Mississippi Today political reporters Bobby Harrison and Geoff Pender talk with veteran Rep. Tommy Reynolds, D-Water Valley, about the rules changes that occurred in the 1980s making the Mississippi House more democratic. As a young member of the House, Reynolds played a key role in writing those rules.
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In this episode of Mississippi Stories, Mississippi Today Sales and Marketing Director Candi Richardson travels to Cleveland, Miss. during the Music Tourism Convention to catch up with Poplarville-natives Chapel Hart. The trio is comprised of sisters Danica and Devynn Hart along with their cousin Trea Swindle. They discuss their Golden Buzzer performance and experience on America’s Got Talent, their music influences, their upcoming album and more.
Chapel Hart captured the attention of the nation and gained an international following after they received the second Golden Buzzer in show history during their audition performance for America’s Got Talent in 2022. CMT selected Chapel Hart as one of several artists for their 2021 “Next Women of Country” campaign, which promotes new and upcoming female country music artists. The group has released two studio albums and seven singles.
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Sarah Stripp is the managing director of Jackson-based nonprofit Springboard to Opportunities, which supports low-income Mississippians. During the water crisis, when families couldn’t rely on clean water from their own pipes, Stripp’s organization was giving households $150 a month to buy bottled water. The group is best known for its guaranteed income program, Magnolia Mother’s Trust. Stripp sat down with reporter Sara DiNatale to talk about her work and what the group’s learned entering its fifth year of the income program.
The interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Sara DiNatale: Well, first off, if you could just tell me a little bit about your nonprofit, Springboard to Opportunities, and all of the types of things you do and the type of gaps that you try to help fill for women in Jackson?
Stripp: So we are an organization that works with families who live in federally subsidized housing, and provide programs and services to help them meet their goals. So subsidized housing, particularly in Mississippi is like 99%, headed by single women and about 99% of those families are Black.
So while technically, our mission is to reach families, and affordable housing, it tends to be Black mothers who are kind of like the main recipients of our work. We really started in 2013 as a resident-service provider. We were basically contracted by private developers to come and provide additional services to families in affordable housing. So that could be everything from providing housing stability, helping folks if they’re behind on rent and trying to figure out some different resources, or making sure that they’re able to keep up their apartments. Then, having things they need for that, too, like helping folks get childcare or providing after school programs, workforce support programs or different things like that.
And so we work really closely with community members themselves to actually tell us what it is that they need, as opposed to coming in and deciding for them what they need. Because we believe families know better than anybody else what it is that they need in order to thrive and meet their goals.
DiNatale: So, what do they need? And how has that turned into programs that you offer?
Stripp: As we would design programming, we would do that hand-in-hand with community members and do our best to make sure that it was lining up with what they were asking for. And at the same time, we also really recognize that programming can only do so much. And at the end of the day, if there’s not good policies to support families, nothing’s going to change.
It was through some of that work, and through conversations that we were having with families, where we kept hearing them say: ‘You know, what I actually need to reach my goal is not like another program or another thing that I have to attend, right? It’s cash … Food stamps are only going to cover food. My housing voucher only covers housing. I also need diapers; I also need transportation; I also need childcare. I need all these other things. If I’m trying to do that, I need the freedom to be able to spend cash in the way that I see fit for me and my family, as opposed to in the way that a government voucher has decided I should spend it.’
So from that, we wanted to really honor our mission and who we are as an organization and said, ‘OK, so let’s figure out how we’re going to do that.’ So we started a small pilot in 2018, with 20 black mothers called the Magnolia Mother’s Trust, which was really the first guaranteed income program … that launched in the country.
DiNatale: So how does the program work and what did you see start to happen?
Stripp: We were working at that point (in 2018) with just 20 moms who received $1,000 a month for 12 months with no strings attached … to see what would happen. And just to kind of put it out there … When moms get money, they spend it to support their families.
Whether that was being able to go back to school or move to a higher paying job, moving out of affordable housing, being able to take their kids to see their grandfather for the first time or some families went down to the beach for the first time and were able to take vacations. One mom bought her son a tuba so that he could be in the marching band. (It was) these little things that moms have always wanted to provide for their kids.
We were able to get some really good traction from that early pilot. And then we were able to expand that in the next year to about 110 moms. Actually, each year since, we’ve had about 100 moms go through a cohort of getting $1,000 a month for 12 months. And then we’ve added in, in addition to that, a $1,000 deposit and in a 529 (college) savings account for their kids so that they’re having the opportunity to build some wealth for their children.
We also have this opportunity to make sure that the stories of our moms are being put out there. We knew nothing was going to be able to change at a federal or state policy level if we continue to operate with … whatever these kind of nasty narratives around moms who are on welfare, that they’re going to abuse the system or that they don’t know what they’re doing with their money.
DiNatale: What are some of the expectations that you had going into the pilot? Were those met, exceeded or different than what the actual outcome was? What did you really wind up learning?
Stripp: We didn’t have a whole lot of expectations, because we wanted to leave the doors open. We were really asking questions around: When you give moms cash do they have the breathing room and the space to be able to actually think about their goals and what they want to do?
They have time to step back and take some time to go back to school and work on the career that they really wanted, as opposed to running between three part-time jobs just trying to make ends meet … People are able to save some of this money and move out of affordable housing or move into a higher paying career.
I think everything got really complicated with the second cohort because COVID came in, and it changed everything. On top of COVID, we just kind of have these compounding crises – the water crisis – and folks losing jobs because of that, because they’ve had to stay home with their kids (when classes went remote online).
But at the same time, I think what we really have seen … particularly in the second, third, and now we’re just about to wrap up our fourth cohort, what’s come out and all of the different kinds of evaluations and pieces that we’ve done has been a really increased sense of parental efficacy. So, moms feeling like they’re able to be the moms that they want to be for the first time. It’s a really big growth in their own sense of agency and their own sense of self-confidence.
DiNatale: I know a report is coming out later this month that covers more deeply what you’ve learned through this process. But with that work done, and lessons learned, is the plan to continue this program?
Stripp: We’re committed to at least having one more cohort that will start later this fall. I think there might be some pieces that look a little bit different based on things that we’ve learned, but we’re still kind of fleshing out a lot of those details. We want to at least do it once more. What we had committed to, at the beginning, was five years.
Ultimately, what we know is that we are a drop in the bucket. We are providing something for a subset of moms here in Jackson. And that’s important, but it’s not enough. And even the length of the program that we’re able to do is not enough. And I think all of these pilots that we’re seeing, a lot of people are using (American Rescue Plan Act) funds and other things to be able to do these (types of programs) in different cities, that’s great. But again, it’s never going to be totally what we want to see.
Our goal has always been, and what we’ve always said from the beginning, was to actually change federal policy and be able to see something come out of this — where we are creating more cash and trust-based benefits for families as opposed to limited vouchers or a social safety net that’s really easy to fall through.
DiNatale: So your goal, really, is changing the way America treats welfare and assistance programs. With the situation of the Mississippi welfare scandal in mind – the alleged misuse of $77 million in TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) funds – have you seen the conversation change at all about welfare dollar use?
Stripp: I would say no, not on a community level. Before we actually started doing the Magnolia Mother’s Trust, we had done an ad before the welfare scandal…came out, and in about 2017, we did a paper with (public policy think tank) New America, and interviewed a lot of our moms to talk about TANF…And I think, at that point, that was when less than 2% of applications were even being seen. And when we talked to moms about TANF and welfare their response was always like, ‘Oh, I don’t even bother with that; it’s not even worth my time.’ They had either applied before or tired before and it just never made sense. So most of them felt so kind of disillusioned by the system to begin with.
DiNatale: What about state leadership? Has anyone responded to the idea of changing how assistance works?
Stripp: I would say in Mississippi, no. The players at the table who we know would be into this are into it, and the players who are not into it are not interested. The (Mississippi) Democratic Caucus has been really supportive. We had moms come and testify, like the TANF legislative hearings … We’ve tried to have some conversations with the Department of Human Services that haven’t really gone anywhere.
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Jackie Robinson broke through the color barrier in Major League Baseball, becoming the first Black player in the 20th century.
Born in Cairo, Georgia, Robinson lettered in four sports at UCLA – football, basketball, baseball and track. After time in the military, he played for the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro Leagues. After his success there, Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey signed Robinson, and the legendary baseball player started for Montreal, where he integrated the International League.
In addition to his Hall of Fame career, he was active in the civil rights movement and became the first Black TV analyst in Major League Baseball and the first Black vice president of a major American corporation. In recognition of his achievements, Robinson was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. Major League Baseball has retired his number “42,” which became the title of the movie about his breakthrough.
Ken Burns’ four-hour documentary reveals that Robinson did more than just break the color barrier — he became a leader for equal rights for all Americans.
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After granting the Holly Springs hospital a special designation aimed at helping small, rural hospitals stay afloat, the federal government is now “reviewing” Alliance Healthcare System’s status as such, the hospital CEO says.
The hang-up is the hospital’s proximity to Memphis, Tenn., about 50 miles away from Holly Springs.
Mississippi Today previously reported that the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services rescinded the hospital’s rural emergency hospital designation after State Health Officer Dr. Dan Edney said at a state board of health meeting that the federal government was “pulling” the designation mere days after awarding it to the hospital.
However, Edney expanded on his statement later to Mississippi Today and said that CMS made the hospital aware they need “further clarification.”
Alliance Healthcare System was named one of the country’s first rural emergency hospitals in March. The designation requires hospitals to end inpatient services and transfer patients in its emergency room to larger hospitals within 24 hours in exchange for higher reimbursement rates and monthly payments from the government.
The new designation is meant to ease financial stress for hospitals on the brink of closure.
Alliance CEO Dr. Kenneth Williams said there are differing definitions of “rural hospitals” among various federal organizations. He’s now trying to convince CMS that his hospital is truly rural, despite it being an hour drive to Memphis, Tenn.
“I firmly believe that it is no question that this is a rural community and a rural hospital,” he said.
He blames the confusion on how new the hospital category is.
Williams has been talking to representatives from CMS for the past week. He said he’s expecting a final answer within the next few days. As far as Williams is aware, the hospital is still considered a rural emergency hospital, unless CMS rules otherwise.
CMS did not respond to questions by press time.
The Holly Springs hospital has been consistently losing money for years, particularly since the pandemic, its leaders say.
And if the hospital can’t maintain rural emergency hospital status, the situation will be dire, Williams said.
The post Feds reviewing designation of Holly Springs hospital, but have not rescinded rural ER status, CEO says appeared first on Mississippi Today.
Legislation awaiting Gov. Tate Reeves’ signature would set mandatory minimum sentences for carjacking and fleeing law enforcement – a move that criminal justice advocates say will increase the prison population and not help public safety.
FWD.us State Director Alesha Judkins said mandatory minimums add to the state’s growing prison population and limit judges from using discretion in sentencing.
“Mississippi is not in the position to handle a situation where we will be sending more people to prison for longer,” she said.
The state has the highest imprisonment rate in the nation and its rate is higher than some countries. Mississippi’s prison population has hovered above 19,000 for several months – numbers the state hasn’t seen since before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to data from the Department of Corrections.
Senate Bill 2101, proposed by Joey Fillingane, R-Sumrall, and passed by both chambers, would increase the current mandatory minimum prison sentence for carjacking from three to five years and the sentence for carjackings that result in serious injury or death from seven to 10 years.
The bill also sets minimum sentences for when people fail to stop and flee from law enforcement: a 10-year minimum for fleeing and operating a vehicle in a reckless manner, a five-year minimum for fleeing that results in injury and a seven-year minimum for fleeing that results in death.
Even without mandatory minimums, Mississippi is running out of space in its prisons, Judkins said. The entire prison system has a capacity of about 22,000, according to Department of Corrections records.
In January, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, announced three bills including SB 2101 that would set or raise minimum sentences. The other bills, which proposed minimum sentences for motor vehicle theft and receiving stolen property, did not pass.
Hosemann spokesperson Brittney Davis said the legislation was in response to incidents of violent crime.
“The legislation is intended to act as a deterrent by mandating a certain sentence or raising penalties,” she said in a Thursday statement. “While we are invested in issues like education, rehabilitation, and mental health, which prevent crime, Lt. Governor Hosemann also believes those who commit violent crimes should serve time.”
In a Jan. 5 interview with Supertalk, Hosemann said information he receives from the Administrative Office of Courts indicates that judges are suspending sentences for people convicted of carjacking, meaning the convicted would serve less than the mandatory minimum prison sentence.
Fillingane echoed this point about suspended sentences during a Jan. 26 Judiciary B Committee hearing. The senator said sentence suspensions are especially prevalent in the Jackson metro area.
“It’s basically a warning and I think the thought being this is such a violent type situation and it’s become so prevalent in this area that we don’t want judges to completely suspend the sentence,” he said.
Language in the bill specifies that minimum sentences cannot be reduced or suspended and that defendants would not be eligible for electronic monitoring or house arrest.
During committee meetings, Fillingane was asked about the basis and supporting data to justify the need for the bill. Sen. Angela Turner-Ford, D-West Point, asked how increasing the current carjacking minimum sentence would change judges’ ability to suspend sentences and deter crime. Fillingane said he didn’t have the answer.
“That’s the explanation I’ve been given,” he said.
Fillingane did not respond to a request for comment.
In January as the committee hearings were going on, State Public Defender Andre De Gruy fact checked claims Fillingane made in committee meetings by reviewing carjacking convictions for Hinds County.
He looked through four years worth of reports and found five carjacking convictions. From there, he looked up the cases in the Mississippi Electronic Courts system and found two cases with suspended sentences.
Half of all counties in the state aren’t on the electronic court system, so the ability to access case information for individuals charged with criminal charges such as carjackings in non-participating courts would need to be done in person.
Lawmakers haven’t specified what court information they reviewed to introduce the legislation. But De Gruy said if they were referring to the Administrative Office of Courts reports, it is possible to misinterpret them.
He noted that he tailored his search to carjacking convictions because the reports would include more dispositions such as dismissed and remanded cases for people who haven’t been convicted.
DeGruy said Wednesday that when the next Administrative Office of Courts report is available in July, he expects to see carjacking convictions and sentence suspensions for Hinds County to remain about the same.
Through a records request with MDOC, FWD.us found that as of July 2022, the average sentence statewide for carjacking was nearly 12 years and 17 years for armed carjacking – evidence that judges are sentencing more than the mandatory minimum.
While lawmakers have raised concern about judge’s ability to suspend sentences, suspension is something they are allowed to do through judicial discretion.
Criminal justice advocacy groups including FWD and conservative group Empower Mississippi have spoken out against the mandatory minimum bills and the effect they would have on discretion.
“This means the Legislature would be mandating a one-size-fits-all sentence instead of allowing local judges to consider the circumstances and perhaps, in some cases, issue a punishment that would be more effective and less expensive than prison,” Empower Senior Adviser Forest Thigpen said in a March 26 statement.
Judkins wants more people to consider other costs of incarceration, such as the amount taxpayers spend on the prison system and the impact on incarcerated people and their families.
Taxpayers spend over $360 million annually on the prison system, according to a November report by FWD.us. Mississippians also face longer prison sentences than the national average for a range of offenses.
Judkins said incarcerating people under mandatory minimums can affect people’s sense of hope and access to the opportunities like rehabilitative programs that make prisons safer for the people who live and work there, as well as help reduce recidivism.
The post Bill’s mandatory minimum sentences would worsen state’s soaring prison population, criminal justice advocates say appeared first on Mississippi Today.
This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal and co-published with The Marshall Project. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.
Poor defendants in Mississippi are routinely jailed for months, and sometimes even years, without being appointed an attorney due to the state’s notoriously dysfunctional public defender system. The Mississippi Supreme Court now says this practice must end.
The state’s highest court approved a mandate on Thursday that criminal defendants who can’t afford their own attorney must always have one before an indictment.
Across the state, defendants facing felony charges lose their appointed attorneys after their initial court appearances, where a judge rules whether they can be released from jail before trial. In many counties, defendants aren’t appointed new lawyers until they’re indicted, a process that can take years. Justice system reformers call this gap the “dead zone.”
In the Mississippi Delta’s Coahoma County, Duane Lake spent almost two years behind bars without bond and without an attorney while waiting to be indicted on triple murder charges following a brutal killing. After he was indicted, he spent four more years in jail before he was acquitted at trial in November 2021.
There are others like him, trapped in a system that leaves defendants who can’t afford their own attorneys with no advocate to ask a judge to reduce their bonds or dismiss their cases as they wait in jail to be indicted. Meanwhile, prosecutors face no deadlines to bring cases before a grand jury.
“There is no other state where a defendant can be sitting in jail without an attorney for months or years while charging decisions are made,” said David Carroll, executive director of the Sixth Amendment Center, which studies how states provide indigent criminal defense.
Several years ago, at the request of a task force appointed by the Mississippi Legislature, the Sixth Amendment Center evaluated the state’s indigent defense services. In a highly critical report, the group proposed a number of reforms, including stronger state oversight of how local governments provide public defenders.
The Legislature shelved the report and the task force’s recommendations, even as criminal justice reformers identified defendants like Lake who sat in jail for years facing charges that didn’t hold up.
But in February, a three-member committee of the Mississippi Supreme Court requested public comments on a proposed change to the state’s rules of criminal procedure. It would require that defendants who can’t afford their own attorneys be represented the entire time they’re awaiting indictment.
The Supreme Court approved the rule change Thursday. It takes effect in July.
“This landmark change in Mississippi’s public defense system marks the end of the dead zone and is a huge step toward a criminal legal system that doesn’t unfairly punish people who are unable to afford an attorney,” said Cliff Johnson, who as director of the MacArthur Justice Center’s Mississippi office has long argued for such a change.
But researchers like Pam Metzger, director of the Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center at Southern Methodist University in Texas, say simply requiring the assignment of an attorney will do little to improve legal representation for poor defendants.
“It’s giving you a warm body and briefcase,” she said of the rule. “But it doesn’t deal with what in my view is the real problem,” which is that people spend too long in jail before they’re indicted.
Current and former public defenders have also cautioned that Mississippi’s decentralized justice system will make it hard to implement the Supreme Court’s new rule.
The amended rule prevents an appointed attorney representing an indigent client at any stage of criminal proceedings from withdrawing until another attorney is appointed. Right now, this provision applies only after an indictment.
It was proposed in May by Russ Latino, who was then executive director of the conservative think tank Empower Mississippi. His request sat for nearly 10 months until the Supreme Court’s criminal procedure committee invited feedback and set a March 15 deadline for responses.
A raft of ideologically diverse legal activists, attorneys and policy advocates responded by urging the court to adopt the amendment.
“No just or useful purpose is served by allowing such incarceration without benefit of legal counsel,” wrote Brad Pigott, who served in the 1990s as one of Mississippi’s U.S. attorneys. “Certainly no legitimate law enforcement purpose is thereby served.”
Across Mississippi, some people without attorneys have spent months or longer in jail waiting for an indictment.
After prisoners in eastern Mississippi’s Lauderdale County jail filed complaints, a federal judge ordered the county in 2016 to provide him with a list of all people held in jail without indictments and without lawyers.
“Something needs to be put in place to make sure someone doesn’t fall through the cracks in this way,” said U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves, according to an Associated Press story.
On the state’s Gulf Coast, an autistic teenager was arrested in 2018 on burglary charges and spent more than 270 days in jail because his family didn’t post a $10,000 bond. The charges were ultimately dropped after a grand jury declined to indict him.
The Wayne County Sheriff’s Department, in southeast Mississippi’s Pine Belt region, reported that 24 of 31 prisoners in the jail as of the end of September had not been indicted, including 13 who had been in jail 90 days or longer. Only six of these 13 had lawyers as of September, according to the report.
One person without a lawyer had been jailed for about six months awaiting indictment on a drug possession charge, according to the report.
Of those 13, only one is still in jail and hasn’t been indicted as of this week, said Kassie Coleman, the district attorney for Wayne County.
Gregory J. Weber, a part-time public defender in Madison County, said he sees delays with many cases, particularly drug charges.
“We’ve got people languishing in jail and nothing is being done,” Weber said in an interview before the Supreme Court acted. For defendants with a private attorney, “something usually is done about it. There is a bond reduction, or they get into drug court and they plead. So we’ve definitely got a problem with people falling through the cracks.”
Even as Carroll, of the Sixth Amendment Center, called the change an important first step, he cautioned that because indigent defense is handled by local court systems, “the state still has no oversight function to make sure that the court rule gets implemented.”
The Sixth Amendment Center has found that in counties without full-time public defender’s offices — which is most of them — the payment structure discourages public defenders from doing extensive work on behalf of their clients.
In most counties, attorneys are paid a flat fee, no matter how many indigent clients they are assigned. That incentivizes attorneys to spend little time on indigent clients so they can take on those who can pay, the center argued.
Nor does the new rule spell out how defendants will be transferred between appointed counsel working for different court systems and different local government bodies. “I think it needs to be delineated much more clearly about when the handoff occurs and who is responsible for that person,” Weber said.
But better payment structures and effective administrative procedures won’t change a key factor in long jail terms: Prosecutors have unlimited time to indict and prosecute someone after they’ve been arrested.
“We’re really focused in Mississippi on the charging time,” said Metzger, who has studied this phase of criminal proceedings in courts across the country.
She said it would be more effective to institute deadlines for indictment, mandatory bail hearings and early disclosure of evidence.
Even when lawyers are appointed early on, such as in Yazoo County, defendants still spend months or years in jail.
Defense attorneys in the county have filed almost 100 motions since 2019 seeking to reduce bonds or dismiss charges. Many of those defendants had spent a year or more in jail while waiting to be indicted.
John Paul Thornton was arrested by Yazoo City police on Dec. 3, 2018, and charged with two counts of commercial burglary involving a local dollar store. Over a year later, Thornton was still in jail and had not been indicted.
Belinda Stevens, an attorney who works part time as a public defender in Yazoo County, filed a motion on Thornton’s behalf in January 2020, seeking a dismissal of the case and claiming that his constitutional right to a speedy trial had been denied. Stevens didn’t respond to requests for comment.
A month later, prosecutors dropped the case. A judge signed an order, and Thornton walked free the next day after 436 days in jail.
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NFL legend Brett Favre says Mississippi’s welfare department didn’t help satisfy his pledge to fund a new volleyball stadium at University of Southern Mississippi.
But current Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, a charity started by Margaritaville-songwriter Jimmy Buffett, and former Gov. Phil Bryant’s political action committee did.
Favre has made national news in recent years for tapping his home state’s welfare agency to raise funds for the stadium, but an email Mississippi Today recently obtained shows he also raised at least $180,000 for the facility from at least four charities. These are organizations that claim to increase economic, educational or workforce opportunities for families in need.
One of the key allegations against Favre in Mississippi’s welfare scandal is that he personally benefited from a scheme to divert federal funds intended to help poor Mississippians to build a volleyball stadium at his alma mater.
Mississippi Department of Human Services, which is suing Favre and dozens of others to recoup the misspent funds, draws this conclusion because, they allege, Favre personally committed funds to the project, so any welfare money used to offset that obligation was a financial benefit to Favre.
The athlete, who also directly received $1.1 million in welfare funds, did personally agree to fundraise or donate just over $1.4 million, according to a never-before-published donor agreement introduced in court this month. The document was signed by Favre, his wife, and University of Southern Mississippi Athletic Foundation President Leigh Breal.
But this guarantee came months after Mississippi Department of Human Services and one of the agency’s subgrantees, nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center, had already crafted a lease agreement allowing them to funnel $5 million in federal welfare funds to the project.
In Favre’s latest reply to MDHS in early April, his attorneys accuse MDHS of using legal fallacies in its civil charges against Favre.
“MDHS’s theory would effectively place no limits on UFTA (Uniform Voidable Transactions Act) liability—anyone could be sued who could in any way be deemed to have reaped some undefined benefit from a transfer,” Favre’s latest motion reads. “That of course is not the law in Mississippi or anywhere else.”
Since Mississippi Today first uncovered in February of 2020 that officials used welfare money to build the volleyball stadium, the entities involved have not made public a full accounting of who paid for the roughly $8 million facility, which would show who contributed to the project following Favre’s commitment so he didn’t personally have to.
An email recently obtained by Mississippi Today reveals publicly for the first time that, at least by the time initial arrests were made, the following individuals had made contributions towards Favre’s pledge:
Favre attached this email to his most recent court filing, but redacted the donors’ names. Mississippi Today retrieved an unredacted copy, which University of Southern Mississippi should have produced to the news organization in response to a public records request last year, but did not.
The list does not implicate Rodgers, Buffett, or any other private donor in the welfare scheme. But the email serves as a key piece of evidence in Favre’s defense.
The gifts cited total just over $650,000. Documents reflecting the total amount Favre personally contributed towards the project have not been made public, but his lawyer Eric Herschmann told conservative sports podcaster Jason Whitlock in a February interview that Favre donated over a million dollars of his own money to the facility. Also, The Athletic first reported that from 2018 to 2020, the same years Favre had an obligation to fund the volleyball construction, his charity Favre 4 Hope donated nearly $133,000 to USM Athletic Foundation.
In addition to the $5 million in welfare funds that went towards the facility, Nancy New, founder of the nonprofit in charge of spending welfare funds, alleged that former Gov. Bryant directed her to make $1.1 million in payments to Favre to help Favre raise funds for the stadium — an allegation Bryant has denied to the press.
But a spokesperson for the athlete recently confirmed that Favre did not use that money on the facility.
“Brett fulfilled his only obligation to USM. No funds he received from MCEC went towards the wellness center. Brett both solicited donations and often asked individuals or groups to send money to USM instead of paying him for services he provided,” a spokesperson for Favre said in a statement last week.
While a complete and reliable breakdown of the funds used to construct the facility has not been made public, outside counsel for the athletic foundation recently confirmed in an email requested by Favre’s wife Deanna Favre that the Favres “satisfied the obligations of their Donor Agreement by raising or paying the Foundation in excess of the pledged amount of at least $1,406,747.55 for the Volleyball Wellness Center.”
“This includes cash donations given directly by Brett and Deanna Favre and other amounts contributed at the request of Brett and Deanna Favre,” Ridgeland-based attorney Scott Jones wrote in the Mar. 23, 2023 email to Favre’s attorneys.
University of Southern Mississippi has refused to answer several questions from Mississippi Today about the volleyball project, citing litigation.
Favre began fundraising for the new volleyball stadium at USM, where his daughter played the sport, in 2017 – no one argues that. What’s in dispute, and belabored in lengthy court motions back and forth, is whether Favre promised to come up with the funding for construction at the outset of the project.
Favre argues in his motion to dismiss the civil suit against him that the $5 million paid in 2017 couldn’t have satisfied his $1.4 million guarantee in 2018 since the payment came before the pledge. MDHS alleges that Favre made a “handshake deal” near the inception in 2017, which is the only reason the university proceeded with the project, meaning he was on the hook for the funding the entire time.
By mid-2017, Favre had supposedly contributed $150,000 towards the volleyball project, according to an April 2017 email from Morrison to then-USM Athletic Director Jon Gilbert. After struggling to secure many more big donors, Gilbert involved nonprofit founder Nancy New, who had already entered at least one lease agreement with USM for the purpose of using grant money to make building renovations on campus – a purchase that has yet to be scrutinized.
“Brett and Deanna have agreed to help with fundraising for the facility,” Gilbert wrote in a July 16, 2017, email to New. “We currently have $1.2 million in hand from a variety of people that have committed to the project … I will find out what Brett’s schedule is Tuesday and coordinate a time he can stop by that works for everyone.”
In the days and weeks following, Favre and New discussed by text the challenges in using federal grant funds for the volleyball stadium, since federal law prohibits spending of these dollars on brick-and-mortar construction projects. Favre suggested the nonprofit hire and pay him for marketing services – which are allowed under the federal rules – and that way he could pass the money to the athletic foundation.
“Will the public perception be that I became a spokesperson for various state funded shelters,schools,homes etc….. And was compensated with state money? Or can we keep this confidential,” Favre texted New in a never-before-published text first introduced into court last month.
New responded that only she, her son Zach New and former Mississippi Department of Human Services director John Davis would have information about the payment – a product of the secrecy shrouding the welfare program.
“So if we keep confidential where money came from as well as amount I think this is gonna work,” Favre wrote.
The nonprofit eventually made two $2.5 million payments through a lease agreement with USM Athletic Foundation in November and December of 2017. For this, Zach New pleaded guilty to state charges of defrauding the government. To make the lease appear legit, the nonprofit said it would occupy classrooms inside the stadium, where it would conduct programming for underprivileged people. Later that December, the nonprofit also made the first $500,000 payment directly to Favre under an agreement that he would cut a radio ad for their anti-poverty program.
In the following months, Favre learned that the construction bids had come in much higher than expected, and that USM Athletic Foundation wouldn’t be able to begin building the facility until they could guarantee more funding was coming.
In April of 2018, an email stated that Favre’s original gift of $500,000 towards the volleyball stadium would be reduced to $250,000 after he instructed the university to transfer half to the construction of a beach volleyball arena. (His daughter had moved from the indoor team to the beach team).
In order for work to begin, Favre signed the $1.4 million donor agreement, ensuring that he’d raise or cover the rest of the cost, on May 2, 2018.
About a week later on May 10, New texted Favre, “I am making some progress on our money needs. What amount out of the whole loan that you signed would be most helpful right now? John and I may have a plan!!”
This text appears to show that Favre and New had planned for the nonprofit to contribute towards his guarantee.
On May 17, New texted Favre, “Good news. I have a little money for the ‘project’ – $500,000! Do you want me to send to the Athletic Dept. Or to your foundation.”
New sent the payment in the following weeks to Favre’s for-profit company Favre Enterprises, Inc., according to the State Auditor’s Office.
The text suggests that they both understood the payment to Favre – paid under what was essentially a sponsorship agreement – was ultimately for the purpose of supporting construction at USM.
“While $1,100,000 was paid based on a contract for public appearances, and Favre did record a radio advertisement, the payment was intended, as requested by Bryant, to help Favre raise funds for construction of the Volleyball Facility,” reads New’s October filing in the civil case.
Through his counsel, Bryant has denied the allegation to Mississippi Today. At the point this payment was made, Favre had not yet cut the radio ad.
“Favre knew that this was a sham designed to allow MDHS to cover Favre’s commitment to fund construction of the volleyball facility,” MDHS alleges in its amended complaint.
Despite their plans, Favre didn’t use the money for the alleged purpose he received it, according to his spokesperson’s statement.
Also in June of 2018, Favre secured donations for the facility from American Family Insurance Dreams Foundation Inc. and Bryant’s PAC Imagine Mississippi Political Action Committee.
Bryant was still governor when Imagine Mississippi PAC donated $2,500 to the volleyball project in June of 2018. Bryant started the PAC by closing his campaign-finance account and transferring the bulk of the $1.05 million he had left over to the new organization in 2017 shortly after winning his second term. The PAC’s stated goal is to support conservative candidates and officials. It spent about $220,000 in 2017, $216,000 in 2018, $307,000 in 2019 and $23,000 in 2020. It did not file an annual report for 2021 or 2022 or a notice of termination, according to what is available on the Secretary of State’s Office website.
American Family Insurance Dreams Foundation Inc., which donated $100,000 towards the volleyball stadium, is a nonprofit focused on supporting programs in academic achievement, healthy youth development, economic opportunity, such as job training, and community resilience, including food, housing and daycare.
A spokesperson for the foundation told Mississippi Today that Favre played in its golf tournament for several years, drawing large crowds and helping fundraising efforts for its nonprofit partners. “For his participation, we made charitable contributions to a few select organizations of his choice, including the University of Southern Mississippi. Supporting colleges and universities, including programming that impacts students, aligns to the mission of the American Family Insurance Dreams Foundation.”
The spokesperson did not respond to follow up questions about what programming the foundation thought its gift was supporting.
In July of 2018, Singing For Change Charitable Foundation — a charity founded by Pascagoula-native and USM alum Jimmy Buffett with the slogan, “Turning good vibes into good deeds” — gave $33,378 for the facility. Its website says it gives grants to small, grassroots nonprofits across the country that help people “get back on their feet, back into homes, back to work, find meaningful jobs, become better educated, and thrive according to their definition.” One dollar for every concert ticket Buffett sells on tour goes towards his foundation.
“Our contribution on behalf of student wellness at USM was made in good faith to the University’s foundation,” a spokesperson for SFC Charitable Foundation said in a statement to Mississippi Today. “… When any nonprofit goes astray and mismanages funds, it’s a sad day for those of us in the sector but especially distressing and financially stressful for local organizations handling the fallout. As Jimmy’s tour resumes this spring, we will to continue to support people living on the margins across the U.S.”
An anonymous donor also contributed $150,000 towards the volleyball stadium that month, according to the Morrison email, and Favre himself donated $50,000 the next month.
Despite personally receiving $1.1 million from the nonprofit, Favre continued in the following months and years to lobby welfare officials, other government officials and current Gov. Tate Reeves in an attempt to secure more public funds to satisfy his obligation.
But this never happened: “Zero public funds went towards satisfying this voluntary pledge,” the spokesperson for Favre confirmed for the first time to Mississippi Today recently.
It’s unclear how Favre may have used the $1.1 million he received from MCEC, which he has since repaid to the state. When he spoke to his associates about his debt in the project, the number varied from $1.1 million or $1.2 million in March of 2019 to $1.8 million in September of 2019.
By July of 2019, Davis had been ousted for suspected fraud and Favre was becoming worried.
“Nancy has been awesome to me and has paid 4.5 million for a 7 million dollar facility. And she said it was all gonna be taken care of until this morning,” Favre wrote to his business associate, Jake Vanlandingham, founder of a pharmaceutical startup company called Prevacus, on July 16, 2019. This text was first published by Mississippi Today in its investigative series “The Backchannel.”
(MDHS also alleges that Favre participated in the funneling of $1.7 million in welfare money to Prevacus, to which New has pleaded guilty criminally, and that Favre is liable. In response, Favre’s attorneys argue, “All Favre is alleged to have done with respect to Prevacus is to have introduced VanLandingham to New … This is insufficient to state a claim that Favre agreed to join a conspiracy … if this conduct was sufficient to join a conspiracy, then MDHS could also add as co-conspirators Southern Miss Athletic Director Jon Gilbert for his role in introducing New to Favre and attending the meeting.”)
“Suddenly she said I don’t think I can do anymore,” Favre wrote to Vanlandingham, referring to New, according to “The Backchannel” texts. “So now I am looking at a big pay out.”
The same month, Steel Dynamics Foundation donated $25,000 towards Favre’s volleyball pledge. Steel Dynamics Foundation is the foundation associated with Steel Dynamics Inc., a Fort Wayne, Indiana-based company that has manufacturing sites in Mississippi and recently received $247 million in tax incentives from the state. The foundation’s website says its goal is to improve the quality of life and local economies in the communities where its employees work.
By September of 2019, Favre’s debt had apparently grown. “I have more shit going on not to mention a very likely 1.8 million note coming due that I thought was covered,” Favre texted Vanlandingham.
That month, Favre secured a meeting with Bryant and the new welfare director, Christopher Freeze, who replaced Davis. They discussed pushing additional grant funds to the volleyball project. After the meeting, Bryant encouraged Favre by text that “We are going to get there. … But we have to follow the law.”
Freeze told Mississippi Today he rejected the proposal and there’s been no evidence that any additional welfare money went to the project after this point.
The next month, Aaron Rodgers – the quarterback who replaced Favre at the Green Bay Packers, prompting a memorable feud in sports pop culture history – donated $10,000 to the facility, according to the Morrison email. Favre had also talked to Vanlandingham in 2019 about asking for Rodgers’ support with the pharmaceutical venture. Rodgers’ agent did not return emails or a call from Mississippi Today.
By early 2020, Favre was desperately trying to come up with the rest of the funding. According to the Morrison email, he then secured $500 from Howard Deneroff, executive producer of Westwood One Sports, an NFL broadcaster. Favre had asked Deneroff to donate in exchange for a sit-down interview on the network. Favre also collected $22,000 from the Jimmy A. Payne Foundation, the foundation of a USM alum and businessman, and $350,000 from Matt Helms, owner of a sports memorabilia store in south Mississippi.
But it wasn’t enough. Favre even attempted to involve the Mississippi Community College Board, incoming Gov. Tate Reeves and the Legislature.
Bryant texted then-USM President Rodney Bennett about Favre’s insistence.
“The bottom line is he personally guaranteed the project, and on his word and handshake we proceeded,” Bennett texted Bryant on Jan. 27, 2020, shortly after the outgoing governor left office. “It’s time for him to pay up – it really is just that simple.”
MDHS uses this text to substantiate its allegation that Favre committed the funds before the welfare payment, since the athletic foundation proceeded with the project by hiring architects to start drafting renderings of the building in July of 2017.
All of this together, MDHS alleges, “support the reasonable inference that Favre personally committed to guarantee the volleyball facility’s construction at the outset of the project.”
Favre’s attorneys push back: “MDHS takes this text message completely out of context—it clearly related to efforts by Favre to raise funds to meet his 2018 written commitment,” Favre’s recent reply states. “MDHS takes a giant and unsupported leap of faith in claiming that the text message related to some different, earlier commitment.”
On the day of the initial arrests in February of 2020, Morrison, the associate athletic director, sent Favre the email describing “the following gifts that have been applied towards your commitment to the Volleyball Facility.”
Asked about the timing of the email, the Favre spokesperson said, “it is purely coincidental.”
The indictment, which was made public that day, had named Prevacus and its affiliate PreSolMD, alleging that the News had embezzled welfare funds from their nonprofit to invest in the companies.
About a week later, Vanlandingham texted Favre, saying he wasn’t sure if one of their potential investors was going to follow through with his contribution “given this MS embezzlement shit.”
Vanlandingham asked the athlete to make another $50,000 donation so PreSolMD could begin developing what it called a “pregame cream” that it promised could prevent concussions.
“…I would but up to my eyeballs in vball debt,” Favre responded.
The post Brett Favre says the welfare agency didn’t help satisfy his volleyball pledge, but Aaron Rodgers, Jimmy Buffett and others did appeared first on Mississippi Today.
Mere days after being approved as the state’s first rural emergency hospital, the federal government rescinded the designation for Alliance Healthcare System in Holly Springs.
Now, it’s not clear how the hospital will move forward — the conversion to rural emergency hospital is intended to be a lifeline for hospitals on the brink of financial collapse.
At a state board of health meeting on Wednesday, State Health Officer Dr. Dan Edney said the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services awarded the hospital the designation, and then took it away.
“It is frustrating that they gave us the designation, and now they’re pulling back because they’re in the Memphis footprint,” Edney said.
Hospitals were only able to apply for the new federal designation a few weeks ago, when the state Health Department announced its rules for “rural emergency hospitals,” a federal program that was finalized in November.
When a hospital converts to a rural emergency hospital, it must close all of its inpatient services and swing beds and transfer its patients within 24 hours to larger hospitals. In exchange, they’re paid more for the care they provide and get monthly payments from the federal government.
But because of the drastic shuttering of services, it’s meant as a last resort for hospitals that are near closure, but essential to the communities they serve. Edney has called hospital conversions to rural emergency hospitals, “closures.”
However, in Alliance’s situation, Edney said the state Health Department fully supports their plight to be recognized as a rural emergency hospital.
Alliance CEO Dr. Kenneth Williams said in a previous interview that the hospital has generally been losing money for more than 15 years, but especially took a hit during the pandemic. Data from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform, an organization that says about a third of Mississippi’s rural hospitals are at risk of closure, shows that the hospital has consistently been losing money for the past few years.
The hospital had been preparing for their rural emergency hospital application to be approved, Williams said in a previous interview — patients were already being discharged as of March 31.
Williams did not respond to emails from Mississippi Today for this story.
At the state board of health meeting, when asked if he thinks any hospitals might close in the next few months, Edney mentioned that Alliance’s situation was tenuous, and avoiding closure is contingent on CMS approving its designation as a rural emergency hospital.
Over the years, the hospital has applied to be a critical access hospital, another federal designation that increases a hospital’s financial viability after it decreases its services, but was denied because of its proximity to Memphis — it’s just an hour away, even though it’s located in Mississippi.
Williams thought things would go differently this time.
The post Days after being named Mississippi’s first rural emergency hospital, Holly Springs hospital’s designation is rescinded appeared first on Mississippi Today.
The Mississippi State Department of Health says that the University of Mississippi Medical Center can potentially host a state burn center.
Whether it actually has the qualifications to do so, however, is unclear.
Mississippi’s only accredited burn center, housed at Merit Health Center in south Jackson, closed in October amid pandemic-related issues and staffing challenges. Ever since, both UMMC and Mississippi Baptist Medical Center have been competing for the title of the state’s next burn center.
In February, a House committee approved giving UMMC $4 million to open a burn center. Mere weeks later, the full House tried to make Mississippi Baptist Medical Center — where the former medical director of Merit’s burn center, Dr. Derek Culnan, now practices — the home of the state’s next burn center.
However, before the conclusion of the legislative session, both chambers passed a bill that allocates $4 million toward the state’s next burn center in the state Health Department’s budget, seemingly giving them the responsibility of choosing the burn center’s home.
While both Baptist and UMMC have submitted applications to host the state’s next burn center, only UMMC has been approved thus far.
UMMC said in a press release on Tuesday that Department of Health officials visited UMMC’s campus on March 21 to assess the medical center’s compliance with standards for a burn center and has officially “designated” UMMC as a “Mississippi Burn Center.”
However, MSDH spokesperson Liz Sharlot said via email that the department merely has the ability to approve that medical centers are qualified to have a burn center, not choose the home of the state’s next burn center.
“UMMC has received designation and so can other hospitals,” Sharlot said. “The law doesn’t say we pick, instead, we review the application, complete an inspection and the (state health officer) then designates the facility as a burn center consistent with trauma rules and regulations.”
There is nothing in the law that would prohibit the $4 million going to more than one hospital.
Sen. Briggs Hopson, a conferee on the bill that included the money for a burn center, told Mississippi Today the bill is intended to give the state Health Department the responsibility of assessing which institution could host the state’s next burn center.
“We had conflicting data as to which entities would be best suited, so rather than the legislators making that decision without the benefit of a full analysis of who’s best suited, we felt like that would be a good place for the Department of Health to review it and analyze what needed to be done as to who’s best suited for it,” Hopson said.
UMMC’s application shows that none of its burn center physicians is currently certified under basic burn care standards. It is also unclear how the burn center’s director, Dr. Peter Arnold, meets the qualifications to lead a burn center.
State regulations say a burn center director is required to have completed a burn fellowship or have spent two of the last five years taking care of burn patients. Arnold has been at UMMC for the past five years, while the state’s only burn center has been housed at Merit.
When asked about Arnold, a spokeswoman from UMMC referred to an emailed statement sent to Mississippi Today in January.
Dr. Alan Jones, UMMC’s associate vice chancellor for clinical affairs, said Arnold has had “extensive training and experience in caring for patients with acute burns and complex wounds in his nearly 20-year career.” He also said that Arnold is assisted at the unaccredited Mississippi Burn Center, which UMMC established in January, by “five other highly qualified, expertly trained plastic surgeons, all of whom have significant experience treating pediatric and adult acutely burned patients.”
UMMC has claimed that it’s cared for burn patients since last fall, including pediatric patients, but internal emails revealed otherwise.
However, according to UMMC’s burn center application to MSDH, none of the employees involved in the burn center is trained in Advanced Burn Life Support. ABLS training is the standard education for providers who treat patients with burns. Additionally, UMMC’s application shows that internal burn care education is currently nonexistent but is in development.
When questioned this week about Arnold and his employees’ training, UMMC spokespeople said they had “no further comment.”
Sharlot said that an independent team of consultants found that Arnold met the criteria to serve as a burn center medical director, but did not say how, nor would she say who those consultants were. The same consultants said that UMMC partially met ABLS training requirements and that there was a corrective action plan in place to ensure all staff would receive training.
Culnan, the former burn center’s medical director who is now credentialed at Baptist, said his team has nine staff members trained in ABLS, two of whom are ABLS instructors. He has also completed a one-year burn fellowship.
Culnan, a fellowship-trained burn surgeon, was 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. Kimberly Alexander, a spokesperson for Baptist, said the lawsuit has been resolved.
“We have submitted our application as a burn center and expect to have a survey soon,” Alexander said. “We are continuing to care for burn patients daily.”
State burn center funds from the bill are not available until July, according to Sharlot.
The post State Health Department says UMMC is qualified to host Mississippi’s next burn center. Its application raises doubts. appeared first on Mississippi Today.