A Mississippi attorney general’s opinion last month on absentee voting has thrown into confusion the voting rights of individuals in jail.
The Sept. 29 opinion addressed the question of whether qualified electors held in the county of their residence in jail can select disability on their absentee ballot, saying disability and other reasons for voting absentee are decided on a case-by-case basis by local election officials.
The absentee ballot application requires the person check a box stating the reason for voting absentee. Incarcerated individuals have typically checked disabled.
However, the opinion didn’t provide clarity about incarcerated individuals’ access to voting, said Jarrius Adams, a research associate for Mississippi Votes.
Mississippi residents can vote if they are in a county jail awaiting trial or serving time in state prison, and they are able to exercise that right through absentee mail-in ballots, voting advocates say.
Many people think any interaction with the criminal justice system makes them ineligible to vote, but that isn’t true, Adams said. People who are convicted of most felonies, misdemeanors, out-of-state convictions or federal convictions don’t lose their right to vote.
The opinion did go on to say: “We do note that a qualified elector who is otherwise eligible to vote does not lose the right to vote because he or she is being detained.”
Adams said guidance from the secretary of state’s office for circuit clerks who manage voter registration is if someone hasn’t been convicted, they can say their reason for voting absentee is because they temporarily live outside of their place of residence.
The secretary of state’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mississippi Votes aims to educate people about their voting rights and combat rhetoric that can discourage incarcerated people from voting, he said.
“Folks should be able to exercise their right to vote,” he said.
Absentee voting by mail is the main way incarcerated people are able to vote. Once determining they are eligible to vote and register, an incarcerated person can request an absentee ballot from their county circuit clerk’s office by mail.
Voting groups including Mississippi Votes visit jails and prisons throughout the year to get people registered to vote and help fill out voting materials.
Adams said the organization can provide sample ballots, information about voting procedure and help people notarize documents.
“We do it like we do with anyone else,” he said. “The only thing we don’t do is tell them who to vote for. We encourage them to vote up and down the ballot. Their opinion matters.”
Representatives from Mississippi Votes, the Mississippi Center for Justice, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the Mississippi Center for Re-Entry visited women at the Flowood Community Work Center last month. The work center is run by the Mississippi Department of Corrections and is for people who are close to release.
Cynetra Freeman, founder of the Center for Re-Entry and a formerly incarcerated person, said the visit was the first of several planned visits to facilities around the state.
So far, voter advocates on the tour have helped educate 200 incarcerated people, she said, and 35 people have registered to vote.
“It was a great response,” Freeman said. “Everyone was engaged and everyone wanted to learn if they could register to vote.”
— Mississippi Center for Re-Entry (@msreentry) October 6, 2022
Once people leave incarceration, there can also be challenges to being able to vote.
A form of picture identification such as a driver’s license or passport is required to be able to vote in Mississippi. Obtaining a driver’s license requires a certified birth certificate and Social Security card – documentation that can be difficult for a formerly incarcerated person to gather, Freeman said.
She said the center is working with local Social Security offices and the Office of Vital Records to help people use their prison license as a form of identification to obtain their birth certificate, which can be used to get a Social Security card and driver’s license.
While most incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people don’t lose their right to vote, those who are convicted of 22 designated crimes in Mississippi lose suffrage.
Among the disenfranchising crimes are nonviolent offenses such as timber larceny, issuing a bad check and receiving stolen property. Murder, rape and armed robbery were added later in 1968.
Eleven percent of the state’s population is unable to vote because they were convicted of a disenfranchising crime, Adams said. That’s about 236,000 people and 62% of those people are Black.
Framers of the 1890 Constitution placed a lifetime voting ban for those crimes because they believed Black Mississippians were more prone to commit them. That provision has been challenged in court for having discriminatory intent, but in August the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld it, saying “the racial taint” had been removed.
A person convicted of a disenfranchising crime can regain the right to vote through a bill passed through the Legislature or an executive order or pardon by the governor.
“That’s a lot of people who can decide whether a person gets the right back,” Adams said, adding that the process can be hard to start if you don’t know your state lawmakers who would have to file a bill on your behalf.
Between 2007 and 2017, the Legislature considered 128 suffrage applications and 45 people had their voting rights restored, according to a 2021 report about felony disenfranchisement by Mississippi Votes and One Voice.
During the recent legislative session, five people had their rights restored because their suffrage bills became law without the governor’s signature.
For the first time since Mississippi’s multimillion welfare scandal broke in February 2020, lawmakers will hold a hearing about the misspending or theft of at least $77 million in federal funds intended to alleviate poverty in the poorest state in the nation.
Mississippi has earned broad national scrutiny in recent weeks for new revelations in what’s been called “the biggest public embezzlement case in state history” — wealthy, politically connected individuals misspent or personally benefited from millions in federal welfare funds that were supposed to help needy Mississippians.
The Tuesday morning hearing, the first major public hearing following years of calls for such a probe, will be a thoroughly partisan affair. While several notable Republican elected officials and their appointees, friends and campaign donors have been named in the scandal, the hearing will be hosted by the Mississippi Democratic Caucus with sponsorships from several progressive advocacy organizations.
“Mississippi Legislative Democrats will host the first in a series of public hearings on major reforms needed to fix the TANF program and address the millions of dollars in federal penalties the state faces due to years of rampant misspending of TANF funds,” an announcement for the hearing reads. “Impacted families and state and national experts will discuss how to repair Mississippi’s broken public assistance program and head off up to $100 million in federal penalties.”
Democrats enjoy little legislative influence at the state Capitol — as Republicans hold a three-fifths supermajority in both the House and the Senate — and the hearing’s testimony will not likely lead to substantive policy change. Several Democrats over the years have decried the welfare misspending and even filed dozens of bills to curb it in the future. But those talks and legislative efforts have been ignored and killed by Republicans.
Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, have not hosted a single hearing nor publicly investigated the misspending of funds by the state’s welfare department and its nonprofit partners. They have also not drafted or passed a single bill to address the welfare scandal’s stark revelations or increase state oversight over block grant programs.
It is unclear whether a single Republican lawmaker or elected official will attend the Tuesday hearing.
Any lawmaker can reserve a room at the Capitol and host public meetings. Official legislative committees may even subpoena experts or witnesses to testify, but such hearings are a rarity in Mississippi. The Tuesday hearing is not hosted by an official legislative committee, and all of the scheduled speakers will participate voluntarily.
Government officials used the money to lavish their family and friends, invest in a pharmaceutical start-up and make outrageous purchases, such as a new volleyball stadium, a horse ranch for a famous athlete, high-dollar rental agreements on properties that sat empty, lobbying contracts, luxury vehicles, religious concerts, expensive getaways and even a speeding ticket, according to a state auditor’s report.
For years, advocates and political observers have posed several critical questions that have gone unanswered by lawmakers. Some of those questions include:
How, exactly, were welfare officials and nonprofit leaders able to get away with this misspending for several years?
Should Mississippi lawmakers strengthen oversight of the welfare agency to ensure misspending won’t continue? Should the welfare agency be removed completely from the purview of the governor?
Should federal TANF regulations be tightened to stop the possibility of state misspending?
Do we even know the full extent of the misspending? If not, why? Should lawmakers mandate better accounting practices at the welfare agency?
How badly were poor Mississippians left behind while all this misspending occurred, and how can they be better served by state leaders in the future?
The Tuesday hearing will be held at Mississippi State Capitol Room 216 at 10 a.m.
Editor’s Note: Public reports regarding the state’s administration of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program give little detail as to how Mississippi uses the $86.5 million in federal grant funds it is allocated each year. To provide a deeper look at the spending, Mississippi Today pulled and analyzed all expenditures from 2015-2022labeled “TANF Work Program” from the state’s public accounting database, called MAGIC, available through the state’s Transparency website. The news organization also analyzed all federal financial reports for the program from 2015-2020.
There are several caveats to the data, but as lawmakers and policy experts research ways to improve this program’s operations, Mississippi Today is releasing the entirety of the data for the public’s use.If you have any questions or comments about the data, please email Anna Wolfe at awolfe@mississippitoday.org.For a downloadable PDF version of this report, click here.
Attempts by officials to quantify the misspending within the “Mississippi welfare scandal” appear in two main reports.
But the purchases they examined make up just a fraction of the state’s total welfare spending — leaving millions in spending a mystery to the public.
The state auditor’s 2019 Single Audit found misspending of $98 million in funds from the Mississippi Department of Human Services — the bulk of which were funds from the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, but also included other federal grants: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Child Care Development Funds (CCDF) and Social Services Block Grant (SSBG). The 2019 Single Audit is an annual report that examined spending in just that one year but extended into previous years in some cases, such as if the grant was a multi-year agreement.
MDHS commissioned a separate forensic audit that covered four calendar years, 2016-2019, and examined TANF spending exclusively. That report found misspending of $77 million. In the four fiscal years 2016-2020, Mississippi spent $317 million in federal TANF dollars.
In both cases, auditors questioned payments for multiple reasons — because the purchases didn’t comply with federal grant regulations, they constituted a conflict of interest or simply because they didn’t contain supporting documentation.
The primary difference in findings between the two reports comes from the fact the state Single Audit reviewed more grant spending than just TANF, and that the forensic audit attempted to comprehensively cover a four-year period. Other documents that help quantify the scandal include the initial indictments against six individuals in 2020, which alleged the theft of $4.15 million, and the civil suit MDHS is bringing against 38 individuals or companies, which alleges the defendants improperly received roughly $24 million.
Almost all of the identified DHS and TANF misspending occurred through subgrants that MDHS issued to outside organizations.
MDHS says it is addressing this by strengthening its internal controls and subgrantee monitoring. In late 2019 after the auditor’s investigation began, MDHS reinstituted a “Request for Proposals (RFP)” process for awarding TANF subgrants — a process the agency had not used since 2012, according to public records retrieved by Mississippi Today. The stricter rules have resulted in far fewer TANF dollars going out to service providers across the state.
The TANF program, a federal block grant to states, is best known for providing cash assistance — referred to as the “welfare check” — to very poor families. But the program gives states broad flexibility to spend the money in the ways they think will reduce or prevent poverty. Federal law does not require these the state to spend the money on evidence-based programs or to achieve specific desired outcomes. Across the country, states spend 80% of the money on things other than direct aid, on programs they call workforce training, child care, child welfare, out-of-wedlock pregnancy prevention and fatherhood. Most of these services are provided by organizations who vie for TANF subgrants to do the work.
But these grants do not make up the entirety of the TANF program in Mississippi.
The federal government allocates $86.5 million in federal TANF funds to Mississippi each year.
Unspent funds may roll over to the next year. In any given year, the state may be spending federal funds from previous grant years. The state must also put up a state match. Historically, the state has reported its college scholarship program as the bulk of its TANF state match.
From 2015 to 2022, Mississippi pushed about $156 million to subgrantees under the TANF Work Program, according to a Mississippi Today review of public expenditures, but that’s less than 40% of the roughly $418 million in federal TANF funds the state reported spending during those years. Just $36.5 million, less than 9%, went to cash assistance, per federal reports. So where did the rest go?
Using data from the state’s public accounting database, Mississippi Today found that between 2015 and 2022, MDHS spent more than $40 million on “Contractual Services” labeled under the “TANF Work Program.” This spending rose dramatically during the time of the corruption, from $162,077 in 2015 to $6.4 million in 2016 and $8.4 million in 2017. The agency has since quelled this spending since the scandal broke, reducing contractual services to $1.6 million in 2022.
Mississippi Today analyzed all expenditures labeled “TANF Work Program” under “Functional Area” in the state’s public accounting database, MAGIC, available through the state’s Transparency website, in state fiscal years 2015 to 2022.
Payments made under TANF subgrants — the subject of ongoing criminal investigations — are labeled under “TANF Work Program” and are reflected in the following figures.
There are some caveats to the data. Mississippi Department of Human Services told Mississippi Today that not all purchases made with federal TANF funds, such as cash assistance payments, are labeled this way and not all are retrievable through the state’s public accounting database. Additionally, some limited other grants are “charged” to the TANF Work Program, MDHS said, so these expenditures could reflect other grant spending. For these reasons, the agency said it would be impossible to compile an accounting of federal TANF funds using publicly facing data.
Sept. 19, 2022 email from MDHS:
6.) Generally, how can I match up the funding categories in the ACF reports with expenditures from the state?
You can't. Federal reporting requires cost collection fields from MAGIC that are not available in Transparency.
At the bottom of this report is Mississippi Today’s full list of questions to MDHS and the agency’s answers. While recognizing imperfections with the data, Mississippi Today compared the TANF expenditures available in the public database to the TANF expenditures Mississippi reported in financial reports to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families (ACF) as a rough overview. State and federal fiscal years differ by about three months, so annual totals are not a perfect comparison. Additionally, the federal reports are typically behind by two years, so the most recent available federal ACF report is for the year 2020. Mississippi reported the highest expenditures of TANF funds on record in 2018, during the height of the welfare scandal.
Mississippi spent anywhere from $17 million (2020) to $52 million (2018) each year under TANF subgrants to outside organizations, according to Mississippi Today’s analysis of expenditures labeled under the “expense items” called “Grantor Payments Nontaxable” and “Transfer to Subgrantee” in MAGIC.
This spending is the primary subject of state audits and independent forensic audits conducted in the last two years. Mississippi Today’s analysis of MAGIC data shows Mississippi paid the two “Families First for Mississippi” nonprofits at the center of the scandal, Mississippi Community Education Center and Family Resource Center of North Mississippi, $55.8 million and $41.4 million in TANF funds, respectively, from 2015 to 2020. The two nonprofits did not receive any TANF funds in 2021 or 2022. Because of missing documentation, auditors say there are still roughly $40 million in purchases from MCEC that have not be examined.
The nonprofits are listed as “Vendors” in MAGIC. TANF subgrantees aren’t the only vendors who receive payments labeled “TANF Work Program” under “Functional Area” in the state expenditure database. Other governmental divisions, consulting firms, tech companies, accountants, a law firm and hotels are also some of the vendors that receive payments labeled “TANF Work Program.”
After MCEC and FRC, the next 20 highest paid “Vendors” for expenditures labeled “TANF Work Program” from 2015-2022 were Mississippi Alliance of Boys & Girls Club ($29.5 million), SPAHRS Payroll & Travel ($21.7 million), Jobs Bank Account ($7 million), Mississippi State University – MAFES ($6.1 million), Department of Employment Security ($5.8 million), Cambria Solutions Inc. ($5.2 million), Institutions of Higher Learning ($5 million), University of Mississippi-Accounting Office ($4.9 million), Midtown Partners ($3.8 million), Community College Board ($3.7 million), Mississippi State University ($3.7 million), Mississippi Children’s Home Society ($3.5 million), YMCA Association Metro Jackson ($2.8 million), Mississippi State University ($2.8 million), Three Rivers Planning & Development District ($2.8 million), Save the Children Federation ($2.6 million), Jobs for Mississippi Graduates ($2.4 million), Heart of David Ministry ($2.1 million), Mississippi State University ($2 million), Boys & Girls Club of Central Mississippi ($2 million). Some vendors, like Mississippi State University, have several vendor profiles in the state’s accounting database, which is why they may appear multiple times.
Payments of $62,727 to Pigott Law Firm, the private firm MDHS hired to bring the civil suit against people who improperly received welfare funds, were labeled under “TANF Work Program” in 2022.
The Office of the State Auditor also received payments labeled under “TANF Work Program” in 2018 ($137,568.67), 2019 ($276,997.26), 2020 ($420,692.81), 2021 ($420,692.81) and 2022 ($394,184.70). The office did not receive any of these payments from 2015-2017.
According to the ACF spending reports Mississippi sent to the federal government, the state spent a total of $104.4 million in federal TANF funds in 2018 and $55.1 million in 2020.
Comparing total spending to the subgrantee payments, the state spent $52 million in 2018 and $38 million in 2020 on things other than subgrants to outside organizations.
The state spent $6.1 million and $3.7 million in those years on direct cash assistance to needy families.
The ACF spending reports includes payments labeled “Child Welfare Services” — $20.8 million in 2018 and $21.8 million in 2020. Mississippi Department of Human Services confirmed it has been using a large chunk of its TANF fund to supplement the budget of the Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services, the agency tasked with overseeing the state’s foster care system and investigating child abuse and neglect. The agency has not stated how these dollars are utilized at CPS — whether they are used on salaries for caseworkers, for example, or on contracts with family unification agencies.
MDHS says it is currently awarding subgrants of $34.5 million each TANF grant year, spending $4.1 million on cash assistance and transferring $30 million to child welfare, leaving about $18 million in additional available federal funds on the table.
While MDHS said it spent $62.3 million in TANF funds in 2022, expenditures in the public database only reflect expenditures labeled “TANF Work Program” totaling $21.9 million. It explained that the remainder, $40.4 million, reflects payments that are not retrievable through Transparency, such as the payments to child protection services. To explain what this additional spending would be, MDHS only gave the example of cash assistance payments — which they said total $4.1 million — and “work related expenses on behalf of our clients.” MDHS did not provide any more information about how it spends the money.
2015-2020 ACF and MAGIC comparison
In federal ACF spending reports from 2015 to 2020, Mississippi reported spending $418 million in federal TANF funds. For this analysis, Mississippi Today only looked at expenditures, excluding transfers of TANF funds to the Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) or Social Services Block Grant (SSBG), which have also varied greatly from year to year.
Of the $418 million, $115 million was reportedly spent on “Child Welfare Services” — likely reflecting the transfers to CPS. It does not appear these transfers are reflected in expenditures labeled “TANF Work Program” in MAGIC. Excluding the transfers to child welfare, Mississippi reported spending $303 million in federal TANF funds from 2012-2020. The state’s public accounting database only reflects TANF spending of $221 million, leaving around $80 million in TANF funds that cannot be identified in the state’s public accounting database.
MDHS told Mississippi Today that cash assistance payments to TANF clients are not available in the state’s public accounting database. Mississippi reported to ACF spending $36.5 million between 2015-2020 on basic cash assistance, leaving at least $45.5 million in additional TANF spending during those years a mystery to the public.
According to interviews, MDHS began offering $250-a-month transportation stipends to TANF clients in the mid-2000s, but this spending is not broken down or identifiable in either the ACF reports or on Transparency, according to MDHS. It’s unclear how much this service is offered today.
When Mississippi Today requested from MDHS in May 2020 all TANF expenditures for fiscal year 2020, the agency provided two spreadsheets with information from the state’s accounting database. The spreadsheet of payments to vendors are coded as “TANF Work Program” under “Functional Area” — similar to what is available on Transparency — and contained the same kinds of vendors analyzed here. A separate spreadsheet contained the “EPAY” data — “EBT – Family Assistance,” “Children Assistance,” and “Other Assistance” — that is not retrievable by pulling “TANF Work Program” expenditures on Transparency. For a roughly seven-month period, the total issued through EPAY was about $4 million. That included roughly $1.3 million labeled as transportation — “PAY TR TRANS”, “PAY TRANSPORT” and “TRANS NOT WORK.”
“Expense Type & Item” comparison 2015-2022
A comparison of the “Expense Type” and “Expense Item” of “TANF Work Program” expenditures in MAGIC from year to year shows a large variation in program operations.
From 2016-2020, the largest payments to subgrantees were labeled in the “Transfer to Subgrantee” category. Today, the state is recording the bulk of these payments not as “Transfer to Subgrantee” but as “Grantor Payments Nontaxable.” For the purpose of this analysis, Mississippi Today is combining and considering both “Transfer to Subgrantee” and “Grantor Payments Nontaxable” — which, according to Mississippi Today’s review, typically go to TANF subgrantee organizations — as TANF subgrant payments.
TANF subgrants recorded in MAGIC have declined from $52 million in 2018 to $15.7 million in 2022, which tracks with the state cutting funding to MCEC and FRC in 2020, as well as imposing stricter requirements on TANF subgrants. Similarly, the state isn’t spending as much on contractual services ($8 million in 2018 versus $1.6 million in 2022) or on travel ($367,767 in 2019 versus $15,864 in 2022).
Salaries and wages for the program, however, have increased significantly since the scandal occurred.
In 2016, when John Davis became director and began moving to privatize functions of the agency, such as the child support enforcement division, salaries under the TANF program decreased from $5.3 million in 2015 to $1 million in 2016. While there wasn’t an acknowledgement the agency was “privatizing” the welfare program, MDHS began relying more and more on employees of the private “Families First” nonprofits to perform agency functions. The nonprofits were hiring away former employees of MDHS, but officials like Davis treated the state agency and private nonprofits as one in the same. Since the scandal broke and Families First shuttered, salaries charged under TANF have increased from less than $1 million in 2019 to nearly $2.5 million in 2022.
MDHS explained that during the time of the scandal, "additional funding was available from another source" to pay for salaries associated with the TANF Work Program and that when that funding ended, the salaries were charged back to TANF.
Vendors under the TANF Work Program 2022
MDHS paid 81 vendors a total of $21.9 million under the "TANF Work Program" in 2022. From 2015-2022, MDHS paid nearly 400 different vendors. The table below includes all the vendors who received at least $1,000 under the “TANF Work Program" from 2015-2022.
Current TANF subgrantees
According to a spreadsheet MDHS provided Mississippi Today, the agency awarded $36.7 million worth of TANF subgrants for the 2021 grant year. The agency has not awarded grants for 2022, which has ended. Based on the dollar amount spent in each category, it appears MDHS is placing more priority on workforce development ($14.9 million) and after school programs ($13.7 million) than parenting initiatives ($8.1 million), which was the primary function of Families First for Mississippi.
There is not a public-facing repository of information or data regarding the efficacy or outcomes of these programs.
Below are the answers MDHS provided Mississippi Today regarding data retrieval from Transparency. For several of the questions, MDHS did not provide a response.
MS TODAY questions (italics) and answers (bold) provided by MDHS on Sept. 19, 2022:
I looked at every expenditure in MAGIC labeled “TANF” in the “Functional Area” category. Here are the total expenditures in MAGIC from 2015-2022: 2015 ($12,929,221.02), 2016 ($26,406,682.63), 2017 ($42,461,946.71), 2018 ($63,755,024.00), 2019 ($48,772,637.14), 2020 ($26,406,682.63), 2021 ($18,780,281.73), 2022 ($21,869,598.21).
The amounts in MAGIC are far lower than the amount of TANF we reported spending to the feds. I realize MAGIC uses state fiscal year and the ACF reports are probably by federal fiscal year, but that wouldn’t account for the drastic differences between the total amounts labeled TANF in MAGIC and the figures we report to the feds. ACF “Federal Funds – Total Expenditures” highlighted next to the MAGIC figures below:
2015: $12,929,221.02 ($46,124,884)
2016: $26,406,682.63 ($49,844,769)
2017: $42,461,946.71 ($83,633,112)
2018: $63,755,024.00 ($104,424,460)
2019: $48,772,637.14 ($79,221,691)
2020: $26,406,682.63 ($55,119,534)
The ACF reports are very outdated, which is why it’s been so hard to look at current spending in the last two years. When the scandal broke in early 2020, the most recent report was from 2018. But in all the expenditure reports/subgrantee data I’ve gathered from the agency over the years, I’ve never seen enough to add up to the totals we report to the feds.
I know we transfer a good bit from TANF to CPS every year, so I even accounted for that in my analysis, in case those inter-agency transfers don’t appear on MAGIC.
The figures below are the ACF “Total Expenditures” minus “Child Welfare” (which I’m guessing are the CPS transfers — although the amounts under “Child Welfare” in the ACF reports, ranging from $12m to $27m, are still less than what CPS recently told me they get from TANF every year):
2015: $29,277,558
2016: $33,777,260
2017: $70,774,040
2018: $83,666,783
2019: $52,133,231
2020: $33,363,256
Comparing the amount of federal TANF dollars (minus “child welfare”) we reported spending to the federal government and the amount of TANF expenditures available on MAGIC, the difference is still as much as $28 million in some years.
1.) How do TANF Expenditures appear on MAGIC?
TANF Expenditures are captured in MAGIC using a system assigned Grant Number.
2.) Are all purchases made with TANF funds labeled as TANF in "Functional Area"?
No. A functional area represents an organizational division within the agency, and not a grant.
3.) If not why?
TANF expenditures may be charged to other organizational divisions, and would not appear in the TANF Work Program Functional Area. For example; TANF Assistance payments are charged to the "Assistance Payments" functional area.
4.) And how would I be able to view TANF expenditures then?
The public view on the Transparency Web Site does not provide the Grant Number / Description therefore you will not be {able }to categorically identify TANF specific charges using Transparency.
5.) If a purchase is labeled TANF under "Functional Area" does that mean it was funded with TANF funds?
No, there are other Grants that are charged to this functional area. For example, Sexual Risk Avoidance Grant charges appear under this functional area also.
6.) Generally, how can I match up the funding categories in the ACF reports with expenditures from the state?
You can't. Federal reporting requires cost collection fields from MAGIC that are not available in Transparency.
7.) How do TANF cash assistance payouts appear in MAGIC?
TANF Assistance payments are charged to the "Assistance Payments" functional area, using a Special Fund Type called a Bank Account Fund. Expenditures charged to this fund type are not available in Transparency.
8.) The most recent federal caseload data suggest we may be bulking up the cash assistance side of the program, but where is that reflected in agency spending/expenditure reports?
See answer to #7
9.) There is a category in MAGIC called "EBT-Family Assistance" but take a look at the totals in this category for each year:
2015: $0
2016: $0
2017: $0
2018: -$27,223
2019: -$121,654.16
2020: $0
2021: $0
2022: $1,955,000
a. Surely some people received cash assistance in these years, I hope, so why does this category in MAGIC appear so low?
If Transparency provided visibility of the Bank Account Fund type, then we would see assistance payments appear under this Commitment Item. (See also answer to #7) The "EBT-Family Assistance" Commitment Item is a category that we charge both SNAP and TANF assistance payments to. However, you are not seeing the payments, you are only seeing some relatively immaterial adjustments made through Journal Entries which are being charged to the MDHS Grant Fund.
b. What do these figures, especially the negative figures mean?
As stated above, you are not seeing the payments, you are only seeing some adjustments made through Journal Entries which appear in the Grant Fund.
c. Why did it jump so drastically in 2022?
The $1.9 million in 2022 were expenditures for the Pandemic Emergency Assistance Fund (PEAF), which was a new federal grant, and not a part of our normal payments to clients.
10.) What are the payments to the vendor JOBS BANK ACCOUNT?
The "Jobs Bank Account" is a checking account and is primarily used to pay work related expenses on behalf of our clients. We deposit funds into this account and then write checks to cover the work related expenses. It is also used as a clearing account to wire funds to the vendor who handles TANF Assistance Payments and TANF Work Programs.
11.) What are these Jobs Bank Account Payments, who gets them, and why did the amount vary so drastically between 2020, 2021 and 2022? The amount jumped from just $685.75 in 2021 to $2 million in 2022? What explains this?
See answer to question 9.a. and 9.c. The Pandemic Emergency Assistance Fund ($1.9M) payments moved through the JOBS BANK ACCOUNT, hence the increase for 2022.
12.) What is the "EBT-Family Assistance - 67090000" and "Children Assistance - 67055000" and why are the amounts so low? We spent just $80 on Children Assistance in 2022, compared to $1.4 million in 2015.
"EBT-Family Assistance - 67090000": See answer 9.a.
"Children Assistance - 67055000: See answer to 9.a.
The amounts for 2015 are payments to clients through the JOBS Bank Account using State Funds for transitional transportation. Typically this is paid for from TANF Federal dollars, but in 2015 State Funds were needed for the TANF Maintenance of Effort. It was necessary to move these funds to the JOBS Bank Account, from sources that didn't involve the Bank Account Fund, and these fund sources appear in Transparency.
13.) I don't see anything in MAGIC that appears to represent the $250 transportation vouchers that MDHS offers. Where are the transportation vouchers reflected in agency spending?
These expenditures are found in the Bank Account Fund, see answer #7.
14.) My next question is about the administrative side of TANF. In the expenses labeled "TANF" in MAGIC, the "Salaries & Fringe Benefits" category has changed drastically over the years - from $5 million in 2015 to less than $1 million in 2019 to now up to nearly $2.5 million in 2022. During the timeframe where there was a decrease in the use of TANF funds for Salaries & Fringe Benefits, additional funding was available from another source. When this funding ended some of the salaries migrated back to TANF.
a. What does this mean for the TANF program?
b. Who are these employees and what are they doing?
c. The amount of TANF going to payroll in 2022 has more than doubled since 2019, but is half the amount in 2015. What is the ideal size of the program staff?
15.) MDHS used to spend between $10,000 and $140,000 in TANF funds on equipment every year, but we haven't spent any on equipment in 2021 and 2022. Our TANF commodities and travel spending has similarly declined.
a. How was this spending quelled? What has been the effect on the agency or program?
b. Ideally should any TANF funds be used on hotels, food, office furniture, etc.?
c. We still spend some of the money this way. Is that allowed and under what circumstances?
16.) Contractual services, and especially professional fees, have declined significantly as well. Did current MDHS leadership find these contracts unnecessary? Or were they moved to a different division in the agency?
17.) "Transfer to Subgrantee" vs. "Grantor Payments Nontaxable"The Department of Finance and Administration required that the agency change the General Ledger Accounting Codes used when making payments to our subgrantees resulting in the expenditures appearing under different Commitment Items.
18.) I assume we're spending a lot less on subgrants because of what happened, but how does the agency plan to rectify this moving forward so that the money is being pushed out to valuable services across the state?
Should be answered by the program
19.) Who are the following vendors and/or what are they doing for the TANF program
Mississippi Children's Home Society ($2.8 million)
Institutions of Higher Learning ($1.6 million)
Dept. of Employment Security ($677,000)
Community College Board ($500,000)
Guidesoft Inc. ($348,000)
Strategic Solutions for Families ($145,000)
United Family Life Center ($83,000)
Rose of Sharon ($77,000)
SASSI Institute ($49,500) (I know this is the drug testing vendor, but I don't see it as a vendor in every year, so I'm curious about that. Also, I thought clients had to pay to get drug tested? Do taxpayers also pay for this?)
Georgia Department of Human Services ($24,700)
Deer Oaks EAP Services ($8,850) (This is the Division's share of the Employee Assistance Program, and is an employee benefit not a client assistance payment.)
Med Screens ($1,900)
Random small payments to various county boards of supervisors.
20.) Again, we spent just $21.9 million, according to MAGIC, in 2022 on the TANF program, which is a $86.5 million-a-year program. How is that possible?
The $21.9 million is understated, and the actual amount for State FY 2022 was $62.3M. See answers to questions 1-3 & 7 for an explanation of why these expenditures would not be showing up in Transparency under the TANF Work Program
21.) Generally, what does MDHS hope to see for the TANF program in the future? Mississippi has so much more federal money for this program than we're currently spending. How does the state plan to best utilize these funds moving forward?
22.) Also, recent caseload data shows there were 256 adult recipients on TANF in November 2021, then 1,809 in December 2021 (the month Mississippi offered $1,000 bonuses to TANF recipients), then 166 in January 2022. How did that happen? How were that many more applicants able to qualify (for a program with such strict eligibility) and why did they fall off the rolls so fast?
About a month removed from a unified effort to lift Jackson out of its water crisis, city and state officials continue to trade public jabs, with the future of the water system on the line.
Meanwhile, the federal government is now tackling the crisis on multiple fronts, with members of Congress on Monday calling for an investigation into the state’s infrastructure spending.
Gov. Tate Reeves released a statement Monday criticizing Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba for being unwilling to work with the Unified Command Structure, a multi-agency taskforce that the state formed in late August to help diagnose, fund and fix issues at Jackson’s main water treatment plant.
Specifically, Reeves said city officials told his office they were unwilling to participate in the state’s emergency contract procurement to hire staff across the Jackson water system for a year. The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency posted the “request for qualifications,” or RFQ, on Friday.
“That would be a huge mistake by the city,” the governor said. “They would be communicating through this action that they no longer desire state assistance and insist on going it alone.”
Reeves said in his statement that the Environmental Protection Agency was pressing the state to hire support staff, and to “take the lead” in procuring the contract. The EPA told Jackson officials in late September it was “prepared to take action,” and then two weeks ago the Jackson City Council voted to enter into a confidentiality agreement with the Department of Justice in discussing a settlement.
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves greets members of the Mississippi National Guard at a water distribution site located at the Mississippi Trade Mart in Jackson, Miss., Thursday, September 1, 2022. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
Lumumba disputed that he was unwilling to participate in the unified approach, saying instead that city officials hadn’t had a chance to review the RFQ before the state published it.
“The City of Jackson has made no mention of ending the City’s cooperation with the Unified Command Structure,” the mayor said in a statement Monday. “What the city will not do is agree to a Request for Qualifications, without the entire Unified Command Structure, which includes the city, having had an opportunity to first contribute, revise or approve the language.”
Jackson, as the RFQ states, would be the entity funding the contract. Hence, Lumumba added: “It is only reasonable to expect the City to play a role in hiring that company.”
The RFQ seeks staffing to run operations, maintenance, and management of both of the city’s surface water treatments plants — O.B. Curtis and J.H. Fewell — as well as Jackson’s tanks and well facilities, for a year.
The governor’s statement says Jackson officials had a chance to review the “technical components of the request,” but did not mention any other involvement from the city.
Before the state intervened in late August to take over the O.B. Curtis operations, Lumumba said the city was looking for an operations and management contractor to run the treatment plant.
Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, with City of Jackson Communications Manager Melissa Payne, fields questions during a community meeting held to update the public on the water system, Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2022, at College Hill Missionary Baptist Church. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
But at a community meeting on Sept. 13, the mayor said the company he was looking at would no longer negotiate because it was now talking with the state instead. Two days later, WLBT reported, the state awarded an operations contract to Hemphill Construction that lasts two months.
As part of the Unified Command Structure the state established in late August, the state and Jackson officials each agreed to pay half the costs for emergency repairs. President Joe Biden then declared a federal emergency, which included paying for 75% of water system improvement costs for 90 days. That cost-share expires on Nov. 29.
The state’s Emergency Management Assistance Compact, or EMAC, contracts expire on Thursday, MEMA said. For weeks, the city and state have relied on the EMAC program to help rehabilitate O.B. Curtis through the work of out-of-state water operators.
Get the latest updates on the Jackson water crisis.
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Thompson, Maloney launch investigationover state’s role
U.S. Reps. Bennie Thompson and Carolyn Maloney sent a letter to Reeves on Monday asking for information on the state’s spending of federal drinking water funds. The two Democrats expressed concern over how Mississippi has divvied up historic amounts of federal funding thus far.
“The American Rescue Plan Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law made billions of dollars available to Mississippi to address a variety of problems,” the letter says, “However, criteria used by (state legislation) to allocate funding — such as median household income, possible population decline and unemployment rate — may limit the funding Jackson receives compared to other locales, despite Jackson’s much greater need.”
In the letter, Thompson and Maloney ask Reeves for a breakdown of how the state was allocating money from the American Rescue Plan Act. They also ask for details on the extra oversight state lawmakers required for sending matching funds to Jackson.
State lawmakers required that matching ARPA funds provided to Jackson go through the Mississippi Department of Finance and Administration, a burden placed on no other municipality in the state.
Jackson residents and supporters hold signs as they march to the Governor’s Mansion in Jackson, Miss. to protest the ongoing water issues in the city on Monday, Sept. 26, 2022. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
The letter also asks about an “arbitrary” $500,000 cap the state established in forgiving loans paid for with money from the Infrastructure Law.
The investigation comes after both the NAACP and the Poor People’s Campaign have in recent weeks called for legal action against the state for depriving the majority-Black city of support for its water system.
The questions over state support to Jackson follow a history of Mississippi lawmakers putting up obstacles for the city to access needed infrastructure funding.
In 2013, lawmakers voted to allow Jackson to add a 1-cent sales tax to help pay for infrastructure. However, lawmakers took the unusual step of creating a commission to oversee the spending and projects, over objections from city leaders, and lawmakers exempted many purchases from the additional tax. So far, most of the projects approved have been for street repairs.
In 2021, lawmakers killed a proposal from the city to allow city voters to decide whether to levy an additional, citywide 1-cent sales tax increase for water and sewerage repairs. The push came after historic winter storms that year left much of the city without water for weeks.
Also in 2021, the city of Jackson unsuccessfully lobbied lawmakers for $47 million in funding for drinking water improvements. The Jackson City Council also requested another $60 million to build new water tanks. With the state relatively flush with cash, lawmakers approved spending $356 million in projects statewide, but earmarked only $3 million for Jackson.
In an interview earlier this year with Mississippi Today, Lumumba described the Legislature’s attitude toward Jackson as both racist” and “paternalistic” in terms of how the capitol city is treated compared to other governmental entities.
Mississippi Today reporters Bobby Harrison and Geoff Pender contributed to this report.
Mississippi’s two U.S. senators have been non-committal on whether they will support Lowndes County District Attorney Scott Colom’s nomination as a federal judge.
The White House has announced Colom’s nomination to the U.S. District Court to fill the spot vacated by Michael Mills, who has taken senior status. The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal first reported the nomination by President Joe Biden.
The objection to Colom by the state’s two U.S. senators could doom his nomination under long-standing Senate traditions.
In an emailed response to Mississippi Today, U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker said, “Judge Michael Mills has left big shoes to fill. I look forward to speaking with District Attorney Colom about his nomination for this important vacancy.”
Mississippi’s junior U.S. senator, Cindy Hyde-Smith, has not publicly commented on the nomination.
Appointments to the federal judiciary, a lifetime appointment, require Senate confirmation.
It is customary for an individual senator from the home state of the judicial nominee to be able to block the Senate nomination through a so-called “blue-slip process.” It is uncertain whether Hyde-Smith or Wicker, both Republicans, would blue-slip Colom, who was appointed by the Democratic Biden.
Colom, a Columbus resident, has been the district attorney for the 16th Judicial District, which consists of Lowndes, Oktibbeha, Noxubee and Clay counties, since 2016. He previously worked for the Mississippi Center for Justice and was a municipal court judge.
The other northern district judges are Debra Brown and Sharion Aycock. When appointed by former President Obama, Brown became the state’s first female African American chief federal judge. Colom would become the second Black judge in the state’s Northern District if he is confirmed.
Biden has yet to announce his nomination for U.S. attorney for the northern district of Mississippi. In September, Biden nominated Todd Gee to serve as U.S. attorney for the southern district of Mississippi, a post that has been vacant since President Trump appointee Mike Hurst resigned in January 2021.
In this episode of Mississippi Stories, Mississippi Today Editor-At-Large Marshall Ramsey sits down with owner and publisher of Mississippi Christian Living magazine Katie Eubanks. Katie, a former writer for the Northside Sun and the Clarion Ledger, took a leap of faith when she took over the longtime Mississippi magazine founded by Marilyn Tinnin.
She talks about what it is like to wears entrepreneur, businessperson and writer hats and she talks about how her faith keeps her grounded and moving forward through business challenges. She also talks about her upcoming women’s conference and some of the challenges her speakers and panelists have faced at well.
A new Morning Consult poll had to grab the attention of House Speaker Philip Gunn and a few other prominent Mississippi Republicans.
The poll, conducted over a three-month period this summer, tagged Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves as the fifth most unpopular governor in the nation. Reeves had the approval of 48% of the respondents and a 42% disapproval.
Generally speaking, the nation’s governors had positive rankings in the 50-state poll. But Reeves was one of only eight governors whose popularity ranking was below 50%. Of the many Republican governors running for reelection within the next four years, Reeves ranks last in America.
The poll had to provide a little positive energy for any politician thinking of challenging the governor. Various sources indicate that Gunn, who is in his third term as House speaker, has been considering whether to challenge Reeves in the 2023 Republican gubernatorial primary.
Gunn has refused to say what his plans are. If he was certain that he was running for reelection to his current House seat and then again to the speaker’s post, he would make that abundantly clear. Such an early proclamation most likely would head off any challenges for both his seat and for his speaker’s post. But Gunn has remained quiet on his future, leading to rampant speculation about who might be the future leader of the House.
Reeves, a first-term Republican governor, has consistently been near the bottom in terms of popularity in the ongoing Morning Consult polls.
Despite that, challenging the incumbent governor would be a daunting task. Reeves’ sizable campaign war chest makes him a formidable incumbent even if he is near the bottom in a poll of the nation’s governors.
There are at least four statewide officeholders who are or have considered challenging Reeves.
First-term Secretary of State Michael Watson, when recently asked about his political plans, deferred and said he had not made a decision. Sources close to Watson say he’s considering a 2023 bid against Reeves.
Attorney General Lynn Fitch, fresh off her successful effort in ending a national right to an abortion, might never be in a better position to run for governor. Mississippi Today reported earlier this year that Fitch, based on her advisers’ counsel, has considered challenging Reeves in 2023.
Both State Auditor Shad White and Agriculture and Commerce Commissioner Andy Gipson are also said to have considered a gubernatorial bid as they’ve coursed their political futures.
The problem for any of these potential candidates in 2023, though, is that Reeves starts with a considerable advantage. The 48-year-old Reeves has been a statewide elected official for nearly all of his adult life: two terms as treasurer, two terms as lieutenant governor and now a first term as governor.
That might explain some of his unpopularity as reflected in the Morning Consult poll. He says he has not shied away from telling people no and thus creating enemies. But more than his willingness to say no, perhaps what might contribute to any unpopularity is the perception of an eagerness to go out of his way to find confrontation.
If nothing else, though, Reeves has name recognition that can be advantageous on an election ballot. Politicians who conduct polls are always surprised to learn of the number of Mississippians who do not know the speaker, secretary of state or other elected officials. But most do know the governor — especially one who has been on the statewide scene for two decades.
And more important than the name identification is Reeves’ huge cash advantage. He has never run a race where he did not have a sizable campaign cash advantage.
That will be the case in 2023. Based on the latest campaign finance reports, filed with the Secretary of State’s office in January, Reeves has cash on hand of about $5 million. On the other hand, Northern District Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley, who is viewed as the Democratic favorite for governor should he choose to run, has $520,000. Reports are that Presley has had strong fundraising efforts this year that will not be reflected on his campaign finance report until January 2023.
Other statewide officials who might be viewed as possible challengers in a Republican primary are far behind Reeves in fundraising.
For example, as of January:
Watson had $351,026.
Fitch had $555,120.
White had $603,353.
Gipson had $87,800.
In terms of campaign cash, Gunn appears to be in the strongest position with $1 million. Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann has $2.6 million, but has said he believes his current office is where he can have the greatest impact.
There will be three gubernatorial elections in 2023: Mississippi, Louisiana and Kentucky. Reeves and Democrat Andy Beshear in normally Republican-dominated Kentucky are the two incumbents eligible to seek reelection.
Beshear is among the top 10 most popular governors, according to the Morning Consult poll. But before people start arguing the poll has a partisan tilt, it should be pointed out that nine of the 10 most popular governors are Republican. And the three most popular represent states that generally are Democratic strongholds: Charlie Baker in Massachusetts, Phil Scott in Vermont and Larry Hogan in Maryland.
They all have reputations of not looking for fights.
Just hours after Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson’s Jan. 6 Committee voted to subpoena former President Donald Trump, Trump wrote a ranting letter addressed to Thompson that questioned the work and claims of the House select committee.
The committee, empaneled in 2021 and chaired by Thompson, has been investigating the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, and has argued that Trump is responsible for inspiring a violent mob to breach the U.S. Capitol and interrupt the certification of the 2020 election that Trump lost.
Trump, who did not mention the subpoena in his 14-page letter to Thompson, fumed about the committee’s work — including what Thompson on Thursday called the committee’s central finding: That Trump “is the one person at the center of the story of what happened on Jan. 6.”
“THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2020 WAS RIGGED AND STOLEN!” Trump’s letter begins, using all caps. “… This memo is being written to express our anger, disappointment, and complaint that with all of the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on what many consider to be a Charade and Witch Hunt, and despite strong and powerful requests, you have not spent even a short moment on examining the massive Election Fraud that took place during the 2020 Presidential Election, and have targeted only those who were, as concerned American Citizens, protesting the Fraud itself.”
Thompson has been outspoken in his belief that the depth and seriousness of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol should be revealed for the nation to see. Most Republican politicians in Washington, including members of the state’s congressional delegation with the exception of Rep. Michael Guest, opposed the investigation.
The committee has found bombshell evidence, including testimony that Trump tried to go to the Capitol as his supporters were invading on Jan. 6 and that he rejected pleas for hours by Republican elected officials and members of his staff to make a statement to stop the attack.
Following its final public hearing on Thursday, all nine members of the committee voted to subpoena the former president, compelling him to testify before the committee. Trump has not said whether he will comply with the subpoena or fight it in the courts.
