OurTupelo

Editor’s note: This piece first published on the blog for Heartland Forward, a nonprofit, policy think-and-do tank that turns ideas into action for states and local communities.

Across the Heartland, a critical community-building tool is quietly slipping away. Since 2005, the United States has lost more than one-third of its newspapers, according to “The State of Local News 2025,” a product of the Local News Initiative at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

“Over the past two decades, the number of news desert counties – areas that lack consistent local reporting – has grown steadily,” the 2025 report states. “This past year was no exception: in this report, we are tracking 212 U.S. counties without any local news source, up from 206 last year. In another 1,525 counties, there is only one news source remaining, typically a weekly newspaper. Taken together, in these counties some 50 million Americans live with limited or no access to local news.”

Nearly 60% of the counties with one or fewer news sources – 1,055 in total – are in the heartland, a region comprising 20 states in the middle of the country that together would be the third-largest economy in the world. That means more than half of heartland counties are news deserts or at risk of becoming one.

But here’s what the statistics don’t show: Every newspaper closure means more than lost information. It means communities lose valuable tools to tackle their biggest challenges, whether in workforce development, affordable housing or healthcare access. Without reliable sources of information, people lack the shared facts they need to work together and secure the support their communities require.

For those of us in the nonprofit journalism space, and especially at Deep South Today where we serve under-resourced communities in the heartland, the question isn’t simply how to keep local news alive. It’s how to sustain and enhance high-quality reporting that can help communities more effectively address the challenges they face.

From information gaps to real solutions

Consider what happened in Jackson, Mississippi, during the 2022 water crisis when the city’s aging water system failed. Approximately 150,000 residents were without safe drinking water. Our newsroom Mississippi Today didn’t just report on the crisis. Journalism became an essential infrastructure. The newsroom provided daily updates on water distribution sites, boil-water notices and steps residents could take to protect their health. By delivering practical information people could use, Mississippi Today built trust and showed how journalism can partner with communities to solve urgent problems.

The heartland needs a model of journalism that goes beyond documenting problems to helping communities find solutions. By reporting in depth on complex issues such as maternal health, workforce shortages and infrastructure gaps, nonprofit news provides the information that policymakers, business leaders and residents need to make informed decisions.

Another example of that is our recent partnership with the Fuller Project to examine Mississippi’s high rate of cesarean births. The reporting didn’t just point out problems. It also highlighted hospitals that were successfully turning things around. By showing both challenges and what’s working, the coverage gave healthcare leaders concrete examples to learn from. This is information that leads to action.

Building a stronger news ecosystem

We are encouraged to see more nonprofit newsrooms embracing collaboration instead of competition as the way forward. These organizations produce in-depth reporting on important issues and make that content free for other news outlets (both nonprofit and commercial) to publish, ensuring it reaches as many people as possible.

This approach addresses a real problem: As traditional news organizations have cut back on reporting, gaps have opened up in coverage of complex policy issues, government accountability and solutions-focused stories. Nonprofit newsrooms step in to fill these gaps, providing essential information that individual outlets, particularly smaller ones, can no longer afford to generate on their own.

The result is a system where different types of news organizations play different roles. Commercial outlets continue to provide daily coverage while nonprofit newsrooms contribute investigative projects and deep reporting that help the entire region. When this content gets republished across multiple platforms, from small-town newspapers to statewide networks, it reaches people who might otherwise lack access to quality journalism.

Bright spots: innovation despite the crisis

While news deserts continue to grow, there’s a promising trend. More than 300 local news startups have launched across the U.S. in the past five years. Northwestern University’s Medill Local News Initiative tracks these developments and identifies “Bright Spots,” news organizations that build innovative and sustainable approaches to serving their communities. 

These Bright Spots share common traits: funding that combines foundation support with reader contributions, deep community relationships, editorial independence and a commitment to working together. 

Yet a big challenge remains: 90% of new startups are in cities. Rural and less wealthy communities, the very places where news deserts are most endemic, continue to fall further behind. This growing divide between news haves and have-nots threatens to deepen existing inequalities across the region.

Deep South Today was one of 12 Bright Spots featured in 2025. Covering Louisiana and Mississippi with plans to expand across the region, our newsrooms produce solutions-focused reporting on issues critical to the communities we serve. From economic development, education, healthcare and civic engagement, the content reaches millions through partnerships with commercial news outlets across the South, creating impact far beyond what any single organization could achieve alone.

Journalism as community infrastructure

Communities with strong local news see clear benefits. Things like higher voter turnout, more competitive elections, better-informed policy debates and greater accountability for public officials. On the flip side, research shows that news deserts experience more corruption, less civic engagement and more polarized voting.

Forward-thinking leaders across the country have come to view journalism support not as charity but as a smart investment in their community’s ability to solve problems. Whether through corporate partnerships, foundation grants or individual donations, they’re helping build sustainable models for quality journalism that serve everyone.

The path forward

The wave of new local news startups, backed by growing foundation support, is encouraging. This trend shows both the demand for quality journalism and the emergence of new ways to sustain it. 

Yet the gap between news haves and have-nots continues to grow. Closing it requires purposeful investment in news infrastructure across the heartland. It means supporting newsrooms rooted in their communities. It means treating quality journalism not as a luxury but as essential infrastructure for making good decisions, building effective policy, and growing the economy.

The heartland’s challenges are real and urgent, spanning economic transition, workforce development and health care access. But its potential is even greater. Together, the 20 states of the heartland have an economic output of almost $7.5 trillion and should not be overlooked.

Communities achieve progress through pragmatic collaboration among business, government, charitable groups and their citizens. Informed communities, fueled by quality journalism, not only make this work possible but also speed it up. Heartland communities are too essential to our nation’s well-being to be without trusted local information sources.   

___

Warwick Sabin is the founding President and CEO of Deep South Today, a nonprofit newsroom network serving Louisiana and Mississippi.

If state lawmakers don’t act soon, Mississippi will pay at least an additional $120 million a year to run its food assistance program. That’s because of a 2017 state law that generated more paperwork for social safety net programs. 

Under the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill passed by Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump over the summer, the cost of food assistance benefits will shift from the federal government to states. How much a state will pay is based on its error rate for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. 

An error rate measures how accurately each state determines whether a person is eligible for SNAP benefits. States with error rates over 10%, such as Mississippi, will have to pay a penalty tied to the amount of benefits they receive. 

Mississippi’s 2024 error rate of 10.69% is slightly below the national average but would still leave Mississippi on the hook for the maximum penalty. 

Experts say that red tape surrounding Mississippi’s anti-hunger program has contributed significantly to its high error rate. The state’s unique and labyrinthine reporting system leads beneficiaries and the Mississippi Department of Human Services to make errors in processing applications and redeterminations. 

“If we don’t get ahead of this, it is going to be a tremendous hit to the state budget,” Republican Sen. Daniel Sparks of Belmont told Mississippi Today.

Sparks has proposed legislation that would simplify SNAP paperwork, which experts say would bring the state’s error rate down.

Last year, people in Mississippi, perennially one of the poorest states in the nation, received $840 million in federal SNAP benefits.

In 2017, lawmakers passed the HOPE Act, a measure that was widely touted as fraud prevention. That move made Mississippi the only state in the nation to ban what’s called “simplified reporting” requirements for SNAP recipients. This system only required recipients to report a major change in their income immediately.

In its place, Mississippi uses a system called “change reporting.” This system requires welfare recipients to report any change in their income, household size or address within 10 days. Experts say Mississippi’s choice has hurt poor people and wasted resources. 

That applies even when the changes are minimal and make no difference in enrollees’ eligibility, explained Gina Plata-Nino, director of SNAP at the Food Research and Action Center, a national nonprofit working to end poverty-related hunger.

If someone moves, or starts a new job – even if they’re earning the same amount – they must report those changes immediately. Under simplified reporting, enrollees would report these changes at a six-month redetermination. The increased paperwork can kick off eligible people, and it strains the system and creates more room for error. 

“When you only have 10 days to get this done, to not lose benefits, it does create more of a barrier for individuals and for the state agency,” said Plata-Nino. 

Errors include when applicants submit the wrong paperwork or forget to write down their landlord’s phone number, Plata-Nino said. They also include when DHS pays recipients too little. They rarely include recipients submitting fraudulent data to receive larger benefits. 

“Payment error rates just reflect administrative and technical issues,” Plata-Nino said. “It’s not intentional wrongdoing.”

The SNAP program has one of the most rigorous systems to determine eligibility and payment accuracy among safety net programs, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. Fraud has rarely been proven.

The stringent requirements are “one of the many reasons why eligible families in the state struggle to gain access to basic needs programs despite high poverty rates and persistent needs,” said Theresa Lau, senior policy counsel at the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

Because of impending shifts in costs, Lau said now is the perfect time for the state to remedy that. 

Mississippi’s error rate is just barely in a higher bracket, meaning even a small decrease could save the state tens of millions of dollars a year, Lau said. 

“We’re on the edge between costs shifting to 15% versus 10%,” Lau said. “Even an incremental change in our error rate could have a significant impact in terms of how (many) dollars Mississippi will have to make up.”

Senators placed their proposal in a House bill that extends the sunset date on the Legislature’s reauthorization of the Department of Human Services’s operations. Instead of agreeing with the Senate’s suggestion and sending the measure to the governor, House members voted last week to send the bill to negotiation with the Senate. This means the legislation will face further scrutiny from a small group of lawmakers before it can go back to the full chambers. 

Rep. Kevin Felsher, a Republican from Biloxi and vice chairman of the House Public Health Committee, asked the House to send the bill to negotiations. He told Mississippi Today he supports the intent of the Senate’s proposal. Still, he would like the House to take more time in negotiation to study the impacts.  

House Public Health Chairman Sam Creekmore, a Republican from New Albany, told Mississippi Today he is not yet sure whether he supports going back to simplified reporting requirements and that he would need to meet with the House leadership first.  He was unsure when that meeting would occur. 

Officials at DHS declined to comment, but the agency’s director, Bob Anderson, has previously said he supports what the Senate is doing. 

Rep. Robert Johnson III, a Democrat from Natchez, asked Anderson in a 2022 hearing conducted by the Legislative Black Caucus if the director supported efforts to repeal the HOPE Act. Anderson said yes. 

But Sparks said his effort to change the reporting requirements isn’t a desire to abolish the HOPE Act or to attack income verification requirements. 

In fact, Sparks said he supports the Trump administration’s push for tougher oversight of the states in the One Big Beautiful Bill because each state needs to “get it right” when it comes to spending federal dollars.

“This is not an attack on the HOPE Act,” Sparks said. “It’s an enhancement of it.” 

MDHS leaders this year have also asked lawmakers for additional money to buy better software and implement more robust income verification for SNAP recipients, something Sparks said he and other Senate leaders support. 

Lawmakers have until March 30 to file an initial negotiated proposal on the legislation to keep it alive as the legislative session enters its final days. 

Something new for the Jackson Zoo? 

Mayor John Horhn announced during the City Council meeting Tuesday that the Planning and Development Department will soon seek bids for companies interested in developing the property encompassing the long-ailing zoo. 

The effort is still in the planning stages, with the bid documents yet to be finalized. Horhn pledged last year during his first State of the City address to revitalize the zoo. He said Tuesday that he believes the city has several “inducements” to entice developers to the property, such as state and federal tax credits. 

The city will be looking for developers who specialize in attractions, Horhn said, adding that if the project is successful, “it would be gigantic.” 

Who’s visiting the zoo? 

The city-run zoo is in west Jackson, a few miles from downtown on West Capitol Street. In recent years, the number of visitors has tumbled, impacting revenue. WLBT reported the zoo hasn’t made more than $100,000 since at least 2021. 

While the zoo still has more than 100 animals, many of its exhibits are shabby and sun-damaged. Last year, the zoo had to relocate its chimpanzees after the city discovered a water leak in a moat surrounding the habitat was leading to “million-dollar plus” water bills.

In addition to the structural problems, the zoo is in a part of Jackson experiencing concentrated blight, including a burned-out church on Capitol Street and numerous abandoned homes. 

“The zoo for many years was the anchor to west Jackson, and it was the number one attraction in the state,” Horhn said. “We’d like to return it to the top attraction in the state, and we think it can be an economic driver for west Jackson.” 

The property’s myriad issues have led to various proposals over the years from state and county officials to close the zoo or relocate it to northeast Jackson. Though ranging in seriousness, none of these efforts have come to fruition. 

In 2018, the Jackson Zoological Society – a now-defunct organization that had managed the zoo since the 1980s – said the zoo was “definitely” moving. The society commissioned studies showing investors wouldn’t donate to the zoo at its current location. 

In 2023, David Archie, then a Hinds County supervisor, attempted and failed to use more than $7 million in county funds to relocate the zoo – money originally allocated to fixing a water tower in west Jackson. He wanted to rename it the Hinds County Public Zoo. 

“Why not place it where everybody can get to it in peace, and they can see it,” Archie said, according to WLBT.

Talk of improving the area

Then-Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, whom Horhn defeated last year, came out against moving the zoo, which he had described as an effort to pilfer resources from a majority-Black part of Jackson. 

Shortly before he left office, Lumumba and his planning and development director, Jhai Keeton, proposed plans to build an amphitheater at Livingston Park, a large green space featuring a lake that sits next to the zoo. 

Horhn’s administration shelved the project, WLBT reported, amid considerations over the zoo’s future. But in doing so, the city was actually pulling a plan from the past, said Pieter Teeuwissen, the city’s chief administrative officer. 

“The idea has always been to try to develop Livingston Park,” he said. “That’s not new.” 

Teeuwissen said the city needs to dredge the lake and fix the splash pads. 

“The city’s finances by themselves are not going to carry the vision, but the hope is that there will be some interest by somebody who sees this proposal and comes up with an idea,” he said. 

Ward 5 council member Vernon Hartley, who represents the neighborhood where the zoo is located, was chuffed to hear the mayor’s announcement. 

“I’d like to encourage everyone to come out,” he said. “It’s not dead.” 

The Southern Poverty Law Center has filed a lawsuit against a county sheriff’s office and state agency for failing to turn over public records about jail deaths. 

In a complaint filed Tuesday in Hinds County Chancery Court, the legal organization argues the Hinds County Sheriff’s Department and the Mississippi Department of Public Safety violated the Mississippi Public Records Act by not responding to numerous requests for information about deaths at the Hinds County Detention Center in Raymond.

“The public has a right to know the extent to which deaths are occurring in the Hinds County detention facility and why,” Andrea Alajbegovic, senior staff attorney for the SPLC, said in a statement. 

Hinds County Sheriff Tyree Jones said Tuesday afternoon that he was not familiar with the lawsuit and declined to comment. DPS spokeswoman Bailey Martin Holloway said the agency is aware of the complaint but declined to comment. As defendants, the sheriff’s office and DPS will have the opportunity to respond to the lawsuit in court filings. 

Alajbegovic said there is not a full picture of the number of people who have died at the facility. News reporting generated existing data, based on information obtained from the Hinds County sheriff’s office and DPS, the lawsuit argues. 

DPS has said at least five people died there between 2022 and April 2025, while local media have reported at least six deaths occurred at the same facility in 2025 alone. 

Additionally, DPS is the state agency responsible for collecting data from all law enforcement offices about in-custody deaths through the federal Deaths in Custody Reporting Act. The lawsuit states the agency should have information about Hinds County’s jail deaths. 

The lawsuit, which represents one side of a legal argument, is seeking a full and transparent account of all deaths at the Raymond jail since 2022. Once it has the data, the SPLC will review it and determine a course of action for the conditions of those held in detention facilities across the Deep South.

The Mississippi Public Records Act states that public bodies have seven working days to respond to a request. A written explanation is needed if they are unable to produce records within the timeframe.

Alajbegovic first submitted a public records request to the Hinds sheriff’s office in May 2025. Despite her and other SPLC staff following up by mail, phone and email, the office has not released the records nine months later, according to the lawsuit. DPS did not respond to a records request submitted earlier this month or a follow-up message after seven working days, according to the lawsuit. 

The SPLC served a copy of the complaint to the Mississippi Ethics Commission, which handles complaints and issues orders involving alleged violations of the Public Records Act. 

The Raymond Detention Center has been the subject of years-long legal action, including a federal consent decree to remedy unconstitutional conditions. Among those conditions was reducing the risk of violence to detainees and staff. 

In 2021, U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves held the county in contempt twice for failing to fix the jail and follow the consent decree. That year seven people died in the facility, including from homicide and suicide. 

The next year Reeves ordered a federal receiver to take control of the jail, but that person did not start work until late 2025 because the county appealed. 

Around the same time, the county began building a new jail in Jackson. The first phase of that facility is expected to be complete in the fall.

Welcome to Mississippi Explained, our weekly news quiz to test your knowledge of this week’s news. 🧠

Lawmakers are considering an override of Gov. Tate Reeves’ veto of a bill to provide low-interest loans to Mississippi communities hit by the winter ice storm.

READ MORE: Gov. Tate Reeves vetoes winter storm aid bill and levels false claim of criminal act at Senate staff

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Email your answer to newsletter@mississippitoday.org with your first name and last initial, and we’ll shout you out in the next quiz post.

Last week’s answer: Line-item veto

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Lawmakers sent a bill to Gov. Tate Reeves for consideration Monday that seeks to ensure federal funding for rural health care is directed toward rural communities and the spending is reported to the Legislature. 

The bill is a diluted version of oversight legislation passed by both chambers earlier in the session, which would have required a competitive bidding process for the distribution of hundreds of millions of dollars given to Mississippi by the federal government. 

In December, Mississippi was awarded nearly $206 million as a part of the Rural Health Transformation Program. States will receive payments over five years as a part of the $50 billion program, which was designed to support rural health care and offset the disproportionate impact already-struggling rural hospitals are expected to bear as a result of federal spending cuts Congress passed into law last summer.

Lawmakers have publicly expressed frustration with the limited role they have played in the funding application and distribution process, which is being led by Reeves’ office. 

Reeves posted the state’s program application on his website in December, but funding estimates are redacted, creating uncertainty about precisely how the money will be spent.

“This is all about transparency and prioritization of where this $206 million goes over the next five years,” said House Public Health and Human Services Chairman Sam Creekmore, a Republican from New Albany, on March 10 after offering amendments to the bill.

Senators unanimously agreed to the House’s amendments Monday. The bill will next go to Reeves’ desk. He can choose to sign the bill, veto it or allow it to become law without his signature. The bill would take effect immediately if it becomes law. 

Has the governor already selected vendors? 

A vendor for professional accounting, auditing, administration and consulting services was selected in January, before lawmakers crafted legislation to increase oversight of the funds. 

The Department of Finance and Administration on Jan. 9 published a notice of intent to award a contract on behalf of the governor’s office for assistance administering the funds, showing that the highest score was awarded to state and local government consulting firm BDO Government Services, formerly HORNE. Respondents had less than a month to respond to the request for qualifications.

The contract went into effect the same day, according to the notice. The contract does not appear in the Department of Finance and Administration’s online registry of state contracts, even though the request for qualifications specified it should be publicly available in the database.

Reeves did not respond to a request for comment from Mississippi Today about whether vendors have been selected for the funds or if the administrative support contract has been executed. 

How lawmakers say the rural health funding bill could enhance transparency

The legislation passed Monday puts “a few guardrails” on the use of funds distributed to the state as a part of the Rural Health Transformation Program, said Senate Public Health and Welfare Chairman Hob Bryan, a Democrat from Amory. 

The bill calls for priority to be given to the following recipients when structuring grants or applications for the funding:

• Rural areas and the Delta region.
• Programs that provide direct assistance to Mississippi providers and patients, rather than vendors.
• Grant recipients that have not received state or federal assistance for facility improvements or medical equipment in the past three years.

It also requires each agency awarding grants or funding to provide quarterly reports to the Legislature.

The bill also requires a competitive procurement process for establishing a statewide health information exchange to support real-time data sharing between providers, and sets requirements for the program. 

The original text of the bill passed by both chambers required vendors or subcontractors, including those tasked with providing medical equipment or creating workforce programming, to be selected by a competitive bidding process. 

A separate bill, which retains this language, was sent to final negotiations by the House on March 17. Lawmakers could still choose to pass procurement regulations for the funds. 

During a Senate Public Health Committee meeting March 3, members expressed concerns that the requirement could slow the disbursement of funds to rural communities in need. States must spend the funds within two years. 

Sen. Rod Hickman, a Democrat from Macon, said the legislation was not intended to slow down the process. 

“We want the process to move forward as quickly as possible,” he said. “We just wanted to put some guard rails to make sure that the state is protected and the state’s most needy places and hospitals are protected.”

Mississippi Today Ideas is 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.

When Maria walked across the stage at her high school graduation, I sat in the audience proud of her perseverance. I had taught her for two years in high school special education, and I knew how hard she had worked to pass her classes and pass her state assessments despite her specific learning disorder in reading comprehension.

But later, Maria confided in me that instead of feeling proud and excited that night, her heart was racing and her stomach was in knots. The familiar walls of our school, where she had spent so many years learning and growing, would no longer hold her.

Ahead lay a world she did not understand and a future she did not know how to navigate. Friends were talking about college, vocational programs or jobs. Maria had no idea what her next step should be.

Maria’s story reflects a larger problem. The pattern I have seen among my students is reflected in the data: from the graduating class of 2022, 10% of students in Mississippi were not enrolled in college or employed within 12 months of graduation. Without being college and career-ready, students like Maria are pushed into the real world with no direction or purpose.

College and career readiness is about more than helping individual students. It strengthens our state’s economy, reduces unemployment and creates a workforce that can compete nationally, which is why this is the focus of the work I’m doing as a Teach Plus Policy fellow.

When students like Maria leave school without a plan, it is not just their future at risk, it is Mississippi’s future. Waiting until junior and senior year to start college and career readiness curriculum is not yielding the results we need. If Maria had been exposed to a variety of careers and options, she might have felt more prepared for life after high school.  

Mississippi needs to do better for our students, and effectively prepare them for their next step. Maria’s trajectory, and the trajectory of countless other students, could have looked very different if we do the following:

Start career readiness early.  If Maria had been introduced to career exploration in elementary school or middle school, she could have discovered her interests long before graduation. Career fairs, job shadowing opportunities and hands-on vocational programs would have given her direction instead of uncertainty. Early exposure helps students connect what they are learning in class to real opportunities beyond school. 

Teach real-world skills alongside academics. Maria mastered reading, writing and math, but she left high school without knowing how to complete a job application, request college accommodations or navigate transportation to work. These are not extras. They are essentials.

Embedding life skills into daily lessons, such as interviewing, budgeting and workplace communication, would have given her confidence and independence. I now work one on one with my students on applying for a job, applying for college and choosing their future career. This little bit of personalized attention makes a world of difference. 

Build individual success plans that grow with students.  Schools work to support academic growth, but they often neglect long-term planning. If Maria’s Individual Success Plan had begun in elementary school and been revisited yearly with her family and teachers, she would have graduated with a clear roadmap tailored to her strengths, goals and needs. Consistent, individualized planning ensures that students do not leave school feeling lost but instead feel prepared and confident in their next step, whether that is college, vocational training or entering the workforce.

Our group of Teach Plus Policy fellows is advocating for the statewide standardization of the creation and implementation of Individual Success Plans to close equity gaps and ensure that every student in Mississippi has meaningful access to college and career readiness planning.

Mississippi has taken important steps to expand college and career readiness opportunities for students. Those efforts must be supported by systems that reach every learner. A standardized approach would help schools align academic planning, career exploration and progress monitoring in a coherent way. Most importantly, it would help ensure that a student’s future is not determined by geography, but by access to intentional and equitable planning.

Every student deserves to leave high school after graduation prepared for life, not left behind by a system that equates a diploma with readiness. As an educator who has walked alongside students at every grade level, I know we can do better and we must.

Schools, policymakers and communities must act now to ensure students like Maria are not left standing at the edge of uncertainty. We owe it to them to turn diplomas into opportunities and fear into hope. 

Elizabeth Maxcey is a special education teacher at Biloxi High School in Biloxi, Mississippi. She is a 2025-2026 Teach Plus Mississippi Policy fellow.

Mississippi’s Republican-controlled Legislature has agreed on a proposal to require local election officials to verify voters’ citizenship using a federal immigration database and to audit voter rolls for potential noncitizens.

Supporters say the measure will boost confidence in election results. Critics say it will suppress some U.S. citizens’ votes.

The agreement came on Monday when the Senate voted 33-18 along party lines to concur with the House on the Safeguard Honest Integrity in Elections for Lasting Democracy, or SHIELD, Act. The bill, which will now head to Republican Gov. Tate Reeves for his consideration, would require county registrars to conduct extra checks on people registering to vote.

The legislation drew vocal opposition from Democrats, who said it would make voting more time consuming and could even function as a “poll tax” because people might end up having to pay for extra documents, such as birth certificates, to prove their citizenship.

There is no evidence that noncitizens are voting in large numbers in Mississippi. But Republicans said the bill is a simple proposal that adds another layer of verification to the state’s process for ensuring only citizens vote.

“I want to be clear, this isn’t a bill to disenfranchise anyone. This is a bill to make sure that registered voters in Mississippi and the people voting in our elections are U.S. citizens,” said Senate Elections Chairman Jeremy England, a Republican from Vancleave. “To many of us in here, even one instance of someone that is caught voting that is not a U.S. citizen throws our entire election integrity into doubt.”

In a statement, Mississippi Democratic Party Chairman and state Rep. Cheikh Taylor from Starkville said millions of Americans lack a passport or immediate access to other documents proving citizenship, a reality that could prevent eligible Mississippians from voting.

“Republicans aren’t solving a problem, they’re creating one on purpose,” Taylor said. “There is no voter fraud crisis in Mississippi. There is a participation crisis, and instead of addressing it, they have made it worse. The SHIELD Act is a poll tax dressed up in modern language, and Mississippi Democrats will fight it with everything we have.”

Under the bill, if someone tries to register and can’t produce a driver’s license number or if the number doesn’t appear in the Statewide Elections Management System, a county registrar would have to verify whether the person appears in a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services database called SAVE.

Government agencies use the federal database to verify an applicant’s immigration status or citizenship. If a person is flagged in the SAVE database, the registrar would notify them and offer a chance to provide documents showing U.S. citizenship before their registration application is denied or canceled.

The legislation would also require the secretary of state’s office to run an annual comparison of the statewide voter registration system against the SAVE database to spot registered voters who may be ineligible. Any matches would be sent to local registrars for verification. The local registrars would also report a list to the secretary of state’s office every year, noting how many registered voters were flagged and how many were ultimately removed from the rolls.

The legislation in Mississippi arrives as the Trump administration pushes to “nationalize” elections with a federal bill that could potentially prevent millions of people from casting ballots. Both chambers of the Mississippi Legislature have also advanced bills this session aiming to crack down on immigration, despite some lawmakers raising concerns that the federal government is responsible for enforcement and that the proposals could inadvertently harm U.S. citizens.

If Reeves signs the SHIELD Act or allows it to become law without his signature, it will go into effect on July 1.

Teacher pay raise bills from the House and Senate are set to be negotiated over the final days of the legislative session.

It’s the latest in a session-long fight to pass a raise for Mississippi teachers, the lowest paid on average in the country. Mississippi teachers last got a meaningful pay raise in 2022.

Since January, the House and Senate have fought over education policy issues, including a teacher raise. Earlier this session, each chamber killed the other’s proposal, then revived their own. 

The Senate’s plan would give teachers a $6,000 raise over three years, while the House plan would provide an immediate $5,000 raise. 

Despite Senate Education Chairman Dennis DeBar, a Republican from Leakesville, previously telling reporters that the House’s teacher pay proposal would not be considered in his chamber, the legislation was brought up on the floor Tuesday morning and sent to further negotiations.

The House declined to agree to the Senate’s proposal that same morning, and did the same.

Now, legislative leaders will appoint three representatives and three senators to negotiate terms of a final proposal. 

The House’s lengthy teacher pay bill, nearly 500 pages, has many other provisions, including changes to the state retirement system.

If the chambers come to an agreement, they’ll produce a negotiated bill to their full chambers for a vote. 

Across Mississippi, many of the thousands of water and sewer systems have struggled to stay compliant with federal public health and environmental laws. Often, those systems either delay raising rates for too long or lack the customer base to fund needed infrastructure improvements.

By virtue of being a rural state, Mississippi has gotten stuck with a large number of water and sewer systems serving very small populations — a median of 1,200 customers on the water side — making it less cost effective to keep those systems running.

This legislative session, state lawmakers took several steps to hold those systems more accountable. Sen. Bart Williams, a Republican from Starkville who worked on a few water and sewer bills, said this was by far the most the Legislature had accomplished in this area in a while. One of his bills, which is awaiting Gov. Tate Reeves’ consideration, would create a Rural Water Oversight Committee.

“We’re requiring water associations to do a rate study, capacity study and asset management,” Williams said of Senate Bill 2526. “That allows us to come check the temperature of the association.”

Water associations are board-run nonprofit utilities. The state has limited oversight over those boards, which instead are mainly accountable to the customers or members in their service area.

By December 2027, those utilities would need to submit rate and capacity studies and asset management plans to the committee. They would then need to complete rate and capacity studies every five years after that. The idea is to ensure providers have the resources and rates necessary to fund and maintain their systems.

“I think it’s needed because some of these (systems) are just derelict,” said Sen. Angela Burks Hill, a Republican from Picayune.

Hill pointed to the Pearl River Central Water Association in her district, which serves 11,830 people. Customers there waited years for leak repairs, she said, and board members refused to hold regular meetings. Recently, though, Hill helped organize residents to oust and replace the entire board.

“It’s taken a long time, our people have suffered for years with water problems, and nothing got better until legislators got involved,” she said.

Under SB 2526, the Mississippi State Department of Health would keep a list of systems in “financial distress,” and those systems would have to file an improvement plan with the Rural Water Oversight Committee. If such a system didn’t follow those steps, the state could then limit its financial assistance.

The seven-member committee would be made up of the following officials or their designees: state director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Dane Maxwell; director of MSDH’s Bureau of Public Water Supply Bill Moody; director of the state environmental department Chris Wells; a representative from the drinking water state revolving loan fund; Mississippi Rural Water Association CEO Kirby Mayfield; and one appointee each of the governor and lieutenant governor.

During discussion of the bill, lawmakers debated how much “teeth” it needed to ensure providers were following guidelines. Hill pointed to Senate Bill 2310, which the governor approved this month, as an example.

In that bill, lawmakers gave the state Public Service Commission power to cancel a city’s certificate to serve drinking water more than a mile outside its boundaries. Williams, who wrote that bill as well, said its genesis was complaints about Canton Municipal Utilities. Customers there were recently caught off guard by skyrocketing water bills, WLBT reported.

If the PSC finds a city’s service to be “inadequate,” it can petition a court to appoint a receiver over the system. The legislation mirrors what lawmakers did for electric utilities in 2024, paving the way for the PSC to intervene in Holly Springs’ power troubles last year.

Hill tried to amend the rural water oversight bill to give the PSC the same power over water associations. Her amendment passed in the Senate Energy Committee but didn’t make it into the bill’s final version.

“You know how bad Jackson water got,” she said. “People shouldn’t have to suffer through that. Now they’re putting in a fix for municipalities, but the same exact thing can happen with a rural water association, even if it’s member owned.”

Mayfield, of the Mississippi Rural Water Association, said there’s enough enforcement over those associations in the state’s Nonprofit Corporation Act. That law allows members of a water association to petition to replace their board members if they’re not meeting standards.

“I just told the Legislature: We’ve got the laws to deal with it, we just need to enforce what laws we already have,” he told Mississippi Today.

Lawmakers this session also passed House Bill 1632, creating the “Community Public Wastewater System Infrastructure Sustainability Act.” The bill, which is also awaiting the governor’s consideration, would require the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality to publish annual letter grades for each public sewer system in the state.

The law would also give the PSC authority over any wastewater system that receives a “D” or “F” grade, allowing the commission to hold a hearing over the utility’s performance and potentially revoke its certificate of service.

Those systems would then have to tell customers within 30 days what grade they received. MDEQ has until Jan. 1, 2028, to release the first set of grades. MSDH publishes similar evaluations of the state’s drinking water systems.