The Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees is moving ahead with the search for the next president of Jackson State University without first accounting for what went wrong with Thomas Hudson’s presidency.
Hudson’s resignation earlier this month made him the third straight president to resign from Jackson State, the largest historically Black university in the state and a cornerstone of economic development in Mississippi’s capital city.
So far, the board has not provided any information about the circumstances surrounding Hudson’s resignation, saying only that it does not comment on “personnel matters.” This silence continued at a board meeting on Thursday when trustees said nothing about leadership at Jackson State despite weeks of press releases suggesting they would. Instead, after 20 minutes, the board voted to go into executive session.
Then at 5 p.m., the board sent out a press release announcing it would begin a search for Jackson State’s next president. Steven Cunningham, the only Jackson State alumnus on the board,will chair the search. Listening sessions will be held this spring.
It is unclear if the board made a decision to commence the search during executive session. IHL’s spokesperson, Caron Blanton, did not respond to questions by press time. Cunningham did not respond to a call or text from Mississippi Today.
Now, unanswered questions about the board’s search process are stacking on top of unanswered questions about Hudson’s resignation.
C. Liegh McInnis, a poet, short story writer and retired Jackson State English instructor, said community members are wondering to what extent the board, with its unilateral power to hire and fire presidents, is responsible for the pattern of resignations at the university, or if Hudson’s resignation was a fluke.
“Whatever it is, it needs to be discussed,” he said. “Not only so it can be avoided, but because he (Hudson) was doing right in so many ways. He was a great fundraiser; he was a great face of the institution.”
McInnis said at a minimum, he thought it was important for the community to know if the Faculty Senate’s “no-confidence” vote played a role in Hudson’s resignation since that could affect the next president’s success.
But McInnis added that he does not expect more transparency because he “can’t think of a time that the board has ever made a decision that works in the favor of HBCUs.”
“Name me one roach who likes when the lights are turned on,” he said.
The board gives itself two options when it searches for a new university president, according to IHL policy: an extended search with a consultant or an expedited process in which the trustees interview candidates “that are known to the Board.” The board has latitude to flip-flop between the two types of searches.
The board used the expedited process to select Hudson’s predecessor, William Bynum Jr., prompting outcry from the community and a lawsuit from Black lawmakers. Bynum’s presidency ended in scandal after he was arrested during a prostitution sting in early 2020.
At the end of 2020, the IHL commissioner, Alfred Rankins, acknowledged “there were some issues” with the search for Bynum during listening sessions. But the board still decided to forgo a national search and appoint Hudson.
McInnis said that while many community members were unhappy with the board’s decision to appoint Hudson without a national search, they ultimately accepted the move because Hudson is an alumnus.
He hopes the community will hold the board accountable to publicly discussing leadership at Jackson State and providing more information about why Hudson’s presidency was cut short.
“They think they’ll never have to address it,” he said. “The question becomes, who is going to push them on it?”
It’s always healthy to focus on fun — even for just a day. And congratulations to Cassandra Wilson for being named Grand Marshal for the 40th Annual Hal’s St. Paddy’s Parade.
Mary Shadd Cary became the first Black female publisher in North America with her anti-slavery newspaper, The Provincial Freeman. Her first published article had come five years earlier when Frederick Douglass asked for suggestions on how to improve the lives of Black Americans.
“We have been holding conventions for years — we have been assembling together and whining over our difficulties and afflictions, passing resolutions on resolutions to any extent; but it does really seem that we have made but little progress considering our resolves,” she wrote. “We should do more and talk less.”
The New York Times wrote, “With that statement, Shadd Cary questioned the anti-slavery establishment and helped define a new role for Black women. But her work didn’t end there.”
Cary published her weekly newspaper in Canada, the home of 40,000 who had escaped slavery. She sought to break down racial barriers and improve their lives and their education. She took that message across Canada and the U.S., soliciting aid for those who had escaped slavery. It was an issue close to her heart.
Growing up, her family opened their home as a refuge for those fleeing slavery, and when Delaware refused to educate Black children, she and her family moved to Pennsylvania, where she completed her education in a boarding school. When the Civil War broke out, she became a recruiting officer for the Union Army. After the war ended, she started a school for the children of those freed, believing that education could help free them even more.
In 1870 she became one of the first Black women to earn a law degree from Howard University. She testified before Congress in support of the 14th and 15th Amendments before throwing herself into the fight for women to vote.
“I am not vain enough to suppose for a moment that words of mine could add one iota of weight to the arguments from these learned and earnest women,” she told the House Judiciary Committee. Because women are taxpayers, they should have the same rights as the men, she said.
In 1893, she died of stomach cancer. Her brick-row house is now a National Park Service museum honoring her. Civil rights leader W.E.B. Dubois described the courageous woman as “well-educated, vivacious, with determination shining from her sharp eyes, she threw herself singlehanded into the great Canadian pilgrimage when thousands of hunted black men hurried northward and crept beneath the protection of the lion’s paw.”
Canada now has a bust of her in BME Freedom Park in Chatham, Ontario.
Some school districts in Mississippi are worried about the financial and legal ramifications of a bill which would allow them to arm employees as a school safety measure.
Senate Bill 2079 would create a “School Safety Guardian Program,” an optional program that would authorize trained district employees to respond to school shootings. If a district chooses to participate and nominates a school employee (who must have an enhanced concealed carry permit), the employee would participate in a training course from the Department of Public Safety and undergo multiple screenings before being dubbed a “School Guardian.” A House addition to the bill would allow either school employees or outside people to serve in this role, a provision Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell said he would prefer removed.
The proposed program, largely borne of concern regarding the rising rate of school shootings nationally, is intended to provide school districts with another way to increase school security. The risks associated with the program, including accidents related to carrying a gun and potential increases in insurance costs will likely prevent most districts from participating, though some districts have already expressed interest.
Marcus Burger of Ross and Yerger, a local insurance agency, said one insurance carrier has already expressed to him it does not plan to cover any liability related to the program. He doesn’t expect to see mainstream insurance carriers offer policies until the program has been around for a few years to give carriers a better understanding of the risks. When Kansas passed a law in 2013 to allow armed teachers (with no special training) on school campuses, the state’s primary liability insurance carrier declined to cover districts with armed employees. Burger added some higher-risk carriers may offer coverage, potentially for a higher premium.
Enhanced concealed carry permit holders are already allowed to bring guns onto school campuses, but, a Mississippi Department of Education official told Mississippi Today in December, after the policy garnered attention last summer, that school districts had concerns about the added liability of more guns on campuses and the impact it would have on their insurance costs.
School shootings have been on the rise nationally over the last decade, with 93 incidents in the 2020-2021 school year. Mississippi’s most notable school shooting occurred in 1997 at Pearl High School. More broadly, the Clarion Ledger reported there have been at least 25 incidents involving guns and students in Mississippi over the last 40 years.
Twenty-eight states already allow school staff to be armed in some capacity according to a RAND Corp. report, but fewer have training programs targeting active shooter response.
In Florida, where a “guardian” program was adopted after the 2018 shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School, the state added liability protections to their professional liability policy for teachers who participated in the program. When the protections were added, the Florida Department of Education asked their Legislature for $200,000 to cover the additional cost – it is unclear if they received it.
In Texas, the number of districts participating in their guardian program has risen significantly since 2018, from 303 to 445. A Texas Association of School Boards 2022 report said most districts were only allowing “commissioned peace officers,” a broader term for people with any type of law enforcement experience, as school guardians.
Jim Keith, a school board attorney whose firm represents over 20 districts across Mississippi, said some districts he works with are interested in adopting the guardian program but he does not expect it to be widespread.
Some education officials and school leaders have said school resource officers, or police officers that work in or for schools, would be preferable to the guardian program, but acknowledged this program could fill a gap for some rural or financially stressed districts that lack qualified applicants or can’t afford full-time school resource officers.
Lauderdale County School District Superintendent John-Mark Cain said his district works with the local sheriff’s office to put a school resource officer on every campus, but he knows other districts that do take advantage of state law as it currently stands to arm staff.
“The district sees (school resource officers) as the most opportune situation since we have that great partnership. However, we do understand that certain districts do not have that luxury, and those local boards will have to work with their attorney and their insurance to essentially measure that liability and that risk,” Cain said.
Research on the impacts of school resource officers has not shown them to be effective at preventing shootings and they are linked with increased suspensions and arrests, but have been effective at stopping fights.
Mississippi’s proposed program includes legal protections for the guardians from both civil and criminal liability if they are actively responding to a shooter or other safety threat. The bill specifies guardians can still be sued if they fail to carry out their official duties.
Keith said in his reading of the bill, the civil protections for guardians would also extend to the school district. Keith added he is concerned about what exactly will fall under a guardian’s official duties.
He said it needs to be clear “what those requirements are going to be to enable someone who is a guardian to make sure that they are acting within the course and scope of those duties. Because if they act outside it, then they lose their immunity, which means the school district could possibly lose its immunity.”
Tindell, whose department is overseeing the program, said that he understands this concern but does not expect guardians to have rigidly outlined duties.
“The primary duty is to protect the school from an active shooter and protect the students,” he said. “I think if they’re doing anything outside of that, that would be outside of the scope of their duties.”
Some have also expressed concern about accidents occurring with the guardian’s gun, which Rep. John Hines, D-Greenville, brought up during debate on the House floor. Rep. Nick Bain, R-Corinth, who was presenting the bill, said the school district and teacher would be liable in cases of accidents and the immunity provision in the bill would not apply.
“If a teacher accidentally discharges a firearm because the gun falls out of the holster or there’s a scuffle between students and they try to break it up and a student grabs the teacher’s weapon and somebody else that’s not involved gets shot, what’s the course (sic) of action for that?” Hines told Mississippi Today after the debate.
Hines also expressed concern about the provision of the bill that requires guardians to have their gun on their person at all times, referring to it as “overkill.”
Tindell said this provision is important so that guardians are quickly able to respond if an active shooter situation arises, but that he would also be amenable to amendments allowing for the gun to be locked up at certain times. Tindell also highlighted that the bill requires a school shooting response plan and chain of command to be created and uniformly implemented across the state.
Like Hines, school leaders are worried about the increased risk that comes with more guns on school property. James Waldington, superintendent of the Greenwood-Leflore Consolidated School District, said he worries daily about guns being brought to campus by students, shooters and school resource officers.
“Although I feel the bill is being discussed as another level of protection for our students (and) staff and I sincerely applaud that effort, to add another dimension to the educational environment where a loaded weapon is present is concerning, to say the least,” he said.
The bill has passed both houses of the Legislature with a sizable majority, and currently heads to a conference committee to work out the differences between the two versions. Sen. Angela Hill, R-Picayune, authored the bill and said the differences between the two versions are relatively minor.
It’s likely Gov. Tate Reeves will sign the bill, as he included a version of the program in his legislative budget recommendations from November of last year.
When asked about possible increases in the cost of liability insurance for districts related to this program, Hill said she was not familiar with this concern but that similar programs had been adopted in other states “and they still have liability insurance.”
Hill said she chose to author this bill because the superintendent of her district asked for it.
“Many of these campuses are rural, they’re spread out, the response time to have additional law enforcement is sometimes unacceptable,” she said. “Some school districts feel like they need more qualified people to be able to respond as a part of their security team.”
Ken Barron, superintendent of the Yazoo County School District, said the district has its own police force to provide security, but that he might be interested in adding this program on top.
“I could see this possibly being a benefit with the right parameters in place,” he said.
Gov. Tate Reeves has appointed one of his top campaign donors to the Mississippi Gaming Commission, growing a list of Reeves insiders who have received government jobs in his first term in office.
Reeves appointed Kent Nicaud, the president and CEO of Gulfport Memorial Hospital, to serve the remainder of the term of former Gaming Commissioner Al Hopkins, who died in February.
If Nicaud is confirmed, he would join another major Reeves donor on the three-member Gaming Commission. The governor appointed Franc Lee, a payday loan magnate and Reeves’ largest individual donor, to the commission in 2021.
Gaming commissioners receive a modest salary from taxpayers — $40 per day — and are reimbursed by the state for travel and meals. The commission is tasked with regulating the casino gaming industry, which brings the state hundreds of millions in tax revenue each year. That revenue has become necessary to fund basic public services across Mississippi.
Nicaud has been one of Reeves’ top donors over the past few years, writing checks totaling more than $100,000, including $41,000 in 2022 alone. Nicaud’s fundraising influence led Reeves to appoint him to his gubernatorial campaign finance committee in 2019.
Reeves also appointed Nicaud’s wife Jenny Nicaud as an administrative law judge for the Mississippi Workers Compensation Commission in 2021. Kent and Jenny Nicaud’s son Jourdan Nicaud has also been a campaign donor to the governor, giving at least $36,000 to Reeves since 2018.
With the appointments, Reeves is growing the list of his personal campaign donors who have later been appointed to taxpayer-funded government positions by the governor.
Another one of Reeves’ pending appointments is Gerard Gibert, the host of a conservative Supertalk Mississippi radio show and regular campaign donor of Reeves. Gibert, first appointed to the Mississippi Lottery Corporation board by former Gov. Phil Bryant, was reappointed by Reeves this year after writing several checks to Reeves’ campaign accounts since 2017.
In 2021, Reeves appointed three campaign donors to the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees — among the state’s most coveted government appointments — and two campaign donors to the Mississippi Community College Board.
Businessman Johnny McRight gave Reeves $50,000 in the four years before his 2021 IHL appointment. Businessman Luke Montgomery gave Reeves $14,500 in the years before his 2021 MCBB appointment.
Gregg Rader, a Columbus businessman, gave Reeves $85,000 in the months leading up to his 2021 IHL appointment. And Rader has continued the flow of money to Reeves’ campaign coffers even after his appointment, writing another $30,000 check to the governor in 2022.
William Symmes, a Gulfport lawyer appointed by Reeves to the MCCB in 2021 after a small 2020 donation to the governor, acknowledged in an interview at the time that his personal connections to Reeves led to his appointment, but said it is logical the governor would pick people who know and support him.
“Obama said it best: ‘Elections have consequences,’” Symmes told Mississippi Today in 2021. “I think that one of those consequences is you’re able to put people around you that you feel comfortable and work well with.”
Mississippi Today reached out to Reeves’ office before this story published and asked why the governor appointed Nicaud to the Gaming Commission. We also asked what Reeves would say to taxpayers who are funding his campaign insider appointments during his first term as governor.
“Mississippi Today is not a news organization, it is an unregistered Democrat super PAC and obviously acting like one again today,” Reeves’ deputy chief of staff Cory Custer said in an emailed statement, declining to answer the questions.
Nicaud faces Senate confirmation before he can assume the Gaming Commission post. He would finish out the term of Alben “Al” Hopkins, who was first appointed to the commission by former Gov. Phil Bryant in 2015 and died in February 2023.
In 2022, Reeves reappointed Hopkins, who faced some political heat in the Senate before ultimately being confirmed for a new term.
Just a few months before Reeves reappointed Hopkins, the Reeves campaign cashed a check: $1,000 from Alben Hopkins LLC.
Superintendents from across the state are visiting the Legislature this week with a message: Please support fully funding our schools.
Senate leaders introduced a plan earlier this month to give an additional $181 million to public schools by slightly modifying the state’s public school funding formula, the Mississippi Adequate Education Program or MAEP, and fully funding the new version.
The funding formula was established by the Legislature in 1997 and has been consistently underfunded every year since 2008. MAEP provides the state’s share of money for the basic needs of districts, such as teacher salaries, utilities, textbooks and transportation.
Tyler Hansford, superintendent of the Union Public School District, said he does not know of a superintendent opposed to the plan.
“The track record of funding the current MAEP formula is so bad, I think common sense people have realized there’s very little hope of that being done, so what we’ve tried to arrive at is some sort of compromise,” he said. “We’re willing to take less money than what’s in the current formula if we can have a predictable amount, that way it’s not guesswork every year.”
Hansford said superintendents are eager to thank and applaud legislators for supporting public schools and they would like to be able to tell parents “Look at what these people did for your kids.”
Despite broad support among superintendents for the proposal, some education leaders and advocates are worried it will die due to the concerns some House leaders have voiced. The bills currently head to conference committees to work out the differences.
“Both (chambers) really want to do what’s best for kids, I really believe that, but we’re being told that there are some heels being dug in,” said Yazoo County School District Superintendent Ken Barron.
Barron explained he has heard some concerns about wasteful spending, but said he does not see it in all the superintendents he knows.
“We care about the kids, we care about our faculty and staff, and we try to take every dollar that we are allocated and use it efficiently as possible,” he said.
John-Mark Cain, superintendent of the Lauderdale County School District, said schools are facing numerous financial pressures right now, including the ending of federal pandemic relief money, record inflation, aging facilities and increased security needs, making full funding of MAEP particularly critical.
“We’re at a time where we know we have the financial resources in the state to make this possible,” he said.
Superintendent of the Covington County School District Babette Duty said the federal pandemic relief money has inflated school budgets and given people a “skewed” understanding of where they stand with school funding, setting up the district to make hard choices soon without additional funding from the state.
Superintendents lauded the teacher pay raise that was given last year, but said it didn’t cover everyone who also need raises to stay competitive.
“We don’t want to leave out our support staff as well, when we talk about bus drivers, custodians, and our cafeteria workers, again all those things go into providing a safe environment for our students, but in order to do that it takes money and often time those things are not captured in the story when we talk about additional funding,” said Robert Williams, superintendent of the Hattiesburg Public School District.
Some legislators have proposed “earmarking” funds for specific programs or positions instead of giving more money to MAEP, something superintendents say limits their choices.
“Our needs vary, and we really need the autonomy to decide what we want to focus on and what we need to fix,” said Duty. “You can stretch a state dollar further if you put it in such a way that the local district can decide how to utilize it.”
A group of Jackson community leaders on Wednesday panned the federally appointed manager of the city’s water system over a number of issues, including a lack of collaboration and transparency, the firing of an employee and awarding a large contract to an out-of-town business.
The Mississippi Rapid Response Coalition, which has led water distribution efforts and rallies during the peaks of the Jackson water crisis, spoke to the media on Wednesday after meeting with officials from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Justice. In November, those two agencies agreed to a federal order with the city of Jackson that put a third-party manager, Ted Henifin, in control of rehabbing the drinking water system.
The EPA and DOJ are in Jackson this week meeting with residents, and asking both in person and through an online survey for input on the future of the water system. (Jacksonians interested in participating can access the survey at this link).
At the Wednesday meeting, the coalition asked the two federal agencies for more inclusion in the future decision-making process around the water system moving forward. As the coalition said to reporters after the meeting, there hasn’t been enough collaboration between Henifin and community members thus far.
Danyelle Holmes, of the Mississippi Poor People’s Campaign, center, speaks during a Mississippi Rapid Response Coalition press conference about Jackson’s water issues at the Mississippi E-Center at Jackson State University in Jackson, Miss., Wednesday, March 22, 2023. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
“There has been no collaboration as it relates to the overall process,” Danyelle Holmes, a member of the coalition and National Social Justice Organizer with the Poor People’s Campaign, said, adding that residents haven’t been getting boil water notices during outages. “There’s no transparency, or accountability at all. We have not had meetings with (Henifin)… the collaboration has fallen short with the coalition.”
Under the federal order that put Henifin in charge, there’s little oversight over the manager’s role other than that of the U.S. judge who appointed him. As a non-public entity, Henifin’s organization, JXN Water, is not subject to public records laws, and it also can avoid state and local statutes around procuring contracts with public dollars. The order also allows Henifin to make changes, such as to the water billing system, without the approval of elected Jackson officials.
Henifin has repeatedly stated his commitment to being transparent, and said he wants the approval of Jacksonians before he makes changes to the billing system or recommends a new structure for future governance. In an interview with Mississippi Today, he talked about earning the trust of residents, and how he hopes that will start to take shape once they see improvements.
Jackson water manager Ted Henifin, discusses the current state of the city’s water issues and plans for the future, Monday, March 6, 2023. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Henifin, who has appeared at several town hall events since his appointment, said his next step in making long-term changes to the water system is holding community engagement sessions, although JXN Water has not put out details for when those will be.
Coalition members said they were disappointed in how the federal takeover has played out so far in terms of working with the community. They were also frustrated with specific decisions Henifin has made so far, such as awarding a large operations and maintenance contract to Texas-based Jacobs Solutions.
Henifin announced last month the six-month contract, which will pay Jacobs $2 million a month to run the city’s water treatment plants and train local operators for long-term staffing.
“We have great pause when we bring in firms like Jacobs and pay them $2 million a month and we don’t pay our local firms anything in sight of that,” said Socrates Garrett, a Jackson businessman whose firm contracts engineering services. “We think that you could’ve had hired a minority firm as the primary contractor and let Jacobs be the (sub-contractor).”
Henifin told Mississippi Today that he expects to extend Jacobs’ contract between five to 10 years, adding that he also expects the extension to come at a cheaper monthly rate.
Holmes also alleged that Henifin “wrongfully” fired the one Black employee of JXN Water, Chief Experience Officer Tariq Abdul-Tawwab, last week. Abdul-Tawwab was brought on to improve the customer service experience for Jackson water customers, who for years have experienced unreliable billing and long wait times to reach anyone at the city’s water department.
While the nonprofit recently removed Abdul-Tawwab from its website, Henifin said in a statement yesterday that “it is not our policy” to comment on personnel decisions. Neither Henifin nor JXN Water responded to requests for comment in response to the coalition’s other criticisms.
Both Holmes and Garrett talked about the importance of JXN Water and its contractors reflecting the 83% Black capital city.
Claims about Abdul-Tawwab’s position with JXN Water comes just after a debt relief program he was helping to publicize made local news over questions of how the program was being funded.
Last week, after the city announced new federal funding that would relieve residents’ water bill debts, WLBT reported that Jackson hadn’t actually received all the federal funds that JXN Water thought it would to fund program. The city then, using another program, had to write off most of the debt it was relieving residents of, rather than paying the debt off, the story reported.
Despite Henifin later clarifying the confusion in a public statement, Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba on Monday said he believed Henifin made a mistake in communicating details of the program, adding that it was done in good faith.
Makani Themba speaks during a Mississippi Rapid Response Coalition press conference about Jackson’s water issues at the Mississippi E-Center at Jackson State University in Jackson, Miss., Wednesday, March 22, 2023. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
In the WLBT story, Henifin said he thought some of the confusion around funding amounts came from “his staff.” Abdul-Tawwab spoke at multiple public events to brief residents about the debt relief program. Other than those two, JXN Water has only had one other employee, Chief Operating Officer Jordan Hillman, according to its website.
In his statement Wednesday, Henifin added:
“We’ll continue our work improving the customer service experience and hope to maintain a relationship with the community organizations that helped introduce us to the Jackson community. We’re hopeful that all the community partners stay at the table and continue to hold us accountable to the people of Jackson.”
At its meeting with federal officials Wednesday, the coalition also presented a petition, which it says has over 6,000 signatures, asking the EPA to protect Jackson from a privatized water system, as well to provide water filters to ensure clean water for residents.
Questions over the future management of the water system emerged this legislative session when lawmakers tried, and failed, to create a state-controlled regional authority to oversee the system. Henifin, who opposed the bill, favors putting the system’s control under a nonprofit led by a board of constituents.
Note: This story was first published in The New York Times on March 22, 2023. It was reported by Sarah Fowler, who is focusing on the Jackson water crisis as part of The New York Times’ Local Investigations Fellowship.
On an abandoned golf course, overgrown with shrubs and saw grass, you can hear the rushing water from 100 yards away.
Near Hole 4, past the little bridge and crumbling cart paths, what looks to be a waterfall comes into view, pouring down through the brush and into the creek below. Except the torrent of water gushing up through the mud isn’t from a spring-fed stream or a bubbling brook.
It is spewing from a broken city water line.
As residents had to boil their tap water and businesses closed because their faucets were dry, the break at the old Colonial Country Club squandered an estimated five million gallons of drinking water a day in a city that had none to spare.
It is enough water to serve the daily needs of 50,000 people, or a third of the city residents who rely on the beleaguered water utility.
No one knows for sure when the leak reached its current size. But newly appointedwater officials say the city discovered the broken mainline pipe in 2016 and left it to gush, even as the water gouged out a swimming pool-size crater in the earth and city residents were forced to endure one drinking water crisis after another.
Jackson’s water system has been flirting with collapse for decades thanks to a combination of mismanagement, crumbling infrastructure and a series of ill-fated decisions that cost the utility money that it did not have. In 2022, the Justice Department reached an agreement with the city requiring it to bring in an outside manager to run the water department.
Residents of the city have been forced to endure chronic boil water notices that traverse the city like rolling blackouts. Many have learned to hoard bottled water against the next round of boil notices. Intermittent bouts of low water pressure can make faucets unusable for thousands of people at a time.
“The size of the leak is probably not uncommon,” said Jordan Hillman, chief operating officer of JXN Water, the management company formed last year to lead Jackson’s effort to stabilize its water service. “The time it took to respond to it is very uncommon. Most places would see this as an immediate threat because that’s a ticking time bomb. As it eats the ground out away from it, you’re eventually going to have a catastrophic failure.”
It is unclear why the city and water department did not repair the leak sooner. Melissa Faith Payne, a city spokesperson, did not immediately respond to questions on Wednesday regarding the broken line. Tony Yarber, the former mayor of Jackson, and Kishia Powell, the former public works director — both in leadership positions in 2016 — could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.
The size of the Colonial Country Club leak and the fact that it went unaddressed for so long hints at the monumental task that city and state leaders face as they work to find a lasting solution. Under the direction of a newly appointed water czar, Ted Henifin, a two-person team has scoured the city searching for leaks or closed water valves, which also can affect water pressure.Often, they have turned the valves back on themselves. Leaks generally require more time and resources to address. One of the leaks is spewing water 30 feet in the air like a geyser and losing the city as much as one million gallons a day, Ms. Hillman said.
The broken pipe under the golf course is one of two main lines that move water from the OB Curtis Water Plant to smaller transmission lines that eventually connect to thousands of customers across the city. The 48-inch pipe is critical to south Jackson, a part of the city that has suffered the most from outages and boil water notices.
Luke Guarisco, who owns the land where the golf course once operated,said he reported the leak several years ago when he noticed a broken pipe pushing water into the creek along the back of his property line. Guarisco said helived out of state and wasn’t aware of the giant hole that has since been created by the leak.
One of the water plants that serves Jackson was built in 1914, the other in the late 1980s. Water lines under the city can be more than 100 years old, and no one knows when or where a piece of pipe or equipment will fail. A combination of Jackson’s aging infrastructure and recent freezes may have exacerbated the current leaks.
The system faced near-total shutdown in March 2021 when residents went weeks without water. In August 2022, another crisis unfolded at OB Curtis, and Mississippi declared a state of emergency for the capital city as water was, once again, deemed unsafe to drink.
Mr. Ted Henifin, a retired manager for a wastewater company out of Virginia that serves 1.8 million people, who has spent 40 years in public service, was working with a national nonprofit on a “small, part-time basis” to address water equity in Jackson. In July, he was working from home in Virginia, one day a week. By November, he was living part time in Mississippi, appointed by the Justice Department to manage the federal takeover of the water system. He officially moved to the state in January.
In the months since, he has talked with state and local leaders about how to create a sustainable water system. But he is seeking solutions in a state where Black city leaders and white state leaders often spar over what is and is not in the best interest of Jackson.
Outside the country club on Tuesday afternoon, construction crews were preparing to begin repairs, which are expected to take a couple of weeks. Residents should see reduced water pressure for only a few hours and water should remain safe to drink, Ms. Hillman said.
Curious neighbors could see stacks of new pipe and hear the sound of trees being cut.
Oscar Mckenzie saw crews working on the leak and assumed they were there to fix another water issue. A water main broke several years ago, he said, and flooded the streets.
Like so many Jackson residents, Mr. Mckenzie doesn’t drink the water that comes out of the tap. He worries what it might do to his four children. When they shower, the water makes their backs itch, he said.
Several houses down, Emmetta Jones passes by the new barricades on her regular walk escorting her son to his school bus stop. Her water pressure is steady, she said, but brown water occasionally comes out of her tap.
Like her neighbor, she doesn’t drink the water. She hasn’t in years.
Sarah Fowler is reporting on the water crisis in Jackson, Miss., in the state where she was born and raised, as part of The Times’s Local Investigations Fellowship.
The Senate on Thursday let a measure that would restore voters’ right to sidestep the Legislature and put measures on a statewide ballot die without taking a vote.
“After yesterday, I spoke to my colleagues and the colleagues I spoke to did not show enough support to do this this year,” said Senate Accountability Efficiency and Transparency Chairman John Polk, R-Hattiesburg. “… We have a representative form of government that has worked for a long time, and I know of no senator who will not accept constituents’ calls, emails or visits if they have an issue we need to deal with. I believe in our representative form of government, and voters every four years have the opportunity to change who represents them.”
Polk said there were too many differences between versions of the measure the Senate and House had passed to be ironed out in the final days of this year’s legislative session. Thursday was a deadline day for senators to take up the measure, and inaction killed the legislation.
Polk said that despite recent polling that shows strong voter support for reinstating the initiative process, he doesn’t believe the right to ballot initiative is top of mind for most Mississippians. He said he noticed this last week when he talked with constituents at a veterinarian’s office back home. They gave him a litany of issues they saw as important, Polk said.
“You know what was not on that list?” Polk said. “Ballot initiative.”
A similar measure died in the Legislature without a final vote last year, after the state Supreme Court in 2021 shot down the ballot initiative right Mississippi voters had for three decades.
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who oversees the Senate, initially declined comment after the Senate adjourned Thursday, indicating he was busy and “not right now.” Polk, speaking to media, said that Hosemann had been “very vocal in wanting a ballot initiative” but lets his chairman make their own decisions.
Hosemann later sent out a written statement: “I have consistently said I am in favor of an initiative process in Mississippi. I trust the voters of the state, both in who they elect to office and on policy matters. A number of Republicans in the Senate have a different opinion on the initiative issue. This is the legislative process and we will continue that process.”
But many political observers and supporters of restoring the initiative had questioned Hosemann’s support for it, given he assigned the measure to Polk’s committee again this year after Polk had publicly voiced misgivings about reinstating ballot initiative.
Many Mississippians were angry when the state’s high court stripped voters of this right in 2021. This was in a ruling on a medical marijuana initiative voters had overwhelmingly passed, taking matters in hand after lawmakers had dallied for years on the issue. Legislative leaders were quick at the time with vows they would restore this right to voters, fix the legal glitches that prompted the Supreme Court to rule it invalid. Many lawmakers said they support the right.
Rep. Zakiya Summers, D-Jackson, said she was stunned to hear the Senate let the measure die Thursday without inviting more debate with the House on a compromise version. She disagrees with Polk about it not being a big issue with voters.
“My constituents think it’s necessary,” Summers said. “… People have issues they believe we are not addressing or listening to them on, like early voting, Medicaid expansion. Those are issues Mississippians are concerned about and when we don’t bring them to the forefront because of politics, they need to have this right to address them. Now we have to wait another year to do this.”
The House and Senate versions of the measure, which would have required ratification by voters in November, differed. But both would have greatly restricted voters’ right to ballot initiative compared to the process that had been in place since 1992. Many supporters of restoring the right have been angered about legislative leaders’ proposals to date. In the House, most Democrats despite supporting restoration of the right voted “present” on the House version they found it so restrictive.
The Senate position on the initiative would require the signatures of at least 240,000 registered voters to place an issue on a statewide ballot. The House version would require about 106,000, nearer the previous threshold required for the last 30 years.
Under both proposals, the Legislature by a simple majority vote could change or repeal an initiative approved by the electorate. Unlike the previous process voters had for decades, voters could only pass or change state laws, not the state constitution.
Polk said he “could not get close to” agreeing on the lower number of signatures in the House proposal, and doubted the House would agree to his higher threshold. He said the House also had made a change he found untenable that he just noticed in recent days: It removed a prohibition on using a ballot initiative to change Mississippi’s position as a “right to work” state, which generally keeps labor unions weak in such states.
“That was disturbing to me,” Polk said.
A recent Mississippi Today/Siena College poll shows Mississippi voters across the spectrum want their right to put issues directly on a statewide ballot restored.
The poll showed 72% favor reinstating ballot initiative, with 12% opposed and 16% either don’t know or have no opinion. Restoring the right garnered a large majority among Democrats, Republicans, independents and across all demographic, geographic and income lines.
The death of the bill on Thursday drew bipartisan criticism, including from Hosemann’s challenger in the Republican lieutenant governor primary, state Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Ellisville.
“Delbert Hosemann chose yet again to silence the voices of Mississippians and protect his own power by obstructing our ballot initiative process,” McDaniel said in a statement. “Delbert’s actions are both disgraceful and unconstitutional.”
But it’s also likely to be a partisan issue this election year. Rep. Robert Johnson III and Sen. Derrick Simmons, House and Senate minority leaders, issued a statement blasting the GOP for death of the bill.
“It showed, yet again, just how out of step Republicans are with each other and with the vast majority of Mississippians — including their own voters,” the statement said. “… Luckily for all of us, it’s an election year, and we’re happy to take our record on the campaign trail. We’re not so sure our colleagues can say the same.”
