I misspoke at a recent media conference regarding the accusations against former Governor Phil Bryant in the $77 million welfare scandal. He has not been charged with any crime. My remark was inappropriate, and I sincerely apologize.
Mississippi Today has published at least 29 times over the course of its coverage of the welfare scandal, including multiple times in “The Backchannel” investigative series, that Gov. Bryant has not been charged with any crime. My mistake was unintentional and an inaccurate representation of the facts.
This statement will be shared across Mississippi Today’s platforms, including our website, social media, newsletter, mobile app and text service. I have requested that the video of my remark be retracted with this apology.
Longtime state Rep. Earle Banks, D-Jackson, on Wednesday pleaded guilty to a federal felony charge of evading federal income taxes.
Sentencing is set for Aug. 21. Banks faces a maximum penalty of three years in prison, a $250,000 fine and one year of supervised release according to court documents.
Court documents unsealed this month claimed Banks reported $38,237 in income on his 2018 federal tax returns even though he “knew that he had received more than $500,000 in additional income” that year — profit from selling real estate.
Banks’ attorney Rob McDuff said Wednesday, “Mr. Banks has cooperated with the U.S. attorney’s office and today had the opportunity to speak directly to the judge and admit that he made a mistake in failing to report on his tax return the proceeds from the sale of land that had belonged to his family for many years.”
Banks, an attorney and funeral home director, has served in the state House since 1993 and in 2012 ran unsuccessfully for the state Supreme Court.
Banks is unopposed for reelection to his House seat this year.
While the Mississippi Constitution prohibits anyone convicted of most state or federal felonies from serving in the Legislature, section 44 of the constitution exempts federal tax crimes as a disqualifying offense.
“This section shall not disqualify a person from holding office if he has been pardoned for the offense or if the offense of which the person was convicted was manslaughter, any violation of the United States Internal Revenue Code or any violation of the tax laws of this state unless such offense also involved misuse or abuse of his office or money coming into his hands by virtue of his office,” the Mississippi Constitution says.
VERONA — Party leaders and campaign staffers scrambled this week after incumbent Republican Gov. Tate Reeves over the weekend appeared to suggest that only one conservative is competing in the hotly contested GOP primary for lieutenant governor.
Reeves told Mississippi Today at a Saturday event in Lee County that he will not endorse either leading candidate — incumbent Delbert Hosemann or challenger Chris McDaniel — in the lieutenant governor’s race, but opined that a spirited campaign would be healthy for the state Republican Party.
“We’ve got a conservative candidate running, and they’re going to talk about the issues,” Reeves said. “And we’ll see how that comes out.”
When pressed to clarify if he thought one of the contenders in the election was not a bonafide conservative, Reeves demurred and offered a vague description that one of the candidates has pushed for certain issues over the past decade, though he declined to specify the issue or which candidate he was referring to.
“What that means is we have two candidates that are running,” Reeves said. “We all know the issues that one of the candidates has focused on over the last 10 years. And so, again, I’m focused on my own campaign.”
The comments stirred several top Republicans to speculate if Reeves was tacitly lending support to McDaniel over the incumbent Hosemann in the state’s most watched primary, which could likely decide the ultimate winner of one of the most powerful seats in state government. How Reeves, the first-term governor and de facto state Republican Party leader, views and talks about the down-ballot race could have an impact on GOP voters.
In two separate statements to Mississippi Today on Monday, Elliott Husbands, Reeves’ campaign manager, attempted to clarify Reeves’ remarks but did little to shed light on what the governor actually meant in his remarks to the press.
Husbands said in a Monday morning statement that the governor’s comments about only “a conservative” running in the race were meant to describe McDaniel, further implying the governor believed the Jones County lawmaker to be the only conservative in the race.
But Husbands walked that initial statement back, and said later on Monday evening that Reeves’ remarks about “the issues that one of the candidates has focused on over the last 10 years” were instead meant to describe McDaniel, though he still did not specify which issues the governor was referring to.
After Mississippi Today began to ask the McDaniel and Hosemann campaigns to respond to the governor’s comments early this week, Mississippi GOP Chairman Frank Bordeaux privately stepped in to mend any bruised feelings between the two statewide officials.
Bordeaux told Mississippi Today in an interview on Wednesday that he reached out directly to both Reeves and Hosemann regarding the matter.
“My job as chairman of the party is to make sure that there is unity in our party,” Bordeaux said.
Reeves, according to a statement from Hosemann, also made a personal phone call to Hosemann on Monday night to assure the lieutenant governor that he was not making an endorsement in the race.
Hosemann’s statement to Mississippi Today also pointed out that several pieces of legislation Reeves touted on social media as accomplishments this year are also items that Hosemann advocated for such as infrastructure investments, salary increases for public K-12 educators and financial assistance for Mississippi hospitals.
“The two items the governor did not include were reducing the number of state employees by 2,300 and paying off a half a billion dollars in debt while not borrowing money in the last two years,” Hosemann said. “All of these originated in the Legislature with our leadership and the leadership of the speaker.
“We are grateful for the governor’s endorsement of the direction we have led the state in over the past four years. Conservative leadership producing results.”
After Mississippi Today’s reported on Reeves’ remarks, McDaniel, in a statement accused Hosemann, the current leader of the state Senate, of blocking some of Reeves’ policy proposals over the last four years.
“As Mississippi’s next lieutenant governor, I look forward to working alongside Governor Reeves to pass conservative policy, fight for our values, and ensure Mississippi leads our country back to prosperity and conservative values,” McDaniel said.
The state senator found himself at odds with the GOP establishment when he challenged longtime U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran in 2014, and when he challenged Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in 2018.
McDaniel was even a political foe of Reeves during his two terms as lieutenant governor, at the time often claiming, as he does now with Hosemann, that Reeves was not conservative enough when he ran the state Senate.
“Since ’14, he’s done everything in his power … to make sure my legislation doesn’t see the light of day,” McDaniel said of Reeves in 2014. “If I introduce a bill in a post-’14 environment, the establishment has given the order that if my name is the primary author, to have that bill killed.”
Now, McDaniel and Reeves have mended their relationship, with the longtime legislator even endorsing Reeves’ bid for governor in 2019.
If he is elected to a second term as governor, Reeves will have to work hand in glove with the elected lieutenant governor, who serves as the leader of the state Senate, to get any major policy achievements across the finish line.
But despite the governor and legislative leaders all belonging to the same political party, Reeves at times has had a frosty relationship with the speaker of the House and the lieutenant governor, who sometimes wield more political power than the governor himself.
The Republican primary will take place on Aug. 8 between McDaniel, Hosemann, Tiffany Longino and Shane Quick. If no single candidate wins an outright majority of the votes, a runoff election will take place on Aug. 29.
Editor’s note on 5/17/23: This story has been updated updated to include a statement from Sen. Chris McDaniel, which his campaign emailed hours after the story published. His campaign had not responded to a request for comment before the story published.
With Tyler softballing down in Hattiesburg this week, long-time Mississippi sports writer Billy Watkins joins Rick to discuss about 100 years combined of writing Magnolia State sports. Favorite players, favorite games, favorite interviews are just a few parts of a wide-ranging discussion.
Scott Berry, who has won and won with utmost class at Southern Miss, has announced his retirement at season’s end.
Back when 60-year-old Scott Berry was a younger coach at Southern Miss — and long before the grass baseball field was replaced with artificial turf — he would spend long hours making sure the field was immaculate. Every blade of grass, every speck of dirt had to be just right.
His daughter, Kathryn Grace, in college now, was a tiny girl. “Daddy,” Kathryn Grace asked her father one day on the field at Pete Taylor Park, “is this your garden?”
It surely has been. The winningest coach in Southern Miss history, Berry has grown ball players and he has grown winners. He did it all with class. When I wrote last week of Berry’s consistent winning ways at Southern Miss, I had no idea he would a week later announce his retirement, which will come at season’s end. I did know that he wasn’t going to coach for much longer because he has said so several times in recent years.
Rick Cleveland
Why now? I can guess. Number one, like any coach who has ever done it, he wants to go out a winner. Who wouldn’t? His current Golden Eagles hold a 13-game winning streak, the nation’s longest, heading into the last weekend of the regular season. They are 35-15, 20 games over .500, and have a good chance for a seventh consecutive 40-victory season. No other Division I school in the nation has more than five straight 40-win seasons currently. Ole Miss, Florida State and Southern Miss came into this season as the only D-I schools with 21 consecutive 30-win seasons. USM now has 22. Both the Ole Miss and FSU streaks will end at 21.
Number two and perhaps more importantly, Berry would never retire if he didn’t believe he was leaving his garden in capable hands. Berry strongly believes the right man is already in the program. USM’s official news release of Berry’s impending retirement says that search for Berry’s replacement is underway. Forget that. Associate head coach Christian Ostrander, who has been a whiz with the Golden Eagle pitching staff, will be the new Southern Miss baseball coach. You can book that.
When Corky Palmer retired in 2009, the transition to Berry was seamless. The same should be true going from Berry to Ostrander.
But that’s a story for another day. Today is about Berry, who has earned the lasting respect of his coaching peers. One is Mike Bianco, coach of defending national champion Ole Miss, who decisively swept Berry and Southern Miss in the Hattiesburg Super Regional last spring en route to Omaha. Bianco’s first year as head coach at Ole Miss coincided with Berry coming to Southern Miss as Palmer’s lead assistant. They have competed against one another on an annual basis since then — and on even terms before last year’s Super Regional. In a phone call Tuesday night, Bianco said news of Berry’s retirement caught him by surprise.
“But I’m happy for him, happy for his family,” Bianco said. “When you’re in this profession, you miss a lot stuff with your family. You don’t have a lot of spare time. I read Scott’s statement, and I am sure all that figured in.”
Asked about his relationship with Berry, Bianco responded, ”We’re not best friends or anything like that. We don’t go hunting and fishing together. But we’re baseball coaching friends for sure. When I think about the people I really respect in this game and the people in the game I call friends, Scott is definitely one of them at the top of the list.
“You’ve watched it, you know,” Bianco continued. “Corky did a great job down there. He really did. But Scott has taken it to a whole other level when you talk about the consistency of the program and what they’ve accomplished in terms of their facility and fan support. They’ve become a national program and that’s tough to do at a so-called mid-major, but Scott’s done it and it’s also how they’ve done it. They play the right way. His teams play hard, they really compete, and they are great kids. That’s a credit to him.”
Berry, as he has said so often in the past, has much the same respect for Bianco.
When Corky Palmer announced his retirement 14 years ago, his Southern Miss team suddenly got white-hot, earned an NCAA berth, won an NCAA Regional at Georgia Tech and then a Super Regional at Florida. Palmer’s career ended in Omaha.
Could something similar happen this season for Scott Berry?
The cuts are expected to save between $125 million and $150 million a year, according to NOLA.com. It is the largest such reduction in the hospital system’s history – the 770 employees represent about 2% of Ochsner’s workforce.
The health system’s CEO Pete November said in a message to employees that despite reducing spending, renegotiating contracts with supply and service companies, decreasing reliance on agency workers and launching initiatives to increase clinic visits, more needed to be done to address financial challenges.
The positions impacted by the layoffs are “primarily non-direct patient care roles” and management. No physicians are impacted, November said, and any impacted employees with active clinical credentials will be offered other direct patient care roles in the system.
“We are not alone in this: healthcare providers across the country have experienced increased labor costs, a shortage of patient care clinicians, high inflation and the end of pandemic relief funding from the federal government,” he wrote.
Tim Moore, president and CEO Mississippi Hospital Association, echoed November when talking about the state of Mississippi hospitals.
“On a national scale 2022 was the worst financial year in history for hospitals. More hospitals report negative margins than ever before, and Mississippi is no exception,” said Moore. “This unfortunately will mean in many cases dramatic changes to staffing and services offered in communities.”
Moore continued to say that Mississippi needs Medicaid expansion.
“We have access to resources that will help businesses, Mississippians, our hospitals and other providers as well. We as a state should simply extend access to care to the low wage earners that cannot afford to pay traditional insurance premiums,” he said. “This is one huge piece of the healthcare stabilization puzzle.”
Hospitals around the country suffered losses in 2022, and first-quarter cuts among health care companies were up 65% in 2023 compared to 2022, according to Fierce Healthcare.
Ella J. Rice talks to one of her pupils, all of them white, in a third grade classroom of Draper Elementary School in Washington, D.C., on September 13, 1954. This was the first day of non-segregated schools for teachers and students. Rice was the only Black teacher in the school. Credit: AP photo
InBrown v. Board of Educationand Bolling v. Sharpe, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the “separate but equal” doctrine in Plessy v. Fergusonwas unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment, which guaranteed equal treatment under the law.
The historic decision brought an end to federal tolerance of racial segregation, ruling in the case of student Linda Brown, who was denied admission to her local elementary school in Topeka, Kansas, because of the color of her skin.
In Mississippi, segregationist leaders called the day “Black Monday” and took up the charge of the just-created white Citizens’ Council to preserve racial segregation at all costs.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Brandon Presley unveiled his proposed ethics reforms Tuesday on the south steps of the state Capitol, where the heat and humidity were nearly as blistering as his attack on incumbent Republican Gov. Tate Reeves.
Presley, the northern district public service commissioner, said revelations of $77 million in misspent welfare funds have “exposed a deeper infection of corruption in state government.” He laid out what he called a corrupt system where lobbyists and people close to politicians are rewarded, and average Mississippians have no recourse.
And the Democratic candidate said the welfare scandal occurred during his opponent’s lieutenant governorship, when Reeves presided over the Senate that had oversight responsibilities of state spending.
Presley laid out several ethics changes he’d work to implement on his first day as governor if elected, adding that he would call a special session to propose the reforms. Specific ideas Presley pitched on Tuesday include:
Limiting the gifts that politicians could receive from lobbyists.
More timely reporting of lobbyists’ expenditures on politicians.
Preventing politicians from receiving campaign contributions while the Legislature is in session.
Requiring a politician to wait one year after leaving office before becoming a lobbyist.
Prohibiting corporations from making campaign contributions and limiting the size of contributions from others.
Ensuring the Legislature is covered by open meetings laws.
Increasing penalties for violations of lobbying and campaign finance laws.
During his speech, Presley dwelled several times on Reeves’ role in the welfare scandal.
Presley retold the story of his upbringing, saying his late single mother had to have the water cut off to pay the family’s bill. He used the anecdote to underscore how millions in welfare funds that were supposed to help struggling Mississippians were instead squandered by state government officials. He pointed out that the funds were instead used to help former NFL legend Brett Favre build a volleyball court at the University of Southern Mississippi and to reward Paul Lacoste, who Presley called Reeves’ personal trainer who taught Reeves “to do jumping jacks.”
He said the state is now trying to recoup welfare funds that Favre and Lacoste received.
“Millions of taxpayer dollars were stolen from programs to support people just like my momma, and mommas and daddies and grandparents all across Mississippi,” Presley said. “And they went to celebrities, a volleyball court, the governor’s personal trainer and all sorts of pet projects … This type of corruption and this good ole boy network makes me sick at my stomach.”
Reeves has maintained he did not know about the welfare scandal when he was lieutenant governor and played no part in the diversion of welfare funds for the volleyball court, for Lacoste or for other expenditures that state and federal prosecutors have questioned.
Presley pointed out that while most other states limit the size of campaign contributions, Mississippi only does so for corporations, which are limited to giving candidates $1,000 per year. When it was pointed out that he had received large donations, including a $250,000 contribution from the political action committee of the Mississippi Hospital Association, Presley said those were current “rules of the road,” but that he believes they should be changed.
While Reeves has out-raised Presley in terms of campaign contributions thanks to multiple large donors, Presley said the $146,399 in campaign contributions of less than $200 each that he received in the first four months of the year is a record amount and an indication of the broad support he has across the state.
During the same time period, Reeves received $25,371 in contributions of less than $200 each.
“Tate Reeves will not tackle corruption. Let me say that again, he will not tackle corruption,” Presley said. “He doesn’t have the guts to do it. It will make too many of his buddies mad and it will upset the system that he has benefited from for the entire time he’s been in state service.”
When asked how hard it would be to convince the Legislature to enact his ethics package, Presley said he believes lawmakers would cooperate. He said the special session would place a spotlight on the issue and make it more difficult for legislators to reject the package.
The Presley campaign documented almost $22,000 in gifts from lobbyists that Reeves has received during his political career. The campaign also pointed out that Reeves committed in the past to lobbying reform but did not make any effort to change lobbying laws as governor.
President Joe Paul announced at a meeting of select faculty and students on Tuesday that he had picked a new provost at University of Southern Mississippi: Lance Nail, the candidate whose checkered past sparked student protests, more than 1,000 signatures on a change.org petition and letters from faculty opposing his hiring.
The selection is now pending approval from the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees, which meets later this week, a university spokesperson confirmed to Mississippi Today.
If approved, Nail will have significant power at USM as the provost oversees a large swath of the university from educational programs, admissions and health services.Prior to the announcement, students and faculty questioned Nail’s status as one of four finalists due to media reports of his time as a dean at Texas Tech University.
“It’s just bad optics,” said Jeremy Scott, a faculty senator and the president of USM’s American Association of University Professors chapter, which wrote Paul a letter urging him not to hire Nail.
But at the 10 a.m. meeting at the Thad Cochran Center, multiple attendees said Paul told the audience of roughly 40 high-level administrators, faculty and students that he spent three weeks checking Nail’s references and learned there was more to the story.
After Nail resigned from Texas Tech, Paul said Nail filed a complaintwhich led the university to offer him a settlement while he was negotiating for a position as dean at San Diego State University, Denis Wiesenburg, the outgoing president of the faculty senate, told Mississippi Today.
“And so the San Diego State people had full access to all the information surrounding the events at Texas Tech, more than what was reported in the media,” said Wiesenburg, who added he worked with Nail when he was dean of USM’s College of Business. “He was able to secure another position at a great university when all the information was available to those making the decision.”
As for the time that Nail changed students’ grades, Scott said that Paul told attendees Nail did so because “it was gonna have a devastating impact on the future of the students” if they did not pass.
Paul’s “point was that (Nail) was student-centered and that was one of the main things of why they liked the guy,” Scott said.
Wiesenburg said when Paul met with the faculty senate executive committee in early May, they recommended that if Paul wanted to hire Nail, he hold a meeting with the faculty senate.
Scott said it seemed like Paul wanted to get ahead of the news. Many people had already left for vacation as Tuesday is the last work day before summer break, which made Scott feel like “they’re sneaking it in.”
“I asked if he was prepared for the scandal, cause it’s, you know, there’s going to be some,” Scott said. “He said, yeah, that he was following shared governance and that’s what the search committee recommended.”
Paul also said he planned to meet with Emily Goldsmith, a graduate student who helped organize a protest against Nail, last week and plans to speak with them further about this decision.
“If you are going to protest the interviewing of Dr. Nail, should you not protest Dr. Paul and the search committee, the search firm and everyone else involved in the selection process,” Scianna wrote to Goldsmith on April 12. “Should we just turn the university over to you and your group to hire the provost and run the university?”
At the time, Scianna’s $6-million donation was the USM Foundation’s largest one-time gift from an alumnus. Nail lists the project as one of his significant professional accomplishments on the first page of his resume.
