Jackson State University President Thomas Hudson has been put on administrative leave with pay, the Institutions for Higher Learning announced Thursday.
Thomas Hudson Credit: JSU
The news came in a press release from IHL and did not detail the circumstances which required the Board of Trustees to place Hudson on leave.
Hudson did not return a call or text message sent by Mississippi Today on Thursday.
The IHL board met twice Thursday for a special called meeting to discuss “a Jackson State University personnel matter.” Both times the board immediately went into executive session. None of the members were present at IHL’s office in Jackson where the public meeting took place; all who attended did so via zoom.
JSU spokespeople said the university does not comment on personnel matters and directed questions to IHL.
Elayne Hayes-Anthony will serve as temporary acting president, according to the release. Anthony currently chairs JSU’s Department of Journalism and Media Studies.
Dr. Elayne Hayes-Anthony. Dean of the School of Journalism at Jackson State University
“I am so pleased to lead the university that launched my career. I plan to work with faculty and staff for the betterment of the students, alumni and community we serve,” Hayes-Anthony said in a text message to Mississippi Today after her appointment was announced Thursday evening.
Hayes-Anthony is a Jackson native who spent 17 years at Belhaven University before moving to back JSU in 2015 (she spent 10 years at the university prior to her time at Belhaven).
“We are grateful that Dr. Hayes-Anthony has agreed to serve as Acting President,” Board of Trustees President Tom Duff said in a statement. “As alumnus and long-time administrator and faculty member at the university, she understands the campus, its students, its challenges and opportunities.”
Weeks before the resignation, JSU’s faculty senate voted “no-confidence” in Hudson and his administration in January, a rare but ultimately symbolic move taken to demonstrate dissatisfaction with the president because of a “continuous pattern of failing to respect” shared governance and other professional norms of higher education. At the time, Hudson said in a statement he was proud of the work his administration had accomplished and he was “committed to continuing the work to collaboratively execute the strategic plan to make Jackson State the best institution it can be.”
Hudson is a JSU alum and Jackson resident who was appointed president by the IHL board in November 2020. Prior to that, he was leading the university in an interim position after former president William Bynum resigned in February 2020 after he was “charged with procuring the services of a prostitute, false statement of identity and possession of marijuana,” according to a Clarion-Ledger report. A Clinton municipal judge convicted him of all misdemeanor charges.
Hudson receives $300,000 a year in salary from IHL plus a $5,000 annual bonus from the university foundation. It was not immediately clear Thursday what Hayes-Anthony’s salary would be as acting president.
IHL said the board will “discuss the future leadership of Jackson State” at its next meeting on March 23.
Brett DiBiase, a former professional wrestler and son of WWE’s “Million Dollar Man,” pleaded guilty Thursday to a new federal charge that involves his brother, Ted “Teddy” DiBiase Jr., as an alleged co-conspirator.
The plea signals that DiBiase may act as a witness in the federal government’s ongoing investigation into the Mississippi welfare scandal, in which officials misspent or stole tens of millions of federal welfare funds under the administration of former Gov. Phil Bryant.
But Brett DiBiase, who admitted to one count of conspiracy to defraud the government, doesn’t appear poised to testify against his brother. Teddy DiBiase and the men’s parents, Ted and Melanie DiBiase, sat in the courtroom for the plea hearing Thursday. All three DiBiase men are facing charges in Mississippi Department of Human Services parallel civil lawsuit, which demands they return over $5 million in welfare funds they received.
“Teddy and Melanie and Ted Sr. love Brett and are here to support him like they always have and always will,” Teddy DiBiase’s attorney Scott Gilbert said at the courthouse.
While Teddy DiBiase has not been formally charged, federal authorities hinted they were zoning in on the older brother when they attempted to seize his $1.5 million Madison home in 2020. Teddy DiBiase was also included as an alleged co-conspirator in the bill of information that former welfare director John Davis pleaded guilty to in September.
Both Davis and Brett DiBiase pleaded guilty to a document called a bill of information, which occurs when the defendant opts against a grand jury indictment. They are the only people who have faced federal criminal charges related to the welfare scandal.
Davis’ combined 20 felony counts come with a total possible prison sentence of decades, but his plea agreement assures he’ll only serve time for his two federal charges, which have maximum sentences of five and ten years. In exchange, Davis is also cooperating with prosecutors.
Davis was Bryant’s direct subordinate, and he could have the most knowledge of Bryant’s role in the scandal.
“As I have said before, this case is far from over and both the State of Mississippi and the U.S. Government will continue to pursue all those involved in this fraud, regardless of their position or standing,” Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens said in a statement after Brett DiBiase’s plea hearing.
Davis brought the DiBiase family into the administration of the state’s welfare agency and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program for several purported purposes, such as employee training and motivational speaking, opioid abuse awareness, youth mentoring, development of a phone app to track teens, and workforce development. While they received payment up front, many of the programs never came to fruition.
These are only some of the agreements — what prosecutors have called “sham contracts” — that make up the largest public fraud case in Mississippi history. Others include the $8 million worth of welfare-funded projects inspired by NFL legend Brett Favre. In the investigative series “The Backchannel,” Mississippi Today found through private text messages that Bryant and Favre had discussed these projects, and that Favre even enticed the governor by offering shares in one of the companies that received stolen welfare funds. Favre is a civil defendant but has not been charged criminally.
Bryant has faced no charges. Instead, the official who initially investigated the case, State Auditor Shad White, whom Bryant originally appointed to his position, describes Bryant as the whistleblower of the case.
“I’m pleased that our work uncovering the largest public fraud in state history continues to result in convictions,” White said in a statement Thursday. “We will continue to assist the prosecutors, who decide who faces criminal charges.”
While the state originally arrested six people in 2020 — five of whom pleaded guilty and one who received pretrial diversion — Davis and Brett DiBiase are the only ones to be charged with federal crimes related to the welfare scandal. Nonprofit operators Nancy New and her son Zach New, whose nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center facilitated much of the theft or misspending, pleaded guilty to separate federal charges that they defrauded the Mississippi Department of Education.
Since no one has been sentenced in the either the state or federal cases, no one is currently serving a prison sentence.
Davis hired Brett DiBiase at the welfare agency in 2017, then secured for him a six-figure job at Mississippi Community Education Center, where Davis was increasingly outsourcing the TANF program. Federal prosecutors say DiBiase was not qualified for the job. In 2018, DiBiase entered a $48,000 contract with the welfare department provide opioid addiction education, but after slipping back into his own addiction, he failed to perform the service. Davis and New then used $160,000 in federal funds to pay for Brett DiBiase’s four-month stint at a luxury rehab facility in Malibu, Davis and New admitted in their state guilty pleas.
During the Thursday plea hearing, prosecutors described how they would prove the charges against Brett DiBiase. They cited a text in which Brett DiBiase asked Davis what the name of the nonprofit he worked for was.
While pleading guilty, federal prosecutors allowed Brett DiBiase to “substantially agree” with the “essential facts” of the bill of information against him, but not the prosecutor’s narrative in its entirety. He did not specify which parts he contested.
Brett DiBiase’s single conspiracy charge comes with a maximum sentence of five years and fine of up to $250,000.
“I applaud our federal partners for continuing to pursue federal charges for each and every individual responsible for stealing from Mississippi’s most needy and vulnerable citizens,” Owens said in his statement.
Singing River Health System will stop offering labor and delivery and other obstetric services at its Gulfport hospital starting April 1, joining two other Mississippi hospitals that have recently done the same.
Singing River announced the cut to the Harrison County hospital Thursday, blaming staff shortages. Employees received a 30-day notice and have the option to transfer to other jobs within the hospital system.
“Like many health systems across the nation, we currently face a shortage of OB physicians,” the statement from the hospital said. “While the decision to suspend services was not something we wanted to do, we are hopeful it is only temporary and that we can reinstate services in the near future.”
Patients can still receive obstetric care – including labor and delivery – at Singing River hospitals in Pascagoula and Ocean Springs.
Singing River and Ochsner Health announced a partnership in 2020 to acquire the 130-bed Gulfport hospital from another owner.
The cut in OB service comes as hospitals across the state say they’re struggling to keep up with rising costs and scaling back on specialized services as a result.
“We will continue to search for long-term solutions to bring back OB services to Singing River Gulfport and our community,” the statement said.
Singing River isn’t facing an imminent financial crisis, but announced it was seeking a buyer in the fall. The hospital’s CEO, Tiffany Murdock, has said partnering with a larger system would help bring down costs because the system would be able to negotiate on a larger scale with insurers and suppliers.
Murdock told Mississippi Today in November the hospital system had 200 open staffing positions and was continuing to struggle with a nursing shortage.
Clarification 3/2/2023: The headline of this story has been updated to reflect that the hospital says it has suspended, not ended, obstetric and labor and delivery services, though it has no firm date of when the services will resume.
Last year, Mississippi First Lady Elee Reeves announced the launch of her new initiative aimed at improving child development – an issue leaders have increasingly recognized as a critical economic driver in the most impoverished state in the nation.
Joined by the press in the Governor’s Mansion, Reeves revealed her new strategy: She wrote a children’s activity book about a turtle named Fred.
Reeves hopes that Fred, named after her childhood imaginary friend, and the story of his journey through Mississippi “will help our children to develop the lifelong skills that they need to become successful adults,” she told TV reporters at the March 2022 press conference.
Reeves’ book — 20 pages of stapled white cardstock featuring comic sans font and a green cartoon turtle on the cover — may have taken center stage at last year’s event, but side remarks signal something far more consequential is brewing.
At the announcement, Reeves was flanked by individuals representing Casey Family Programs, a national foster care foundation credited with funding production of the book, and The Hope Science Institute of Mississippi, a little-known nonprofit that quietly evolved from a child welfare initiative called Family First.
The new nonprofit oversees an initiative called Programs of Hope, which consists of an advisory council chaired by Reeves and Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Dawn Beam.
Financial documentation is not yet available for 2022, so it’s difficult to see where The Hope Science Institute, also known as Hope Rising Mississippi, is receiving its funding, how much it’s receiving, or where it’s going. Officials said a grant from Casey paid to print the initial copies of Reeves’ book, called Fred the Turtle. While the two organizations would not disclose the size of the grant, the governor’s office told Mississippi Today that Casey Family Programs awarded Hope Rising $28,500 to print 33,000 books.
But Mississippi Today also uncovered that Hope Rising paid to print thousands of additional copies of Fred the Turtle with $10,000 in federal Head Start funds appropriated to it by the governor’s office.
A spokesperson in the governor’s office justified the expense by describing the coloring books as “materials to promote better linkages between Head Start Agencies.” This goal is not advertised in PR and news alerts about the book. Pressed further, the spokesperson clarified the books Hope Rising paid to print last year will be distributed to Head Start classrooms starting this May.
“Almost since the beginning of our governor’s administration, we were looking for ways to build hope, and the First Lady and Justice Beam have been working together on Mississippi Programs of Hope in the effort to bring together government, the private sector and nonprofits to work together,” Cindy Cheeks, director of program operations for The Hope Science Institute, said at the 2022 book announcement.
The First Lady of Mississippi, Elee Reeves, visited Dixie Attendance Center today to present 4th graders a copy of her new book, “Mississippi’s Fred the Turtle.” The book follows Fred the Turtle on his journey around Mississippi and some of its most historic places and landmarks. pic.twitter.com/KPsNJT0Q4V
The concept bears striking resemblance to the Family First Initiative, for which Cheeks formerly served as a strategic initiatives coordinator. But onlookers wouldn’t know from press releases or promotional materials how one initiative grew from another.
Family First was a short-lived judicial initiative launched by Beam and former Mississippi First Lady Deborah Bryant in 2018. Former Gov. Phil Bryant and others advertised Family First as the catalyst for a significant overhaul of Mississippi’s child welfare system.
The idea was to prevent child neglect by connecting needy families to resources in their community — food, clothing, beds, money for rent or power bills, transportation, job training, etc. — so that the state didn’t have to remove children from their homes.
Instead, the state sold empty promises through the initiative, Mississippi Today found in its 2022 investigation, and while the members say some meaningful work did occur on the local level, the project’s demise was one of many casualties felt by a larger welfare scandal that broke in 2020.
“They were lying,” Beam recently told Mississippi Today, referring to the Bryant administration’s promise to create a database that could connect families to resources and track needs and outcomes.
While two separate and distinct entities, there was a close association between the Family First Initiative and Families First for Mississippi, the now defunct welfare program run in part Nancy New, who pleaded guilty to fraud and bribery.
The New nonprofit program, also promoted by former Gov. Bryant, served as a vehicle for officials, including former welfare director John Davis, to misspend tens of millions of federal grant funds from the Mississippi Department of Human Services. Beyond sharing a similar name and goal, Family First and Families First were entangled with many of the same characters. They even had the same logo, the result of a bungled branding campaign carried out a PR firm called Cirlot Agency.
After agents from the auditor’s office arrested New and Davis in 2020, Families First for Mississippi immediately shuttered and the court-affiliated Family First Initiative vanished.
“I can tell you that at some point, I was bluer than blue about all this. It broke my heart,” Beam told Mississippi Today in 2022, referring to the welfare scandal.
Beam — daughter of former Mississippi Baptist Convention president and preacher Gene Henderson and sister to Pinelake Baptist Church pastor Chip Henderson — then quoted a Bible verse: “Don’t grow weary in doing good.”
“We can’t quit trying to find resources to help our kids. If anything, we have to fight all the harder,” she said. (Beam spoke to Mississippi Today in an individual capacity, not as a representative of the court.)
Since then, architects of the judicial initiative have tried to rebrand and distance their mission from the corrupt welfare delivery system and its leaders. The new initiative no longer proclaims goals as lofty as reducing the foster care population; it’s more focused on “sharing the power of Hope.”
And while Elee Reeves promotes building resilience in children, her husband squeezes the state of the resources it could use to stabilize households and satisfy that goal.
Gov. Tate Reeves has left millions of federal welfare funds unspent. He sent $130 million in rental assistance back to the federal government. And he continues to adamantly reject billions in Medicaid funds that could provide health insurance to poor parents.
Shortly after arrests in the sprawling welfare scandal, Beam began a new court effort similar to Family First called “Programs of HOPE” under the Mississippi Supreme Court’s Commission on Children’s Justice. HOPE stands for housing and transportation; opportunities for treatment; parent and family support; and economic opportunities — though the program does not itself provide or fund these services.
Beam was inspired by the book “Hope Rising” by Casey Gwinn, an attorney and founder of a violence prevention organization, and Chan Hellman, a social work professor at the University of Oklahoma.
The book provides an alternative perspective to the heavily-cited, widely-accepted Adverse Childhood Events or ACE score.
The ACE score is a framework developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control for understanding the correlation between childhood stressors and adult health outcomes — and the corresponding resiliency test, which measures the exception to the rule. In other words, the more traumatic childhood events a person experiences, the higher risk they are for chronic health problems and other challenges in adulthood, unless they have high resiliency.
This goes hand-in-hand with the idea of “trauma-informed care,” which promotes a holistic approach to addressing challenges, recognizing the role that trauma plays in a person’s life.
“Hope science” presents the theory that a person’s level of hope – “the belief that your future can be brighter and better than your past and that you actually have a role to play in making it better,” according to the book – is the greatest indicator of future success.
Beam was struck by the concept.
“Many of us (judges) have been doing this for years. We just didn’t have what to call it,” Beam told Mississippi Today in 2022. “Talking to people in such a way instead of screaming and yelling at them about getting off your butt and finding a house and a job so you can get your kids back, and rather saying, ‘How can I help you? We want your children to be with you because we know that’s going to be the best thing,’” Beam said.
Beam then helped set up a private nonprofit called The Hope Science Institute of Mississippi, and moved the public court function of “Programs of Hope” under the private organization in 2021. The organization changed its operating name to Hope Rising Mississippi in 2022.
“Programs of Hope simply helps them (state and community leaders) to connect and facilitate the exchange of ideas,” Beam recently told Mississippi Today. “It’s exciting to see how light bulbs start going off, where agencies thought, ‘We could never get this done.’ And then all of a sudden, vouchers are there, or transportation is there, those types of things. Parenting – we’ve never had any standard for parenting classes and now that’s coming about. It’s just that opportunity to bring people together.”
The program has received virtually no media attention, save for a feature in Mississippi Christian Living magazine. The article described Hope Rising as a “new nonprofit that aims to create lasting, systemic change in Mississippi through the science of hope (which, yes, is a real thing).”
According to a press release, Justice Beam was supposed to represent Programs of Hope at Elee Reeves’ 2022 book announcement, but her former assistant Cheeks spoke instead. Cheeks explained that Fred the Turtle was born out of the efforts of Programs of Hope.
Cheeks, who worked as a coordinator for Family First during her employment at the Mississippi Supreme Court, is also a longtime administrator for an organization called GenerousChurch, which works to “train Biblical generosity.”
While Beam serves as an advisor to the nonprofit and chairs one of the nonprofit’s programs, the judge is quick to clarify that she is not an employee or a board member for the nonprofit.
The director of Hope Rising Mississippi is Amanda Fontaine, who also serves as director of the Mississippi Association of Broadcasters. Fontaine previously worked for New’s program Families First for Mississippi, according to past articles describing Fontaine as the program’s “director of development and sustainability.”
A 2018-2019 ledger of Families First expenses from New’s nonprofit — which the State Auditor found contained errors — does not reflect that Fontaine was on payroll, but it did list $1,500 worth of reimbursements to Fontaine for food and travel.
“I’m in another role helping numerous people,” Fontaine told the Jackson Free Press in a 2018 feature about her work. “(Families First is) about … the family as a whole. They have so many programs that help families and children.”
(A week before the story ran, New’s nonprofit paid Jackson Free Press $400 for a quarter-page ad with the memo “Congrats to Amanda Fontaine,” according to the ledger).
Hope Rising’s publicly listed address is Fontaine’s residence in Brandon.
For Rimes, the familiar characters between the old and new welfare initiatives doesn’t come as a surprise. “I often say Mississippi is ‘one big small town.’ Some overlap is inevitable in the world of nonprofits and government,” Rimes said in an email.
Another team member and co-founder of Hope Rising is former FBI agent Christopher Freeze, who served a stint as the director of the embattled Mississippi Department of Human Services under Bryant. Bryant appointed Freeze to replace Davis in August of 2019 after Davis was ousted for fraud.
After leaving the agency as Bryant’s term was ending in early 2020, Freeze dove into the field of trauma-informed leadership and began studying for his doctorate in philosophy in organizational and community leadership. He started motivational speaking and formed an LLC for his services called Mr. Freeze Enterprises.
“I know that a lot of you have programs and services,” Freeze said to social workers and service providers in a keynote address at Hope Rising’s inaugural event, MS Hope Summit, just days after Elee Reeves’ 2022 press conference. “I know that you think that you’re involved in programs and services and that that’s the goal. Let me just tell you, that is not the goal. Your programs are pathways to those goals. Your job is to help that person understand what their goal is and how your programs can help them achieve their goal. And then help them maintain, motivate their willpower.”
Mississippi Child Protection Services Director Andrea Sanders, who oversees the state’s child welfare and foster care system, and many state employees attended last year’s summit. Tickets to the event were $25 and the organization also solicited event sponsorships from $500 to $10,000.
A couple months later, the Governor’s Office gave Hope Science Institute $10,000 in funds from Head Start, the federal preschool program for low-income families. All of the money was used to print 7,500 copies of Elee Reeves’ Fred the Turtle book, according to records Mississippi Today obtained.
“It was a one-time expense of the Head Start Collaboration Office for printing services for materials to promote better linkages between Head Start Agencies, other child and family agencies, and to carry out the activities of the State Director of Head Start Collaboration,” Shelby Wilcher, spokesperson for the governor, said in an email last year.
Head Start does not appear as one of the agency partners listed at the end of Fred the Turtle, nor does Hope Rising appear to do work with Head Start centers.
Asked for more clarification, Wilcher said in a statement that after Fred the Turtle was “so well received by students,” Casey Family Programs awarded a second grant to offer books for students in all of Mississippi’s 82 counties. After the second Casey grant, “the decision was made to expand the initiative to kids in Head Start,” though nearly a year after first ordering the books to be printed, they have not yet been delivered.
“Once the books funded through the Casey Foundation have been distributed, Fred the Turtle will crawl into Head Start classrooms,” Wilcher wrote.
The aim of the Hope Rising, which has already started delivering lectures to government workers about the science of hope, revolves not around providing evidence-based services to low-income families, but promoting the concept that “hope” is a tangible quality that can be taught, measured and utilized to overcome trauma and generational poverty. This year’s annual “Hope Summit” is set for April.
Hope Rising advertises a summer camp called Camp HOPE America, a national program with which the nonprofit is “working to secure its affiliation status,” and a year-long program called Pathways, which is operated by existing local community organizations, according to its website.
Hope Rising also takes some credit for the state offering five new housing vouchers to young adults aging out of foster care — a program called the Foster Youth to Independence (FYI) Voucher program that the long-standing Tennessee Valley Regional Housing Authority applied to the federal government to start receiving.
“A wide variety of organizations within the state worked for months to forge a process for leading FYI vouchers and determine the supports necessary to assist these youth in transitioning to independence,” a Hope Rising press release says.
Hope Rising was initially incorporated as Hope Science Institute of Mississippi by Madison pastor Dan Hall. At that time, the organization’s website described its mission as “changing the trajectory of our most at-risk youths” and outlined its four action areas: “pray, preach, practice and partner.”
“Can you imagine the impact the Body of Christ could make as we all come together to strengthen families and serve on another at one time?” the old website read. “We are looking at April being a month of hope in action across the state through the Body of Christ, organized with purposeful impact in your own community.”
Cheeks told Mississippi Today in 2022 that Hope Science Institute of Mississippi operates mainly on grants from Casey Family Programs and other private funding. She said that money goes towards administrative salaries, planning and meetings. The organization itself does not provide any direct child welfare services.
Rimes said the majority of time put in by nonprofit staff has been unpaid. “I have been deeply impressed and am extremely appreciative of the servants heart they have displayed,” he wrote.
Rimes did not answer questions from Mississippi Today about how much money Hope Rising gets from Casey Family Programs.Casey Family Programs also would not answer questions about its partnership with Hope Rising.
“Hope Rising has a diverse board of professionals from across our State who are focused on ensuring hope is brought to Mississippi in the best possible way. Financial integrity will always be a focus of our board,” Rimes said in an email.
In 2021, the nonprofit had revenue of $8,000 and spent $3,800, all on administrative expenses, according to the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office. Information for 2022 is not yet listed. Hope Rising’s IRS reports, called 990s, are not available online. Rimes provided Mississippi Today a 990 filing from the nonprofit for 2021 that did not contain any financial data. The 2022 filing is not due until May.
Mississippi Today reviewed state expenditures to The Hope Science Institute of Mississippi in the state’s public-facing accounting database. In fiscal year 2022, Hope Science Institute of Mississippi received $2,525 from the Mississippi Department of Education for employee training, $1,300 from the Mississippi Department of Human Services, $3,000 from the Department of Mental Health and $10,000 from the governor’s office.
In publicly available dollar figures, Fred the Turtle is Hope Rising’s largest tangible offering to the state since the nonprofit’s creation. The book is promoted on Hope Rising’s website, which says 1,750 copies have been distributed in eight communities. It also asks for donations to “help Fred tour Mississippi.”
Elee Reeves’ 2022 announcement of Fred the Turtle came with a hodge podge of vaguely stated goals, such as “to build and bring resources that strengthen families and children in our state,” Cheeks said.
Russell Woods, senior director for strategic consulting at Casey Family Programs, said during the press conference that Fred the Turtle aligns with his organization’s mission to reduce the need for foster care. The organization has repeatedly declined to discuss the project with Mississippi Today.
“This project was important to invest in because it aligns with Casey’s vision to improve child wellbeing outcomes,” he said during the 2022 press conference. “And part of a healthy child development and wellbeing is literacy, education and social functioning. All of these are elements that are being effectively used in this activity book.”
The last page of the book cites several medical journals that Reeves said she used to inform her writing and the activities in the book. It also thanks several partners, including “The Casey Foundation,” “The Hope Institute,” Mississippi Department of Human Services, Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services, Mississippi Department of Education and The Cirlot Agency, the same branding agency that received $1.7 million in welfare funds for promotional materials during the Family First era.
Cirlot CEO Liza Cirlot Looser told Mississippi Today that Cirlot designed the cover and laid out the pages in Fred the Turtle for free.
Mississippi isn’t the only place in which Casey Family Programs is partnering with the spouses of governors to build support for child welfare reform.
“The spouses of governors (first spouses) can leverage their influence to advance child and family well-being,” its website states. “Although not elected officials, first spouses are important allies to child welfare leaders as they seek to collaborate with a wide range of partners, build upstream prevention services, and transform the child welfare system.”
Meanwhile, the Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services, an agency under Gov. Reeves, is still failing to draw down the unlimited federal matching funds newly offered by the Family First Prevention Services Act of 2018 that could be used to prevent neglect and keep families intact.
In recent weeks, the First Lady’s office issued a media blast about her book tour, during which she read Fred the Turtle to students in Canton, Jackson, Hattiesburg and Meridian. WDAM reported that Elee Reeves’ goal is to distribute 30,000 copies of her book.
Dixie Attendance Center student Brayden Cooke said this about the First Lady’s visit: “It was amazing, but I was also kind of nervous because it’s my first time seeing her and I didn’t want to act a fool.”
In the book, readers follow a character named Jimmy, a fisherman in the Gulf of Mexico. On his seafood delivery route in Hattiesburg, Fisherman Jimmy encounters a turtle he names Fred.
Together, they travel to Meridian, Columbus and the U.S. Air Force Base, Natchez, Indianola and the B.B. King Museum, Oxford, where they learn about William Faulkner, and the Mississippi State Capitol in Jackson, briefly running into Gov. Reeves. Along the journey, the book asks children to contemplate and write down their dreams, goals, fears and superpowers. Other pages ask the reader to find the turtles hiding in the Capitol building, connect the dots to finish a picture of a guitar or complete a word search.
The State’s Education Superintendent Carey Wright, who also spoke at the 2022 press conference, said the new book “shows all Mississippians how much the First Lady values the children of our state.”
Wright then turned to Reeves. “If I might say,” Wright said, “you might have another vocation waiting for you when you finish this job.”
The article cites a 2017 deposition that Dr. Scott Benton gave in which he said Jones recruited him to UMMC as a direct response to previous lawsuits that the hospital had faced for “failing to recognize child abuse in some cases.”
Jones denies the accuracy of Benton’s assertion.
Jones’ full statement submitted to Mississippi Today after publication reads: “In my role as vice chancellor for health affairs at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, I was not directly involved in determining the need for a specialist in child abuse evaluations nor in the decision to hire Dr. Benton. I am confident that none of these decisions were driven by anything other than the best interests of the children and parents of Mississippi. I am certain that protecting the medical center against lawsuits would never take priority over the welfare of any of our patients in any decision made by me, those working with me during my time of leadership, nor of any decisions made by my successors in leadership. Any statement by a Mississippi Today journalist wrongfully impugning my character or assuming motives for decisions without evidence is strongly resented.”
At Mississippi Today, we take seriously the power our words can have, and we constantly weigh the responsibility we owe readers in using them. In more than 10 years as a Mississippi journalist, I have closely covered Jones in his various prominent leadership roles and do not have any reason to question his integrity — and that includes when he served as UMMC’s leader when Benton was hired. I can say unequivocally that in the weeks of reporting, writing, editing and fact-checking of the Feb. 28 article in question, no Mississippi Today journalist once intended to impugn Jones’ character.
Two sentences in our original article, however, didn’t clearly attribute Benton’s 2017 deposition as the source of information regarding his recruitment to UMMC. We apologize for that omission and have updated the story to make it clearer who said what and when.
I’d like to use this opportunity to share with readers a little more about our reporting process. Understanding why Benton was brought to UMMC in the first place is critical to contextualizing the questions our reporting raised about his work in later years. We spent weeks exhausting every option available to us to learn more about the exact nature of Dr. Benton’s hiring. Before the story published, Jones twice declined to speak with us on the record about Benton’s statement regarding why he was hired. He referred our inquiries to current UMMC public affairs officials, who subsequently declined to respond to two detailed questions about the nature of Benton’s recruitment.
Additionally, UMMC officials declined several requests for interviews with Dr. Benton and made no other medical center official available for an on-the-record interview. Without comment or an interview to discuss why Benton was hired, we cited what was available to us: Benton’s sworn testimony from the 2017 deposition — a public record and Benton’s own words.
Mississippi Today will continue to be completely transparent with our readers about updates to stories and any necessary corrections or clarifications. And when our reporting is called into question, we will publicly respond as appropriate.
My inbox (adam@mississippitoday.org) is always open for comments, concerns or questions about our reporting.
The Senate Appropriations committee on Tuesday stripped a sweeping House college financial aid bill of changes that would expand eligibility to adult and part-time students.
“Are there questions?” Hopson asked. Hearing none, he moved to a vote.
The move signals that the final version of House Bill 711 will likely be worked out in a closed-door conference. At least three competing versions of the bill have been suggested throughout the session.
As originally introduced by Rep. Donnie Scoggin, R-Ellisville, House Bill 771 would have expanded the Mississippi Resident Tuition Assistance Grant to full-Pell-eligible students and adult and part-time students, and doubled award amounts under the program. The ACT score requirement of 15 or higher would be removed, and students from families that make more than 200% of the state’s median household income would no longer be eligible.
These changes would lead to 17,000 more students receiving state financial aid, a consulting firm estimated.
In a more controversial measure, Scoggin’s version also would have reduced awards under the Higher Education Legislative Plan for Needy Students so that it no longer would pay full tuition for all four years of college regardless of what institution a student attends. Instead, the first two years of the award would be equal to the average tuition at the state’s two-year community colleges.
Hopson told Mississippi Today that these changes have sparked a “fairly hearty disagreement” between representatives from the four-year universities and the community colleges who are competing for HELP recipients and HELP dollars.
The community colleges are in favor of this change, because it will incentivize more HELP recipients to attend two-year institutions, and the four-year universities want HELP to stay as it is. By and large, HELP recipients use the generous award to attend four-year universities.
Hopson said his amendment was an effort to keep HB 771 alive so there can be more discussion.
“It is a little bit of a compromise, I guess, but this has still got some work to be done,” he said.
Hopson added that he hopes to bring the universities and community colleges togetherto discuss the billbefore conference.
“When you deal with these things … you need opportunities to sit down together face-to-face and go over options,” he said. “We typically hear from one group as opposed to the other group and are never really getting those groups together.”
Last week, the Senate Colleges and Universities Committee voted to make a different set of changes to the bill. That version would have removed any changes to the HELP grant and kept the revisions to MTAG. This change, called a committee substitute, wasn’t uploaded to the Legislature’s website.
But last week’s version of the bill would entail increasing spending on state financial aid. So does Scoggin’s proposal, which would increase the budget for the Office of Student Financial Aid by an estimated $21 million.
Jennifer Rogers, the director of OSFA, said her office is supportive of Scoggin’s original proposal and comfortable with not making changes to the HELP grant.
“I very much hope that meaningful changes to the programs can be made to promote effectiveness and efficiency,” she said, “and I am still hopeful that that is a possibility.”
Education policy experts like Toren Ballard, K-12 policy director of Mississippi First, were chastened by the changes made by the Senate Universities and Colleges.
Ballard said Hopson’s proposed reduction to the HELP grant is better than Scoggin’s original proposal simply because it is not as large a decrease in awards. Under Scoggin’s bill, HELP recipients at the universities would lose an average of $11,200 in financial aid over the course of four years. Hopson’s proposal means these HELP recipients would lose an average of $6,504 over four years.
All told, this would save the state roughly $1.4 million million a year in spending on HELP, according to a Mississippi Today analysis.
“I don’t understand what they’re trying to achieve,” Ballard said, “because the savings are very marginal.”
Ballard’s other issue with Hopson’s proposal is that it does not make any changes to MTAG, a program he wants to see updated. MTAG has not been significantly amended since it was created in the late 1990s.
“We have a great opportunity to revise a grant program that doesn’t have any sort of value-add for the state,” he said. “It’s a handout of $500 to $1,000 to middle to high income families that doesn’t give us any return on investment. By scrapping all these changes to MTAG … we’re just shooting ourselves in the foot.”
A House panel made changes to a Senate bill to put long-term control of Jackson’s troubled water system under a new “regional” authority, keeping the measure alive after a Tuesday-night deadline.
The changes were an effort to appease a special federal court receiver now overseeing the system and Jackson city and legislative leaders who have decried the regional water authority and other measures as a hostile state takeover of the capital city. The city’s water system, suffering decades of neglected maintenance, has routinely left residents with no potable water or at times no water at all.
“The city of Jackson would retain ownership, this makes that clear,” said Rep. Shanda Yates, I-Jackson, who presented the Senate-revised bill to the House Public Utilities Committee late Tuesday. The bill now goes to the full House for consideration, and if passed there would head back to the Senate since the House amended it.
Yates said she and SB2889 original author, Sen. David Parker, R-Olive Branch, met with the federal receiver — who has said he would likely need about five years to true the system — on changes to the bill, some of which were minor tweaks.
The major change is the new authority would possess a “leasehold” on the system’s assets, not ownership as in the original bill. Also, any money obtained by the utility authority beyond what’s needed to operate and maintain the system would be returned to the city.
Yates said she hopes the city and her fellow Jackson legislative delegation will be more open to the measure, but she understands it’s gotten caught up in bitter politics over other “takeover” bills.
“All of them have been balled up into one, ‘We hate it all,’” Yates said. “… But everybody has said there needs to be some governing body other than the city running this system. My goal — I live in Jackson, I work in Jackson, I’m raising a family in Jackson, and I’m representing constituents of Jackson — is that when the third party (federal receiver) is gone, we have something in place, ready to go. I don’t want a year or two to go by with nothing new after they leave and things start to crumble again.”
Public Utilities Chairman Scott Bounds, R-Philadelphia, said he hopes Jackson legislative delegates can offer amendments to the bill when it comes to the full House “to make it more palatable.”
“Hopefully at the end of the day, we can have something to make sure that in the long run we provide good, safe, clean drinking water for the city of Jackson,” Bounds said. “I think that’s what everybody wants.”
Rep. De’Keither Stamps, D-Jackson, a member of the committee, successfully offered an amendment to the bill Tuesday to require one member of the authority board be a water customer from west-south Jackson, and that a well system in that area be maintained as either a primary or backup water system.
Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the amended bill.
Rep. Chris Bell, D-Jackson, on Wednesday said he had not seen the House-revised bill and, to his knowledge, most others in the Jackson legislative delegation had not been consulted.
That’s part of the problem with the regional authority and other Jackson bills this session, Bell said, lawmakers from elsewhere are trying to take over policing, utilities and other governance without consulting lawmakers representing the city.
“No, that usually doesn’t happen,” Bell said. “I can’t come up here and introduce legislation changing things in the Delta and not talk with people from there … It’s a situation of people from outside of the city thinking they know what’s best for the city. That’s part of the issue here.”
Bell said he generally believes, “Jackson should maintain its water system without any board having control over it.” He said he believes interest in taking it over came after about $800 million in federal money was secured to fix it. He questioned how the system would deal with emergencies under such a regional authority board, which he said would make things cumbersome.
The “Mississippi Capitol Region Utility Act” would create a nonprofit authority to control the system that covers Jackson, much of Byram and parts of Ridgeland. The nonprofit board would include four people appointed by the Jackson mayor, three appointed by the governor — one with input from the Byram mayor — and two appointed by the lieutenant governor — one with input from the mayor of Ridgeland. The measure makes clear that neither Byram nor Ridgeland are required to remain in the utility authority.
Some other measures dealing with the city of Jackson faced deadlines for committee action. They include:
House Bill 1168, authored by Ways and Means Chairman Trey Lamar, originally would have forced the city of Jackson to spend all the money collected from a special 1-cent sales tax — usually $14 million to $16 million a year — on its troubled water system. But the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday overhauled the bill, to allow the city to do road, bridge, stormwater, water, sewer or any other infrastructure work, as the program was initially intended. The bill would require more stringent reporting of spending by the commission that runs the 1-cent sales tax work, which Finance Chairman Josh Harkins said has become “lax.” Jackson leaders have for years complained that the state created a special commission to oversee the spending of the 1-cent sales tax, as opposed to giving the city authority to spend it.
Sen. David Blount, D-Jackson, on Tuesday said: “What we are left with now is a … reporting provision … The House passed a bill to take away road paving and put it into the water department, which is about to have $800 million in the bank … This keeps the money where it needs to be used. I’m glad we are going back to paving streets with this. If there’s one thing in Jackson right now that does have money, it’s the water department.”
The measure heads to the full Senate, and if it passes there, back to the House for consideration of the changes.
HB698, authored by Rep. Shanda Yates, I-Jackson, would prohibit a city basing water bills on a customer’s property values, such as the special administrator providing federal oversight of Jackson’s water system has proposed. The measure remains alive and has passed a Senate committee after amendment, meaning if the full Senate passes it it will return to the House. The administrator has said to a judge that he might sue over any state legislation that prevents him from setting water rates based on property values.
HB1094, authored by Rep. Becky Currie, R-Brookhaven, would fine the capital city up to $1 million for each “improper disposal” of wastewater or sewage into the Pearl River — a fairly common occurrence with Jackson’s crumbling sewerage. The measure died without a vote on Tuesday night’s deadline in the Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee. Opponents had said the measure could bankrupt the city with hundreds of millions of dollars in fines, and that the city is already under a federal consent decree to stop polluting the river.
Correction: An initial version of this story had the incorrect number for the regional water authority bill. The correct number is SB2889.
Thirty-six basketball games in six days. That’s the task facing Scorebook Live’s Tyler Cleveland this week at the MHSAA State Basketball championships at Mississippi Coliseum. The Clevelands discuss the basketball bonanza that reaches a crescendo with four championship games each on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. There’s also plenty of college basketball and baseball to discuss.
