The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality announced Thursday it was awarding $7.3 million from a 2016 Volkswagen settlement to emissions-saving transportation projects around the state.
Most of the money, $5.4 million, will go to a dozen public school districts and one private school for lower-emitting diesel buses, electric school buses and charging stations. Specifically, that money will help pay for 42 lower-emitting diesel buses, 12 electric buses, and 10 charging stations.
The Jackson County School District is getting the largest award amount, $1.5 million, for six electric buses and six charging stations.
In total, Mississippi received $9.87 million out of the $2.7 billion Volkswagen Environmental Mitigation Trust, a fund established through legal settlements after the Environmental Protection Agency found that the car manufacturer had intentionally programmed their vehicles to cheat emissions tests. The purpose of the money is to offset excess emissions of nitrogen oxides from Volkswagen’s cars.
“The goal of the mitigation projects is the reduction of diesel emissions, specifically nitrogen oxide pollutants, which have been linked to increased ozone levels and air contaminants,” said Chris Wells, MDEQ Executive Director.
All 50 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia are beneficiaries of the fund. States were allocated money largely based on how many affected Volkswagen cars were registered in each state, according to the EPA.
About half of the remaining $2 million is going to three companies: Waste Management, Sysco in Jackson, and Pan Isle Inc., also known as Ship Island Excursions. Waste Management is receiving $570,000 to replace 13 diesel garbage trucks with clean natural gas vehicles.
The Meridian Airport Authority is receiving $430,435 for new electric ground support devices.
Another $330,00 is going to build 18 charging stations in seven locations around the state.
The money MDEQ awarded Thursday is in the form of a rebate, and can account for up to 70% of the project’s cost. To access the funds, the recipients must complete the projects by September, 2025, and then request reimbursements.
Use the table below for a full list of projects MDEQ awarded money to on Thursday:
Ray Guy, the best athlete these eyes have ever witnessed, died Thursday morning in Hattiesburg following a long illness. He was 72.
Many times over the years, readers have asked: Who’s the best pure athlete you ever covered?
Ray Guy, I always answer. When it comes to all-around athleticism, Guy was the best.
A punter, some will invariably ask with incredulous looks?
Rick Cleveland
Yes, Ray Guy was the greatest punter who ever lived and the standard by which all punters are forever judged. But Ray Guy was so much more than a punter. There was nothing with a ball — any ball — Guy could not do. I have so much to say about Ray Guy, the problem is this: Where to begin?
Let’s start with the first time I ever heard of him. This was 1969, and Hamp Cook was the offensive line coach at Southern Miss. He and Doug Barfield, who would later be the head coach at Auburn, had recruited Guy out of Thomson, Ga., near Augusta, steering him away from the likes of Bear Bryant at Alabama, Vince Dooley at Georgia and Major League Baseball. Guy was broad-shouldered, slender-hipped, long and limber. Yet he possessed the agility of a gymnast.
“You won’t believe this kid,” Hamp Cook told my father and me. “The stadiums aren’t big enough. He kicks the ball out of sight.”
The Southern Miss pitch to Guy was this: If you go to Alabama or Georgia, you’ll just be the kicking specialist. If you come here, you can do it all. And he did. P.W. Underwood, the head coach, took one look at Guy and then told his coaches, “The first one of you who tries to coach him about punting or kicking is fired.”
Ray Guy boomed his NFL punts for the Oakland Raiders.
You should know that besides being USM’s first consensus Division I All-American as a punter, Guy also shares the school’s pass interception record. He was the team’s emergency quarterback and could throw the ball 80 yards, seemingly with no great effort. Once, when USM was playing Memphis, a Tiger wide receiver ran a pass pattern over the middle. Guy lowered his shoulder and hit the poor fellow just as the ball arrived, breaking up the pass and knocking the receiver out cold. It took several seconds to revive the poor Memphis receiver and then a search ensued in the grass around him. They were looking for the guy’s teeth.
As a punter, he was other-worldly. In 1972, he launched a punt from seven yards deep in his own end zone at then-Hemingway Stadium. Incredibly, the ball sailed far over Ole Miss return man Bill Maloof’s head and eventually rolled into a chain-link fence beyond the opposite end zone. It was almost comical. Maloof took one look at the punt, turned and sped the other way. He couldn’t catch it. The ball traveled about 117 yards total. I also saw him kick a 61-yard field goal during a snowstorm at Utah State.
Guy controlled games with his kicking. In 1970, he kicked a 49-yard field goal just before halftime to give Southern Miss a 17-14 lead over No. 4 ranked Ole Miss in a game Southern would win 30-14. But his punting is what won the game. Said Archie Manning, “Every time we got the ball we were inside our own 10, looking at 90 or 95 yards of field. Ray killed us.”
Once, against Louisiana Tech, Guy punted from his own 40 out of bounds at the Tech 5. But Southern Miss was penalized and had to kick again from the 35. Guy punted again, this time through the end zone. But Southern was penalized again, so Guy punted from the 30. There was no penalty the third time. Guy kicked it out of bounds at the Tech 1.
Al Davis of the Oakland Raiders noticed. He made Guy the first kicker ever drafted in the first round. Davis and his coach, John Madden, believed Guy was the missing link to help the Raiders win the Super Bowl. With Guy, the Raiders won three. Once in the Pro Bowl at the Louisiana Superdome, Guy punted a ball into the gondola and video screen high above the field. My brother, Bobby, was on the field taking photos that night. “Ray told me he was gonna do it right before he did it,” Bobby said. “‘Watch this,’ he said. And then he launched it. That damned ball hit the screen on the way up.”
I could go on and on. Indeed, I will. Once, Guy was crossing the intramural fields at USM and ran into school’s intramural track and field meet. They were contesting the softball throw. “Am I eligible?” Guy asked. Yes, he was told. He threw the ball nearly 340 feet. It’s still the school record.
Guy took up ping pong while he was at USM and was the only guy who could beat the Chinese exchange students.
He was drafted as a pitcher three times by three different Major League Baseball teams. He routinely threw gems for Southern Miss. Ron Polk once told me Guy had the best slider he had ever seen in college baseball. His fastball velocity reached nearly triple digits. And he hit the longest home run I ever saw at the old USM baseball park – not only far over the left center field fence but all the way across West Fourth Street. The ball traveled at least 500 feet. That was back when they used wooden bats.
I played golf with Ray one of the first times he ever played. The first hole at the old B.O. Van Hook Golf Course was a 282-yard part 4. Guy, without hitting any practice shots, took out his 3-wood and hit a perfect draw, pretty as you please, onto the green.
The first hole at the Hattiesburg Country Club is a 375-yard, par-4, a dogleg to the left. Once, on a cold, wet day, I saw Guy launch a 3-wood over the towering pine trees that guard the left side of the fairway and onto the green. He made a 2.
Guy wasn’t one to brag about any of his athletic skills. He just went out and did it.
In high school, he was a quarterback and never lost a game his junior and senior seasons. He was also an all-state basketball player and the best baseball player in the state. The only bad thing about his baseball prowess was that he didn’t get to participate in track and field – except for one memorable meet his junior season when the state meet did not interfere with the baseball playoffs. Paul Leroy, his high school football coach, once told me the story.
“We had a great track team except for the field events, so we had Ray come out and try the discus,” Leroy said. “Well, he threw it further than anybody, so we took him to the meet and he won it.”
That’s not all. On the way to the track meet, they taught Guy the steps to the triple jump in the aisle of the bus. And you know what happened next. “He won the triple jump, too, the first time he ever tried it,” Leroy said.
“I’ll never coach another athlete like Ray Guy,” Leroy said. “Nobody will.”
YAZOO CITY — Jamara Johnson knew something was wrong when she went into labor with her third baby early in the morning of Aug. 30.
She was 38 weeks pregnant and had been in pain the night before. She attributed it to overextending herself while cleaning her apartment in Yazoo City – “nesting,” she said. When her water broke around 5 a.m. – a greenish color she’d never seen with her first two babies – she realized she needed to get to a hospital as quickly as possible.
Johnson lives in a county defined in a new report as a “maternity care desert” — there have not been any labor and delivery services in Yazoo County since the early 1990s, and there are no practicing OB-GYNs. Many women go to the Federally Qualified Health Center about a half hour away in Canton, while others, like Johnson, see the doctors at an OB-GYN group in Flowood, more than an hour away from her home.
More than half the counties in Mississippi are considered maternity care deserts, according to the new report from the March of Dimes. These counties have no hospitals providing obstetric care, no OB-GYNs and no certified nurse midwives.
Discontinued labor and delivery services and shuttered neonatal intensive care units have dominated headlines in the state in recent months, painting a bleak picture for mothers and babies’ access to care. Greenwood Leflore Hospital closed Leflore County’s only labor and delivery unit on Oct. 15. Over the summer, Ochsner Medical Center in Hancock County did the same.
The trend of reduced access and care for mothers and babies — on the heels of the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and is expected to result in 5,000 additional babies in Mississippi alone — does not bode well for a state already plagued by high infant and maternal mortality rates and poor health outcomes.
Dr. Rachael Morris, assistant professor of maternal fetal medicine at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, travels the state training emergency responders, nurses and providers in small, rural hospitals in obstetric emergencies and caring for pregnant and recently delivered mothers who may have complications or life-threatening problems.
The state’s problems did not happen overnight, she said.
“But it’s really only getting worse. The nature of this problem, it’s additive at this point,” she said. “We have a very complex, medically diverse, underserved population with a lot of high-risk patients, whether it’s diabetes, obesity, hypertension — this is a lot of our mothers in Mississippi. So when you have that baseline complexity, that creates a very high-risk population for pregnancy.”
The unhealthy population in Mississippi, a leader nationally in chronic disease, means women of childbearing age are already behind the starting line. When emergencies come up – as they will do in high-risk pregnancies – access to nearby care is critical.
“When you’re talking about a baby and a pregnancy and a delivery, minutes matter for that mom’s health and that baby’s health,” said Dr. Anita Henderson, president of the Mississippi chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Minutes mattered for another Yazoo City woman with eerily similar circumstances as Johnson: Tamara Stuckey was also pregnant with her third child and was a patient at the same OB/GYN group in Flowood as Johnson. On Aug. 28, 2019, the 32-year-old Stuckey was 35 weeks pregnant and taken by ambulance from her home in Yazoo City to St. Dominic Hospital, according to a lawsuit filed by her fiance and the father of her other two children.
She was complaining of constant and sharp abdominal pains, and her medical records indicated Stuckey, who had given birth by cesarean section for both previous babies, was at high risk for postpartum hemorrhage. Her OB-GYN ordered a fetal ultrasound but did not investigate her complaints of “uterine irritability,” or mild contractions, and pain in her right shoulder, according to the complaint. She was discharged that evening and sent back home — an hour away.
That same night, her fiance called emergency medical services again. Stuckey reported a pain level of 10 on a scale of 1 to 10, the complaint states, and was again transported to St. Dominic. She arrived at the hospital around 1:18 a.m. Her baby, a little boy they planned to name Daxton, was already dead. The complaint says medical records indicate the last fetal heart tones detected were at 1:01 and 1:02 a.m.
Within 30 minutes of arriving at the hospital, Stuckey went into cardiopulmonary arrest. Her baby was delivered stillborn early that morning, and the next day, Stuckey died.
“The maternal autopsy report revealed massive intrapartum hemorrhage, with the abdominal cavity containing four liters of free blood,” the lawsuit complaint states.
Stuckey’s fiance Damien Sanders and his attorneys declined to be interviewed for this story.
In their response to the complaint, Women’s Health Associates and Dr. David Waddell, Stuckey’s OB-GYN, denied the allegations and agreed only to the basic facts listed in the document. St. Dominic Memorial Hospital and St. Dominic Health Services both said in their responses that the injuries and damages to Stuckey “resulted from medical conditions, events or the acts or omissions of persons or entities other than St. Dominic.”
Baptist Medical Center – Yazoo in Yazoo City, Mississippi. The hospital offers no obstetric services. Credit: Kate Royals
Johnson didn’t want to risk her baby’s life by waiting.
She called her doctor’s office immediately when her water broke, and a nurse said to get to St. Dominic as quickly as possible. The discoloration meant the baby was at risk for meconium aspiration, which can occur when the baby passes his first stool (meconium) while in the womb. Aspiration can occur when the newborn breathes in a mixture of meconium and amniotic fluid (the liquid that surrounds the baby in the womb).
The condition can cause difficulty breathing, pneumonia, and at worst, death.
In the bathroom early that morning, Johnson weighed her options: she could wait for who knows how long for an ambulance to come to her apartment, or she could go to Baptist Memorial Hospital-Yazoo, where she would then be transferred via ambulance to Jackson.
Or, since she wasn’t having contractions yet, she could get in the car and drive.
She had made this same game-time decision less than a year before when she went into labor with her second child on Sept. 20, 2021. She drove with the child’s father to the Yazoo City hospital but didn’t bother getting out of the car when they saw there was no ambulance there, so they decided to take their chances.
Less than an hour after leaving the hospital, Johnson called 911 and they pulled over in Sullivan’s Grocery in Flora. Minutes later, Johnson gave birth in the back of an ambulance in the grocery store parking lot at 1:45 a.m.
“If I was still in Yazoo City, I would’ve had to wait on that same ambulance (that met me in Flora) to come, so I just went on and took my chances,” Johnson said of her decision.
With her third delivery, she felt even more pressed for time: she needed to get to a hospital capable of treating her baby in case there was something wrong. She called her aunt Summer Brokman, who lived about five minutes away, and asked her to go with her to the hospital. The two started the drive with their hazard flashers on. About 30 minutes into the hour-long drive, Johnson was stopped again — but this time, it was in Pocahontas, and it was for a different reason.
A Highway Patrol car had pulled the two over on Highway 49.
Brokman told her to try and be calm and not make any sudden movements. But Johnson, who had been driving until that point, was starting to have contractions and was in pain.
The officer asked for Johnson’s license and registration, and Brokman pleaded with the officer.
“I was like, ‘Sir, look, she’s having a baby. She’s in labor, she delivered her last baby on the side of the road … can you follow us to the hospital?’” Brokman recalled. “And he was like, ‘License and registration.’”
The two were shocked, but Johnson produced her driver’s license, and they sat on the side of the road while the officer ran it through the system. More than 10 minutes later, they said, he came back and issued Johnson two tickets: one for speeding and the other for not having insurance.
“He’d asked me for insurance and I told him I couldn’t — I was in too much pain to search for it,” Johnson remembered.
Brokman looked for it but couldn’t find it, she said.
The trooper finally let the two go, and Brokman took over driving. They made it to Jackson, and Johnson’s son was born around 9 a.m. — about two hours after the trooper had written her the ticket.
Criss Turnipseed, director of public affairs at the Mississippi Highway Patrol, said they have no official protocol as to how to handle medical emergencies, and it is “left to the Trooper’s discretion.”
“Our first preference for those instances is always to call 911 first. There is no ‘official’ protocol for how a Trooper should proceed with someone claiming there is a medical emergency on a traffic stop other than based on his observations and the severity he is authorized to request an ambulance to the scene himself,” Turnipseed said in an emailed statement to Mississippi Today.
Turnipseed said he had no comment on what happened to Johnson and Brokman.
Now, more than three months later, Brokman and Johnson can’t help but think of all the things that could have gone wrong that day. They say they commonly hear stories about women in Yazoo City giving birth on the side of the road — like Johnson did in 2021 — and they were glad they made it to a hospital.
“My momma used to always tell me when I was young: ‘When you’re having a baby, you’re closer to death than you’ll ever be in your life,’” Brokman said. “Death is at your toes.”
That statement is especially true in Mississippi, which leads the nation in maternal and infant mortality. And it is even truer for Black women and babies, who are significantly more likely to die in childbirth than their white counterparts.
The pregnancy-related mortality ratio was 33.2 deaths per 100,000 live births between 2013 and 2016 — nearly double the national average of 17.3 deaths per 100,000 births.
The same is true for babies: the state has the highest rate of infant mortality in the nation, and the rate of death in Black infants is twice that of white babies.
For Black women in Mississippi, the rate was about three times the rate of white women at 51.9 deaths.
The state also has one of the highest rates of uninsured people in the country – a problem the March of Dimes report highlights when discussing the importance of quality care before having a baby, during pregnancy and after.
“Continuous high quality health care in all three time periods can lead to better health outcomes for both mom and baby,” the report states. “… Stalled progress to improve pregnancy outcomes has, in part, pointed towards inconsistent health interventions before pregnancy.”
Greenwood Leflore Hospital, which permanently shuttered its labor and delivery unit as the hospital fights to cut costs and stay open, welcomed just over 2,000 babies into the world over the last five years.
But now, any babies born at the hospital will be born in the emergency room, where interim CEO Gary Marchand said the hospital has relocated labor and delivery equipment.
The closest hospital with labor and delivery services is in Grenada — a 45-minute drive or more for some in the area.
Providers and community members worry more women in Leflore County will have experiences like Johnson and Stuckey’s. Dr. Terry McMillin, an OB-GYN who has practiced in the Greenwood area for more than 20 years, said the closure of the unit is “devastating.”
“In the short term, are you going to have potentially some bad outcomes? I can’t predict that, but certainly it only increases that likelihood,” he said.
The hospital now only has “limited obstetrical call available” — or several obstetricians who retained their privileges and can assist ER physicians if the situation warrants and they are available.
“The March of Dimes report just illustrates that we have to find ways to provide access and health care to moms even in the midst of some of those maternity deserts, and having more and more labor and delivery units closing is just the wrong direction,” said Henderson, the head of the Mississippi pediatrician group.
The March of Dimes report ended with several policy recommendations, including expanding Medicaid for individuals who make less than 138% of the federal poverty level, or about $30,000 annually for a family of three.
Mississippi remains one of 12 states not to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act — and one of 21 states not to extend postpartum Medicaid coverage for new moms beyond 60 days to 6 months or a year, another recommendation of the report.
Although my faith teaches me that road construction is something that only occurs in Hell, I figured Heaven would give Dick Hall a warm (but not that warm) and familiar welcome. I’ll miss the Commissioner Hall. I always enjoyed drawing him and his reactions to those drawings. My heart goes out to his wife Jennifer and all who loved him.
State lawmakers on Wednesday approved a $247 million tax incentives deal for Steel Dynamics Inc., a Fort Wayne, Indiana-based company that already has a manufacturing presence in Mississippi, to expand and build an aluminum mill near Columbus.
Steel Dynamics, a Fortune 500 company founded in 1993, is the third-largest producer of carbon steel products in the U.S. and one of the largest metal recyclers. It owns facilities across the U.S. and in Mexico.
The company for the third quarter of 2022 reported record steel shipments of 3.2 million tons, net sales of $5.7 billion and an adjusted net income of $994 million. The company is considered one of the most profitable steel companies in the world and it employs around 10,000 people.
The company already operates a scrap-fed electric arc furnace steel mill in Columbus and plans to build a massive aluminum flat-rolled mill and other new operations in Mississippi that the company says will create at least 1,000 new high paying jobs.
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves on Wednesday, after state lawmakers approved the incentive deal, praised Steel Dynamics and the people who work at its existing Columbus plant.
“Do not forget the men and women employed at Steel Dynamics today,” Reeves said. “They would not be investing $2.5 billion today if not for the fact that Mississippians show up every day for work and they produce.”
According to industry reports, electric vehicles are requiring substantially more aluminum than traditional automobiles, and Steel Dynamics is positioning itself to take advantage of this. Company leaders in late summer, when discussing plans for a new plant, said labor and energy costs at their planned facility will be much less than traditional because of state-of-the-art equipment they plan to install. They said the aluminum rolling mill will work along with satellite recycling centers in the U.S. and Mexico.
Steel Dynamics’ existing Columbus steel mill was previously owned by Severstal North America and was bought by Steel Dynamics in 2014. The company said its Columbus mill “is currently the most technologically advanced (electric arc furnace) facility in North America” and can produce 3.4 million tons of steel a year. It serves the auto, agriculture, appliance and construction industries along with HVAC and pipe companies.
In 2021, Steel Dynamics settled a lawsuit with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency after the federal government alleged the company was not complying with emissions standards at two of its facilities in Butler, Indiana. The company agreed to pay a civil penalty of $475,000 and spend $3 million to upgrade its air pollution control equipment.
The Mississippi Legislature, in a one-day special session with only a handful of dissenting votes, approved $247 million in taxpayer-funded incentives to help a company build an aluminum mill and other operations near Columbus and create at least 1,000 jobs.
Lt. Gov. Hosemann said Mississippi was in competition with at least two other states for the project. Gov. Tate Reeves said Monday when he called the special session on short notice that the incentive package needed to be approved quickly to help the company with “speed to market” and ensure the mill was built in Mississippi.
State officials said they agreed not to name the company until the deal was inked, and referred to the deal as “Project Triple Crown” during Capitol deliberations Wednesday. But numerous sources and industry trade journals said the parent of the deal is Fort Wayne, Indiana-based Steel Dynamics, the third-largest producer of carbon steel products in the U.S.
The company already has a steel plant in Columbus. Over the summer, Steel Dynamics announced plans to build three large facilities — including one in the Southeast — to supply the automotive and packaging industries with flat-rolled recycled aluminum material. An officer for Steel Dynamic recently filed paperwork with the state registering Aluminum Dynamics LLC in Mississippi.
“A $2.5 billion project doesn’t come to Mississippi very often,” Hosemann said, “but it will be happening more often because Mississippi is open for business.”
House Speaker Philip Gunn, R-Clinton, said the project “would be a big economic development opportunity for the Golden Triangle, creating at least a 1,000 jobs and hopefully economic prosperity.”
(Note: Details of deal are itemized below in this article)
While there were few dissenting votes on Wednesday, Democrats and even some Republicans questioned why lawmakers rushed to pass the incentives deal while ignoring other problems pressing the state.
When asked about why lawmakers were not spending or passing policy to tackle water infrastructure woes, hospital closures and other urgent issues, Hosemann noted that only the governor can call lawmakers into special session and set the agenda. He vowed the Legislature will tackle such issues when the regular session starts in January.
“In about eight weeks you’ll see us tackling all the rest of it,” Hosemann said. “This particular Legislature has not been timid in looking at issues and I anticipate those issues will range from water and sewer to hospitals and just about anything else the Legislature thinks should be addressed.”
The bills for the incentives passed the 122-member House with only five “no” votes — all from conservative or Libertarian leaning Republicans who oppose “corporate welfare.” Four House Democrats voted present. In the Senate, the measures passed with no dissent and only Kathy Chism, R-New Albany, voting present.
Rep. Robert Johnson, D-Natchez, expresses his concerns during a press conference about Gov. Tate Reeves’ plan for an economic development project after the Senate passed it during a special session at the Mississippi Capitol in Jackson, Wednesday, November 2, 2022. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
But legislative Democrats held a news conference during Wednesday’s session to point out emergency needs facing the state.
“No one here is arguing that economic development isn’t a good thing,” Rep. Robert Johnson of Natchez, the House Democratic leader, said Wednesday on the south steps of the state Capitol. “But while we’re in this building, facing a crisis that affects each and every Mississippian, we should talk about solutions. It would be malpractice to walk out of here, at the height of this crisis, without passing legislation that would begin to address the myriad issues facing our state’s healthcare system.”
Given past boondoggles that left Mississippi taxpayers on the hook for millions when companies went belly-up or didn’t deliver jobs for incentives, legislative leaders assured their colleagues Wednesday that this deal includes stringent “clawback” and other measures to protect the state.
“I think these are the strictest clawbacks we’ve ever done,” said Senate Finance Chairman Josh Harkins, R-Flowood. “In large part, it wouldn’t even be clawback — it’s on reimbursement. We’re not just going to cut them a check up front. It will be provided as reimbursement once they’ve done certain things … This is a strong, performance-based contract, if you will. They’ve got to produce to get incentives.”
Tax rebates and abatements would be suspended if the company didn’t meet job and investment benchmarks laid out in phases, lawmakers said, although state Rep. Shanda Yates, I-Jackson, noted during floor debate that the language in the bills said the Mississippi Development Authority “may” enforce clawbacks and suspensions, not “shall.”
House Ways and Means Chairman Trey Lamar said this was to give MDA ability to negotiate with the company to get it back in compliance and he assured colleagues state taxpayers would be protected. He said that all clawback provisions are with the parent company, which is “well-heeled” and not a start-up like some of the companies that burned the state in the past.
Reeves and others called the deal the largest economic development project in state history, and said the company is promising the average salary for the jobs will be $93,000 a year. Hosemann said he was told the lowest salaries for the project would be “$58,000 plus bonuses.”
Lamar said: “This will be life-changing money for families not used to making that much money here in the state of Mississippi.”
Some highlights of the “Triple Crown” deal:
Lawmakers authorized state borrowing up to $246.7 million — enough to cover the entire incentives package the company wants, including grants, road work, tax breaks and land. This was to ensure the company all incentives are guaranteed. But lawmakers approved spending $81.1 million in cash up front, and said they hope to not borrow any money for the deal but pay cash as it goes along as long as state finances remain rosy. The first borrowing would not take place for three years, regardless, Hosemann said.
The incentives include $155 million in grants for the company. This would include $54 million in a first payment, then other “tranches” as various buildout and hiring goals are met. The state is also loaning $18 million to Lowndes County to purchase the remainder of the 2,100 acres the company plans to use. The grants also include $25.1 million in state road work for the project.
The incentives include up to $92 million in tax incentives and rebates, much of this tied to jobs created. Because the state is still considering massive tax cuts or elimination, the state will guarantee up to $45 million in a reserve account if the company keeps adding jobs, even if lawmakers eliminate or cut taxes further. Lowndes County is also providing major local tax breaks for the company.
The company is pledging to invest $1.9 billion in a recycled aluminum flat rolled mill and create 700 jobs. It pledges to invest $150 million in a “Renewable biocarbon facility” and create 40 jobs. An MDA official told lawmakers this plant would burn organic material to create ash that would provide feed stock for steel production.
The company has pledged $200 million in investment and 160 jobs from other businesses — customers and suppliers — locating at its new aluminum mill campus. Lawmakers said that although this would be other companies, the parent mill company would be on the hook for this as part of the incentives deal. The company has also promised to invest $250 million in a “Future project to be named later” and create at least 100 jobs.
Flanked by the primarily African American Democratic legislative caucus, Johnson dropped to ground bills that would:
Expand Medicaid to provide health care coverage to primarily the working poor.
Provide $40 million to the beleaguered Jackson water system to deal with immediate issues regarding accessible and quality drinking water.
Provide grant funds for rural hospitals.
He said those bills were ready to be taken up immediately if the governor would include them in the special session. The governor has indicated those issues can be considered during the regular session.
Johnson pointed out state Health Officer Dr. Dan Edney recently said as many as six hospitals were in danger of closing.
The closure of the hospitals would negatively impact Mississippi’s health care outcomes that already are the worst in the nation. The hospital woes are occurring, Johnson said, as state officials projected an additional 5,000 births per year with the Supreme Court decision giving states the right to ban abortion as Mississippi has done.
In addition to being issues of life and death in terms of having quality water and accessible health care, the Democrats said they also were economic development issues.
Derrick Simmons of Greenville, the Senate Democratic leader, said expanding Medicaid, by accepting more than $1 billion annually in federal funds for health care would provide more economic development for the state than the aluminum plant.
The closing of the hospitals in Greenville and Greenwood would result in greater job losses than the aluminum would produce.
“Apparently, only new jobs constitute an emergency meeting of the Legislature,” Simmons said. “The jobs that hardworking Mississippians continue to lose as hospitals close do not. That logic doesn’t add up.”
On social media, state Rep. Zakiya Summers, D-Jackson, said, “Mississippi needs economic development. Yet we are not having a special session on the water crisis or hospitals closures happening across the state. Mississippi needs those basic services as well.”
Johnson said the economic development package could have been passed in the regular session, beginning in January. Instead, he called the special session “a campaign event — a political pep rally” for the governor.
Mississippi’s longest serving transportation commissioner Dick Hall died on Wednesday at the Baptist Rehabilitation Center in Jackson. He was 84.
Hall had been retired from the elected, three-person Transportation Commission since he opted in 2019 not to seek reelection for the current four-year term.
“Mississippi lost one of its longest tenured public servants, and I lost a great friend and mentor,” said Brad White, the executive director of the transportation department who previously served on Hall’s staff. “Commissioner Hall led by example and my life is much better because of the major role he played in it.”
Before being appointed to the Transportation Commission by then-Gov. Kirk Fordice in 1999, he served three terms in the Senate and three terms in the House, representing the Jackson area in the Legislature. He was one of a few Republicans serving in the Legislature when he was first elected.
He was elected to represent the state’s 22-county central district on the Transportation Commission five times after being appointed by Fordice to fill a vacancy. He served 11 years as chair of the Commission.
But before being elected as transportation commissioner, Hall had an eventful tenure in the Legislature, including serving as Senate Appropriations chair. He first was appointed to the post by Republican Lt. Gov. Eddie Briggs. Briggs removed him from the position after the Legislature was required to run for election in consecutive years by a federal court because of conflicts over redistricting. Briggs appointed Hall to chair the Public Health Committee after removing him from Appropriations.
But Democrat Ronnie Musgrove, who defeated Briggs in the 1995 election, re-appointed Hall as Appropriations chair where he served until his appointment to the Transportation Commission by Fordice.
“I am saddened by the passing of my friend and colleague Dick Hall. I had the honor of serving with him on the Transportation Commission and developed a deep respect for him and his dedication to our great state,” said Southern District Commissioner Tom King, who also is chair of the Mississippi Transportation Commission. “He has left a legacy of service and hard work not only at MDOT, but for the entire state of Mississippi.”
As transportation commissioner, Hall was an outspoken advocate for providing additional revenue to deal with a deteriorating infrastructure system. Finally in a 2018 special session, the Legislature passed bills to address some of the road and bridge issues highlighted so often by Hall.
College Gameday went off without a hitch in Jackson, but the big news in the Magnolia State over the weekend was Mississippi State Athletic Director John Cohen leaving for Auburn. The Cleveland boys discuss that move, recap last week’s action and look at what lies ahead for Jackson State, Ole Miss and Delta State, which are now a combined 24-1.
