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A first floor storage room at the state Capitol was opened Friday, and the Art Logistics International moving company crew from Memphis, Tennessee, got to work building a protective scaffolding-like hoist. 

The protective contraption was constructed to safely lift the statute of former Gov. Theodore Gilmore Bilbo, one of the state’s most notorious racists, onto a forklift and then to a waiting flatbed. 

The curious stopped for a closer look, chatted amongst themselves and snapped a few cellphone images.

“It’s been 75 years. I think the old goat would be tickled he’s still causing this much of a fuss,” said one onlooker.

“Long time coming, and way past time,” said another.

Bilbo served two terms as Mississippi governor in the 1920s and 30s and was later elected three times as U.S. senator. Among his many egregiously racist actions, he advocated for the deportation of Black Americans to Africa and fought national efforts to pass anti-lynching legislation.

After stints in the Capitol Rotunda, Room 113 and out of sight behind the closed doors of a storage room, the Bilbo statute was transported from the Capitol to its new home in the basement of the Two Mississippi Museums.

The post Statue of former Gov. Bilbo removed from Capitol appeared first on Mississippi Today.

After months of negotiations during which tens of thousands of Mississippians were unable to access services at the state’s largest hospital, Blue Cross and the University of Mississippi Medical Center have reached a contract agreement. The terms of the agreement are confidential. 

“Effective December 15, 2022, all UMMC facilities, physicians and other individual Professional Providers are fully participating Network Providers for all Blue Cross commercial health plans,” the parties wrote in a press release Friday afternoon.

The state’s largest hospital had been out of network with its largest commercial insurer since April 1, meaning patients with Blue Cross insurance couldn’t see their doctors at UMMC unless they were prepared to pay significantly more out of pocket. Some patients – including people in the middle of chemotherapy or late in their pregnancies – benefitted from continuity of care provisions until July 1. 

UMMC offers the state’s only Level I trauma center, Level IV neonatal intensive care unit, and children’s hospital. About 30 to 40 patients are transferred from other Mississippi hospitals to UMMC every day. 

The two parties disagreed over reimbursement rates and the insurance company’s quality care plan. UMMC, the state’s only academic medical center, has maintained it was being underpaid relative to other such centers in the Southeast. It sought a 30% increase in overall reimbursement rates from the insurer, and in some areas an increase of 50%. Blue Cross said that would force it to raise customers’ premiums. 

The hospital also wanted changes to the insurer’s quality care plan, which measures hospital performance across metrics like readmission rates and blood clots after surgery. It claimed the complexity of some services it offers means it should have its own individualized plan, while Blue Cross said it should be evaluated the same as other hospitals. 

The contract dispute forced thousands of patients to miss appointments with specialists or fine new doctors farther away. Heather Tanner, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, which requires regular appointments, tests and infusions, said the resolution can’t undo the months of frustration, expense and delayed appointments she’s dealt with.

“During this mediation my past neurologist was available to continue prescribing my medications but, after waiting for months on an agreement to be reached, I had no choice but to seek a neurologist elsewhere to obtain the tests that have been delayed,” she said in an email to Mississippi Today. “At this point I do not know if I will go back to see the doctors at UMMC because it is already hassle enough to switch everything over. I am very disappointed that the dollar to both the hospital network and insurance companies is more important than my health and wellbeing.”

Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney said the announcement is an early Christmas gift to Blue Cross’ more than 750,000 policyholders.

“While this matter drug on far too long and resulted in undue hardship and disregard for many patients and over 750,000 BCBS enrollees, I am thankful that the parties were able to overcome their differences and find common ground,” he said in a statment.  “UMMC is in the process of informing its patients that the hospital and Methodist Rehab are back in network. Children and patients in need of specialty medical now have access to UMMC.”

Chaney said in an issue unrelated to the UMMC dispute, Blue Cross last week removed Monroe and Pontotoc County public school health providers from the state health plan networks without notifying the state.  All the public school providers are back in network as of today, he said. 

I will be pursuing legislation in the 2023 Session to protect consumers and policyholders in the future from getting caught in the middle of these types of contract disputes.”

Blue Cross is by far the biggest private insurer in the state, with market share of 55%. The next-biggest, United, holds just 17%. 

That gives hospitals little leverage to negotiate with the insurer to get more payment, because if Blue Cross kicks them out of their network, they’ll have very few other patients with commercial insurance. And the hospitals can’t negotiate with Medicaid and Medicare, because reimbursement rates for those programs are set by the federal government. With labor and supply costs rising, Mississippi hospitals have few opportunities to increase their income. 

Blue Cross in July sued Dr. LouAnn Woodward, UMMC’s CEO, and several other top administrators for defamation and civil conspiracy over the hospital’s public relations campaign. The campaign featured billboards and signs that said the insurance company “excluded” UMMC from its network, which it believed was misleading since UMMC was the one to end the relationship between the two.

After encouraging the two parties to enter into mediation to resolve the dispute, Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney called off mediation in October. He said he had not received communication about any progress for six weeks.

Chaney would go on to publicly accuse both UMMC and Blue Cross of wrongdoing and took a strong stance against the nearly yearlong dispute: “It’s deplorable that the citizens of our state are being used as pawns to settle this dispute,” he said. 

Earlier Friday, Chaney told Mississippi Today that one option he had to increase pressure to settle was threatening to prevent Blue Cross from issuing new policies unless it expanded its network for policyholders– meaning reinstating UMMC. 

“Blue Cross and UMMC remain focused on their missions of serving Mississippians’ health care needs,” the release said.

The post Blue Cross, UMMC reach contract agreement after months of negotiation appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The state of Mississippi was entering a new day in the fight against poverty. 

At least that’s what conservative talk radio station SuperTalk would have you believe.

It was the summer of 2018, and radio host Paul Gallo was visiting with John Davis, then-director of the Mississippi Department of Human Services, and nonprofit founder Nancy New on site during a government summit at the Westin luxury hotel in downtown Jackson.

New and Davis were hyping their ill-conceived welfare delivery model, Families First for Mississippi, which resulted in the theft or misspending of nearly $100 million. The pair would later plead guilty to several felonies after perpetuating what officials have called the largest public fraud scheme in state history.

“Sometimes it just takes people like Nancy New and John Davis … to say, … ‘We’re going to take the lead on this,’” Gallo boasted.

“Please pay attention,” Gallo said at the same event, “because number one, this will change lives.”

SuperTalk consistently boosted the work of Families First to its statewide audience, broadcasting the organization’s original ribbon cutting, the opening of its generously renovated new center, events featuring free homemade ice cream, massive high school rallies, “exclusive” behind-the-scenes reports on its services, and the infamous Brett Favre radio ad that caused the athlete to be sued.

And for all its promotion over the years, SuperTalk received more than $630,000 in welfare funds.

The money came from MDHS, the welfare agency, which previously employed SuperTalk’s own CEO Kim Dillon and, at the time of the welfare scandal, her son.

With 26 radio stations in its operation, and 45 more to which it distributes the news, Supertalk’s traditionally conservative, older white audience is far from the population needing welfare services. But the media company, officially called TeleSouth Communications, founded and owned by Steve Davenport, had access to the innards of Mississippi’s political machine – and therefore taxpayer funds – because of the platform it gives GOP leaders to promote their agenda.

Now SuperTalk is at the center of two subpoenas and allegations of contract steering as lawyers in the state’s ongoing civil suit attempt to unravel the radio network’s larger role in Mississippi’s good ole boy club.

“Steve (Davenport) and I had drinks with the Gov (Phil Bryant) on Wed night,” Kim Dillon texted Davis in May of 2019, just one month before Davis was kicked out of office for suspected fraud. “He was very complimentary of you. We had the best time!” 

At the Westin that day, leaders including then-Gov. Bryant declared that the state did not have to separate families in order to prevent neglect; that neglect was a product of poverty, and it could be eliminated by placing resources directly into the homes of needy families.

Gallo put it best: “Every single day across the state we have the justice court system tearing these kids away from the family, and if they just had one hand to reach out. And if that’s a possibility, why hasn’t somebody done this before? Because, I mean, it’s one of those things that could have saved a lot of families,” he said.

With a faraway stare and her mouth slightly open, Nancy New looked over to the camera, then down at her fidgeting hands.

“Instead of taking the kids out of the house, put them in the court system, and you have to deal with them,” Gallo continued, “and ultimately, if there’s a possibility of a foster family getting some financial help, what if that financial help went to the mom?”

Gallo was describing welfare.

Behind the scenes, though, Davis, New and others were diverting tens of millions of these dollars away from the needy – including, notoriously, $8 million to the pet projects of former NFL legend Brett Favre.

Favre himself received $1.1 million in welfare funds from Nancy New’s nonprofit to cut a radio ad at SuperTalk promoting Families First. The ad ran several times in the fall of 2018, according to an invoice obtained by Mississippi Today, nearly a year after he received his first payment. Favre has since returned the funds.SuperTalk itself was one of those welfare recipients cited in State Auditor Shad White’s explosive 2020 audit report. “Due to the unreasonable cost of the advertising,” the audit found, “… and the lack of any correlation to how the advertising benefited the programmatic nature of the TANF program, these costs are questioned.”

Kim Dillon, Gallo and Davenport declined or did not respond to interview requests from Mississippi Today. Davenport, a major Gov. Tate Reeves donor, did provide a canned written statement saying his company “fulfilled its contractual obligations.”

He did not address the characterization of SuperTalk as a campaign tool.

Of the $632,388 cited in the audit, most ($435,000) was paid during fiscal year 2019, the year Gov. Reeves ran for governor. 

“It looks like they kicked their spending with TeleSouth into overdrive in FY 2019,” said Logan Reeves, a spokesperson for the auditor’s office. “… They (Families First) were advertising left and right, doing all kinds of stuff, as I think the audit makes clear.”

About half of the funds came from New’s nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center and the other half came from Family Resource Center of North Mississippi, the other nonprofit helping to run Families First. 

The two nonprofits paid significantly more than any state agency paid SuperTalk in those years. 

While the auditor questioned the payments, these expenditures were not listed as a fraudulent or unallowable expense in a separate forensic audit MDHS commissioned and released in 2021. Because TeleSouth conducted the work it was hired to do, Logan Reeves said, the auditor’s office did not issue a demand for repayment to the network.

TeleSouth is not one of the vendors MDHS is targeting in its ongoing civil lawsuit to recoup the misspent money. MDHS initially filed its complaint in May, mostly targeting individuals and companies that were cited in the forensic audit, but it amended its complaint in early December to include several additional vendors.

The welfare department, an agency under the governor’s office, has not provided the public a full explanation for the standards they used to determine which of the dozens of vendors listed in the audits to target for repayment.

Some of the entities newly added as defendants to the lawsuit, such as Lobaki Inc., a Jackson-based virtual reality company, were added to the suit even though they completed the work for which they were hired. In Lobaki’s case, the attorneys argue that the company’s agreement with the nonprofits required them to follow MDHS grant policies and applicable state and federal law – which is why they’re allegedly on the hook for those misspent funds.

The contracts between the nonprofits and TeleSouth – which were not originally public records since they did not include a state agency – have still not been made public, nor has a breakdown of the purchases under the contract.

“SuperTalk entered into contracts with the Mississippi Community Education Center and the Family Resource Center of North Mississippi to provide advertising services,” SuperTalk general counsel Ashley Tullos Fortenberry said in a short statement to Mississippi Today for this story. “The services outlined in those contracts were performed and SuperTalk was qualified to provide the services—which were intended for a state-wide reach—as it operates 26 radio stations (consisting of both talk and music formats) that cover the state and a news network that distributes news and advertising to over 45 radio stations throughout the state.”

TeleSouth isn’t the only statewide radio network; both Mississippi Public Broadcasting and Mississippi Owned Radio (MOR) Network provide statewide radio coverage. MPB, a publicly funded agency, could even provide services to the state for free.

Within the larger political landscape of Mississippi, though, taking public funds and providing favorable coverage to political leaders and their ideas isn’t an unusual arrangement for SuperTalk.

SuperTalk’s parent company TeleSouth Communications has received at least $6.2 million in public funds from the state since 2009, according to Mississippi Today’s review of public expenditures, while giving politicians and agency heads ample airtime for braggadocious dialogues without the risk of facing pointed questions about the consequences of their policy decisions.

“Where they have built their little empire is access. If that’s who’s in charge, then that’s who they want to be next to,” said longtime politico and professor Marty Wiseman.“… I guess you would describe it as a transactional thing, you know, ‘You scratch our back, we’ll scratch yours.’”

SuperTalk bills itself as a news program, but “I don’t think the average person who listens every now and then realizes the pipeline that SuperTalk has into government,” Wiseman continued. “They just take it at face value that who they’re having on there is probably telling the truth.”

SuperTalk’s tie into government is possibly best illustrated through the Families First debacle.

SuperTalk CEO Kim Dillon’s son Logan Dillon, for example, worked as a lobbyist for MDHS during the scandal while his then-wife Alyssa Dillon worked for Families First. 

A former Bryant staffer and accountant executive at SuperTalk, Lynne Myers, left the radio network to become MDHS’s communication director in 2018. Right before Davis left office, she sought his permission to extend the agency’s contract with SuperTalk. Her husband, Kevin Myers, and their daughter also worked for Families First. 

SuperTalk’s former digital marketing director Dawn Dugle is the one who introduced Davis to fitness instructor Paul Lacoste, who then secured a $1.3 million contract with Families First – one of the first red flags during the start of the auditor’s investigation.

But SuperTalk’s connections went much higher than the welfare office.

In 2020, members of Bryant’s inner circle allegedly directed Austin Smith, Davis’ nephew who was overseeing a federal preschool grant for the state, to enter an expensive advertising contract with SuperTalk, Mississippi Today first reported. 

Smith, who is facing civil charges over the $430,000 in welfare contracts he received, said he refused to contract with SuperTalk because the grant period for expending the funds had expired, he explained in a civil court filing. Expenditure records obtained by Mississippi Today do not reflect payments to SuperTalk under this grant, but Smith did appear on the radio program to promote the grant. 

While Smith was employed by the Mississippi Community College Board, the state agency that administered the preschool grant, he was also working on a contract for Families First. Smith has not been charged criminally.

Bryant frequently gloated about Mississippi’s success in securing the $10 million grant.

“Just think, if you’re a single mom in the Delta trying to pay for child care and go to school, it’s nearly impossible,” SuperTalk quoted Gov. Bryant as saying. “This grant will help bridge that, and we will be able to find more young ladies that will be able to go to work, find a job, have a career and live the American dream right here in Mississippi.”

But Bryant was unaware, when asked during an interview with Mississippi Today in April, that the state only ended up spending 60% of the funds, mostly on equipment and materials for the centers, not on more vouchers for kids. About $190,000 of those funds went to New’s nonprofit. The state had to give $4 million back to the federal government. The grant didn’t result in any more kids in child care. The program was a flop.

“I could sit here and talk to you for a very long time about that grant in childhood and things that should have been done differently,” Smith told Mississippi Today in an exclusive interview in November. “... It did not accomplish what it needed to accomplish because before we ever got the grant, it was already spent. It was already decided where it was gonna go, who it was gonna go to, and what it was gonna go for.”

Smith alleges that after the grant ended, he was the only employee working on the grant to be fired.

“Among the PDGB5 Grant employees retained were Austin Smith’s secretary, the niece of SuperTalk’s prominent host, Paul Gallo,” reads Smith’s civil court filing.

Generally, Smith feels that in the course of the welfare case, “there's only a certain number of people that's been handpicked and targeted.”

“There's so many more people involved in this,” he added.

Smith’s attorney Jim Waide has subpoenaed TeleSouth for several items, including any communication regarding receiving payment for providing interviews to Smith, New, Davis, Favre, Bryant, White and others.

The attorney MDHS originally hired to craft the civil suit, former U.S. Attorney Brad Pigott, also subpoenaed TeleSouth back in July, but within days of that filing, Gov. Reeves’ office chose to fire Pigott. The legal team that took over the case, from the firm Jones Walker, appears to have abandoned that subpoena.

Waide similarly subpoenaed Gov. Bryant for any of his communications related to paying TeleSouth for advertising while he was governor, as well as communication with Davenport specifically. Bryant confirmed in a following motion that he possesses communication about paying TeleSouth, but he objected to turning it over, citing executive privilege. Hinds County Circuit Court Judge Faye Peterson isn’t expected to rule on whether Bryant must comply with the subpoena for several weeks.

While Gallo used his show to elevate the anti-poverty programs he said would “change lives,” Mississippi was actually turning away most poor applicants for the cash assistance, formally called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF. 

Only about 4,000 families were receiving the benefit, a monthly check of, at the time, no more than $170 for a family of three. 

When pressed in April about the lack of resources reaching families during his administration, Bryant told Mississippi Today, “I did not know that was not happening. John reported to me one time that a number of people had dropped off, and I said, ‘Tell me why.’ And he told me that they had not reapplied.”

The low approval rate was publicly known and reported on by news outlets as early as 2017 – but not on SuperTalk’s website.

“... (W)hat if that financial help went to the mom?” Gallo asked the welfare officials.

Ignoring the progressive logic in the host’s rhetorical question, Davis responded with a winding answer about his boss Gov. Bryant’s desire to create a “holistic collaborative approach” to delivering social services in the challenging environment of “siloed” government bureaucracies. 

Few impoverished families were actually helped by the services Families First advertised, sometimes at lavish events with sophisticated commercials and an abundance of branded swag. 

But Supertalk helped prop up the facade.

“I’ll tell you, the governor never stops. I think he’s up from daylight ‘til way after dark making things happen for Mississippi,” radio host JT Williamson said during a 2018 interview with New and then-first lady Deborah Bryant at the Mississippi Coast Coliseum, where a Families First “Healthy Teens Rally” was taking place. 

The rallies, which happened a few times a year in different areas across the state, were a cornerstone of the Families First for Mississippi initiative and reportedly spearheaded by Gov. Bryant. 

“We’re trying to encourage them to make healthy choices – mentally, physically and every other way,” Deborah Bryant told SuperTalk, “so that they can handle the hard knocks when they come that they don’t have any choice over, to stay away from drugs, to have children in a timely manner and not when, you know, just have them, just because it just, ‘oops by the way,’ you know? These children deserve better lives than that.”

The conference brought thousands of high school students together to hear lectures that bordered on self-promotion from sports celebrities like retired WWE wrestler Ted DiBiase Jr. – who received $3 million in welfare funds – and former running back Marcus Dupree. Both athletes appeared on SuperTalk during this time to promote the welfare programs. DiBiase and Dupree are targets in the welfare agency’s ongoing lawsuit that attempts to claw back the funds.

“In talking about the governor … like this thing right here, to put back into these kids,” Williamson said as the crowd of teens roared in the background. “And we all know that this is the future of Mississippi, and when you see the future is here, and we see these young people that are here today that are listening right now to Ted DiBiase Jr., who are taking all this in, and soaking in all this information, and to understand this is where it starts. And this is where we have to go back and fix things, with education and employment opportunities and different things to keep people from going down the wrong path.”

Mississippi lawmakers, including under Bryant’s leadership as lieutenant governor from 2008-2012, have underfunded public schools almost every year since they created the funding formula in 1997 to determine how much money schools need to provide adequate education to Mississippi children. Mississippi also typically maintains the lowest workforce participation rate in the nation and the lowest median earnings.

Emma Briant, an author and British researcher at the George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs specializing in propaganda and political communication, likened Mississippi’s relationship with SuperTalk to the tactics of Cambridge Analytica, a British data-mining firm accused of manipulating multiple elections across the globe. Briant was the expert called to testify in Fair Vote Project’s lawsuit in Hinds County against architects of the Brexit movement, who attempted to launch a data firm in Mississippi.

“Using state resources or government resources to essentially, by proxy, finance your own political advertisement and reputational enhancement is something you see in a weak democracy,” said Emma Briant, “It’s the sort of thing that we saw in some of Cambridge Analytica’s campaigns in Africa, and it’s not the sort of thing you would wish to be happening in the U.S. in 2022.”

Davenport, who introduced Bryant at his election night party in 2007, donated a total of $10,800 to Bryant from 2007-2015, according to FollowTheMoney.org. He donated a couple grand to current Gov. Tate Reeves in his previous campaigns, but a few months before the 2019 gubernatorial election, Davenport and his wife each gave Tate Reeves $15,000.

“I told him (Bryant) he needed to help Tate with his commercials,” Dillon texted Davis in May of 2019. 

TeleSouth has contributed at least $3,000 to Bryant from 2011-2015, according to FollowTheMoney.org, and $6,000 to Tate Reeves from 2004-2011.

TeleSouth has received advertising work from Mississippi Department of Human Services for many years, and even caught heat from PEER, the legislative watchdog committee, during the 2000s for raking in hundreds of thousands under sole-source, no-bid contracts.

Criticisms about using public funds to prop up a political apparatus are nothing new.

"Supertalk and Paul Gallo and JT & Dave and all that pounded me into the ground every single day during the lieutenant governor elections,” former Democratic Rep. Jamie Franks of Mooreville told the Jackson Free Press in 2008. “They've basically used these advertising dollars to make TeleSouth Communications a tool of Gov. Haley Barbour and the Republican Party.”

The relationship continued into Gov. Bryant’s administration.

The welfare agency continued to contract with the radio network, such as in 2016 to advertise things like iPay, the program that allows fathers to pay child support online, or in 2018 to tell people how to apply for the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. The contracts at this time went through a Request for Proposal, or RFP process, according to records obtained by Mississippi Today.

MDHS directly paid TeleSouth almost $780,000 from 2009 to 2019, with amounts varying greatly from year to year, according to Mississippi Today’s review of public expenditures on the state’s Transparency website. While the spending mostly declined over the decade, it did spike to $141,290 in 2016, John Davis’ first year as director.

A Mississippi Today review of MDHS expenditures labeled under the TANF Work Program shows the department did not use welfare money to pay for its TeleSouth contracts, except for $15,262 in 2018. This payment has not been analyzed in any audit.

The Division of Medicaid – the agency that provides health insurance to very poor Mississippians, including many pregnant people, and often fails to get the word out about their services – has also spent at least $380,000 over the years advertising with SuperTalk.

"I would assume that if you're out here advertising for Medicaid benefits or for mothers of dependent children, the audience of SuperTalk — which usually advocates for cutting Medicaid — is probably not the place you should be advertising," Franks told the JFP.

It seems to have taken a scandal for this long-running trend to end. The Mississippi Department of Human Services, which experienced a vast leadership turnover after the arrests in 2020, has not paid the radio network since the arrests. Medicaid’s last payments to SuperTalk were in 2018.

When asked why MDHS ended its advertising with SuperTalk, the agency plainly said in a statement that “MDHS is committed to utilizing taxpayer funds in matters guided by and in compliance with all federal and state policies … MDHS takes seriously the stewardship of the message and resources entrusted to the agency by the taxpayer.”

The agency also said its current strategy is to focus on “earned media,” a term that refers to promotion it can acquire for free, such as traditional news articles or social media mentions.

The Mississippi Department of Rehabilitation Services recently contracted with SuperTalk to run ads about prom safety. Though, Gallo once admitted on his show, “I do understand that we don’t have a large audience of 13- to 18-year-olds in talk radio and that’s a shame and that’s their loss.”

The state agencies that have paid SuperTalk the most since 2009 are Mississippi Department of Transportation ($2.3 million), Mississippi Department of Public Safety ($1 million) and Mississippi Department of Human Services ($780,000).

Public service announcements are one thing, but in some cases, public agencies are actually paying for the talk radio interviews themselves. That was true in the case of a package SuperTalk put together in 2020 with the Mississippi Community College Board, which included three interviews with Gallo as part of the contract. In broadcasting, these promotional deals are called “remotes” because the radio hosts visit the paying client on site, but in the case of SuperTalk, it’s not always clear the station is getting paid for the coverage.

Ironically, the community college board is located inside the same complex as Mississippi Public Broadcasting.

Bob Sawyer, a financial advisor in Gulfport and former chairman of Mississippi Public Broadcasting’s board, has long lamented that the advertising TeleSouth has provided could be done for free at the publicly funded station.

Sawyer said state leadership only had one issue. “The only thing they had issues with is they felt like it (MPB) was a little too liberal,” he said.

State agency payments to Supertalk have steadily declined since the 2000’s, from $831,637 in 2009 to $609,473 in 2016 to $228,722 in 2022. This does not account for money SuperTalk receives through state contracts with other ad agencies that buy placements at the network.

These figures also do not include the public funds SuperTalk may receive through other passthroughs, such as it did through Families First.

The private nonprofit structure of Families First, plus a breakdown of internal controls at the welfare agency, meant that much of the public TANF money they spent, including at SuperTalk, was not public record until the auditor included it in his audit report.

“The funneling of this kind of money that was taxpayer funded for welfare, for helping the most marginalized and vulnerable people,” Briant said, “the fact that that was being funneled into a political campaign that was all about image management and branding and trying to sell these elected officials to their own audience, not to the people who most need this welfare is just very blatantly a disgusting misuse of resources to fuel political propaganda.”

Compared to other vendors providing advertising services to the state from 2015 to 2022, according to Mississippi Today’s analysis of public expenditures, Supertalk is the fifth highest paid, behind Maris West & Baker ($24.3 million), Mann Agency ($4.1 million), Godwin Advertising Agency ($4.1 million) and Frontier Strategies ($3.5 million) – owned by Bryant’s close ally Josh Gregory.

But the $2.2 million TeleSouth received in that same time period dwarfed what the state paid other radio broadcasters, some of which have broader audiences, such as iHeart Media ($110,000), New South Radio or MIX 98.7 ($111,000), The Radio People or Y101 ($3,000), or even American Family Association ($31,000).

The state also paid nearly $700,000 to Snapshot Publishing, the ad firm owned by Gov. Reeves’ sister-in-law Leigh Reeves.

Several agencies continue to pay SuperTalk in the current fiscal year, including the Board of Contractors ($20,000), Department of Rehabilitation Services ($10,500) and the Mississippi Development Authority ($12,500).

SuperTalk is not a cheerleader for every state agency, though. In mid-2019, the network interviewed State Superintendent of Education Carey Wright, blasting the Mississippi Department of Education for not being able to calculate how many teachers would receive a proposed pay raise.

“Her interview on Gallo was a train wreck. She blamed it on their computer system,” Dillon remarked to Davis, referring to Wright. “... Gallo compared her to Hillary.”

Wright, who was appointed by the department’s board, not the governor, often found herself in the crosshairs of Republican politicians. 

And the Mississippi Department of Education hadn’t paid SuperTalk since 2009.

Texts gathered so far in the welfare case make SuperTalk seem like the water cooler for Mississippi’s most powerful. 

And like many government programs, Families First was infected by gossip, backstabbing and politics.

In the last months leading up to Davis’ ousting, the welfare program was consumed by infighting between the two nonprofits selected to run the program. 

Bryant allegedly directed Davis to cut funding to the nonprofit in the northern part of the state, Family Resource Center of North Mississippi, Mississippi Today first reported, because its director Christi Webb supported Democratic candidate Jim Hood for governor.

“Kim just called and said to hold firm,” Davis texted a colleague in March of 2019. “Also had a lot to say about Christi and what the Gov said when he was in to talk to Gallo. CRAZY WORLD.”

The post SuperTalk radio was a powerful mouthpiece for welfare fraudsters — while raking in welfare funds itself appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Extending postpartum Medicaid, creating a foster care bill of rights and building a new website to help moms and families find resources are all among the policy priorities backed by the Senate Study Group on Women, Children and Families, Sen. Nicole Boyd, R-Oxford, told Mississippi Today.

Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann tasked the group with reviewing the needs of Mississippi families and children from birth to age 3, following the Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that allowed the state’s near-total abortion ban to take effect.

The ban will result in an estimated 5,000 additional births each year, a 14% increase in the state with the country’s highest rates of infant mortality and preterm births; a foster care system in which children are often abused and neglected; and the most restrictive Medicaid policies for new moms in the country. 

The Senate study group held hearings in September and October, focused on maternal health; adoption and foster care; childcare availability and early intervention for kids with special needs. They heard from state and national policy experts, obstetricians and pediatricians, and leaders of Mississippi state agencies. 

“As we sit here today, we’re not ready,” committee member Sen. Brice Wiggins, R-Pascagoula, told WLBT as the hearings concluded. “But I think that we can be there.”

Boyd told Mississippi Today that the committee is making recommendations in the following areas. 

• Extending postpartum Medicaid from 60 days to 12 months postpartum. The Senate passed this measure last session, but House Speaker Philip Gunn, R-Clinton, did not let it come to a vote in his chamber. 
• Creating a website that will consolidate information for mothers about family planning, postpartum care, child care and more.
• Enacting a foster care bill of rights to address “the many concerns that foster parents have that we’ve heard from during this process.”
• Creating a study group to focus on foster care and the adoption system.
• Streamlining the foster care process by increasing judges’ discretion around regulatory requirements like the home study. 
• Creating a study group to help overhaul the early intervention program, which aims to offer services for children with developmental delays as early as possible. The state Department of Health-run program currently serves about 1,100 children, but could be reaching as many as 10,000. Boyd said that investment would not only help kids succeed in school but also bring a significant return on investment for the state. “The more intervention services that you do, the dramatically less service and help those children need later in life.”
• Restructuring the tax credit for employers that provide childcare for their employees. Boyd pointed out that the labor force participation rate among single mothers is 75%, compared to 55% for the state as a whole. 

With the exception of technical changes that state agencies could make on their own, policy changes will take place through legislation that will flow through committees like Medicaid and Public Health and Welfare and then go to the House. 

Gunn has recently reaffirmed his opposition to extending postpartum Medicaid. His “Commission on Life,” the House’s analog to the Senate study group, has held no public meetings and Gunn’s staff will not say who the committee has met with. Several members told Mississippi Today they have heard from pastors and doctors, but declined to share their names. 

They have not announced any concrete policy proposals, though Gunn has said he wants to expand the tax credit for the state’s roughly 40 crisis pregnancy centers – which do not offer health care services and vary significantly in offerings and scale – from $3.5 million to $10 million. Extending postpartum Medicaid would cost the state about $7 million and provide greater access to health care for roughly 20,000 women every year. 

Boyd emphasized that the Senate group is not a one-session committee and expects members will continue to gather information and develop recommendations in the years to come. 

Beyond the hearings, Boyd said, the group members have held about 50 meetings with researchers, advocacy groups, industry representatives and state agency staff. 

The hearings were open to the public and live-streamed, and people were invited to share comments and feedback with the committee via email at WCFStudyGroup@senate.ms.gov. 

“It’s when we get that public participation that we can write the most effective legislation,” Boyd said. 

The post Senate study group backs changes to support moms and families appeared first on Mississippi Today.

As Amtrak plans for a 2023 start date, the freight companies and Alabama port that once said passenger rail’s return to the Mississippi Gulf Coast could be detrimental to business are now pledging millions of dollars in improvements to the tracks between Mobile and New Orleans. 

The freight companies and Alabama Port Authority have promised to pay a collective $15 million to improve the passenger train’s route in efforts to decrease the total time it will take Amtrak to go between New Orleans and Mobile, according to details obtained by a Mississippi Today records request.

Amtrak had been at odds with the freight companies for years — so much so it filed a complaint to a federal board that has spent the last determining if the freight-owned tracks could handle added passenger traffic. 

Arguments, at times, got ugly with Amtrak once posting a live video feed and snarky tweets about how often — or not — freight trains came through the corridor. 

Amtrak, the port, and freight companies CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern mediated an agreement over the once-contested route, rather than putting the dispute to a board vote. Since they announced that agreement last month, they have all been tight-lipped about its terms or specifics about the route’s future beyond saying it was moving ahead. 

READ MORE: Amtrak passenger route will return to Mississippi Gulf Coast

Mississippi Today has been able to glean some details of what the parties have planned after examining a copy of a grant application by the Southern Rail Commission that requests nearly $179 million in federal money to help pay for a “Gulf Coast Corridor Improvement Project.” The application also details $44 million in non-federal matching funds from the project’s partners. 

“What I can say is that once these improvements are made, it will result in a 3-hour-and-23-minute trip time,” Southern Rail Commission chairman Knox Ross told Mississippi Today. “At the beginning, you will have something longer than that.” 

The Southern Rail Commission was already awarded $33 million in 2019 through the same grant program — Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements Grant Program – for the Gulf Coast route. None of that money has been spent yet. 

Under the Biden Administration, there is $1.4 billion available to improve railways’ speed and safety this year through the program. That’s more than four times the amount allocated in 2021, according to the American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association.

The improvement plans in this year’s application detail construction and track improvements lasting until 2026, but the route can still run while the bulk of the improvements are being made. 

Ross declined to comment further on the application or agreement. Amtrak referred any comments back to the information submitted in the hefty application.

In a letter supporting the project included in the application, CSX specified it would pay nearly $9.9 million in matching funds. 

“The Project will facilitate the introduction of a new twice-daily Amtrak service between New Orleans and Mobile, while simultaneously supporting freight service quality,” wrote the company’s Executive Vice President of Operations Jamie Boychuk.

In a similar letter, the Alabama State Port Authority promised to contribute $750,000 in funds to support the route. The Mississippi Legislature had already allocated just under $14 million in funding to support route improvements. The state of Louisiana has pledged roughly another $9 million. The Port of Pascagoula pledged $2 million. 

Amtrak has an existing $6 million in contributions. 

“Implementing a twice-daily service between New Orleans and Mobile would provide a huge economic lift to Bay St. Louis, Gulfport, Biloxi and Pascagoula, and other cities along Mississippi’s Gulf Coast,” wrote U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker in a letter also included with the application. “It would serve as a culmination of Mississippi’s efforts to recover from Hurricane Katrina. Since 2010, the population of the Mississippi Gulf Coast has grown steadily, and an additional transportation option would encourage further growth and improve quality of life for current residents.”

The application spells out 12 separate “components” within the overall project totaling about $223 million.

Among the listed improvements is a new station track in Mobile, which will not be funded by the grant but by CSX, according to the application. The improvements will allow for Amtrak trains to board and deboard passengers within the Mobile Terminal downtown. 

The proposed grant-funded improvements include extending tracks, installing new switches and turnouts, additional crossovers and improving stations, yard and crossings. Specifically, it calls for “significant station improvements” along the Mississippi stops.

That includes a new station building in Biloxi and platform canopies in Bay St. Louis and Gulfport. In Pascagoula, Amtrak may attempt to acquire the historic train depot, which was built in 1904 and registered as a historic place in the 1970s, or build a new building nearby. 

The plan also calls for improving railroad crossings at multiple points on the 85-miles of track that go through Mississisippi. 

Should the grant be awarded, project management would be coordinated by Ross and the Southern Rail Commission. 

In a note included in the application, the Southern Rail Commission explained it’s asking for more funds than it did in 2018 because the costs of construction and the available infrastructure dollars have increased, and because of the new public-private partnerships “bringing momentum.”

“This Project is the epitome of various parties joining together to commit resources to expand intercity passenger service while maintaining viable freight networks essential to the economic viability of the rural areas and ensuring the safety and efficiency of operations in the New Orleans to Mobile rail corridor,” the commission wrote. 

Ultimately, the commission hopes to make Union Passenger Terminal in New Orleans a hub that connects Mobile — and its Mississippi stops in between — with routes to Baton Rouge and toward Texas. 

The post Details emerge over Gulf Coast Amtrak route from Mobile to New Orleans, as former enemies become funding partners appeared first on Mississippi Today.

When House Speaker Philip Gunn, R-Clinton, announced he would create a special commission after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, he said the group would develop “Next Steps for Life.”

Nearly six months later, those next steps remain unclear. The Speaker’s “Commission on Life” has identified no concrete measures or specific policy proposals, several members told Mississippi Today.  

The legislative session begins in 19 days.

“We have not hammered out anything as far as I have seen for this legislative session as of yet,” said Rep. Otis Anthony, D-Sunflower, who said the commission had held about eight meetings. 

The meetings have taken place entirely in private. Gunn told members he didn’t want the commission to become a “political football,” Anthony said. Members who spoke with Mississippi Today said they could not share the names of the people they have spoken to during their meetings.

They said Mississippi Today should contact Gunn’s office for that information, but his communications director Emily Simmons did not respond to a question asking who had met with the commission.

“The Speaker’s Commission is continuing its work, and we will update you once the policy recommendations are finalized,” she told Mississippi Today. 

Members who spoke with Mississippi Today said they were divided into subgroups, like faith-based efforts and women’s health issues. They heard from numerous pastors as well as doctors. 

Other members of the committee contacted by Mississippi Today did not respond to texts, phone calls or emails. 

“In the coming weeks, we will have legislation that addresses a lot of those issues,” said Rep. Missy McGee, R-Hattiesburg. “And at that time, we’ll really take it from there.”

She declined to answer other questions.

The opacity around the commission means it’s not clear what measures will have the support of the speaker when it comes to expanding assistance for moms and families in the next session, other than expanding the tax credit for crisis pregnancy centers from $3.5 million to $10 million. The centers provide pregnancy tests and some direct assistance like formula and diapers, but are not regulated by the state Department of Health and do not offer health care services.

Anthony said the group had discussed the importance of improving access to child care, particularly through faith-based organizations.

“Those in the faith-based community gotta step up to the plate now and really put your money where your mouth is,” Anthony said. “How can we maybe look at helping those mothers who may need those childcare services so they can continue to work or so they won’t lose their job?”

On the day the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning Roe v. Wade and allowing Mississippi’s near-total ban on abortion to take effect, Gunn announced he would create the commission. The Health Department estimates the ruling could result in an additional 5,000 births each year– a 14% increase in a state that has the country’s highest rates of infant mortality, preterm births and low birth weight babies. 

“With love for children and the women who bear them, we move forward to secure strong and lasting legal protections and cultural support for life, and a vibrant network of abortion alternatives,” he wrote on Twitter.

Gunn is a vocal opponent of abortion rights. After the ruling in Dobbs, he told reporters that a 12-year-old molested by a relative should carry the baby to term.

“So that 12-year-old child molested by her family members should carry that pregnancy to term?” Daily Journal reporter Taylor Vance asked at a press conference.

“That is my personal belief,” Gunn said. “I believe life begins at conception.”

It took almost three months for Gunn to name the members of the commission. In a press release at the time, Gunn said the group would focus on encouraging churches, the private sector and nonprofits to “step forward to answer the need.” 

The release said the members, who had already been working, wanted to develop plans to engage churches, expand assistance to pregnancy resource centers, expand access to adoption, create jobs for mothers, and improve foster care and child support assistance.

It’s also unclear how much Gunn and Republican colleagues in both chambers will prioritize measures designed to further restrict abortion. Abortion is almost completely banned in Mississippi thanks to a law that prohibits the use of “any instrument, medicine, drug or any other substance” to end the pregnancy of a woman who is known to be pregnant. That language clearly applies to medication abortion.

But some Republicans have said they want to see stricter controls on medication abortion, especially because advocates around the country and world have scaled up their efforts to provide access to abortion pills through the mail. 

The approach of the House Commission on Life stands in stark contrast to that of the Senate Study Group on Women, Children and Families. 

The Senate committee, led by Sen. Nicole Boyd, R-Oxford, held public hearings over four days in September and October. They heard from state and national policy analysts, Mississippi obstetricians and pediatricians and state agency heads. Their hearings focused on maternal and child health care; adoption, foster care and child support; childcare availability and early intervention for kids with special needs. They’re heading into the session with a list of policy priorities.

One of the Senate study committee’s top policy recommendations, Boyd told Mississippi Today, will be extending postpartum Medicaid coverage from 60 days to 12 months, which Gunn blocked from coming to a vote in the House last session. State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney and University of Mississippi Medical Center Vice Chancellor Dr. LouAnn Woodward endorsed postpartum Medicaid extension in their presentations to the committee.

Gunn remains opposed to the measure, which would cost the state about $7 million annually – less than the cost of his proposed tax credit for crisis pregnancy centers. 

“I don’t see the advantage of doing the postpartum thing,” he told reporters earlier this month. 

And his Commission on Life has not spent much time discussing it.

“Yes, it came up,” Anthony said of extending postpartum Medicaid, “but that was kind of all it did.”

The members who spoke with Mississippi Today praised the speaker’s closed-door approach and his input during meetings. 

“The speaker made it clear that he did not want to try to grandstand,” said Rep. Cedric Burnett, D-Tunica. “If we can do something to help, and we’ve figured out what to do, just do it. So that’s pretty much it. It’s not to draw any attention or anything like that.”

“Just by being there, seeing the questions that he asks the ministers – you can tell, if there is something that can help, he wants to do that,” Burnett said. 

The members of the Speaker’s Commission are: Reps. Otis Anthony, D-Sunflower; Cedric Burnett, D-Tunica; Angela Cockerham, I-Amite; Kevin Felsher, R-Biloxi; Jill Ford, R-Madison; Missy McGee, R-Hattiesburg; Dana Underwood McLean, R-Columbus; Sam Mims, R-McComb; and Lee Yancey, R-Brandon.

The post Six months after Dobbs ruling, the work of Gunn’s ‘Commission on Life’ remains a mystery appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The former welfare agency official who brought information about corruption to then-Gov. Phil Bryant — breaking open a massive public fraud case that eventually ensnared NFL legend Brett Favre — is now one of the scandal’s biggest culprits, according to the state.

“‘Shot himself in the foot’ is a great way to phrase it,” said Logan Reeves, spokesperson for the state auditor’s office, which originally investigated the case.

State-employed attorney Jacob Black is facing allegations that he himself participated in the illegal welfare scheme, that he racially discriminated against an employee under him, and that blowing the proverbial whistle was for his own benefit.

“He was just always bragging how he was the whistleblower,” Kristie Greer-Ellis, former regional director of the Mississippi Department of Human Services, said during a court deposition earlier this year, “that he was going to be the next executive director and that he was going to be the one who makes all of the changes and that nobody was to … go through anybody but directly to him.”

Greer-Ellis also alleged Black was hostile towards Black women — an allegation he denies — to the point that when Black women working for the agency needed him to address something, they would enlist a white colleague instead. This is the basis of an ongoing race discrimination lawsuit that former MDHS deputy administrator Dana Kidd is bringing against the agency.

Black did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Black, now a staff officer at the Mississippi Division of Medicaid, joined the executive staff at the Mississippi Department of Human Services in 2015, just before John Davis became director. Davis pleaded guilty in September to a combined 20 state and federal counts of fraud, conspiracy, or theft.

Since arrests in 2020, officials have pegged Davis and politically connected educator Nancy New, who founded a nonprofit that received tens of millions in welfare funds to run a program called Families First for Mississippi, as the main architects of the scandal. New has also pleaded guilty to bribery and fraud. Forensic auditors say they and others stole or misspent at least $77 million.

Had Black not turned information over in mid-2019, the fraud may have never been uncovered.

But as legal counsel, Black was instrumental in crafting many of the grants in question to appear to fit within the guidelines of different federal programs the agency administers, including the welfare program Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. If Davis was the architect, according to the auditor’s findings, Black was the engineer.

Black once wrote in an email to Nancy New’s son Zach New, assistant director for the nonprofit, that if they wanted to construct a building with TANF, or welfare funds, it shouldn’t take receipts from the contractors because that “seems to get really close to showing that you all are controlling the Brick and Mortar process which TANF has a strict prohibition against; however, if you have worked with your attorney, I have no issues with [it] because this is a lease that you will be a party to not MDHS.”

He recommended adding a clause that would “be vague enough to not tie you directly to the construction.”

In this email, Black was discussing a palliative care facility for medically fragile children that Nancy New and then-Mississippi first lady Deborah Bryant were working to build, a project that eventually fell apart.

But MDHS, New’s nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center, and the University of Southern Mississippi used this same legal analysis when crafting a $5 million lease agreement to build a new volleyball stadium at the school, according to an amended civil complaint MDHS recently filed to recoup misspent welfare funds.

The volleyball stadium scheme, first uncovered by Mississippi Today, has emerged as the centerpiece of the welfare scandal in recent months.

“Jacob Black, then-Deputy Administrator of MDHS, and Garrig Shields, then-Deputy Executive Director of MDHS, provided substantial assistance to the co-conspirators by advising on how to circumvent the TANF prohibition,” the complaint alleges. “… Black provided substantial assistance to John Davis, Nancy New, Zachary New, and MCEC by providing the template for the sham USM Athletic Foundation Sublease as a means of fraudulently disguising the true nature of the payments made to the USM Athletic Foundation.”

The amended complaint alleges for the first time in court that Black and Shields met with USM athletics officials and university administrators in mid-2017 and “advised at this meeting that the source of the funds would be TANF funds and that the sublease would be with MCEC because MDHS ‘can’t directly fund a building project.’”

MDHS originally told Mississippi Today in February of 2020, during a two-month long stretch in which Black was interim director of the agency, that MDHS officials had no knowledge of any deal related to the volleyball stadium.

Shortly after the 2017 meeting, Shields left MDHS to work for New’s nonprofit, then went into private practice with another attorney working under the Families First program, Laura Goodson. Shields has not returned Mississippi Today’s request for comment.

The complaint said Black and Shields are both jointly liable, along with several others, for damages totaling nearly $6.9 million and $6.7 million, respectively. These are civil charges, but Zach New pleaded guilty to a criminal charge of defrauding the government because of the sham USM lease agreement.

Whether or not he intended to, Black was instrumental in exposing this and other alleged fraud schemes he’s now accused of perpetuating.

Black, who was second in command at MDHS, and a few of his colleagues began gathering evidence about his boss’ potential corruption in the last months of Davis’ tenure. They were focused on Davis’ relationship with a professional wrestler named Brett DiBiase, whom Davis had hired and then showered with lucrative welfare contracts, and his brother Teddy DiBiase Jr., who appeared to be going into business with Davis. At this time, the welfare agency operated under a nebulous structure in which public and private ventures were commingled and much of the federal spending happened outside public sight and without proper documentation.

Even for some on the inside, it was a challenge to discern or document exactly what was going on at the agency and the private welfare delivery system called Families First for Mississippi, according to several interviews with employees of the state agency and nonprofit.

“When you started publishing all of this stuff, that’s when a lot of us found out what was going on,” Dana Kidd, who ran the division TANF is housed under during the scandal, told Mississippi Today in a recent interview. “It wasn’t until you started publishing stuff that we found out what was going on. We had no clue.”

It’s unclear what Black knew about the overarching fraud scheme polluting the agency, though emails and texts show he played a critical role in keeping the funds flowing.

But the fraud tip he took to Bryant was a relatively small discovery. Under the contract Davis awarded to Brett DiBiase’s company, the wrestler was using a P.O. Box that belonged to Davis. The abnormality suggested Davis might be accepting a kickback, though prosecutors have never presented evidence to that effect. Instead, the men explained that DiBiase was using his boss’ P.O. Box because he was having marital problems and wanted to hide the earnings from his wife.

In June of 2019, while Davis, Nancy New, Ted DiBiase Jr., Kidd and others were in D.C., where Davis was testifying before Congress about the federal food assistance program, Black took the information to Bryant’s office.

Bryant turned the information over to State Auditor Shad White, Bryant’s former campaign manager and the rising politician Bryant appointed to fill a vacant state auditor seat in 2018. White’s office began investigating Davis and Brett DiBiase, and within days, Bryant forced Davis to retire.

“Everything changed when Mr. Davis left,” Greer-Ellis, former regional director, said in her deposition. “I mean, immediately Jacob went on, in my personal opinion, an attack, like he – everything was done deliberately, and he was not ashamed about anything. He even mentioned himself being the whistleblower and all that. He was just outright just flamboyant with his stuff.”

Auditor White has since credited Bryant — not Black — as the whistleblower of the case, though the tip would eventually lead investigators to an alleged illegal scheme to funnel welfare money to a pharmaceutical company connected to Bryant. Bryant denies knowing the company, Prevacus, had received public funds, though texts show Favre and Bryant discussed the project at length and that Favre even told the governor when it began receiving money from the state. The texts also show Bryant continued to lobby for the company and agreed to accept a stock agreement after leaving office. These texts were not revealed until Mississippi Today published them in April, more than two years after investigators collected them.

Favre, Prevacus, and its founder, Jake Vanlandingham, are all named in the ongoing MDHS civil suit, but Bryant is not.

The auditor’s office maintains that Black is not the “whistleblower” because he did not take the information to an investigative body, as specified in the state’s whistleblower statute.

In May, after MDHS released a third forensic audit report revealing Black’s email about “brick and mortar,” the auditor’s office issued a $3.6 million demand for repayment on Black. He didn’t face official civil charges until he was added to the state’s lawsuit this month. As is true for most people named in the suit, including Favre, Black has not faced criminal charges related to the scandal.

Just a few days after MDHS added Black to the suit, a federal judge in Kidd’s separate racial discrimination case ruled that the allegations against Black were enough basis for the case against MDHS to move forward and go to trial.

“An employee who worked under Kidd testified that Mr. Black ‘had a problem with Black females’ and that he made clear that most employees he wanted to terminate were Black,” reads U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Jordan’s recent order. “That same employee stated that Mr. Black would treat white employees more favorably than Black employees.”

Kidd brought the lawsuit against MDHS in April, alleging the agency discriminated against her on the basis of age, race, and disability when it forced her to retire in 2020. Kidd’s attorney is the prolific north Mississippi trial lawyer Jim Waide, who is also representing a separate defendant in the MDHS civil lawsuit, Austin Smith, Davis’ nephew.

The Mississippi Department of Human Services asked the court for a summary judgment. Jordan granted the state’s request related to the age and disability claims, effectively throwing them out, but said the race claim should move forward. When asked for a response, MDHS told Mississippi Today it does not comment on pending litigation.

Black denied the allegations of racial bias in his deposition, saying the one employee he has promoted in his time at Medicaid is a Black woman. Black also said Greer-Ellis and Kidd are “super close friends, so the validity of that testimony I would highly question.”

Kidd has apparent connections, personally and through husband Alvin Kidd, with other welfare employees or contractors caught up in the welfare probe. Alvin Kidd is friends with and played high school football with Marcus Dupree, a former star high school running back and one of the high-profile defendants in the civil lawsuit. Dupree received at least $371,000 in welfare funds, the complaint alleges. Nancy New’s nonprofit bought Dupree a horse ranch, Mississippi Today first uncovered in 2020, where he lives, according to the suit. Kidd said she didn’t know how Dupree got connected to Families First.

Dupree and Alvin Kidd also grew up with the father of Gregory “Latimer” Smith, the young MDHS procurement officer charged with fraud related to payments to Brett DiBiase. The Kidds have been close with Smith since he was a kid; Dana Kidd even helped him get the job at MDHS, she said. Smith’s case has since been referred through pre-trial diversion, a program that could keep the charge off his record.

Dana Kidd worked for the welfare agency for 30 years, starting out as an entry-level eligibility worker.

“This is not one of those employment cases where an employer fires an underperforming or heavily disciplined employee,” Judge Jordan wrote in his latest order. “By all accounts, Kidd was an excellent employee, consistently performed at a high level, and had an unblemished record.”

Greer-Ellis also speculated that Black may have wanted to get rid of Kidd because she “could have been easily the next person in line to be able to move the agency forward.”

“He wanted that executive director position so bad,” she said.

Kidd alleges in her lawsuit that in January of 2019, she became paralyzed due to a rare disorder and took a medical leave of absence from the department. “Black indicated that Plaintiff was not wanted at the agency because of her disability,” her complaint alleges.

When Kidd returned from medical leave in May of 2019, she alleges Black became more hostile towards her, eventually moving her from her post as deputy administrator in the state office to the Hinds County DHS office — an effective demotion. It was supposed to be temporary, but when current MDHS Director Bob Anderson became director in March of 2020, Kidd was still stationed there. Anderson decided to eliminate her position, forcing her to retire or be terminated in April of 2020. Black left the agency shortly after, starting his new job at Medicaid in June of 2020  in a lower position than he held at MDHS.

Kidd also alleges Black excluded her from meetings and generally ostracized her from the rest of the executive staff.

Black explained that Kidd was close to Davis, which is why he was keeping Kidd at bay during the internal investigation into their boss.

“We kept that investigation very close so we could make sure that we had an opportunity to finish that investigation and get everything reported with sufficient evidence without John finding out about it,” Black said in his deposition.

The post Welfare fraud tipster turns alleged perpetrator appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The State Board of Education has adopted new social studies standards that will be implemented in the fall of 2023. 

Late last year, the Mississippi Department of Education was accused of removing civil rights content from the standards, which serve as the framework for social studies instruction for public schools. The accusations led to multiple meetings and conversations where the public aired their numerous frustrations with social studies education. 

An update to the social studies standards was first presented to the State Board of Education in December 2021. The proposed changes removed many specific names, events and details in lieu of more broad descriptions. During the first public hearing in January 2022, education department officials walked back this change to the satisfaction of several groups present. Still, other people expressed concern that officials were adding critical race theory to the standards. MDE officials have repeatedly stated the theory is not taught in K-12 classrooms. 

After releasing an updated version of the standards in September, the department held another public hearing, where advocates pushed for greater inclusion of the disability rights movement. In the written public comments, 120 people asked for greater inclusion of Sikhism in the elective minority studies standards. Changes were made to address both of these concerns in standards that were adopted on Thursday.  

Wendy Clemons, associate superintendent of secondary education, told Mississippi Today the most substantial changes in the new standards are related to the flow of the standards for grades K-6, eliminating repetition and making sure that concepts are built upon one another. She said that in some cases the content itself did change to improve the overall flow, pointing to the sixth grade standards, but said that the changes were largely organizational. 

Tammy Crosetti, curriculum director of secondary education, noted the comprehensive nature of the teacher review committee, which has 62 teachers total representing each congressional district. 

“Educators who are in the classroom teaching (the standards) can be proud of it,” said Clemons. 

The new standards were adopted without any questions or discussion.

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Chris Jans’ Mississippi State Bulldogs, undefeated and ranked No. 17 in the nation, rolled into Mississippi Coliseum Wednesday night as a whopping 21-point favorite over Jackson State, who had won just once. And if that sounds like a potential snooze fest, just know that it was not.

The Bulldogs were behind with eight minutes to play and had to fight, scratch and persist for a 69-59 victory over the Tigers, who were well-prepared and played their rear ends off.

Two ways to look at this result, depending on your perspective:

• One, State, now 10-0, took JSU’s best shot but still made all the clutch plays at crunch time to win before an enthused crowd of 3,206 on a rainy night in the Capital City.
• Two, Jackson State, playing its first game in its home city this season, not only had to battle a more talented team but did so before a highly partisan Mississippi State crowd. Said Mo Williams, the former NBA star and first-year JSU coach: “This was our first game in Jackson, and our fans didn’t show up. If this had been a football game, we’d have had 60,000 people. We’ve been on the road all season and then to come home and not have the support of our fans. I am disappointed. Think what a difference that might have made in a close game.”

To be sure, State’s rally over the last eight minutes was fueled by a loud, pro-MSU crowd that surprised even Jans, who credited his fans for making a difference. “Our fans were awesome,” he said.

The Bulldogs needed all the help they could get. Jackson State, which out-rebounded the Bulldogs 31-24, appeared far better than the 1-9 team they are. That’s because the Tigers are better than that. Their first nine games, all on the road, included games at Michigan, Indiana, TCU and some other tough mid-level Division I foes. The Tigers’ lone victory was at SMU. They are not a terrible team. They will win many games once they begin SWAC play and play half their games at home. Until then, well, they play at Texas Tech Saturday and then at No. 4 Alabama next Tuesday. If that hardly seems fair, well, it’s not.

“We gotta go play the games to make the money,” Williams said. “It’s not an excuse, it’s reality.”

Meanwhile, Jans, who came to Mississippi State from New Mexico State, has something special going. The Bulldogs already claim victories over Utah of the Pac-12, tradition-rich Marquette of the Big East and Minnesota of the Big 10. Jans’ team plays extremely hard and plays defense with purpose.

“They are good, really good,” said WIlliams, the Jackson native who played his college basketball at Alabama and knows a good college team when he sees one. “They are really athletic and they can really get out and run. Our plan was to make it a half-court game and we did for the most part. But they made the big plays down the stretch and that’s what really good teams do.”

State has at least two potential NBA players in 6-foot-11 Tolu Smith and 6-7 D.J. Jeffries, both seniors and both listed as forwards. Smith is the team’s star, averaging 16 points and nine rebounds, while shooting 63% from the floor. You’d love to see the Bulldogs get him the ball more down low in the post where he most effective. He made four of his only five shots against Jackson State, which swarmed him for much of then night. Jeffries, from Olive Branch, was one of the state’s most highly recruited players ever before signing with Memphis out of high school. As a senior, he appears to be playing with more purpose than ever. He led the Bulldogs with 15 points Wednesday night.

The Bulldogs’ best player Wednesday night might have been reserve forward Keyshawn Murphy, a 6-10 redshirt freshman out of Birmingham, who scored 10 points and passed out two assists in just 12 minutes. He has a chance to be special.

For Jackson State, the star was Coltie Young, a left-handed sharpshooter from Starkville, of all places. Young made 7 of 11 3-pointers and topped all scorers with 23 points. He gave his team a chance to win over his hometown team.

For Mississippi State, Wednesday night’s game was a chance to smile and cheer after a three days of mourning the death of beloved football coach Mike Leach. There was a moment of silence, followed by respectful applause, before the opening tip.

Said Jeffries, afterward, “Everybody at Mississippi State, including us, has been grieving. We wanted to do something for them, give them something to cheer.”

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