OurTupelo

The Senate Public Health and Welfare committee advanced a bill Tuesday that aims to improve upon House legislation to increase the regulation and transparency of pharmacy benefit managers. 

The committee narrowly passed an amendment with an 8-6 vote replacing all of the language in House Bill 1665. The bill moves to the full Senate for more debate.

The amendment’s author, Republican Sen. Rita Parks from Corinth, told committee members her changes would strengthen the legislation and add key provisions requested by independent pharmacists. 

Pharmacy benefit managers are the middlemen used by health insurance companies and self-insured employer plans. The managers have increasingly drawn scrutiny from policymakers because of opaque business practices and market consolidation. Independent pharmacists have warned year after year that their businesses could be forced to close because of low reimbursements from pharmacy benefit managers. 

Parks’ amendment drew criticism from several committee members, who argued the bill’s wording would drive up insurance costs, harm businesses and return efforts to pass pharmacy benefit manager reform to where they stalled last year.

“We’ve dealt with this for three years and we seemed on the precipice of getting something done here, and instead of getting something done, we’re right now debating a strike-all that puts us back where we were last year,” said Sen. Jeremy England, a Republican from Vancleave and the most vocal opponent of Parks’ amendment.

Parks said she believes the legislation’s benefits to independent pharmacies are critical, because they sustain access to health care in rural areas. 

“At least I will know I provided an avenue for care for all the citizens of Mississippi, with keeping our doors open with our independent pharmacists,” Parks said. 

Mississippi lawmakers have proposed bills to regulate pharmacy benefit managers unsuccessfully for several years. A pharmacy benefit reform bill last year made it further in the legislative process than in years past, but died in the House after a lawmaker raised a procedural challenge. 

Parks’ amendment maintains many of the provisions in the House’s version of the bill, which passed the chamber Feb. 4. These provisions would increase transparency and prohibit spread pricing, the practice of paying insurers more for drugs than pharmacists in order to inflate pharmacy benefit managers’ profits. 

The updated bill would also: 

• Remove language that would prohibit insurers from requiring a patient to use a specific affiliate pharmacy, a practice known as “steering.” 
• Keep oversight of pharmacy benefit managers under the Board of Pharmacy, rather than transferring it to the insurance commissioner, like in the House’s bill. 
• Require pharmacists to be reimbursed at least as much as an affiliate pharmacy or the Mississippi Division of Medicaid, which covers the cost of the drug and a dispensing fee. 

Parks has championed pharmacy benefit manager reform efforts in the Senate for several years. She said Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney told her he believes pharmacy benefit managers should be regulated by the Board of Pharmacy, and that moving those responsibilities to the Mississippi Insurance Department would take at least two years. 

“That’s two more years we would lose before (House Bill) 1665 could even be in practice,” Parks said. 

England said several major employers and hospitals told him the cost of providing insurance to employees would increase if the state adopts provisions such as requiring independent pharmacists be paid a dispensing fee. 

“Our business community is literally screaming at us to not do it,” he argued as he implored other committee members to vote against Parks’ amendment. 

At England’s request, the committee made an additional amendment that could force the bill into final negotiations between the House and Senate.

Sen. Brice Wiggins, a Republican from Pascagoula, asked why the committee was advancing pharmacy benefit reform legislation after Congress passed its own reform bill in February. Parks said passing state-level legislation is necessary to strengthen oversight. 

Congress enacted several provisions pertaining to pharmacy benefit managers in its February appropriations bill. The legislation included measures that require pharmacy benefit managers to pass all rebates on to employer health plans, and increased oversight of pharmacy management services for Medicare Part D plans and employer health plans with transparency and data reporting requirements. 

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press is now providing free and direct legal support to Mississippi journalists and newsrooms through its Local Legal Initiative.

Mississippi is among the seven states with a staff attorney from the Reporter’s Committee available to provide local news organizations free legal assistance, and the group is set to expand its service to two more states later this year.

Andrew Coffman, based in Tupelo, is the group’s new staff attorney for Mississippi.

“Mississippi journalists are working every day to bring information to our communities, and in a growing number of cases, they need legal backing to fulfill that mission,” Coffman said in a press release.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press is the nation’s largest provider of pro bono legal services for journalists and newsrooms. It is also a leading advocate for press freedom in the U.S. and has a variety of resources, including a 24/7 Legal Hotline.

“We really see our mission here as parallel to the mission of any kind of journalism … and we view ourselves as providing support for that,” said Eric Feder, director of the Local Legal Initiative.

With the addition of Mississippi and Louisiana, along with Minnesota and Michigan later this year, the number of states in the Local Legal Initiative is growing from five to nine. The program previously provided services in Oregon.

Part of what made this expansion possible was a $1.25 million award from Press Forward’s Open Call on Infrastructure. Press Forward is a philanthropic group that supports local journalism in the U.S.

“I’m looking forward to being a resource for journalists and news organizations across the state to help them access public records and meetings, push back on legal challenges and produce even more deeply reported stories that shed light on important issues and hold government accountable,” Coffman said in the press release.

Coffman is a graduate of the University of Mississippi School of Law and was the inaugural National Center for Justice and the Rule of Law fellow.

He previously worked at law firm Phelps Dunbar LLP, where he litigated cases related to intellectual property infringement, defamation and more. He also worked as senior associate general counsel for the Tennessee Department of Health, senior associate attorney for King & Ballow and law clerk to U.S. District Judge Michael P. Mills in the Northern District of Mississippi.

According to The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press website, the initiative’s attorneys have helped journalists win legal battles over public records, libel lawsuits and subpoenaing sources. The attorneys also have successfully helped advocate for greater transparency in state, local and municipal governments.

In 2025, the Reporters Committee and the Mississippi Press Association filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging the Mississippi Supreme Court to uphold a lower court’s dismissal of former Gov. Phil Bryant’s defamation lawsuit against Mississippi Today. The Supreme Court recently heard arguments Bryant’s effort to revive the case, but justices have not yet issued a ruling.

Mississippi State has lost only to the No. 1 team in college baseball. Southern Miss has lost only to the best pitcher in college baseball. Ole Miss still has a Top 10 RPI. The Clevelands discuss all that and bring in a special guest, Millsaps women’s hoops coach Jeff Wilbur who is taking his newly crowned conference champs to the NCAA D-3 Big Dance.

Stream all episodes here.

Raising teacher pay, which was originally described as a priority for both chambers of the Legislature, became a casualty of politics this week. 

Bills that would have increased teacher salaries died with a deadline at the Capitol on Tuesday, despite pleas from educators and advocates who have said for years that a teacher’s salary in Mississippi is unsustainable. 

Mississippi teachers are, on average, the lowest paid in the country at $53,704. Starting teachers make a little over $42,000.

The Legislature passed the last meaningful teacher pay raise in 2022, which educators told Mississippi Today was quickly eaten up by rising insurance premiums and inflation. In the years since, teachers say they’ve had to take second jobs and make tough financial decisions to live within their means. 

Both the Senate and House authored bills early in the session that would increase teacher pay. A Senate bill would’ve given educators a $2,000 increase, while the House proposed a $5,000 raise. 

But by the end of the day Tuesday, the deadline for committees to pass bills originating in the opposite chamber, lawmakers in both chambers ended up blaming the other for failing to advance each other’s raises.

“It’s incredibly disappointing,” said Jason Reid, a teacher in DeSoto County who drives a school bus before and after work to supplement his income. “Two months ago it seemed both chambers were very committed to addressing the regional and national teacher pay raise gaps and teacher shortage. Now, Mississippi teachers will fall even further behind their peers.”

Educators have consistently named low pay as one of the factors driving the teacher shortage in Mississippi. A survey released earlier this year by the Mississippi Department of Education showed nearly 4,000 vacant teaching jobs across the state. 

Senate and House leaders said in the weeks leading up the 2026 legislative session that raising teacher pay was one of the top items on their agendas. However, as the day winded down on Tuesday, it appeared that the chambers had reached a stalemate.

Both the Senate and House Education Committees had the opportunity to advance the others’ teacher pay raise bills. Still, they chose not to and pointed fingers at the other.

Kelly Riley, leader of Mississippi Professional Educators, said the blame doesn’t lie with one chamber. 

“Educators, just like other constituents, expect their legislators to come to Jackson and to take care of the state’s business,” she said. “Please put politics aside and do the job that your constituents elected you to do.”

Senate Education Chairman Dennis DeBar, a Republican from Leakesville, told Mississippi Today on Tuesday that he wasn’t planning on calling a meeting before the chamber adjourned, and that the proverbial ball was in the House’s court. 

“Senate Bill 2001 has been in the House since the second day of the session,” DeBar said. “I would have liked to have collaborated with them over the past seven weeks.”

However, the Senate has also had the House’s teacher pay raise bill since early February.

The leader of the House Education Committee, Republican Rep. Rob Roberson of Starkville, made it clear weeks ago that he would not call another meeting before the March 3 deadline. 

It’s not exactly clear why, but the move did come after Senate leaders made their stance clear on school choice, which was House Speaker Jason White’s pet issue this session. 

The Senate Education Committee killed House Bill 2, White’s omnibus school choice bill, last month. A majority of the committee’s education bills were then double-referred in the House, a tactic commonly employed in an effort to kill bills — though White told Mississippi Today that wasn’t out of retaliation. 

The House’s education panel has only passed two Senate education bills. DeBar’s committee met last week and passed just two House education bills. 

As a result, dozens of education measures have died over the past two months. 

“It’s frustrating because this seems to be an annual thing when we discuss pay raises,” DeBar said. “However, along with the pay raise, we’ve sent down a plethora of bills that refuse to get any action.”

DeBar, who’s also vice-chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said he’s now planning to amend the Mississippi Department of Education’s appropriations bill to include money set aside for a teacher pay raise of at least $2,000. However, because legislators can’t address general law in appropriations bills, this would be a one-time bonus — not a permanent change to the teacher pay scale. 

In short, it would be a stop gap, and a temporary solution until the chambers could reach a resolution on a raise — perhaps next year. 

But legislative leaders heavily involved in education policy, such as Roberson and Republican Rep. Jansen Owen of Poplarville, and Senate Appropriations Chairman Briggs Hopson, a Republican from Vicksburg, all said they’d like to find a long-term solution before the chambers adjourn this year.

“That’s just not how you do teacher pay raises,” Owen said. “It’s strange. I don’t understand why they’re trying to work around taking up the clean pay raise bill. We sent the Senate a very clean, a good, clean, large pay raise. And if it’s dead, that’s sad … I hate to see that the Senate is killing it just to play some political games.”

Riley said the status of the teacher pay raise bills was especially disappointing, given the state’s academic achievement over the past decade.

While state leaders have taken turns accepting credit for students’ dramatic progress in reading and math that have landed Mississippi in national headlines, education advocates say the gains wouldn’t have been possible without the work of teachers. 

“It’s just disheartening that they don’t turn around and reward that hard work with the pay raise,” Riley said. “But I hate to say that they deserve it, or it’s a reward, because the bottom line is that they should pay and respect our educators as the professionals that they are.”

A teacher pay raise could be taken up during a special session, if Gov. Tate Reeves, the only person who can call a special session and sets the agenda, were to call one. 

Roberson suggested that the chambers could also potentially agree to suspend the rules of the session and revive one of the teacher pay raise bills before they gavel out for the year as scheduled in early April. 

“I’m not saying that we are gonna do one, but we could,” he said. “Dennis and I are gonna get together. There may be other tools that can be used to fund this for a year, but I don’t want to do it that way.”

Roberson said he doesn’t want to give up on the House’s more generous $5,000 proposal. 

“I think it’s just a matter of us figuring out what we’re gonna do,” he said. “We may can agree on something and that may work, so conversations are ongoing. Nothing is set in stone until we leave.”

Mukta Joshi is part of The New York Times’s Local Investigations Fellowship.

Melvin Funez, 22, and Hannah Cline, 21, met two years ago on Instagram.

They both lived with their parents in Lakeland, Florida, at the time. They would play video games and chat endlessly online, often until they fell asleep together on FaceTime. They bonded over date nights at Chili’s and shared a love for movies and seafood boils. 

A year later, they moved out of their parents’ homes and began living in a new apartment with Funez’s dog and a kitten they adopted together. In the fall of 2025, they decided they were ready to get married. They made plans for a simple courtroom ceremony in January.

Cline was excited. “He was going to buy a ring and randomly propose,” she said.

But as the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown intensified across the nation, the couple became nervous. Cline is a U.S. citizen. Funez is not. His mother had brought him to the U.S. from Honduras when he was 5 months old.

“I would have nightmares of him getting picked up by ICE,” Cline said.

On the morning of Nov. 29, just as they had feared, Funez was stopped by police. A headlight on his car had been out and the local sheriff’s department held him for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, when he was unable to produce proper documentation. 

Funez was held for weeks in Florida and Louisiana and was transferred in December to the Adams County Correctional Center, a private, for-profit detention facility in Natchez, Mississippi. 

The couple didn’t give up on their marriage plans. Starting in January, Funez began submitting requests to hold a ceremony at the CoreCivic-owned Mississippi detention center, something that has long been allowed under federal rules.

Using a tablet given to him by the facility, and the detention center’s electronic portal, he repeatedly inquired about the marriage process. 

His first request was addressed to CoreCivic and directed at the chaplain. The chaplain told Funez his first conversation needed to be with his ICE representative. 

Funez’s subsequent requests to ICE, reviewed by Mississippi Today, always received anonymous responses. Each request was closed, with one response saying, “We do not allow detainees to get married at this facility.”

Federal policy since 2019 has stated that marriage requests by ICE detainees will be considered on a case-by-case basis. It states that a request is ordinarily granted unless a facility administrator or field office director determines there are “compelling government interests” to deny it or that the marriage meets other criteria for denial, such as posing a security threat.

Prior to 2019, the policy explicitly stated that “compelling interests” did not include the possibility of a marriage allowing a detainee to avoid deportation, language that is no longer included in the policy. 

A representative for ICE acknowledged receipt of Mississippi Today’s request for comment, but did not respond. 

“Our Adams County Correctional Center follows all ICE policies,” said Brian Todd, a spokesperson for CoreCivic. The warden and assistant warden of the Adams County facility did not respond to a request for comment. 

An ICE facility disallowing detainees to get married altogether is highly unusual and would constitute a violation of rights, said immigration attorney Brandon Riches. Riches, who has represented clients held at various facilities in the South, said he had not heard of any detention centers with blanket bans on weddings. One of Riches’ clients got married while at the Jena, Louisiana, facility in June, he said.  

“While there are levels of various approvals to have this done, the right to marry should not be infringed upon because of current immigration policies,” Riches said. “These are not criminal detentions.” 

ICE detention is legally classified as administrative detention. Unlawful presence in the United States or not possessing proper documentation is considered a civil violation – like a parking ticket or a health code violation – not a crime. 

But even prison inmates who are convicted of crimes have a constitutionally protected right to get married while serving time. News reports show that detainees have gotten married in facilities across the country (such as in Texas and Washington). Susan Torres, a Florida-based immigration attorney who represents Funez, said at least five of her clients have gotten married while detained at different facilities in the past. 

“There’s usually a person that’s even designated for marriages that you can reach out to, and they will usually approve your request as long as it’s reasonable,” Torres said. 

But Cline said she has been unable to even contact staff at the Adams detention center despite multiple attempts to reach them. “When they answer, it’s a robot, and it gives you 10 options of people to speak to. I picked every single option so I could get a hold of somebody. No one answered the phone,” she said. 

Meanwhile, Funez has been spending his days waiting for his bond hearing, hoping to be released. To honor his engagement, he has been wearing a white and blue ring with a letter “H,” for “Hannah,” that a fellow detainee from Mexico spent a week weaving for him.

“They give us food in plastic bags every so often. He would cut the plastic bag into strips, tie one end to a bed post and tie the other end onto a shampoo bottle and spin it until it becomes a fine thread,” Funez said. 

His bond hearing is scheduled for Wednesday morning. If he is released, Funez says he wants to use the same plastic bag ring to propose to Cline. “It reminds me that I fought for our relationship, and to stay in a country that to me is our home,” he said. 

Correction 3/3/26: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of the last name of Melvin Funez’s fiancée.

A legislative push to improve health care in Mississippi prisons — which has attracted legal scrutiny and mounting allegations that prisoners are denied necessary treatment — is still alive in the Legislature even after some lawmakers appeared ready to scuttle the effort.

Rep. Becky Currie, the House Corrections chairwoman spearheading a package of reforms aimed at ensuring prisoners aren’t denied care, used a legislative maneuver to keep the measures alive after Senate leaders prepared to kill them on Tuesday. Hours before a deadline for committees to pass general bills from the other chamber, Currie, a Republican from Brookhaven, changed the language in a Senate bill dealing with prisons and probation and inserted the language from her own proposals.

That move was prompted by Senate Corrections Committee Vice Chairwoman Lydia Chassaniol, a Republican from Winona, saying she planned to kill almost all of Currie’s bills without taking them up for a vote by Tuesday’s deadline. Chassaniol is running the committee while Chairman Juan Barnett, a Democrat from Heidelberg, is out with an illness, and said she was honoring Barnett’s wishes by only bringing two bills forward.

“I just decided, what do we have to lose? They’ve killed the bills, we’ll force them to have to do it again,” Currie said. “I’m just continuing the fight.”

The legislative proposals follow Mississippi Today’s ongoing “Behind Bars, Beyond Care” investigative series, which has documented alleged routine denial of health care in Mississippi prisons. The findings include potentially thousands of people living with hepatitis C going without treatment, an untreated broken arm that resulted in amputation and delayed cancer screenings one woman said led to a terminal diagnosis. One ex-corrections official said people are experiencing widespread medical neglect in Mississippi’s prisons. 

The proposals Currie kept alive on Tuesday include a bill to require the creation of a hepatitis C program and an HIV program aimed at improving the treatment of prisoners. A Mississippi Today report in October revealed that only a fraction of Mississippi prisoners diagnosed with hepatitis C receive treatment, which has allowed the treatable infection to develop into life-threatening illness. Additionally, the bill would require the state to develop a plan focused on improving the health of female prisoners.

Another bill Currie advanced would take the power to award health contracts away from the Department of Corrections and task the Department of Finance and Administration with soliciting proposals for a new medical contractor. The current medical contractor, Kansas-based VitalCore Health Strategies, was awarded over $315 million in emergency, no-bid state contracts by the Department of Corrections from 2020 to 2024. It has since faced legal challenges and allegations that it routinely denies or provides inadequate care inside Mississippi’s prisons.

Currie said she wants to make it possible for other entities to compete for Mississippi’s health contract proposals after Gov. Tate Reeves leaves office in 2027. Reeves appointed current Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain, under whose watch VitalCore has raked in hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds.

“We don’t want them here anymore after this governor leaves,” Currie said. “I’m not saying who’s going to get (the contract), but what I am saying is we want everybody to be able to submit. The way the RFP was written before, it was only for VitalCore, so we just want to be fair.”

The proposals had passed the House with unanimous, bipartisan support before being thwarted in Senate committee.

Currie also revived a policy that would increase oversight of the Inmate Welfare Fund. Currie said she found seven bank accounts linked to the fund, but only obtained access to one. In that one account, she found about $32 million, but had trouble tracing much of it. Currie said the disparate info in the bank statements raises questions about whether the money has been spent on prisoners.

The House’s efforts this year come after Mississippi’s prisons have attracted federal scrutiny for poor conditions, at times leading to death and suffering. Mississippi has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world — 661 people per 100,000. About 19,500 people are currently incarcerated in state prisons. 

A public zoning hearing is scheduled for March 16 in Brandon to review an application for a development from a battery storage company. The meeting is open to the public and will be held at 6 p.m. at Brandon City Hall on Municipal Drive. 

Brandon Mayor Butch Lee confirmed that Black Mountain Energy Storage, a Texas-based company, was applying for the zoning permit. According to its website, the company focuses on bringing “reliable energy storage capacity to the electric grid that will enhance system reliability and enable greater reliance on renewable generation.”

“Observe, listen, study, before accepting everything from the social media influencers,” said Lee when asked for comment about the project. 

Some Brandon residents have been raising concerns about the new proposal on social media ahead of the zoning hearing.

The new proposed facility comes on the heels of last August’s announcement of a $6 billion data center project being built in Brandon that has received community pushback over concerns about energy rates and air and water pollution.

Correction 3/3/26: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that a planned zoning hearing was for a data center development in Brandon. The hearing is for a new proposal from Black Mountain Energy Storage.

Editor’s note: This essay is part of Mississippi Today Ideas, a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share their ideas about our state’s past, present and future. Opinions expressed in guest essays are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of Mississippi Today. You can read more about the section here.

If you are in downtown Jackson while the Legislature is in session, stop by the Capitol and watch democracy in action. It’s like a real-life civics lesson.

Most people know that there are two chambers, that committee meetings are regularly held and that floor debates can be observed from the public gallery. But there is also a lively part of the process, held most days during the session, on the first floor under the Capitol rotunda.

Here, a range of groups representing various walks of life, programs and issues gather to present information on their organizations. If you get there early enough, you might even score a biscuit or a stress ball.

“Mississippi Nonprofits Day,” scheduled for Thursday, will bring leaders from across Mississippi to the Capitol to showcase their value to state legislators, agency heads and statewide elected officials.

One of the groups presenting under the dome that you need to go see is the Mississippi Alliance of Nonprofits and Philanthropy. The objective of the Alliance is to harness the collective power of nonprofits by connecting them to issues that matter to thought leaders and decision makers. This issue-focused mindset helps the nonprofits improve their messaging effectiveness as they engage in the work on issues that are important to them.

For example, the Alliance hosts affinity groups focused on education, health and workforce development, helping nonprofits and foundations collaborate on policy solutions and share best practices. This support ensures nonprofits can source the best ideas, implement them with a degree of flexibility that government agencies often can’t match and garner a level of community trust that helps those programs succeed.

Nonprofits are kind of a big deal here. Mississippi is consistently ranked highest in the country for per capita charitable giving, but nonprofits also provide a material impact to the local and state economy.

Based on aggregate IRS Form 990 filings, Mississippi has over 17,000 nonprofits in the state, employing 92,000 people and holding $29 billion in assets. These include civic organizations, charitable groups, religious associations, educational focused groups, business leagues, chambers of commerce, professional associations, social clubs and, yes, even cemetery corporations. 

But more importantly, they are bridge builders that convene stakeholders and focus resources to solve specific quality of life challenges. Just recently, I’ve seen the Great City Foundation and other corporate foundations organize and convene stakeholder meetings over several weeks to develop Mayor John Hohrn’s visionary plan called “Jackson Rising.”

I’ve seen education-focused groups such as the Woodward Hines Education Foundation work directly with state agency leaders to increase the number of Mississippians with postsecondary certifications, credentials and degrees. There have been efforts to provide workforce training to citizens who are reentering society after being incarcerated, a factor that is directly correlated with lower recidivism rates.

Why is all this important? Steps like increasing the number of citizens with occupational specific training after high school or increasing the number with an associate or bachelor’s degree lead to more people working, resulting in growth in the state’s gross domestic product and an overall stronger economy. That means the state has more money to pay our bills. It matters.

One huge impact I’ve seen a nonprofit have here is related to the headlines heralding the recent education achievement described as the “Mississippi Miracle.” This alliterative phrase refers to the significant gains in reading scores and other educational achievements.

The results are for real, and it began with the Barksdale Reading Institute, first setting the foundation for what became the Mississippi Early Learning Collaborative Act in 2013. This bill was passed after a lengthy and collaborative process, ultimately providing the framework and funding structure for schools and nonprofits to work together. It also established the third-grade reading gate, which requires students to read on grade level before advancing to the next grade.

In 2024, legislators increased the state’s appropriation to early learning collaboratives by $5 million to reach $29 million total. It was nonprofit organizations with their deep knowledge of community needs and their relationships built over the years, which supported efforts to turn policy into practice.

Gov. Tate Reeves and his team have made historic economic development project announcements lately that demolish any previous investment number. With all of the promising news ranging from education to economic development, now is the time to put it all together and leverage our capabilities, and it’s time to stomp on the gas.

Neither governmental entities nor nonprofits can fully achieve this on their own. The focus needs to be on ways to achieve greater collaboration between the public and nonprofit sectors: an interdependent relationship that produces outcomes greater than either sector could achieve on its own.

With legislators providing the framework and resources, and nonprofits delivering expertise and excellent services, we create something greater than the sum of its parts. This isn’t just good policy. It is essential to Mississippi’s long-term prosperity.

Go see them all working at the Capitol. And maybe get you a biscuit.

Jason Dean is senior vice president at SiteLogIQ, whose mission is to develop energy efficiency solutions for its school districts and other public sector clients. He has worked in the workforce and education policy arena in Mississippi for 25 years, including as chair of the Mississippi Board of Education. Dean has been a White House fellow, a governor’s education adviser, a board member of the National Association of State Boards of Education, a board member of a local school board and currently serves as a board member on the Jackson State University Development Foundation. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern Mississippi, and has a master’s and doctorate in education from the University of Mississippi.

The 1927 New York Yankees, a remarkable team many experts consider the best in baseball history, won 110 games and lost but 44 for a winning percentage of 71.4%. Turns out, it really helps to have Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Bob Meusel batting back-to-back-to-back in the middle of your lineup.

Now, compare that with the current World Champion Los Angeles Dodgers, who last season won 93 games and lost 69, a winning percentage of 57.4%. That’s much more normal, or should we say, mortal. 

Now then, compare all that to how Mississippi teams have begun their college seasons. Mississippi State has won 11 and lost one, a winning percentage of 91.7%. State’s only defeat, which came Sunday, was to No. 1 ranked UCLA in extra innings. Southern Miss has won 90.9% of its games and 10 straight after losing its opener to the best pitcher in college baseball, Jackson Flora of Cal-Santa Barbara. 

State plays USM at Hattiesburg Tuesday night in the nation’s best mid-week matchup, a battle of Top 10 teams. Somebody has to lose. Indeed, a really good team will lose.

And, yes, I know what many readers are thinking, which is: All this winning won’t last. And you are right.  Baseball is more a game of failure than success. The best hitters make outs two-thirds of the time. Usually, the best teams lose at least 30% of their games. That’s because even the best hitters go through slumps and even the best pitchers have off days. And sometimes, the other guy just pitches better. Bob Gibson, the most dominant pitcher I ever saw, lost 174 times. That’s right: Gibson lost 41% of his decisions. And he was a first ballot Hall of Famer.

You should know Ole Miss isn’t too far behind its two in-state rivals. The Rebels have won 10 and lost 2, a win percentage of 83.3%. Of course, that rate of winning won’t last, either. It just won’t. The schedule will get lots, lots harder, especially for both the Rebels and the Bulldogs when they get to the SEC season, which happens soon.

That might not be true of Southern Miss, by the way. The computers that calculate college baseball power ratings have spat out numbers that say Southern Miss has played the most difficult schedule in college baseball to date. Indeed, Chris Ostrander’s Golden Eagles currently rank No. 1 in the country in RPI (ratings percentage index).

Neophyte fans might wonder: Just what is this RPI thing you hear announcers talk about and sports writers write about all the time? Simply put, which is not so simple, RPI is a ranking system used by the NCAA to evaluate team performance and strength of schedule, which heavily influences NCAA Tournament selection. It is calculated using three main components: a team’s winning percentage (25%), opponents’ winning percentage (50%) and opponents’ opponents’ winning percentage (25%). The formula factors in where games are played, heavily weighting victories won on the road over those won at home.

See, I told you it wasn’t simple.

A word here about Ostrander, who answers to Oz, as in the wizard of: When USM swept highly regarded Louisiana Tech on Sunday, it marked Ostrander’s 100th victory, just 11 games into only his third season as the Eagles’ head coach. It took Oz only 137 games to win 100. That’s a win percentage of 73%, and that’s outlandish. No USM coach has ever done it faster, which is saying something because the last four Eagles coaches have all been voted in to the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame. 

Ostrander will match wits with new State coach Brian O’Connor, a 2024 inductee into the College Baseball Hall of Fame and easily one of the most respected coaches in college baseball. O’Connor won an amazing 917 games in 22 seasons at Virginia. And, in case you are wondering, it took him 145 games to win his first 100, which just goes to show how remarkable Ostrander has been at USM. 

Tuesday night’s matchup is a mid-week game, so most of both teams’ best starting pitchers will get a night off. Expect both teams to use multiple arms and expect both coaches to get a look at some of their younger, lesser-used pitchers. That doesn’t mean they won’t be trying to win. A victory would be a nice achievement for either, but a defeat won’t hurt badly, at least RPI-wise, for either team. 

Defense attorneys for former pro wrestler Ted “Teddy” DiBiase Jr. tried to discredit the former director of a nonprofit agency who pleaded guilty to sending federal welfare money to DiBiase’s companies and testified she received virtually no services in return. 

Over the course of three days, Christi Webb, former director of the now-defunct Family Resource Center of North Mississippi, told a federal jury that she funneled money to DiBiase under pressure from John Davis, the director of the Mississippi Department of Human Services from 2016 to 2019. 

Webb testified that she received one item from DiBiase as he drew millions in federal funds: A list of food pantries in north Mississippi. 

“Truthfully, I threw it in the garbage can,” she said.

Prosecutors allege Davis was instrumental in pushing welfare and food assistance grants to DiBiase, and Webb testified to a variety of tactics Davis used to keep the money flowing. 

Webb said Davis called her crying and said, “The only way I can have friends is to give them money.” He ordered her to direct funds to the wrestler, Webb said. Davis even went over her head, she testified, showing up at her Tupelo office while she was not there and demanding Webb’s staff stamp her name on checks to DiBiase for hundreds of thousands of dollars – including on the day her mother died. 

Webb testified that when she refused to fund the wrestler’s companies in the fall of 2018, Davis shouted, “I’ll just pull all the money back and fund who I want to fund.” 

In 2019, Webb said she got a letter from MDHS that her budget had been cut by half. She finally met with Davis a few months later in his office, and he told her why: “He took his finger on the table, and he said, ‘You drew the line in the sand when you refused to fund Teddy.’’’ 

Davis rejected this telling when he took the stand before Webb, saying her funding was threatened by budgetary constraints alone.

DiBiase is the only defendant to face a criminal trial in Mississippi’s sprawling welfare scandal, though seven have pleaded guilty. He is being tried on charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, theft and money laundering.

The federal government described Webb – who pleaded guilty in 2023 to theft concerning federal funds – as a co-conspirator in the scheme, and U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves called her a “major witness.” 

Webb led one of two nonprofits – the other being Mississippi Community Education Center founded by Nancy New – that Davis contracted with to privatize many welfare services across the state. New took the stand after Webb’s testimony concluded Monday.

The defense, which argues DiBiase was a lawful independent contractor of the nonprofits, sought to discredit Webb by reminding her of moments she said she couldn’t recall or claimed didn’t happen. 

On Friday, DiBiase’s attorneys introduced a text thread of a group chat including Davis and Webb on June 26, 2018, the day Webb’s mother died. Webb had testified that her phone was off and she only found out Davis and DiBiase had visited her offices to obtain a $350,000 check when her financial officer called later that day. 

But the texts showed Webb responding to Davis’s message that the pair planned to drop by the office. She wrote she had told her financial officer to prepare a check. 

“This is not what you said this morning,” defense attorney Sidney Lampton said. 

“I had forgotten all of that,” Webb responded. 

In a particularly tense moment, Lampton sought to play a recording she claimed Webb had made of a phone call with Davis, in which Davis was explaining her funding had to be cut because of a federal government shutdown in early 2019. Webb had said she did not record such a call. 

The prosecution objected several times. Reeves asked the defense how the recording undermined the government’s theory of the case. 

“Your honor, it’s impeachment,” Lampton said. “She says, ‘I don’t remember ever turning this over to the government.’ It was filmed in her home.” 

The recording was also important, Lampton continued to argue, because it proved Davis stopped funding Webb not because of DiBiase, but “because of a federal government shutdown, and there was no money.” 

“There’s a whole lot of reasons in this record as to why people did get money and didn’t get money,” Reeves said, rejecting the argument. “So I guess we’re going to impeach on top of impeach on top of impeach.” 

With the aid of several checks she cut to DiBiase, the prosecution walked Webb through a series of events that culminated in Davis cutting her funding in retaliation, she testified. 

In early 2018, the Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services experienced a budget shortfall that MDHS helped plug by shuffling funds from nonprofits run by Webb and New. The agency pulled $6.5 million from FRC’s budget, Webb testified, leading to across-the-board cuts — for seemingly everyone but DiBiase. 

A few days after Webb sent DiBiase a letter that his grant would be cut, she testified she got a call. It was Davis, who said she couldn’t stop funding DiBiase. 

“We’re all taking a salary cut and he’s not doing anything, so we see this as $20,000 a month that we could use to provide our services with,” Webb said she responded. 

Then, Davis started crying — a move the director had pulled before, she said, when he was depressed in the middle of the night. 

“He said the only way I can have friends is to give them money and I’ve got to keep Teddy and he’s got to keep this grant,” Webb said. “He said that’s the only way I ever get friends and I said, John, remember you have friends, everybody thinks the world of you. The governor, his wife, they love you. Why do you think that? He said, the only way I can have friends is to give them money, and I’ve just got to give Teddy money. You cannot cut his grant. And he cried some more and I listened.” 

The next contract that Webb inked with DiBiase came with $500,000 upfront, again for the services of leadership outreach coordinator. Webb said by this point, she knew she wouldn’t receive any work in return. 

“The contract was real, but it was like a scam,” she said. 

Not long after, Webb testified that MDHS assigned her a nearly $500,000 grant from a federal program for emergency food assistance. She wrote a budget itemizing her plans to hire four employees and buy food supplies. 

When MDHS sent her the budget back, it came with a significant change. All the funds would be assigned to a category labeled “subsidies, loans and grants.” Two days later, Webb said Davis called and said DiBiase was going to be the grant administrator. All the funds would go to him. 

She said she resolved not to send any more money to DiBiase. But in August 2018, the wrestler and Davis came to visit Tupelo as Webb was away from the office, preparing for a fundraiser. 

The prosecution introduced a note that Webb said she wrote to herself that day: “John Davis + Teddy D came to Tupelo for the Gerald Crabb concert. He went to Debbie Underwood’s office + demanded a check for Teddy. He would (underlined twice) not (underlined once) let her call me.” 

When Webb joined FRC in 2006, she said the nonprofit had three full-time employees and couldn’t afford to pay their health insurance.

After Davis took the helm at MDHS, FRC’s budget grew by millions, Webb testified. By 2017, she said the nonprofit had over 300 employees and 23 centers, from Madison County in the Jackson metro area to Tishomingo County on the Tennessee state line, providing programs free beds for needy children, English classes for Spanish speakers, and parenting classes. 

FRC also started monitoring grant compliance by creating a 14-person review board. But the panel never looked at DiBiase’s contracts, she testified. 

The year after Davis took over the agency, Webb testified that he told her to enter into a contract with DiBiase’s company, Priceless Ventures, for “services as a leadership training coordinator.” At the time, Webb – not a wrestling fan – said she didn’t know who DiBiase was, and she didn’t think the nonprofit needed this service, having a former community college president, a former superintendent and a former principal in its employ.

The contract came with a cash advance of $250,000, as well as an option to extend the contract for another four years, for more than $1 million. 

“I see you kind of closing your eyes,” said Dave Fulcher, an assistant U.S. attorney, after he asked Webb to recall the contract specifics. 

“It just makes me sick to even look at it,” she said. “It’s just bad. I just did the wrong thing.” 

Webb said DiBiase did not do any of the work under the contract. After he exercised the option to extend it, she testified that she delayed his $20,833.33 payment by one month in a failed attempt to find a way out of paying him. 

The prosecution alleged that Davis shared this view – at least for a moment. Fulcher introduced an October 2017 text from Davis to Webb and New. 

“I get like this when I get away from the office. I have clarity of thought and you guys are problem saying what the hell is talking about,” the director wrote, with some words missing. “It just bothers me that I allowed these guys to gain access and it feels like they are using. It you dont mind tell Ted Jr. to report to my office Friday morning. We are going to engage his ass.”

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