing quality care for the residents of Mississippi,” a statement from Kimberly Alexander, public relations manager for Baptist Memorial Health Care, said.
Alexander said Culnan and his team have treated 14 pediatric burn patients since he began there in late November.
Editor’s note: Kate Royals, Mississippi Today’s community health editor since January 2022, worked as a writer/editor for UMMC’s Office of Communications from November 2018 through August 2020, writing press releases and features about the medical center’s schools of dentistry and nursing.
HATTIESBURG — The Louisiana Cajuns were raining bright red all over Southern Miss’s basketball parade. The Cajuns, who had won 10 straight, led by 10 points with four minutes and change to go in the first half. The Golden Eagles were drowning in a sea of missed shots and foul trouble.
Louisiana’s all-Sun Belt Conference forward Jordan Brown was scoring seemingly at will. No Golden Eagle could stay in front of Themus Folks, Louisiana’s left-handed whirling dervish of a point guard. Worse, Southern Miss stars Felipe Haase and Austin Crowley were largely ineffective, Crowley on the bench in foul trouble and Haase scoreless having missed all five of his shots and without a single rebound. It seemed Haase and many of his teammates were shooting at a moving target.
Rick Cleveland
Thursday night’s mid-major showdown was fast becoming a beat-down. A raucous crowd of 8,097 at Green Coliseum — the first sellout in 14 years here — was watching what seemed a replay of so many USM basketball debacles in recent seasons.
That’s right. Bleak doesn’t begin to describe the Golden Eagles’ situation, and perhaps that’s appropriate. Nothing is supposed to be easy – and it’s not – for this team, which has become college basketball’s version of Lazarus. Of course, Lazarus, in the Bible, was buried for four days. These Eagles have been dormant for years.
By now, most readers will know that Southern Miss fired back for a 82-71 victory, its 22nd of the season against just four defeats. The Eagles erased the 10-point deficit and won by 11, edging one game ahead of Louisiana in the tight Sun Belt race.
Haase, the multi-talented Chilean, scored all of his 17 points in the second half. Crowley started the second half and announced his presence with a long, rainbow-like three-pointer that immediately got the crowd back into it. DeAndre Pinckney poured through 14 of his team-high 22 points in the last 20 minutes. Green Coliseum — the Greenhouse, it is called around here — became a noise factory. Just three months ago, you almost could have a conversation with someone across the court in this place. Now, you can’t hear yourself think. It is difficult to describe just how loud it was, and it seemed to lift the Eagles to a much higher level of play. Southern Miss shot a blistering 62% in the second half, and 63% from beyond the three-point arc.
The sellout crowd, nearly all wearing white, was announced at 8,097 on the video boards at Southern Miss.
“An incredible euphoria,” was how Jay Ladner, the Southern Miss coach described the atmosphere.
“It just makes me so happy to see all the little kids running around with big smiles on their faces and so many grown-ups acting like kids,” Ladner said.
Haase, Crowley and Pinkney have provided three-pronged leadership all season in this outhouse-to-penthouse story. That said, it took so much more than their prowess to secure the biggest Southern Miss basketball victory since many of these kids with big smiles on their faces have been alive.
My MVP vote this night would go to Neftali Alvarez, the irrepressible Puerto Rican point guard who has come back from a leg injury to provide instant energy off the USM bench. Nefta, as his teammates call him, applied constant defensive pressure, directed the offense, and somehow weaved and muscled his way to the bucket for critical baskets. He scored 17 points, passed out four assists, stole the ball twice and played his best basketball during that critical period late in the first half when Southern Miss cut that 10-point deficit down to a manageable five.
But it took more than Alvarez’s heroics, as well. Big Tyler Mormon came off the bench to slow – if not completely stop – Louisiana’s talented Brown. After scoring 16 points on 7 of 11 shooting in the first half, Brown scored nine points, including just two of six field goals, in the second. Donovan Ivory was also huge off the bench for the Eagles, scoring seven points and defending well in his 22 minutes of playing time. The Golden Eagles out-scored the Cajuns by 18 points while Ivory was on the floor. That was better even than Crowley, the sharp-shooting Ole Miss transfer. USM was a plus-17 during Crowley’s 27 minutes of playing time.
What is becoming increasingly apparent with each USM victory is how much this team enjoys one another. They willingly share the basketball. They constantly encourage one another. They appear to be having so much fun.
You can even see it in the warm-ups when they come out in their cover-up shirts that say “Southern Miss grit” on the front and the number “14” on the back. Wait, you say, everybody can’t be number 14. No, but that’s where Southern Miss was picked to finish in the Sun Belt Conference, 14th of 14 teams.
Instead, for now, fast approaching March Madness, they are first, but they wear that “14” like a badge. They have Southern Miss fans by the thousands pinching themselves and asking, “Is this real?”
The young’uns’ big smiles — and the grown-ups acting like kids — serve as a definitive and affirmative answer.
I guess the idea of the legislation — to allow trained teachers to carry weapons in school — would work as well here in Mississippi as anywhere; yet, I still have serious reservations. I think of my high school science teacher, who weighed 80 pounds on a good day, going Dirty Harry on someone. And honestly, how horrible is it that we even live in a world where this is an even a conversation.
Outgoing Democratic National Committee Chairman Paul Kirk Jr., left, holds up the hand of Ron Brown, the new chairman, after his appointment to the post in Washington, Feb. 10, 1989. Credit: AP Photo/Barry Thumma
Ron Brown was elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee, becoming the first Black American to lead a major political party in U.S. history.
Brown was a descendant of Mississippi Reconstruction lawmaker Eugene B. Welborne, who had to flee the state to avoid being killed. He and his brother disguised themselves as Confederate soldiers and “carried it off because of their fair coloring,” Brown recalled.
He grew up in the Theresa Hotel in Harlem, which his father managed. In the hotel, he bumped into the likes of boxer Joe Louis and actor Paul Robeson and enjoyed the world-class entertainment available at the nearby Apollo Theater.
The son of Howard University graduates, his parents sent him to prep schools, and he became the only Black student in the freshman class at Middlebury College in Vermont. White classmates from the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity welcomed him, but the national organization objected because it barred Blacks. Fellow fraternity members backed him, leading to the chapter’s expulsion by the national chapter.
Brown then became a trustee at the mostly white school. After a stint in the U.S. Army, he earned a law degree, became a social worker and joined the National Urban League before becoming the first Black attorney at a high-powered Washington law firm. At first glance, Brown seemed unlikely to become chairman. He had just managed Jesse Jackson’s 1988 campaign for president. “I promise you,” he told the Washington Post, “my chairmanship will not be about race; it will be about the races we win.”
Under his leadership, Democrats saw the election of a Black governor in Virginia and a Black mayor in New York City. Democrats also picked up four congressional seats in special elections. In 1992, Bill Clinton became the first Democratic presidential candidate to win in 16 years, and he appointed Brown as Secretary of Commerce.
Three years later, Brown was on an official trade mission when he died in a plane crash in Croatia. Clinton praised Brown, calling the secretary “one of the best advisers and ablest people I ever knew.”
After leading the charge to overturn Roe v. Wade and outlaw abortion in Mississippi, Republican leaders promised to address the inevitable fallout and prioritize support to pregnant women and babies.
Yet many bills filed this legislative session to strengthen the social safety net, fund child care for low-income parents and increase access to resources like contraceptives have all died before lawmakers had a chance to vote on them.
While debate rages over the most visible piece of legislation to improve outcomes for expectant moms, postpartum Medicaid coverage, the help pledged by Mississippi’s politicians in the wake of Roe extends far beyond health care. It considers financial and economic stability, improved public assistance policies, family stabilization, streamlined adoption processes and more.
The programs and initiatives, many of them at the discretion of the Legislature, aim to ensure that women who feel unprepared to become mothers are supported and have access to resources to successfully care for their child. They also try to address the reality that these unwanted or unplanned pregnancies and births could result in more children in the state’s plagued foster care system, without homes or families.
For Republicans, these goals are met by funding private pregnancy centers, typically faith-based organizations focused on anti-abortion advocacy as opposed to professional social work; cracking down on child support enforcement; and making it easier for people who do not want to be parents to give up their children for adoption.
More Democratic lawmakers and family advocates believe these objectives would be better accomplished by expanding Medicaid; reforming the state’s welfare agency; increasing workforce development and workplace protections for women; and funding more child care vouchers for low-income parents. Most of this legislation died without a vote, including more than 15 bills introduced to expand Medicaid.
There is one niche but impactful policy change that both Reeves and advocates for low-income families support: to remove the child support enforcement requirement within the child care voucher program. Mississippi’s Child Care Payment Program, which provides child care vouchers to low-income working families, is funded by the annual federal Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG) and administered by the Mississippi Department of Human Services. Mississippi’s child care block grant was about $94 million in 2023.
The Legislature has not proposed legislation to do this, but legal experts say that because the requirement is not mandated by state or federal statute, Mississippi Department of Human Services could make the rule change on its own.
Reeves has also thrown his support behind new child care tax credits, increased corporate tax credits for crisis pregnancy centers and a special partnership with an adoption agency called Lifeline Children’s Services.
“We must be willing to prove that being pro-life is not simply being anti-abortion,” Reeves said on the Paul Gallo Show on conservative talk radio network SuperTalk on Jan. 11. “Because of that we’ve initiated a very aggressive new pro-life agenda in our state. We’ve proposed establishing child tax credits for child care, increasing the first of its kind across America pregnancy resource center tax credit. We want to partner with Lifeline Children’s Services to ensure that we’re helping the moms and newborn babies.”
Mississippi Today compiled and analyzed more than 60 pieces of legislation that could satisfy politicians’ stated post-Roe agenda. Twenty-six were still alive by early February after the first round of legislative deadlines for general bills.
Access to resources
Republicans are looking to crisis pregnancy centers as the primary support system for women facing an unplanned pregnancy.
House Bill 468, introduced by Gunn, R-Clinton, would increase an existing tax credit for corporations who donate to pregnancy centers from an annual aggregate total of $3.5 million to $10 million. While lawmakers have not taken action on the bill, it remains alive because it is considered a revenue bill, which lawmakers don’t have to take up until a Feb. 22 deadline.
The tax credit, which Gov. Reeves supports, was initially created by legislation last year.
Only centers that align themselves with the statewide organization Choose Life Mississippi, run by ardent anti-abortion activist Terri Herring, are eligible for the tax credit. But the companies that benefit from the program are a mystery – the Mississippi Department of Revenue does not release a list of those that claimed the credit.
Reeves also supports direct taxpayer contributions to these centers.
House Bill 983, which died in committee, would have created the Pregnancy Resources Grant Program under the Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services to award competitive grants to crisis pregnancy centers. A separate appropriations bill to fund the CPS grant program, House Bill 1546, is still alive.
Senate Bill 2781 would create the Mississippi Access to Maternal Assistance Program within the Mississippi State Department of Health. The program would serve as a resource hub, coordinating and promoting information about services for expectant mothers, such as adoption assistance, child care, domestic abuse protection, early intervention, food, clothing, job training and placement, paternity, parenting skills, prenatal and postpartum care. That bill is still alive.
Other bills to actually pump resources through the health department, instead of just coordinating them, died. House Bill 1085 and House Bill 506 would have required a nurse practitioner to be present at each of the county health departments weekly to provide contraceptive supplies, either for free or on a sliding fee scale. House Bill 1263 would have required county health departments to provide free menstrual hygiene products. House Bill 1372 would have added a line item to the health department’s budget for funding to the Child Advocacy Centers, community-based resource centers for children and mothers experiencing abuse, which have recently faced large budget cuts. None of these bills received noticeable attention.
Economic health
Opponents to legal abortion have also acknowledged the need to improve the economic position of mothers, as well as people who choose to adopt.
One policy that national advocates have recommended for years – a state Earned Income Tax Credit – would provide an income boost to low-income working Mississippians. State Auditor Shad White, who investigated the welfare scandal, supports the tax credit and said the state could use welfare funds to implement the program at no new cost to the state.
“Economists agree that EITCs are one of the best ways to improve the economy and help working people,” White wrote in a column last year. “The EITC would directly attack a critical problem facing the state. More people working means stronger families, more tax revenue, and a better economy. Policymakers should put money into the hands of working people and get Mississippi moving forward.”
The Mississippi Legislature has routinely ignored any legislation to start offering a state Earned Income Tax Credit, which models an existing tax credit on the federal side.
House Bill 321 and Senate Bill 2897, both authored by Democrats, are the two Earned Income Tax Credit bills before the Legislature this year.
Other bills introduced by Republicans to create tax credits for child care and adoption expenses might have an easier road ahead this session.
“As long as we have an income tax, we should use it to incentivize the responsible raising of children,” Reeves wrote in his budget recommendation. “These policy changes are tangible ways to reduce the costs of raising a family in America today.”
Similarly, House Bill 1268 and Senate Bill 2696, which passed the Senate, would increase tax credits for adoptive parents to pay for adoption-related expenses.
Fitch supports House Bill 505 and Senate Bill 2335, which incentivize employers to offer additional benefits to parents. House Bill 505 provides tax credits to employers who provide maternity and paternity leave for its employees and Senate Bill 2335 provides tax credits to employers who pay for their employees’ child care.
All of these are considered revenue bills, so they are still alive, awaiting the later deadline.
Two bills to strengthen women’s standing in the workforce – the Mississippi Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and the Mississippi Paid Family Leave Act – died without consideration.
House Bill 1361 would have prohibited employers from discriminating against women because they are pregnant, and Senate Bill 2286 would have required employers with more than 50 employees to offer 12 weeks of paid leave for childbirth.
Mississippi has among the lowest wages and median household income of any state in the country. Minimum wage in the state, which follows the federal minimum wage of $7.25, has not increased since 2009.
Following revelations about widespread abuse within Mississippi’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, or welfare, Democratic lawmakers filed several reforms to the Mississippi Department of Human Services.
Currently, Mississippi has over $100 million in TANF funds sitting idle. The department has not answered repeated questions from Mississippi Today about how it plans to use the reserve.
House Bill 463, House Bill 774, Senate Bill 2794 would have moved tens of millions of the state’s annual TANF block grant to supplement the state’s child care voucher program, potentially providing child care to thousands of working parents who might not have it otherwise. The federal government allows states to use 30% of its block grant this way.
House Bill 1431, a perennial bill from Rep. Omeria Scott, D-Laurel, would have required the state to use unspent TANF funds on tuition and expenses for nursing students, simultaneously providing workforce training to low-income Mississippians and addressing the state’s nursing shortage.
House Bill 612 would have required the welfare agency to provide transportation and child care to TANF recipients, to assist them with completing the application process and participating in the required work program.
House Bill 613 would have limited TANF programs to serve people below 200% of the federal poverty line.
House Bill 502 would have increased the monthly TANF cash assistance by more than $200.
House Bill 970 would have prevented the state from using TANF funds for college scholarships to families who are not receiving TANF benefits. Historically, the state has reported its annual appropriations to the state’s scholarship programs as TANF spending in order to match the federal grant and pull down the funding. The effect of this is that money that should be going towards anti-poverty programs is actually being used to benefit middle-class families, Mississippi Today first reported in 2019.
House Bill 971 would have loosened eligibility for TANF, removing the upfront job search requirement, which presents significant barriers to applicants.
Senate Bill 2331 would have removed the requirement that single moms sue their child’s father for child support – the same restriction Reeves supports dismantling in the child care voucher program – in order to qualify for TANF or food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Senate Bill 2806 would have removed the drug testing requirement from the TANF program.
Though all of these bills died without consideration, Democratic lawmakers took the opportunity to discuss these policies when a repealer bill for the Mississippi Department of Human Services – standard legislation that comes up every few years to extend the life of an agency – reached the Senate floor Tuesday.
While presenting his amendment to the repealer bill, Sen. David Blount, D-Jackson, criticized MDHS for using $30 million in TANF funds each year to supplement the Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services, which he argued should be funded with state appropriations. This is just one example of how the state fails to use these dollars in the most effective way to fight poverty.
“It’s all legal but it’s wrong,” Blount said. “And we need to fix it.”
Blount’s amendment would have moved $30 million in TANF funds to the child care voucher program. Sen. Derrick Simmons, D-Greenville, also introduced an amendment to remove the drug testing requirement for TANF applicants. Sen. Rod Hickman, D-Macon, noted the extremely low approval rate of TANF applications – as low as 2% in some years – when he introduced a bill that prohibits MDHS from denying assistance to families under 130% of the federal poverty level.
Republican senators killed all three amendments.
“The question posed by the amendments today is: In response to the biggest public scandal involving a state agency in the history of this state, what did the Legislature do? The answer expressed today is nothing. We do nothing. We make no changes,” Blount said. “That attitude is the reason we got in this problem in the first place, because it is the disregard for the politically powerless.”
Mississippi Department of Human Services Director Bob Anderson has asked the Legislature to make one important reform to the department to ensure it runs smoothly so that it can serve all eligible applicants: Remove the bureaucratic red tape created by the Medicaid and Human Services Transparency and Fraud Prevention Act, dubbed the HOPE Act, passed in 2017.
Conversely, Republican lawmakers have filed bills to increase restrictions or make it harder still for low-income families to access public assistance.
Sen. Angela Hill, R-Picayune, introduced a bill to require the welfare department to include photo identification on Electronic Benefit Transfer (known as “EBT”) cards — the cards recipients use to spend their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps, benefits. The bill, which died, would have prevented more than two people in the family from being able to use the card.
Two other dead bills, filed by Sen. Melanie Sojourner, R-Natchez, would have prohibited TANF funds from going to people convicted of several felonies and require TANF recipients to participate in community services.
Child support & fatherhood
“The Republican Party Platform affirms ‘our moral obligation to assist, rather than penalize, women who face an unplanned pregnancy,” reads a 2022 column in the Hill co-authored by Fitch. “At the urging of then-Treasurer Lynn Fitch, the platform that stands today supports ‘legislation that requires financial responsibility for the child be equally borne by both the mother and father.’”
The strict ban on abortion has brought renewed attention to the state’s long-troubled child support program, which provides legal services to help separated custodial parents secure court orders against the noncustodial parent for monthly child support payments. Many of the single moms in the child support program are forced into the system as a condition for receiving public assistance from the state.
The enforcement side of the program, which is run by a private contractor, then helps enforce the order by locating the noncustodial parent, establishing paternity if necessary, garnishing wages, intercepting tax refunds, and in extreme cases, suspending driver’s licenses or filing criminal charges in the case of unpaid support.
(The child support privatization contract with Young Williams has come under scrutiny in recent years for failing to require that the contractor meet certain performance-based metrics, something MDHS says it solved in its existing contract. House Bill 177 would have eliminated the contract and brought the program back in-house. It died.)
Lawmakers filed several bills to tweak the child support program to, as Fitch said, “require fathers carry their equal share of the financial needs of childbearing and child-caring.”
House Bill 1114 would increase the cap of how much a person’s income goes towards child support. Currently, a person with five or more children under support orders must pay 26% of their income in child support payments. The bill would revise the law so that a person with six or more children pays 30% of their income. Reeves publicly supports this policy change.
House Bill 320 and House Bill 1117 would revise the law so that monthly child support payments begin when a woman becomes pregnant, instead of after birth. HB 1117 would also include prenatal and post-natal expenses as part of the order.
House Bill 1183 would require Mississippi Department of Human Services to publish the names and photos of people in child support arrearage.
All of these bills died.
The only bills to crack down on child support that remain alive are Senate Bill 2634, filed by Sen. Joey Fililngane, R-Sumrall, on behalf of Fitch’s office, and House Bill 1490 by Speaker Gunn.
Fillingane’s bill increases the statute of limitations for criminal charges against a person who refuses to pay child support. Currently, a person can be charged with desertion of a child if they are found to have wilfully neglected or refused to pay child support while the child is under 18. The bill would increase that age to 21 and also allow for charges to be pursued for three years after the child turns 21.
A nearly identical bill in the House, House Bill 1112, died.
Gunn’s bill requires the Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks to suspend the license of any person who has not paid child support.
“For too many families, regular and reliable child support payments can be the difference between steady meals and going hungry,” Fitch wrote in her most recent column for World News Group last week. “As four out of five custodial parents are women, too often this falls heavily on the mother. Fathers simply must be held equally responsible for their children financially. Women have borne this burden alone for too long.
Legislation that takes a more punitive approach to child support collections – which some advocates warn may lead to the criminalization of poverty – appears to reverse the national trend.
In 2016, the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement implemented a rule change that required states to enact safe guards so that before a parent is jailed for unpaid child support, there must be evidence that the parent has the funds and is willfully refusing to pay. The federal government gave states until 2022 to comply. The rule in part helps to ensure that states are following the 2011 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Turner v. Rogers, which said states must determine whether a parent is able to pay the ordered child support before incarcerating them for nonpayment.
The 2016 rule also prohibits states from allowing child support debts to accrue while a parent is behind bars, but the practice still continues today. As a result of not complying, human services director Bob Anderson told lawmakers that Mississippi is at risk of losing its federal match for the operation of the child support enforcement program – about 66% of the program’s budget.
To deal with this, Sen. Brice Wiggins, R-Pascagoula, introduced Senate Bill 2082, which suspends child support arrears from accruing when a person is in prison or involuntarily institutionalized for longer than 180 days. House Bill 1215 would do the same thing. Both are still alive.
Another bill that would have offered leniency to people dinged for not paying child support is Senate Bill 2218, introduced by Sen. Hill, which would have provided temporary driver’s licenses for the purpose of employment and worship to people whose licenses were suspended due to unpaid child support. That bill died.
National child support experts have long acknowledged that a punitive approach to child support collections is not necessarily the most beneficial for families. If a father loses his license or goes to jail, for example, he might lose his job, only making it less likely he’ll be able to make the monthly payment.
“It’s a very complex question when you’re trying to force a parent to do what he or she ought to do anyway. And you can’t legislate everything, but we try to do the best we can,” said Filingane. “Let’s take the example of the driver’s license being suspended. Well, then, if you’re gonna follow the law, and you no longer have a driver’s license, how do you expect that person to get to their job to earn the money to then turn around and pay the child support? … There’s all these sometimes unintended consequences that happen.”
“And when you criminalize behavior and you end up throwing them in jail, sometimes it does the trick,” he continued. “It’s fascinating that sometimes the person who swears up and down that he or she doesn’t have a hundred bucks to their name and can’t pay it cause they just don’t have it, they end up in jail and less than eight hours later it’s paid in full.”
The state’s efforts to either force or incentivize fathers to participate in child rearing extend beyond the child support program. But information about the efficacy of those efforts is lacking.
Every year for the last several years, Mississippi has spent anywhere from $9 million to $39 million in TANF funds on grants to “Fatherhood and Two Parent Family Formation” programs, according to federal reports, but the department does not provide much information about what those programs entail, nor does it gather any records to show what outcomes the programs achieved.
House Bill 1146, authored by Rep. Becky Currie, R-Brookhaven – the lawmaker who introduced the abortion ban that overturned Roe v. Wade – would have created the “Mississippi Fatherhood Initiative Fund” to distribute grants to local organizations providing parenting resources to fathers. The bill died.
Auditor White has placed a heavy focus on “fatherlessness” in recent months, releasing a report that aimed to demonstrate the cost of one-parent households on Mississippi taxpayers. One example: the report estimates that 50% of the state’s prison population are men who come from “fatherless” homes, and the state spends $180 million annually to incarcerate them. (A bill to provide workforce training to inmates, House Bill 640, died).
The report lays out the purported problem – positioning “fatherlessness” as the root cause of societal ills associated with poverty, as opposed to the other way around – but the proposed solutions are sparse.
White makes one recommendation: expand the JROTC military program in high schools across the state.
“Countless studies prove our communities and families — along with the average taxpayer — would benefit from strong, engaged fathers and father figures in the lives of Mississippi’s children,” the report reads. “One program interrupting the cycle of fatherlessness is the Junior Reserve Officer’s Training Corps (JROTC).”
White points to the 100% graduation rate of students in the program. The cost of expanding the program to all high schools is $185 million, according to White’s separate 2020 report on JROTC. There has been no legislation introduced this session to do this.
But there have been bills – House Bill 1360, House Bill 1413, House Bill 1414 and House Bill 1419 – to implement various high school dropout prevention and academic performance improvement programs in struggling districts. They all died without consideration.
Reeves supports at least one initiative in this arena: Placing career coaches in high schools across the state. His workforce cabinet began the program last year with $8 million in pandemic relief funding. Reeves recommends doubling it.
“These coaches will especially be directed toward low-income areas, helping to inspire young Mississippians with the abundance of pathways available for fulfilling careers,” Reeves said.
House Bill 274, authored by Speaker Gunn, would provide $12 million to the Office of Workforce Development, called Accelerate MS, to fund more coaches. The bill is still alive, awaiting the appropriations deadline.
Baby drop off, foster care, and adoption
After the Dobbs ruling, health professionals in Mississippi estimated that the state should prepare itself to handle an additional 5,000 births each year. There are already about 4,000 kids in the state’s foster care system – which is still under a decades-long federal court settlement because of its failure to properly care for kids in its care.
Reeves proposes several measures he believes will alleviate issues caused by unplanned births, including increasing the amount of time a parent is allowed to “drop off” a baby without facing consequences; increasing subsidies to adoptive parents; and making modest budget increases to the Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services to hire more personnel and reduce adoption backlogs.
The court settlement, referred to as Olivia Y, has required Mississippi to periodically increase the public subsidy foster families receive to care for foster children. But the state failed to make similar increases to the adoption subsidy, meaning families are facing a scenario where it makes more financial sense to foster than to adopt.
“It creates an artificial incentive for courts to keep children in state custody for the sole purpose of making sure that family has adequate funding to take care of the child,” Child Protection Services Commissioner Andrea Sanders said at a Legislative appropriations hearing last month.
She asked for an additional $12 million appropriation to fund increases to the adoption subsidy, as recommended by Reeves.
House Bill 510 would create versions of a “Foster Parents Bill of Rights and Responsibilities,” adding several provisions to existing statute that give foster care parents the opportunity to participate in various areas of the child’s care, including communicating with the child’s school, doctors, guardian ad litem, and others. The Senate version of the bill, Senate Bill 2191, which died, would have also required the court to notify the attorney general’s office when changes to a child’s long-term care plan occur.
House Bill 533, which is alive in the house, and Senate Bill 2611, which died, were introduced to ease requirements for parents seeking adoption in hopes to hasten the process. Instead of a compulsory home study before a child is placed for adoption, the bills would leave it up to a judge to determine if a home study is necessary. Additionally, Gunn’s House Bill 1342 would create the “Board of Trustees of the Mississippi Adoption Licensure Authority” to regulate adoptions in the state and add new adoption procedures to state statute.
Senate Bill 2377 would enact the Mississippi Safe Haven Law, adding exhaustive measures to the existing statute, spelling out step-by-step the process for a parent to relinquish her child to an emergency medical services provider. This law, as well as House Bill 244, would increase the age a baby may be relinquished from seven days to 30 days. House Bill 1318, which passed the full house, takes this a step further, increasing the age to 90 days. If enacted, Mississippi would have one of the most lenient Safe Haven Laws in the nation with the exception of New Mexico (90 days) and North Dakota (one year), according to a 2021 Charlotte Lozier Institute analysis.
House Bill 634, which died, would have removed the age limit altogether and added “baby box” to the list of allowed drop-off destinations.
Children removed from their families often face challenges into adulthood. A bill to waive tuition at state schools for foster or adopted children, House Bill 127, died.
The Legislature still has time to find the additional appropriations requested by CPS. But lawmakers face an even bigger budget question if it ever wants to stop using its federal TANF grant to fund the foster care agency – a financial maneuver that has prevented the state from being able to pull down unlimited dollar-for-dollar federal matching funds offered by the 2018 federal Family First Prevention Services Act.
Study Group on Women & Children
Several bills during the 2023 session came out of the Senate Study Group on Women, Children and Families, chaired by Sen. Nicole Boyd, an outspoken proponent of postpartum Medicaid extension.
Senate Bill 2781, Senate Bill 2898, Senate Bill 2696, Senate Bill 219 and Senate Bill 2377, described above, originated from the study group.
The group, which examined a broad range of issues affecting Mississippi families, also resulted in the following legislation, all of which remains alive:
Senate Bill 2167: Create the Mississippi Early Intervention Pilot Project at Mississippi State University’s TK Martin Center and create an Early Intervention Task Force to work on issues related to early childhood screenings and therapeutic services for children.
Senate Bill 2384: Create the Mississippi Task Force on Foster Care and Adoption to study and make recommendations for improving state laws related to foster care and adoption.
Senate Bill 2485: Revise qualifications for personnel under the Early Intervention Act for Infants and Toddlers to address shortages.
Senate Bill 2192: Clarify circumstances under which a presumed father cannot further contest paternity.
Finally, a bill to repeal Mississippi’s abortion ban and put the issue to a statewide vote, House Bill 1385, died.
The state Senate on Thursday kept alive a measure that would reinstate Mississippi voters’ right to bypass the Legislature and put issues on a statewide ballot.
Lawmakers stripped out an earlier provision that would have given the Legislature power to veto or amend citizens’ initiatives before they go before voters. They also removed red tape that would have, among other things, required the daunting task for initiative sponsors to get 10 signatures each from the state’s more than 300 municipalities.
But the proposal, as it stands now, would make getting an initiative on a ballot a more difficult task, requiring about 240,000 voter signatures to get something on the ballot, compared to about 107,000 under the state’s previous initiative process. Last year attempts to reinstate voters’ initiative rights died when the House would not agree to the Senate’s demands for more signatures.
“If I had my way, I’d have a higher percentage (of signatures required),” Senate Accountability Chairman John Polk, R-Hattiesburg, told his colleagues Thursday.
Polk was tasked by Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann with handling ballot initiative legislation this year and last, but has not appeared very enthusiastic about giving voters back the right to sidestep the Legislature in making policy. Polk has described the ballot initiative process as “dangerous.” On Thursday during Senate debate he decried the “debacle” that nearly happened when voters enshrined a medical marijuana program into the state constitution, only to have the state’s high court strike it down.
In 2021, the state Supreme Court in a ruling on litigation against citizen-led creation of a medical marijuana program, ruled Mississippi’s ballot initiative, and the program, invalid. Lawmakers last year created a medical marijuana program. But despite public outcry and legislative leaders promising to reinstate voter ballot initiative rights, it failed in the final days of the legislative session last year.
The current Senate Bill 2638 and accompanying Senate Concurrent Resolution 533 — which would have to be approved by voters in November if it’s passed by lawmakers — would give Mississippi voters the right to change or create state law, not amend the constitution as the previous ballot initiative allowed.
The current version also would reinstate the Legislature’s right to offer alternative measures to anything citizens put on a ballot. Lawmakers in the past have used this to try to confuse the issue and defeat citizen initiatives, including with the medical marijuana Initiative 65.
Supporters of voter initiative rights have questioned the veracity of legislative efforts to reinstate them.
“There are legislators in here who say they are for the ballot initiative who are for it,” said Sen. David Blount, D-Jackson. “And there are legislators in here who say they are for the ballot initiative who are not really for it. We’re about to find out soon where people really are, when we see if we get a legitimate, workable ballot initiative process … We need to be straight with people that we mean it.”
Sen. Barbara Blackmon, D-Canton, offered an amendment that would have stripped the Legislature’s power to offer alternative initiatives. The amendment failed.
“We ought to be able to trust people, your constituents, have the ability to think for themselves and that they have a brain,” Blackmon said.
Polk warned that out-of-state interests can spend large amounts of money and harness social media campaigns to co-opt the ballot initiative process and force policy that is not truly grassroots.
Rep. Angela Hill asked Blackmon, “Was our country founded as a constitutional republic or a direct democracy?” making the point that the U.S. and Mississippi’s government is based on representation by elected leaders, not mob rule or en masse voting on most policy issues.
Blount pointed out that Mississippi voters had initiative rights for 30 years before the Supreme Court invalidated it, and only seven initiatives were brought to ballot, and only three passed.
“The fear is that this process is going to be abused,” Blount said. “… That fear is misplaced.”
Senate Concurrent Resolution 533 passed the Senate on Thursday, the deadline for floor action to keep it alive, 43-4. Polk said he expects there will be much more work on the issue between House and Senate before a final version is struck.
Brett Favre, the NFL legend who has become publicly ensnared in the sprawling Mississippi welfare scandal, sued state Auditor Shad White and national sports media figures Shannon Sharpe and Pat McAfee for defamation.
White, whose investigation of welfare misspending led to 2020 criminal charges of six people, is one of the most prominent officials to publicly discuss the scandal. Several times in recent months, White has criticized Favre’s involvement in the scandal and even got into a tense social media back-and-forth with the Hall of Fame quarterback.
Attorneys for Favre, who has not been charged with any crime related to the scandal, argued in the new lawsuit that White has “made egregiously false and defamatory statements” in several media appearances.
“Shad White, the State Auditor of Mississippi, has carried out an outrageous media campaign of malicious and false accusations against Brett Favre — the Hall of Fame quarterback and native son of Mississippi — in a brazen attempt to leverage the media attention generated by Favre’s celebrity to further his own political career,” reads Favre’s complaint, filed in Hinds County Circuit Court on Feb. 9.
Favre’s complaint against White continues: “By shamelessly and falsely attacking Favre’s good name, White has gained national media attention he previously could have only dreamed of, including appearances on television shows on CNN and HBO, a popular ESPN podcast, as well as interviews for print and online media. None of these national media outlets would have paid White the slightest attention had he not been attacking Favre. White himself acknowledged this, admitting that his own wife was “shocked” by his appearance on the ESPN Daily Podcast.”
Favre also specifies that he’s suing White, not the state of Mississippi, and that he’s seeking damages from White as an individual, not from Mississippi taxpayers.
White’s office released a statement shortly after the lawsuit was filed on Thursday.
”Everything Auditor White has said about this case is true and is backed by years of audit work by the professionals at the Office of the State Auditor,” White’s spokesman Fletcher Freeman said. “It’s mind-boggling that Mr. Favre wants to have a trial about that question. Mr. Favre has called Auditor White and his team liars despite repaying some of the money our office demanded from him. He’s also claimed the auditors are liars despite clear documentary evidence showing he benefitted from misspent funds. Instead of paying New York litigators to try this case, he’d be better off fully repaying the amount of welfare funds he owes the state.”
Favre also sued media figures Shannon Sharpe and Pat McAfee, who each have popular national platforms to discuss sports news and analysis, for defamation.
“You got to be a sorry mofo to steal from the lowest of the low,” Sharpe said on his television show “Skip and Shannon: Undisputed” on Sept. 14, the day after Mississippi Today broke a story revealing that when Favre discussed receiving funding from a welfare-funded nonprofit director, he asked if the public would find out.
“Mississippi is the poorest state in our country — its citizens,” Sharpe continued. “So if they’re the poorest state, Brett Favre is taking from the underserved. You made $100 plus million in the NFL. And to talk about, ‘Well, he didn’t know.’ This is what Brett Favre texted: ‘If you were to pay me, is there any way the media can find out where it came from and how much?’ If you’ve got to ask this question, ‘Is there any way the media can find out?’, you already know you’re doing something wrong.”
Mississippi Today’s 2022 “The Backchannel” investigation revealed how Favre received welfare funds for several projects, including funding for his startup pharmaceutical company.
Never-before-seen text messages showed former Gov. Phil Bryant discussed Favre’s proposal to build a new volleyball stadium — construction ultimately funded with welfare funds. Prosecutors have called the project a scheme to defraud the government.
Mississippi Today’s reporting found that Favre traded on his own fame and connections to secure a financial bailout from the state of Mississippi.
In the course of Favre’s dealings with state officials on behalf of the pharmaceutical venture or the volleyball stadium, Favre proposed: giving Bryant and nonprofit founder Nancy New shares in the company in exchange for their help; buying the former welfare director John Davis a F-150 Raptor; and convincing New and Davis to pay off a more than $1 million commitment he made to USM.
Favre himself received a $1.1 million payment from the welfare-funded charity under a vague promotional gig, which White claims included event appearances that Favre never attended. Favre has since returned the funds.
In addition to the new defamation suit, Favre continues to fight civil charges Mississippi Department of Human Services has filed against him and several others in an attempt to recoup the misspent welfare funds. The suit alleges Favre should be on the hook for over $7 million that he allegedly helped funnel away from people in poverty.
A House bill that would allow elected municipal officials to be recalled during the middle of their terms, through a combined effort of the governor and the voters, was voted down Thursday in a surprise rebuke of the proposal.
Rep. Shanda Yates, an independent from Jackson and the only white member of the capital city’s House delegation, filed the bill in response, she said, to constituents asking her if there was a mechanism in state law to recall elected officials.
Opponents have argued that the legislation specifically targeted Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, who has been at intense public odds with Gov. Tate Reeves and other state and legislative leaders.
Black members of the House argued during the debate on Thursday that Yates’ bill was a continuation of multiple proposals pending this legislative session intended by white state elected officials to strip power from the leaders of Jackson — or at the very least treat the capital city differently than other municipalities in the state.
Earlier this week, there was a four-hour debate over legislation that created a separate court in Jackson, the largest city in the state and Blackest major city in America, where the judges would be appointed instead of elected like most other judges in the state.
“When you see things woven in the fabric of racism, all there can be is a racist blanket,” said Rep. John Hines, D-Greenville. “We are better than this.”
A sizable number of House Republicans voted with Democrats, who are in a minority, to defeat Yates’ recall proposal 53-60 on Thursday.
Yates said when she researched existing state law after getting questions from constituents, she found a little known and little used provision that allows for the replacement of county officials. Her bill would have amended that law to include municipal officials.
She argued there are mechanisms that allow the removal of all elected officials in the state except for municipal officials. When it was pointed out to her earlier this session the proposal would allow voters to recall municipal officials, but not state officials, including legislators, she told Mississippi Today she would not have a problem allowing for the voter recall of legislators.
But no effort to change the bill to include legislators was made when it was debated and ultimately defeated Thursday. Rep. Tommy Reynolds, a Democrat from Water Valley, wanted to amend the bill to remove the governor from having a role in the removal and leave it solely to voters, but Speaker Philip Gunn said his amendment was offered too late.
“If we wanted to do (recall) for everybody, that would be good, too,” Reynolds said.
Yates’ bill would have given the governor the authority to establish a panel to decide if a recall should occur if 30% of the voters signed a petition in support of a recall.
