OurTupelo

A federal board has scheduled its vote on whether Amtrak’s service will return to Mississippi’s Gulf Coast with a route from Mobile to New Orleans. 

The Surface Transportation Board, a federal body made up of presidential appointees, announced Friday it will vote on the future of the passenger route on Dec. 7. The contested route has been under the board’s review for over a year, with Amtrak and the track’s freight-company owners presenting their own cases about its viability. 

There will be a final set of November hearings ahead of the vote. 

“Amtrak is preparing for the next hearing, confident in our case for Gulf Coast access and optimistic our service will begin next year,” spokesman Marc Magliari said in a statement. 

Read more: Amtrak breaks ground for new Gulf Coast platform, though route still uncertain

Amtrak has maintained the route can handle the added passenger train traffic, while companies CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern Railway Company say it could negatively affect businesses that rely on the Port of Mobile to move freight. 

The hearings, beginning Nov. 17, will focus on models that predict train traffic. 

Amtrak hasn’t run a Gulf Coast route since Hurricane Katrina. The proposed route would run two trains daily in the morning with stops in Bay St. Louis, Pascagoula, Gulfport and Biloxi. 

The post Vote scheduled to decide fate of Gulf Coast Amtrak route appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Joe Paul, the eleventh president of University of Southern Mississippi, walked onto the stage at the Thad Cochran Center on Thursday to a standing ovation, a scaled-down marching band and cheers of “Fight! Fight! Fight!” 

“Okay,” Paul exclaimed as he took in the scene. “Um, wow.” 

The celebration marked Paul’s first public address since the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees cut its executive search short earlier this week and announced that the longtime administrator was signing on to lead the university for the next four years. 

In an 11-minute speech, Paul told the audience – which included students, faculty, state and local elected officials and members of the IHL board – that he is committed to serving everyone on campus. He vowed to grow enrollment, expand USM’s beleaguered Gulf Coast campus, bring in more research dollars, improve student life and recommit to shared governance with faculty. 

“Together, we are mighty,” he told the crowd multiple times. 

Paul credited a number of people in his speech, including his wife; former USM president Aubrey Lucas; high-dollar donors Chuck Scianna and Joe Quinlan; the mayors of Hattiesburg and Gulfport, who were his former students; and the IHL board. 

In particular, Paul shouted out Tom Duff and Gee Ogletree, USM alumni and IHL board members who co-chaired the presidential search. 

“All I can say to y’all is that Mr. Duff is one persuasive individual, okay?” Paul said. “These two Southern Miss alums, along with their fellow trustees, have displayed courage, conviction and integrity through this process. They have listened and they have acted. They love Southern Miss, as we do, and all of these servant-leader trustees are going to help us take Southern Miss to the top.”

Flanked by several trustees and the IHL commissioner, Duff, who is serving as the IHL board president this year, also received a warm welcome before he introduced Paul. He remarked that the board is not used to a positive reception. 

“I’ve got to admit, this is the eighth time we’ve stood up here to have a person selected as an institutional head,” he said. “Mostly, we’ve had folks jeer at us, not clap for us.” 

Duff thanked the 15 members of the Search Advisory Constituency for their feedback. The advisory group had been criticized by rank-and-file faculty and staff who worried a lack of representation would lead IHL to pick a president who did not support them. In the three days since IHL announced Paul’s selection, some faculty who were critical of the constituency have expressed support for the new president. 

Duff told the audience that during the listening sessions, the advisory group had taken notes during the listening session and provided the board with an eight-page summary of qualities they wanted to see in the next president. 

“Not only did they write up the profile, they pretty much told us who it needed to be, and we appreciate that,” he said. “We’ve listened.” 

IHL hired a headhunting firm, Academic Search, for $130,000 to aid in the presidential search with the scheduled conclusion of spring 2023, according to the contract inked on Sept. 21. But IHL and Academic Search did not post formal advertisements for the position, IHL’s spokesperson Caron Blanton told Mississippi Today. She added that the board is now in the process of amending the contract.

Duff sought to assuage any criticisms of IHL expediting the search. 

“Oftentimes even though we have a path, we have to take responsibility and say no, that choice needs to be this, that decision needs to be that,” he said. “This is one of those situations. And we’ve probably been written up a couple times in the paper, I noticed, as not following our blueprint. But our blueprint is finding the best leader, it’s not following the blueprint.” 

Paul’s contract has not yet been finalized; in an email, Blanton said she would provide it to Mississippi Today once it is executed. 

The post ‘We’ve listened’: IHL welcomes Joe Paul as next USM’s president at campus event appeared first on Mississippi Today.

HATTIESBURG — The sport wasn’t baseball, but Southern Miss swept a doubleheader Thursday.

At 3 p.m., an overflow crowd gathered in USM’s Thad Cochran Center and cheered as if attending a football pep rally, as Joe Paul was introduced as the 11th president in history of the 112-year-old university. It was an almost surreal atmosphere. I mean, I’ve often heard similar cheering when a football coach or basketball coach was introduced, but never for a university president. As Thomas Duff, who led the Institutions of Higher Learning search, commented, “These kinds of announcements are usually jeered, not cheered.” This one was cheered thunderously.

Then, three or so hours later, Will Hall’s surprisingly proficient football team jumped out to a 20-2 first quarter lead and then held on for a 39-22 victory over the Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns, a team that has won 41 games and four Sun Belt West Division championships over the past four seasons. Don’t look now but the Golden Eagles are 3-1 and a half game behind Troy in the Sun Belt West standings. Hall’s Golden Eagles have now won five of their last six games and seven of 10 over the past two seasons.

As Hall put it afterward, “We’re not a finished product. We’re really young. We’ve got 71 players who are freshmen and sophomores. We gotta go to work again tomorrow. We got to pick up the shovel and dig some more. We’re not there yet, but, man, are we coming and doing it the right way.”

Hard to say which cheers were louder: Was it when wide receiver deluxe Jason Brownlee scored on a 76-yard pass from true freshman Zach Wilcke to give Southern Miss a 20-2 lead? Or was it a few moments later, during a TV timeout, when Paul was introduced to the football crowd as the university’s new president? Paul received a standing ovation – and the loudest cheers were from the student section. You just don’t see and hear that every day on a college campus.

Those students apparently have been paying attention. The plan for hiring a new president had called for a nationwide search that probably would last into next year. Dr. Paul, who will turn 69 on Halloween, changed that plan. During his three months as interim president, Paul worked with such energy and accomplished so much in terms of fund-raising, recruitment and campus-wide goodwill, it became clear to all that the right person already was in place. Paul, of course, has a much, much longer history at the school, having graduated from USM in 1975 and having served the school in varying capacities for nearly all his adult life. As Will Hall put it later Thursday night, “Joe Paul bleeds black and gold. He knows everybody, everybody knows him.”

Hall is right. Indeed, this column should come with a disclaimer. I’ve known Paul for 50-plus years. We graduated in the same class. His motto is “leave it better than you found it,” and he always does. My opinion: Southern Miss hit a home run with this hire. 

And it is becoming increasingly apparent that athletic director Jeremy McClain knocked the ball out of the park on Dec. 2, 2020, when he hired Hall as football coach. Despite a remarkable string of injuries – particularly at the all-important position of quarterback – Hall’s team has made steady progress in not quite two years time. You could see it coming last November when Hall installed a “super back” offense with running backs playing quarterback and won the last two games in decisive fashion.

This season, despite losing their starting quarterback, two starting inside linebackers and several others to injuries, the Eagles clearly improve with each and every outing, Defensively, the Nasty Bunch has become nasty again. They swarm to the football. They hit. Hard. The special teams are excellent. Punter Mason Hunt isn’t Ray Guy, but some of his kicks will remind you of the greatest punter in the history of the sport. Offensively, the Eagles piece it together, depending mostly on Brownlee and running back Frank Gore Jr., who puts every ounce of his 5 feet, 8 inches and 195 pounds into every play. Thursday night, Gore ran for 87 yards and threw a beauty of a 52-yard touchdown pass to talented and speedy freshman Tiaquelin Mims, another mite-sized dynamo.

Late Thursday night, someone asked Hall if was time to start dreaming of a conference championship.

“Dude, man, I’m the biggest dreamer in America,” Hall said. “I’m a 5-foot-7 dude who played quarterback. I dream all day long. But right now we have to figure out a way to win each week. We’re growing and we’re getting better and I hope everybody sees it.”

Southern Miss students appear to see it – and more. In the student section Thursday night, some students held up big posters with photos of both Hall and Paul.

Said Hall, “I’m a big Joe Paul fan and I was before this president thing ever came about. Me and Joe are alike in a lot of ways. We’re not afraid to dream. We’re not afraid to create a big vision and then be the first to jump out in front of everybody and start digging.”

At Southern Miss, there was a lot of digging going on Thursday. The future appears bright.

The post Thursday at Southern Miss, we saw the Joe Paul and Will Hall Show appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The city of Greenwood and Leflore County have put up a total of $9 million in a last-minute effort to save Greenwood Leflore Hospital, a key health care provider and economic engine for the Delta.

The financially struggling hospital has been negotiating with the University of Mississippi Medical Center over a lease agreement since the summer. A key sticking point in the talks was Greenwood Leflore’s outstanding debts to Medicare and the funds necessary for deferred maintenance on hospital facilities. UMMC did not want to be responsible for those costs after any transition. 

But now, Greenwood and Leflore County have each approved a $4.5 million letter of credit, for a total of $9 million in local financial support to pave the way for UMMC to take over hospital operations. 

With negotiations stalled, UMMC told Greenwood Leflore they would not be able to complete lease agreement documents in time for the year’s last scheduled meeting of the Institutions of Higher Learning, which needs to approve any agreement, the Greenwood Commonwealth reported earlier this week. Interim CEO Gary Marchand told hospital employees in a memo Tuesday that the hospital will need to make additional cuts in order to stay open through the end of the year, and it still may have to close its doors before then. 

The funding from the city and county doesn’t on its own speed up the timeline for a resolution, but it does appear to remove a barrier to an eventual agreement. 

Leflore County Supervisor and Board President Robert Collins told Mississippi Today that hospital leadership had made bad decisions for years, like excessively expensive contracts with physicians, redundant administrative positions, and too many staff for the number of patients they were serving. 

“We just could never get a meeting with them to sit down and talk about it,” Collins said of the hospital. “The situation’s been going down here for the last 10 years or more … We had a consultant come and tell us four years ago, if we stayed on the course that we was on, we’d be broke in four years, and they were right.”

But the hospital is so critical to its community that Collins said his support for the funding was an obvious choice. People who don’t have transportation need a health care facility nearby, and people without insurance can rely on the hospital for critical care. If the hospital were to close, people might wind up being airlifted to Memphis. 

“And if they do have to have a helicopter ride, they’ll be in debt the rest of their lives,” Collins said. “It’s just so important that we have health care here in Greenwood, Mississippi.”

Marchand told hospital employees in a memo Friday morning, before the county supervisors met and approved a letter of credit for the hospital, that the city had approved “a funding commitment” to support the lease agreement with UMMC.

“With sufficient funding in place to resolve several key challenges, we will be meeting with UMMC’s Executive Leadership to assess the status of our negotiations and the potential for a transaction date in early 2023,” he wrote. 

The hospital said it would make decisions on service cuts and other potential cost-saving measures by next week. 

Though the last scheduled meeting of the IHL board in 2022 is Nov. 17, UMMC could ask the board to hold a special meeting to approve any agreement with Greenwood Leflore. That would allow the board to vote as soon as the agreement is ready, rather than waiting until January. But Patrice Guilfoyle, communications director for the hospital, said there are no plans to do that. 

When Mississippi Today followed up to ask why not, spokesman Marc Rolph said, “We have no comment on that question.”

Collins said he wants to make sure local leaders understand what services UMMC plans to maintain if it does take over Greenwood Leflore. County leaders have a Zoom call scheduled with UMMC next week, he said, the first time they’ll talk directly with the prospective new operator. 

“We welcome UMC,” he said. “We welcome them to come. We just want to make sure that we have an opportunity to sit down and talk with them.”

The letter of credit approved by the county does not specify that UMMC must be the entity that takes over Greenwood Leflore and could be used to support an agreement with any partner.

The post County, city commit $9 million for Greenwood hospital, but cuts still loom appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Prime appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The United States Supreme Court is being asked to find unconstitutional Mississippi’s lifetime ban on people convicted of many felonies being able to vote.

“The justices normally take about 1% of the cases they are asked to hear, but I think the odds are higher here,” said Rob McDuff, one of the attorneys who filed the case and director of the Impact Litigation Project at the Mississippi Center for Justice. “This is an important and interesting case.

“And it deals with issues that we are still grappling with in terms of race.”

The nation’s highest court is being asked to overturn the provision of the Mississippi’s constitution that places a lifetime ban on voting in most instances on people convicted of certain felonies — crimes that the framers of the 1890 state constitution said Black Mississippians were more prone to commit.

The framers did not disenfranchise people convicted of murder or rape, for instance, but did strip voting rights of people convicted of several “lesser crimes,” which the writers of the constitution falsely believed would be committed by African Americans.

The provision was one of many placed in the Jim Crow-era state constitution to keep Black people, then a majority in the state, from voting. Those other provisions, such as a poll tax and literacy tests, have been ruled unconstitutional.

But the U.S. 5^th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the felony disenfranchisement provision in a split decision in August. The entire 17-member Court heard the case, and seven judges dissented from the majority opinion.

The majority opinion upholding the lifetime ban was unsigned. Circuit Judge James Graves Jr., who before being appointed to the U.S. 5^th Circuit Court of Appeals was only the third African American to serve on the Mississippi Supreme Court, wrote a blistering dissent, describing in sometimes graphic details Mississippi’s history of racial discrimination.

The office of Attorney Lynn Fitch defended the felony disenfranchisement provision before the federal judges. Even those who uphold the provision conceded that it was added to the constitution with the intent of keeping Black people from voting.

But the majority decision was based, in large part, on the fact that in 1950 the Legislature passed a proposal approved by voters to remove burglary as one of the disfranchising crimes. And in the 1960s, the Legislature and ultimately the voters approved a provision making murder and rape disenfranchising crimes.

Those changes, the majority found, removed the “racial taint” from the original 1890 language. But McDuff pointed out that those changes were made during an era of intense racial conflict and discrimination in the state. Perhaps, more importantly, the changes did not allow Mississippians to vote on whether to remove lifetime bans from voting on people convicted of other felonies.

Or as Graves wrote in his dissent, “Mississippians have simply not been given the chance to right the wrongs of its racist origins. And this court … deprives Mississippians of this opportunity by upholding an unconstitutional law enacted for the purpose of discriminating against Black Mississippians on the basis of race.”

The 5th Circuit is viewed as one of the most conservative federal courts in the nation. McDuff conceded the current makeup of the Supreme Court also is conservative, but he expressed optimism the justices would hear the case.

“Although the Supreme Court has become more conservative in recent years, we hope it will see that the continued implementation of this racist provision is an affront to the promise of the Equal Protection of the Law contained in the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,”  McDuff said.  “This is another step forward in our lengthy legal battle to strike down the racially motivated provision in the Mississippi Constitution, which denies thousands of Mississippians the right to participate in our democracy.”

A decision on whether the Supreme Court will hear the Mississippi case most likely will be made sometime in the first half of 2023.

The Mississippi Center for Justice among other groups brought the lawsuit on behalf of two Black Mississippians who had lost the right to vote: Roy Harness and Kamal Karriem, convicted of forgery and embezzlement, respectively.

Mississippi is one of fewer than 10 states where people convicted of felonies do not get their right to vote restored at some point after serving their sentence.

In Mississippi, people with felony convictions must petition the Legislature to get a bill passed by a two-thirds majority of both chambers to regain voting rights. Normally only a handful (less than five) of such bills are successful each session. There is also the option of the governor granting a pardon to restore voting rights, but no governor has granted pardons since Haley Barbour in 2012.

For a subset of those who lose their rights, the courts can expunge their record. In some instances that expungement includes the restoration of voting rights, while for others it does not. That outcome depends on the preference of the judge granting the expungement.

Those crimes placed in the constitution where conviction costs a person the right to vote are bribery, theft, arson, obtaining money or goods under false pretense, perjury, forgery, embezzlement, bigamy and burglary.

Under the original language of the constitution, a person could be convicted of cattle rustling and lose the right to vote, but those convicted of murder or rape would still be able to vote — even while incarcerated.

“Our country’s ideals of equality and freedom are swiftly undermined by Mississippi’s insidious practice of felony disenfranchisement, which is one of voter suppression’s most effective tools,” said Vangela Wade, chief executive officer of the Center for Justice. “Too many Mississippians, particularly people of color, face enormous hurdles to accessing the ballot box. We hope the U.S. Supreme Court will strike down this 132-year-old racist provision in the Mississippi Constitution.” 

Editor’s note: Vangela M. Wade is a member of Mississippi Today’s board of directors.

The post U.S. Supreme Court being asked to remove last vestige of Jim Crow from state Constitution appeared first on Mississippi Today.

County circuit clerks’ offices will be open from 8 a.m. to noon Saturday, Oct. 29, for the start of in-person absentee voting for the Nov. 8 general election.

The last day for in-person absentee voting is Saturday, Nov. 5, when clerk’s offices will also be open from 8 a.m. to noon.

All mail-in absentee ballots must be postmarked by Nov. 8 and received by county circuit clerks’ offices within five business days after election day in order to be counted.

As of Sunday, Oct. 23, Secretary of State Michael Watson reported a total of 17,693 absentee ballots requested, 16,884 absentee ballots sent and 10,186 absentee ballots received for the 2022 general election.

For questions regarding absentee voting, contact the Mississippi secretary of state Elections Division at ElectionsAnswers@sos.ms.gov, call the Elections Hotline at 1-800-829-6786, or visit YallVote.ms.

On the ballot:

Congressional races:

• 1st District incumbent Republican Trent Kelly faces Democrat Dianne Dodson Black.
• 2nd District incumbent Democrat Bennie Thompson faces Republican Brian Flowers.
• 3rd District incumbent Republican Michael Guest faces Democrat Shuwaski Young.
• Republican Mike Ezell, Democrat Johnny DuPree and Libertarian Alden Patrick Johnson face off in the 4th District.

The ballot also will include judicial races. Four Court of Appeals races are on the ballot. In the only contested Court of Appeals race, incumbent 4th District Judge Virginia Carlton is being challenged by Bruce Burton.

The post In-person absentee voting begins Saturday for Mississippi appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The largest medical marijuana grower licensed so far in Mississippi’s fledgling program had to destroy about $1 million worth of plants, halt some operations and make structural improvements at one of its sites, state Health Department officials said Thursday.

But largely, the department said it is working with new marijuana businesses — all of which have some “compliance” issues — as the program gets going and not dropping the regulatory hammer laid out in state rules or calling law enforcement on them.

A Mississippi Today article and photos in early October showed that Mockingbird Cannabis LLC did not follow state growing and security regulations. The department’s response at that time — to write Mockingbird a letter listing “corrective actions” and to not answer any questions — had competitor growers crying foul. They said Mockingbird was allowed to grow and harvest a crop improperly and on the cheap in plastic- and cloth-covered greenhouses with lax security that would allow them to beat others to market as the program gets rolling.

Mockingbird had been growing plants without listing them in the state’s “seed to sale” tracking system, at a secondary site 12 miles from its main operations on Springridge Road near Raymond. Other cultivators said they were told they had to limit cultivation to one site and that they were not allowed to use greenhouses.

But at a Thursday online press conference, Kris Jones Adcock, Mississippi Medical Cannabis Program director for the Health Department, said Mockingbird has since faced more repercussions.

“There is an order in place where they have some halt on operations and some impact on their operations and some capital improvements they have to do to satisfy that corrective action,” Adcock said. “They also had to destroy a number of plants in their inventory … I don’t know the exact number, there was upwards of $1 million of inventory destroyed — right at about 5,000 plants.”

READ MORE: Weed war: Medical marijuana competitors cry foul over Health Department’s response to company breaking rules

A Mockingbird official had said earlier this month there were about 20,000 plants growing at the site.

Mockingbird co-founder Marcy Croft declined to answer questions about the department’s actions on Thursday, but sent a written statement that it pledges to “continue to fully cooperate with the Mississippi Department of Health, our fellow growers, dispensaries owners and healthcare providers to ensure a robust and effective market in our state.”

READ MORE: Mississippi medical marijuana regulation ‘stuck in constipation mode’

Despite having 47 cultivators licensed and already growing tens of thousands of plants, the Health Department has reported it has only three staffers and no investigators and that the program is in a “provisional” phase. Nevertheless, State Health Officer Dr. Dan Edney on Thursday said he’s reasonably sure little marijuana is being diverted to the black market from the state medical program and that preventing diversion is a top priority.

“We are doing that to the best of our ability,” Edney said. “We are not going to be able to get that to zero, but we are doing as best we can under the regulatory authority given to us … and as we are bringing on more staff next month it will be easier.”

The department, which didn’t want the task of overseeing the state’s medical marijuana program to start with, has struggled with hiring cannabis program workers, Edney reported to the Board of Health recently. On Thursday, officials said they expect to have nine more staffers hired by the end of November and to be contracting private companies to help with compliance. The state Legislature, when it created the medical marijuana program, put the Health Department and Department of Revenue on a tight, 120-day schedule to get the program up and running. DOR is licensing and regulating dispensaries and sales.

Adcock estimated marijuana products could be for sale to patients by early in the new year.

Adcock said that as of Thursday the department had “provisionally” licensed:

• 47 cultivators

• 138 dispensaries

• 8 processors

• 2 testing facilities

• 117 practitioners (prescribing doctors and nurses)

• 491 cannabis industry workers

• 406 patients

Edney said the Health Department has done “yeoman’s work” in standing up a new program in such a short amount of time. He said the “key tenets” of the program will be ensuring the safety of the public and “that we reduce any opportunity of diversion that we possibly can.”

“Make no mistake the agency has been regulating this industry from day one and will continue to do so as we go forward,” Edney said.

The post Mississippi marijuana grower ordered to destroy plants, make improvements appeared first on Mississippi Today.

“Only positive Mississippi spoken here,” a phrase coined by former Gov. Kirk Fordice, was the theme for the most part of the politicians at the annual Hobnob event sponsored by the state’s Economic Council.

But two politicians – Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney – devoted much of their speech at the Mississippi Economic Council’s annual Hobnob to the state’s troubled health care system and the financial difficulties that many of the state’s hospitals are facing.

“Would you locate (a business) in a state that you don’t have health care?” Chaney asked of the crowd of about 1,000 primarily business leaders gathered at the Mississippi Coliseum to hear from the state’s political leadership. “I don’t think you would.”

Hosemann said the Senate would be looking at health care issues during the upcoming session. He also said the legislative leadership should not be scared away from efforts to improve health care by “that X word.”

Hosemann was presumably referring to Medicaid expansion where, through primarily federal funds, the state could provide health care for about 200,000 poor Mississippians, mostly people who work in jobs that do not offer health insurance. Hospitals have argued that expanding Medicaid like 38 other states have done would help them financially.

At the very least, the lieutenant governor said the state should extend Medicaid coverage for mothers from 60 days after giving birth to one year.

“How can we not be pro-life and pro-child at the same time?” asked Hosemann. “That does not make sense to me.”

While not definitively endorsing Medicaid expansion, Hosemann has said the state should look for the most efficient and inexpensive way to improve health care access in the state. Many argue that expanding Medicaid with the federal government paying most of the costs would be the best way to do that.

Chaney told reporters after the speech he supported Medicaid expansion and that he believes Hosemann does, too. But passing Medicaid expansion will be difficult with both Gov. Tate Reeves and Speaker Philip Gunn in opposition.

Reeves kept his speech positive, not mentioning health care at all.

But after the speech, he reiterated to reporters his opposition to Medicaid expansion.

“I remain opposed to expanding Obamacare in Mississippi …” Reeves said. “No doubt we’ve seen certain health care institutions in our state and across the country struggling, due to leadership decisions that were made in those specific instances. The pandemic certainly didn’t make it any easier.”

Reeves said a solution to Mississippi’s dire health care issues is doing away with the state’s certificate of need (CON) requirements. CON laws regulate approval of major projects or expansions for health care facilities, aiming to control health care costs by reducing duplicative services and restricting where new facilities can be built and operated. Mississippi and 34 other states have varying CON laws.

Reeves said this thwarts competition, and “competition tends to drive down costs.”

“For instance, the University of Mississippi Medical Center doesn’t have to adhere to CON rules, but everyone else does,” Reeves said. “That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.”

Opponents of removing the CON process say they fear it would result in even fewer hospitals and other health care facilities in poor and underpopulated areas.

On other topics, Reeves said Mississippi is in historically great financial shape and vowed to continue to push to eliminate the state’s personal income tax.

“You have my word that as long as I’m governor I will never stop fighting to fully eliminate the income tax in Mississippi,” Reeves said. He said this will make the state more competitive for economic development with Texas, Florida and Tennessee – states that have no personal income tax.

“Mississippi in virtually every category is climbing the national ladder,” Reeves said. He said the state has seen a record $3.5 billion in capital investment so far this year with “more capital investment in 2022 than we saw in the five years previous to me becoming governor.” He said the state has made great gains in K-12 education, including increasing the graduation rate from 72% to 88.5% during his time in office, now above the national average of 86.5%.

Reeves vowed to push for “good jobs with above-average wages,” and quoted from his first state-of-the-state address: “At the end of my time as governor, we will measure our success in the wages of our workers.”

According to a recent U.S. Census report, Mississippi has the nation’s lowest median household income at $46,511, compared to $67,521 nationally. Mississippi also has the highest poverty rate, with 18.8% of people living at or below the poverty level.

Chaney spent much of his speech criticizing both the University of Mississippi Medical Center and Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi for their inability to settle their contract dispute, which is impacting tens of thousands of Mississippians. People insured through Blue Cross have been out of network with UMMC since April 1.

“Both parties in this dispute are wrong,” Chaney said. “UMMC is asking for too much, and Blue Cross can give more.”

Chaney later told reporters that he believes the dispute could be settled, though, in the coming days.

Chaney said UMMC is “using (patients) as pawns for a money grab … On the other side Blue Cross is not right, either.”

The Republican insurance commissioner also told the crowd that UMMC has written a letter to a Medicaid managed care company demanding a higher reimbursement rate. If UMMC is not included in the network for the managed care company, this could impact health care for many of the Mississippians covered through Medicaid.

There are three companies – Magnolia, United and Molina – that have managed care contracts with the Mississippi Division of Medicaid. Under the contracts, the companies provide health care services for the Medicaid patients at a set rate paid to them by the state. Under that process, the companies reimburse the health care providers for the services provided to Medicaid recipients.

In response to Chaney’s comments, Dr. Alan Jones, associate vice chancellor for Clinical Affairs told Mississippi Today: “In the course of normal business operations, all health care institutions enter discussions with payor partners about new or current contracts, sometimes several months before the end of a current agreement. These routine engagements are necessary to ensure contracts meet the needs of our patients who are their health plan members.

He added, “Currently, we are in normal contract-related discussions with Magnolia Health Plan on the agreement that covers UMMC care provided to their managed Medicaid health plan members. Our intent is that these standardized discussions will soon yield a new agreement and we will continue our strong partnership with Magnolia and health care relationship with their members.”

Chaney also predicted that efforts to negotiate a lease agreement between the Greenwood LeFlore Hospital and UMMC would be unsuccessful and that the financially troubled hospital would close, negatively impacting health care throughout the Delta.

Chaney said the state’s health care issues must be solved if the state is to prosper.

Also speaking were Auditor Shad White, Secretary of State Michael Watson, Attorney General Lynn Fitch, House Speaker Philip Gunn, Agriculture and Commerce Commissioner Andy Gipson and Treasurer David McRae.

Gipson, wearing his cowboy hat, sang a portion of the song “A Country Boy Can Survive” before praising the work of Mississippi farmers.

Watson, who has been mentioned as a possible gubernatorial candidate at some point – perhaps even against Reeves in the 2023 Republican primary – said, of next year’s election, “We need leaders who care more about Mississippi than their careers. I hope you help me elect those folks.”

While not being specific, Watson referenced some “tough times” possibly ahead for the state in terms of health care.

White said that as auditor, he gets to “look under the hood of Mississippi government,” and see what works and what doesn’t. He said the state’s workforce is the biggest issue he sees, and he offered four ideas to improve it.

“First, an earned income tax credit,” White said. “If you go from unemployed to employed, you get a tax cut … 29 other states have this … It’s one of the best things to get people off the couch and off the sidelines and working … There are some folks who want to just hand a bunch of money to poor people. That is not going to juice our economy.”

White said the state should use its federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families money – the source of a major fraud and misspending case White’s office uncovered – to fund the tax credits, as 20 other states do.

“Second, we’ve got to address brain drain,” White said. “From 2015-2019 we spent $1.5 to $2 billion on higher education, and we only kept 50% of the graduates in Mississippi.”

White said his office has a fellowship program that helps cover tuition for future auditors, provided they stay with his office for two years. He said this could be replicated for other professions statewide.

“Third, fatherlessness,” White said. He said too many children are growing up in broken homes and are not prepared to succeed when they become adults. He said, “There are all sorts of social maladies from not having engaged fathers in the home.” White said the Junior ROTC program in Jackson Public Schools is an example of a program that helps with this issue – with retired military people mentoring youth. He said the program at JPS has a “100% graduation rate.”

Fourth, White said, “is the city of Jackson.”

“Jackson is our number-one talent magnet in this state,” White said, “with 30% of our graduates coming to work in Hinds County.”

He said, “Jackson’s magnet is going to turn off unless we learn how to collect the garbage, keep the water clean and not be the per-capita homicide leader in the country.”

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The Office of Broadband Expansion and Accessibility for Mississippi (BEAM) and the Community Foundation of Northwest Mississippi have partnered to present the state’s first broadband community engagement event.

The free event — held Thursday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Lyric Hotel in Cleveland — will serve as an informational overview of how residents can get involved in shaping broadband plans for their communities and even how to utilize available credits to lower their internet bills.

Many counties and cities in the Mississippi Delta, like other rural areas of the state, have been slow to gain access to high-speed internet access.

“A person’s zip code should not determine their access to the full range of benefits that high speed broadband access has to offer,” said BEAM director Sally Doty. “The BEAM office is committed to overcoming geographical barriers and leveling the playing field by providing technological opportunity for Mississippians across all corners of our state.”

The Office of Broadband Expansion and Accessibility for Mississippi was created by state lawmakers in 2022 to serve as the state’s single point of contact for broadband issues and to serve as the clearinghouse for federal grant funds for broadband expansion.

Speakers at the Thursday event include: BEAM director Sally Doty; Central District Transportation Commissioner Willie Simmons; state Director for Digital Skills and Accessibility Angelique Lee; community leaders from Quitman County; Vermont-based Center On Rural Innovation’s southeast director Brandon Campbell; and Microsoft representatives.

A public library representative will also detail how all Delta residents can gain free broadband access and education in their communities, according to a press release for the event.

“We are inviting everyone who may want to shape the state’s Broadband plan, see how to develop a plan for their community, or learn how to gain free or reduced cost to access Broadband,” said Community Foundation of Northwest Mississippi President Keith Fulcher.

Admission is free for all Delta residents, but registration is necessary.

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