OurTupelo

More Mississippians would prefer not to pay the 7% sales tax on groceries than not to pay the state income tax, according to a recent poll from Mississippi Today/Siena College.

The poll, conducted Jan. 3-8, found 68% of respondents favor suspending the grocery tax, while 24% oppose ending the grocery tax.

“The cost of food is high enough already,” Hinds County resident and poll respondent Lucinda Robinson told Mississippi Today. “We need some relief.”

Robinson said she does not believe it is right to tax necessities like food and milk.

“Eggs are so expensive that I just eat the chicken,” she said.

Mississippi’s 7% tax on most retail items is one of the nation’s highest. In addition, most states either have a lower sales tax on groceries than on other items, or they just exempt groceries from being taxed altogether. Mississippi levies the full 7% on groceries.

Editor’s note: Poll methodology and crosstabs can be found at the bottom of this story. Click here to read more about our partnership with Siena College Research Institute.

Alternatively, a 55% majority of respondents support eliminating the state personal income tax, while 31% oppose eliminating it.

A reduction in the state income tax already is underway based on previously passed legislative action. And Gov. Tate Reeves, Speaker Philip Gunn and others have advocated for the complete elimination in 2023 of the income tax, which currently generates about one-third of the state general fund revenue.

“We need economic development. The way to attract people to move here is to eliminate the income tax,” said DeSoto County resident Brad Dickey, who was a poll participant. “It is as great way to do it.”

Dickey, who is an engineer working in Memphis, said young people move to other states that do not have an income tax such as Tennessee, instead of locating in Mississippi.

When asked about the state’s high grocery tax, Dickey said, “We have to have some money to provide services. I think there is more support to eliminate the income tax than to eliminate the grocery tax.

“I understand the grocery tax is regressive,” he said. “If they could get rid of both, that would be fine. But we have to have some money from somewhere.”

The poll did not ask respondents to consider how the elimination of a state revenue stream, whether from the income tax or from the grocery tax, would impact the services provided by the Mississippi government.

But some poll respondents told Mississippi Today they do not believe they are getting many services for their taxes anyway.

Poll respondent Ester Jones of Jones County said the state should eliminate both.

“If they are not going to support the schools with the money, they should just do away with it and allow the parents to support their children,” she said.

Jones said she believes it is unfair to force poor people to pay a tax on their groceries. She said the state of Texas does not have a sales tax on groceries and also has no income tax.

By a significant margin, Black Mississippians would rather not pay the grocery tax than the income tax. Their support for the suspension of the grocery tax is 60% to 29%, with 11% not answering or having no opinion, while their support for the elimination of the income tax is 44% in favor to 38% opposed.

White Mississippians also were more supportive of suspending the grocery tax — 74% to 19%, compared to 62% to 27% for the income tax.

Republicans support suspending the grocery tax 71% to 22%, while Democrats do 65% to 28%, and independents do 67% to 21%.

On the income tax, Democrats favor elimination by a narrow 42% to 41% margin. Two-thirds (66%) of Republicans support elimination of the income tax, while 23% of Republican oppose it. Independents support income tax elimination 56% to 30%.

“In my situation I pay a tremendous amount of property taxes. I pay a lot of incomes taxes, too,” said Sam Rosenthal of Indianola who described himself as a landlord. “I don’t want to be taxed out of business. I am overwhelmed with taxes.

“I feel like every time I turn around I am paying some type of tax whether property, income or some type of assessment,” Rosenthal said. “I would love to see the elimination of that.”

He said he also does not like the grocery tax, but added, “If had to choose I would rather pay the grocery tax. I am a realist. I know the state has to have money.”

Another poll question attempted to gauge support for a one-time rebate to taxpayers as many other states have done. That idea garnered 51% support and was opposed by 41%. Democrats supported the one-time rebate 73% to 21%, while Republicans and independents opposed them by narrower margins.

Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and many in the Senate leadership have advocated to use some of the current surplus the state has to provide taxpayers a one-time payment.

The Mississippi Today/Siena College Research Institute poll of 821 registered voters was conducted Jan. 8-12 and has an overall margin of error of +/- 4.6 percentage points. Siena has an ‘A’ rating in FiveThirtyEight’s analysis of pollsters.

Click here for complete methodology and crosstabs relevant to this story.

The post Poll: Grocery tax cut more popular than income tax cut appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The House of Representatives, after lengthy debate and a partisan vote on Thursday, passed a bill that would ban gender affirming surgery and drugs for Mississippians 18 and under.

The 78-28 vote, mostly along party lines, came after numerous Democratic lawmakers asked why the bill was needed, and why the House wasn’t instead addressing a health care crisis with officials warning 38 hospitals are on the verge of closure.

House Bill 1125, the “Regulate Experimental Adolescent Procedures Act,” is similar to measures passed or debated in other states and was authored by Rep. Gene Newman, a Republican from Pearl.

It would prohibit Mississippi doctors from performing gender affirming surgery or prescribing drugs such as hormone replacement therapy to those under 18. It would allow for the doctors’ licenses to be revoked and create a “civil claim of action” for them to be sued with a 30-year statute of limitations. It would prohibit insurers or Medicaid from reimbursing families for such procedures and would strip doctors who provide them of the state’s generous tort claims protections.

The bill now heads to the Senate for consideration.

Under questioning, Rep. Nick Bain, a Republican from Corinth who made the floor pitch for the bill, said he knows of no cases of Mississippi youth undergoing gender affirming surgery, but said he has heard some are taking hormone treatments. Bain said the University of Mississippi Medical Center had 47 “visits” regarding gender affirming care between 2017 and 2022, but he is unsure if any of those patients were 18 and under.

“To me it’s about taking a wait-and-see approach to make sure that these kids are what they think they are,” Bain said. “… The child still has the right, the ability to live as any gender they want, then when they turn 18 they can make that decision.”

Other than Bain, Republican supporters of the bill were mostly quiet during the floor debate that lasted more than an hour.

Rep. Chris Bell, a Democrat from Jackson, asked Bain, “Wouldn’t we be better off dealing with bills to prevent hospitals closing across our state?” noting the measure was one of the first general bills to be taken up by the House this session.

Bain said such legislation dealing with hospitals would be forthcoming and he believes the Thursday bill “is a compelling public interest for us to be involved in with children.”

Rep. Omeria Scott, a Democrat from Laurel, offered an amendment to the bill to expand Mississippi Medicaid coverage. Her amendment was ruled improper and no vote was taken.

“Instead of dealing with 47 people out of 3 million, this will do something for 166,000 people who need health care,” Scott said of her amendment.

Rep. Zakiya Summers, a Democrat from Jackson, questioned whether supporters of the bill were “taking away parents’ rights.”

“When these types of decisions are made, there’s usually a team, right, not just the child,” Summers said. “There’s a psychiatrist, a psychologist, physicians. Are we saying we want to take away parents’ rights and say we won’t allow them to make decisions for their children based on what medical professionals tell them?”

Bain said, “We take away parents’ rights all the time,” including with custody decisions and other matters to protect children’s well-being.

After the bill passed, the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi issued a statement saying the backers of the bill are “forcing policy onto vulnerable young people.”

“Denying healthcare to transgender youth can be life-threatening,” the ACLU statement said. “Research shows transgender youth are twice as likely than their cisgender peers to experience depression, isolation, and attempt suicide. Additionally, transgender youth whose families support their gender identity have a decrease in suicidal thoughts and significant increases in self-esteem.”

The post House passes ban on gender affirming procedures for those 18 and under appeared first on Mississippi Today.

More than three years after a historic downpour within the Mississippi River basin led to financial hardships for the Gulf Coast’s fisheries, a federal judge ruled Wednesday that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers must seek consultation over the effects of opening the Bonnet Carré Spillway.

The spillway, which was built in the 1930s, is designed to redirect potential floodwaters from the Mississippi River away from New Orleans and into Lake Ponchartrain. But when the Corps opens the spillway, the river’s water eventually reaches the Mississippi Sound, and can impact the salinity in a way that kills off species such as oysters, shrimp and crabs.

After historic amounts of rainfall in 2018 and 2019, the Corps opened the spillway an unprecedented three times in two years. Mississippi Today published a series in 2020 on the impacts of the spillway openings, where Gulf Coast fishermen questioned the future of their careers after dealing with one disaster after another.

In his ruling on Wednesday, Judge Louis Guirola wrote that the Corps violated the Magnuson-Stevens Act by not seeking consultation from the National Marine Fisheries Service — a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA — when opening the spillway. The law requires federal agencies to seek consultation if they take an action that impacts essential fish habitat.

Guirola ordered the Corps to consult with the National Marine Fisheries Service regarding the impact of the spillway openings by Sept. 30 of this year.

Guirola dismissed a related lawsuit, filed by Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, in September, 2021. In that case, later argued by Secretary of State Michael Watson, Mississippi officials argued that the Corps should complete an updated environmental impact study on the effects of the spillway openings, and also that the Corps should open the Morganza Spillway, which would instead send water into southern Louisiana.

The judge dismissed the case with prejudice over a lack of jurisdiction and failure to state a claim.

The post Federal judge rules against Army Corps in Bonnet Carré lawsuit appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Certified teacher vacancies in Mississippi have decreased since last year, with 2,593 reported for the 2022-23 school year according to the Mississippi Department of Education. 

The state did not start tracking its critical teacher shortage until 2021, when the department found just over 3,000 public school teaching positions were either completely vacant or held by teachers who were not properly certified. 

Courtney Van Cleve, MDE director of educator talent acquisition and effectiveness, said the survey data provided “one of the clearest pictures of Mississippi’s educator workforce that we have had to date.” 

Elementary school teachers make up a third of all vacancies, at 32%, but high school teachers were close behind with 31%. In high school, the greatest vacancies are in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) classes.

“It’s encouraging that we have fewer vacancies, but we still have too many vacancies in districts throughout our state,” said Kelly Riley, director of Mississippi Professional Educators.

Riley specifically called the 335 special education teacher vacancies “alarming” because it is a subject area she said has been on the critical shortage list for too long, since at least the 2019-20 school year.

Administrator vacancies have also decreased from last year, but vacancies for support staff, such as custodians or administrative assistants, have not. Particularly, there have been increases in vacancies for teacher assistants and bus drivers. 

Van Cleve said districts linked this increase to an uptick in responsibilities to address pandemic-related learning loss without an increase in wages. 

“Things like one-on-one tutorials with a teacher assistant or extended day bus routes or Saturday bus routes are leaving them in a place feeling … fairly overwhelmed,” Van Cleve said.

Van Cleve said that while there are still vacancies to be addressed, the department has seen success by creating some flexibility in teacher licensure. This has allowed a greater number of teachers to enter the field with similar outcomes to other teachers.  

Toren Ballard, K-12 policy director for Mississippi First, lauded the department for tracking this information but said he would have liked to see it presented at the district level. 

“Overall it’s about 500 less vacancies than last year, which looks like a good statistic, but I think it doesn’t cover the whole story,” said Ballard. 

In the 2021-22 school year, Mississippi had 32,199 teachers working in classrooms and the average salary was $47.902, according to MDE.

Even after the pay raise offered by the Legislature last year, Mississippi First found in a new report the number of teachers who left their district at the end of the 2021-22 school year still increased, with 23.7% of all teachers not returning. Teachers in poorly rated districts were also more likely to leave, with 32% of teachers in F-rated districts leaving at the end of last year compared to 16% in A-rated districts. 

READ MORE: ‘It was an easy choice for me’: 17% of teachers left their district in the 2020-21 school year

The report also found that half of Mississippi teachers cannot afford at least one of the following: adequate food, transportation, housing, or medical care. Financial insecurity, and student debt specifically, was most closely linked with a risk of leaving the classroom. Teachers who work in low-rated school districts and teachers of color both reported significantly higher student debt burdens. 

To address these impacts, Mississippi First recommends an annual stipend for teaching in critical shortage areas and an expansion of eligibility for the existing Winter-Reed Teacher Loan Repayment Program. Currently, the program is only available to traditional route teachers in their first year of teaching and has a cap on the number of applicants that can be assisted each year, which does not allow the financial aid office to use the total appropriation for the program each year. The organization recommends expanding eligibility regardless of years of experience or path to the classroom, as well as removing the cap. 

“Our work in improving the educator pipeline is not finished,” Ballard said. “Some of the disparities and financial issues that are underpinning the teacher shortage in Mississippi have been around for so long that it’s going to take more than one year of a pay raise to really start making some progress in addressing this issue.” 

The post Dept. of Ed reports nearly 2,600 teacher vacancies, a slight decrease from last year appeared first on Mississippi Today.

A new Mississippi Today/Siena College poll showed 57% of voters would support “someone else” over current Gov. Tate Reeves in a November election, while just 33% would support Reeves.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Close to the Vest appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Question: What do all eight starting quarterbacks remaining in the NFL playoffs have in common, other than an intense spotlight shining on them this weekend?

Answer: While still in college, all eight worked as counselors in the Manning Passing Academy (MPA) in Thibodaux, La. Count ’em, eight: Dak Prescott, Dallas Cowboys; Trevor Lawrence, Jacksonville Jaguars; Jalen Hurts, Philadelphia Eagles; Brock Purdy, San Francisco 49ers; Daniel Jones, New York Giants; Joe Burrow, Cincinnati Bengals; Patrick Mahomes, Kansas City Chiefs; and Josh Allen, Buffalo Bills.

Several of those, including Dak Prescott, were Manning campers before they became counselors later on.

“We’d love to take credit for all their success, but they were pretty good when we got them,” Archie Manning told Mississippi Today on Tuesday. Archie Manning and his sons Cooper, Peyton and Eli are all deeply involved in the camp, which is already sold out with a long waiting list for 2023.

Besides the eight quarterbacks, Kellen Moore, the coach who will call the Cowboys’ plays for Prescott, worked as an MPA counselor when he played at Boise State. Cincinnati Bengals head coach Zac Taylor was an MPA counselor in 2006 when he played at Nebraska.

What’s more, three of the four quarterbacks whose teams lost in the playoffs last weekend were also MPA counselors. The only outlier? Tom Brady.

Deadpanned Cooper Manning, “Tom just wasn’t good enough.”

The 26-year-old MPA welcomes approximately 1,200 campers each summer for four days of intensive instruction. Over the years, thousands of those campers have been Mississippians.

“We like to keep the coach/camper ratio at 10 to 1,” Archie Manning said. “So our coaching staff consists roughly of about 80 high school and college coaches and then about 40 counselors who are college quarterbacks.”

Many of the college quarterbacks, including Prescott, attended MPA multiple years. Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts, a prime candidate for NFL MVP, was a three-year counselor, including two times when he was at Alabama and once when he was at Oklahoma.

“The portal has really changed things,” Archie Manning said. “When I was sending out invitations for our return counselors, 11 of 21 had changed schools.”

Asked if any of the counselor-turned-playoffs quarterbacks have surprised him, Archie Manning didn’t have to think long to answer. “It would have to be Brock Purdy,” Manning said. “I mean, my gosh, from last pick in the draft to doing what he’s doing right now in San Francisco. I knew he was pretty good, but this is something like Ole Miss getting the last bid to the NCAA Tournament and then going on to win the national championship.”

That’s exactly what happened with Ole Miss baseball last year. And Purdy, a rookie out of Iowa State, has quarterbacked the San Francisco 49ers to six straight victories since becoming a starter, throwing 16 touchdowns, just four interceptions. Purdy was a third string rookie before injuries to the top two 49ers quarterbacks elevated him to a starting role.

So, how did an Iowa State quarterback end up at a football camp in Thibodaux, La.? “I was flipping channels one Saturday and started watching an Iowa State game,” Archie Manning answered. “I just loved the way Brock played and made a note to invite him to the camp.”

Purdy accepted, as nearly all do. It has become almost like a badge of honor for college quarterbacks to be invited to be an MPA counselor.

Archie Manning says he stays in touch with all “our guys,” primarily with text messaging. “I congratulate them when they do well, and probably send as many or more notes when they have a bad game,” he said. “That’s the thing with quarterbacks. You’re going to have bad games. That’s the nature of it. You’re going to throw interceptions, and not all them will be your fault. Look at Dak in the last game of the regular season. I was so proud of him the way he came back in the playoffs Monday night.”

Prescott, Manning said, is one of his favorite quarterbacks to come through MPA. “Love Dak,” he said. “Love the way he plays, love his toughness, love the way he handles himself. Love everything about him.”

That doesn’t mean Archie and son Eli weren’t above playing a joke on Dak during one summer camp. “Papa John’s made us these bright red T-shirts for our counselors one year,” Archie Manning said. “Eli and I took the one for Dak and added some stripes to it and made it look like an Ole Miss game jersey.”

Prescott wore it – after removing the stripes.

Archie Manning recalls watching Trevor Lawrence in person for the first time at the MPA in 2019 when Lawrence was Clemson’s star quarterback. “What I remember is watching Trevor work out and throw and thinking, ‘This is what God drew up when he decided to make a perfect quarterback.’”

Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow was invited to MPA in the summer of 2019 just before his breakout National Championship season at LSU. Archie Manning also invited Amory native Jimmy Burrow, a college coach and Joe’s dad, to the camp that year.

“Jimmy wrote me a note the next week and told me how much they enjoyed it,” Archie Manning said. “He told me Joe told him on the way home that he believed he was the best quarterback at camp and he probably was. Joe has never lacked for confidence.”

“What I remember most about Joe, besides how good he was, was how his hair and his sunglasses had to be perfect,” Cooper Manning said. “Joe was always stylin’. Still is.”

One of the annual highlights of the camp is a Friday night throwing competition among the counselors. In 2017, the competition was delayed by a heavy rainstorm.

“Usually, in Thibodaux, when it rains like that there’s lots of lightning and they have to come off the field,” Archie Manning said. “That day, Josh Allen (then of Wyoming, now the Buffalo Bills) comes up to me in the locker room and says, ‘Mr. Manning, it’s not lightning. Let’s go out there and do this.’ Josh is so competitive. He couldn’t wait.

“So we go out there and it’s wet as can be, and I’ll never forget it. It’s hard to throw a wet ball because it gets slick and heavy, but Josh threw that thing like it was perfectly dry. I turned to Peyton and said, ‘Can you believe this guy?’ Peyton couldn’t believe it either. Never seen anybody throw a wet football like that. I always said Matt Stafford had the strongest arm I had ever seen, but then I saw Josh Allen throw it. Unbelievable.”

Cooper Manning concurs. “It was raining like crazy. Everything was soaked and wet. And there’s Josh, slinging it 80 yards.”

Of course, throwing at targets in shorts and t-shirts is not a good predictor or how someone will throw the football when the blitz is coming and huge, angry people are coming at you intent on rearranging your body parts.

Patrick Mahomes would be Exhibit A.

“I remember when Mahomes came,” Archie Manning said. “In the competition he was like just another guy. There were several who could throw it as well or better. When Pat really impresses is when he’s throwing on the move, improvising, extending plays. Nobody does it better. He just makes plays.”

Nine-time Pro Bowler Russell Wilson is another who attended MPA both as a camper and then a counselor. Wilson didn’t make the playoffs this year with the Denver Broncos, but Archie Manning well remembers when Wilson and the Seattle Seahawks trounced the Broncos and Peyton Manning in the 2014 Super Bowl. In fact, Archie remembers watching a mid-Super Bowl week TV interview with Wilson. “Russell was wearing a Manning Passing Academy t-shirt there at the Super Bowl,” Archie said. “That blew me away.”

Said Cooper Manning, “It has gotten to be almost like a fraternity, the guys who have been through MPA and are now some of the biggest stars in the sport. We’re proud of it, and we don’t take it for granted.”

The post All 8 remaining playoff quarterbacks came through Manning academy appeared first on Mississippi Today.

A majority of Mississippi voters would prefer a new governor in 2023, according to a new Mississippi Today/Siena College poll.

The poll showed 57% of voters would support “someone else” over current Gov. Tate Reeves in a November election, while just 33% would support Reeves, who announced last week he will seek a second term as governor in the Nov. 2023 election.

Among Republican respondents, Reeves garnered 55% support in the scenario, while one-third of Republicans would prefer to elect someone else. More than two-thirds (67%) of independents, who in Mississippi often vote in Republican primaries, prefer someone else over just 24% who prefer Reeves.

But the poll wasn’t all bad for Reeves. He currently leads narrowly against a known Democratic challenger in the general election and leads handily against a potential Republican primary challenger, according to the survey results.

Editor’s note: Poll methodology and crosstabs can be found at the bottom of this story. Click here to read more about our partnership with Siena College Research Institute.

Reeves leads Democrat Brandon Presley, the four-term public service commissioner who announced his campaign for governor last week, by a narrow 43%-39% margin, according to the poll. That margin is within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 4.6%, meaning the race could either be virtually tied or Reeves could be up by 9 points. The statewide survey was conducted between Jan. 3-8, several days before Presley announced his candidacy.

Reeves carried strong support among Republicans in a head-to-head matchup with Presley, and Presley greatly outpaced Reeves among Democrats and narrowly among independents. One-third (33%) of independent respondents said they’d vote for Presley, 31% said they’d vote for Reeves and 27% said they didn’t know or had no opinion.

Presley, who has never held statewide office, is not well known across the state, according to the poll. Just 21% of Mississippi voters said they had a favorable opinion of Presley, 15% said they had an unfavorable opinion of him, and a substantial 61% said they did not know enough to say. Presley enjoyed the highest name ID in the 1st Congressional District, where he lives and where he has served as public service commissioner the past 15 years. But even there, 41% of respondents don’t know enough to say whether they find him favorable or unfavorable.

Reeves’ name ID across the state is much stronger, with just 11% of poll respondents indicating they didn’t know enough about Reeves to say whether they found him favorable or unfavorable.

A 61% majority of voters also said they did not know enough to render an opinion about former Supreme Court Chief Justice Bill Waller Jr., who has said he is contemplating challenging Reeves in the August Republican primary. Waller challenged Reeves in the 2019 Republican primary, forcing a runoff despite entering the election late and facing a substantial fundraising disadvantage. The new poll showed 19% of voters find Waller favorable, while 18% find him unfavorable.

Head-to-head in a potential Republican primary, Reeves defeats Waller 52% to 29% among poll respondents. But independents, who often vote in Republican primaries, favor Reeves over Waller by only a 38%-37% margin.

In Mississippi, party primary elections are open to all voters. Notably, 29% of Democrats who were surveyed said they planned to vote in the Republican primary later this year.

When asked to choose between Reeves and “someone else,” African Americans who responded support the unknown candidate by a 78% to 11% margin, while white Mississippians support Reeves by a 45% to 44% margin.

In terms of the race against Presley, white voters support Reeves 63% to 21%, while Black voters support Presley 69% to 8%.

The Mississippi Today/Siena College Research Institute poll of 821 registered voters was conducted Jan. 8-12 and has an overall margin of error of +/- 4.6 percentage points. Siena has an ‘A’ rating in FiveThirtyEight’s analysis of pollsters.

Click here for complete methodology and crosstabs relevant to this story.

The post Poll: Majority of Mississippi voters prefer new governor in 2023 appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said measures he’s pushing in the Senate will help with Mississippi’s hospital crisis “not just next year, but for the next generation.”

The Senate plan would provide immediate help to hospitals with grants, remove legal barriers to consolidation of small hospitals and try to incentivize nurses and doctors to stay in Mississippi.

Hosemann said he is also working with Mississippi Medicaid and Gov. Tate Reeves to see if Medicaid can increase reimbursement to hospitals for some services. But Hosemann, one of few GOP leaders open to Medicaid expansion through the federal Affordable Care Act, said he doesn’t foresee full expansion as a starter this year.

READ MORE: Poll: 80% of Mississippians favor Medicaid expansion

Senate leaders have drafted four bills, with a cost of about $111 million as part of the plan Hosemann announced. Hosemann said he worked extensively with the Mississippi Hospital Association and other hospital and health care leaders to come up with this plan. It would:

• Provide $80 million in grants, to help shore hospitals’ flagging revenue and increased costs, which threaten closure of 38 rural hospitals across the state. SB 2372 would distribute money to hospitals based on the number of licensed beds and type of care. Hosemann said it would also require hospitals to provide data that lawmakers could use to overhaul the state’s health delivery system. He said adjustments are needed to meet demographic and other changes.

• Change “anti-trust” laws or other state legal barriers to “collaboration and consolidation” of hospitals. Hosemann said SB2323, which has a mirror bill in the House, would not change the state’s certificate of need laws that limit where certain hospital beds and specialties can go, but that “our CON laws are due for a review” and will likely also be examined this year. For the long run, Hosemann said the state’s health care infrastructure needs to be reorganized and modernized to make facilities more financially viable.

• Provide $6 million for a nurse loan repayment program. Hosemann said SB 2373 is a do-over of a bill passed last year that did not work to address the states drastic shortage, estimated at about 3,000 nurses. He said changes the House made last year and other issues derailed the program, but those issues are being worked out. The plan, using federal pandemic relief money, would provide $6,000 a year, for up to three years, for nurses who agree to work at Mississippi hospitals.

• Provide $20 million for a nursing/allied health community college grant program. SB2371 would use federal pandemic funds, initially, for grants to help community colleges’ nursing and health programs. Hosemann said many of the programs have long waiting lists and shortage of faculty, equipment and infrastructure needed to train nurses. Hosemann noted the COVID-19 pandemic showed the importance of nurses and “our community colleges are leading the way in providing nurses throughout the state.”

• Provide $5 million to help with hospital residency and fellowship programs. Also in SB2371, this proposal, funded by federal pandemic money, would help create new programs, or add capacity to existing residency and fellowship programs in medical or surgical specialty areas at Mississippi hospitals. Hosemann said the federal government provides reimbursement for some residents or fellowships at hospitals, but the initial startup costs are prohibitive, and this new plan would help. He said that hospitals report that a majority of doctors stay in areas where they do their residencies.

READ MORE: Democrats finalize hospital crisis plan, blast Republicans for inaction

READ MORE: ‘We’re 50th by a mile.’ Experts tell lawmakers where Mississippi stands with health of mothers, children

Hosemann on Wednesday also reiterated his support for extending postpartum Medicaid coverage for new mothers from 60 days to a year. The Senate passed such measures last year, but they were killed in the House.

“We won the pro-life case, and now we’re unwilling to take care of our moms?” Hosemann said. “I don’t understand how you can make that argument.”

The post Hosemann announces Senate plan to help Mississippi hospital crisis appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Mirror, Mirror appeared first on Mississippi Today.

A task force of public officials met behind closed doors last year to discuss revamping Mississippi’s college financial aid programs, and lawmakers next week will begin debating a bill written based on the group’s private discussions.

The 16-person task force, which met several times last year outside public view, was comprised of multiple public officials, including an associate commissioner from the Institutions of Higher Learning, the interim executive director of the Mississippi Community College Board, two community college presidents, and the chair of the little-known state board that oversees financial aid.

A bill has been filed in the Legislature based on the group’s proposal and a joint hearing has been scheduled for next week. 

The president and CEO of Woodward Hines Education Foundation, the nonprofit that convened the task force, declined to discuss the details of the proposed overhaul until after the hearing, citing “the code of confidence we promised members.”

“It won’t be the Mississippi One Grant, and I’ll just leave it at that,” Woodward Hines CEO Jim McHale told Mississippi Today, referring to the controversial 2021 plan that would have resulted in Black and low-income students losing thousands of dollars in state financial aid for college. That proposal, which failed to gain any support from lawmakers, was also conceived largely in the dark — a point of contention among many critics.

The group’s meetings, undisclosed until now, are notable because the closed-door deliberations inspired legislation that aims to spend taxpayer dollars. Yet no students who receive financial aid or will be affected by the proposed changes were invited to attend. 

Mississippi Today has obtained records from the task force, including a letter McHale sent in May 2022 inviting members to join that details its goal: to “explore how Mississippi’s student financial aid investments can be best leveraged to meet the economic development needs of the State.”

The task force met over the course of at least eight meetings moderated by HCM Strategies, a consulting firm brought in by Woodward Hines, which synthesized members’ discussions into a proposal. The task force approved the final proposal not by a vote, said Jennifer Rogers, a participant and director of the Office of Student Financial Aid, but “agreement by discussion.” 

According to a PowerPoint created by HCM Strategies, the proposal would substantially change two state aid programs aimed at helping students from low- and middle-income families afford college, while leaving the state’s most racially inequitable aid program virtually untouched. 

The Higher Education Legislative Plan for Needy Students — called the HELP grant — would be reduced. The HELP grant currently pays up to four years of tuition at the state’s community colleges and public and private universities, no matter what institution a recipient attends. 

The task force recommended lowering the HELP grant for freshmen and sophomores to the cost of tuition at the community colleges, even if a recipient decides to go to a four-year university. The last two years of the HELP grant would cover the cost of tuition at the universities. 

HELP recipients, by and large, have preferred to use the generous financial aid award to attend four-year public and private universities rather than community colleges, according to OSFA’s annual reports.

The revised HELP grant would aim to push more recipients to attend community colleges, a change that Rogers said “the community colleges wanted to see.” 

The task force also included the presidents of Itawamba Community College and Mississippi Delta Community College, the executive vice president at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, according to HCM’s PowerPoint. 

The proposal made the most changes to the Mississippi Resident Tuition Assistance Grant, or MTAG, which provides up to $500 a year to freshmen and sophomores and $1,000 a year to juniors and seniors. 

Those amounts would increase to $1,000 and $2,000, respectively, and eligibility would broaden to include Pell Grant recipients and part-time students. Students from families that make more than 200% of the median household income in Mississippi ($49,111 in 2021, according to the Census Bureau) would no longer be eligible. The requirement to get a minimum of 15 on the ACT would be removed. 

The goal of these changes to MTAG is to “expand workforce preparation,” according to HCM’s PowerPoint. To that end, the grant would be renamed “MTAG Works.” Students would also get a $500 “bonus” if they pursue degrees in a “high value pathway” as defined by the state’s workforce development office. 

A bill filed by Rep. Donnie Scoggin, R-Ellisville, the chair of the House Colleges and Universities Committee, is virtually identical to draft legislation that Rogers wrote based on the proposal. In the bill, the “bonus” amounts were changed to be equal to a percent of the average tuition at public universities. 

If Scoggin’s bill becomes law, the new programs would go into effect next year. Sen. Rita Potts Parks, R-Corinth, who chairs the Senate Colleges and Universities Committee, told Mississippi Today she has filed identical legislation. She called for the joint legislative hearing next week.

There were no lawmakers on the task force but Potts Parks said she knew about the meetings. Each legislative session, Potts Parks said that IHL and the community colleges ask for changes to the state’s financial aid programs but up until now, every proposal has been too controversial to go forward. 

“I’m very proud of that group of individuals that came together,” said Potts Parks. “I will tell you, I never dreamed that they would be able to come to an agreement.” 

All told, the revamped programs would cost the state an additional $21 million on top of the existing programs, according to HCM Strategies’s PowerPoint, based on the estimated number of new recipients. 

The proposal does not address several existing issues with the way Mississippi hands out public money for college. It does not fix the eligibility “cliff” that prevents low-income families making slightly more than $39,500 from receiving the HELP grant nor would it make the Mississippi Eminent Scholars Grant, the state’s primary merit-based grant, more racially equitable. 

Though McHale said Woodward Hines’ staff were “the conveners” of the task force, he wouldn’t discuss the proposal prior to the hearings because “it wasn’t our plan.” 

But Woodward Hines has pushed it along the legislative process, helping to set up meetings between lawmakers and task force members. A calendar invite obtained by Mississippi Today shows that Woodward Hines’ registered lobbyist, John Morgan Hughes, scheduled a meeting on Jan. 10 in Scoggin’s office for a “Post Secondary Bill Walk Through.” 

Rogers, who presented draft legislation at that meeting, said Potts Parks, Scott Waller from the Mississippi Economic Council and Nick Hall from Speaker Philip Gunn’s office also attended, but their names aren’t listed on the calendar invite. 

“They were a driving force behind it,” Potts Parks said of Woodward Hines. “I mean, they’ve been a driving force behind trying to improve education for quite some time.” 

This is not the first time that attempts to revamp state financial aid in Mississippi have been less than transparent. The failed Mississippi One Grant — which Woodward Hines advocated against — was created by a committee of financial aid advisors that met outside public view. 

McHale invited higher education and workforce officials from across the state to participate in Woodward Hines’s task force after the One Grant failed to gain any legislative support last year. 

The task force met during the second half of last year and the discussion progressed from understanding state financial aid policy in Mississippi to “communication strategies” and “advocacy,” according to meeting minutes. 

Members heard from experts in higher education and workforce policy, but Rogers said that student recipients of state financial aid did not attend. The only explicit mention in the meeting minutes of recipient input came during the second meeting when the task force watched a video of “student voices.” 

At a Zoom meeting of the Post-Secondary Education Financial Assistance Board on Tuesday, the chair, Jim Turcotte, said he was “cautiously optimistic” about the task force’s proposal. Turcotte was one of three financial aid board members who participated or were represented on the task force, but he said that he did not speak on their behalf. 

“I didn’t say, ‘this is what we want’ or ‘this isn’t what we want,’ but I did react when asked and sometimes when not asked,” Turcotte said. “I shared my opinions and asked my questions.” 

The joint legislative hearing on the proposal is scheduled for Jan. 24 at 9 a.m. at the Capitol in Room 204. Rogers said she plans to present the PowerPoint created by HCM. 

Editor’s note: The Woodward Hines Education Foundation is a Mississippi Today donor.

The post Public officials met in ‘confidence’ to overhaul state financial aid. Their proposal could become law. appeared first on Mississippi Today.