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Legendary Southern Miss baseball coach Corky Palmer has passed away. Read Rick Cleveland’s excellent column here.

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

A recent Pew Research Center study revealed that while legacy papers have continued to cut full-time capitol reporters, nonprofit newsrooms have increased their number of devoted political investigators from 92 in 2014 to 353 in 2022, now representing 20% of the total statehouse press nationally. At Mississippi Today, we are honored to be part of this community of nonprofits championing statehouse coverage to ensure government accountability. 

Our role in maintaining democracy is critical. Mississippi is one of 16 states where the number of full-time statehouse reporters has suffered a 23.5% decrease since 2014. The consequences of this loss put access to the coverage Mississippians deserve at risk, and profoundly impact our state’s democratic processes and outcomes. This is, in part, why Mississippi Today launched our flagship nonprofit newsroom six years ago. We proudly serve as a government watchdog for Mississippi and demand accountability from all of our leaders. Today, our Capitol Team makes up at least one-third of the full-time statehouse investigators in Mississippi.

Devotion to this coverage fuels our team’s ability to go above and beyond traditional news sources, ensuring no stone is left unturned when we report to you. Our vigilance and earnestness ensures that our readers are always informed about the critical issues that influence their lives, but, we are not alone in this effort. While the work of our journalists is imperative, it is our collective impact that continues to be truly transformational. Your support strengthens our ability to deliver free, nonpartisan news to all Mississippians. Thank you for enabling us to help fill the void in Mississippi with news you can depend on from a team you can trust.

Please take a moment to check out our 2022 mid-year impact report. I am incredibly inspired and encouraged by the work of our team over the course of this very newsy year, and I believe you will be, too.

The post Reporting with impact: 2022 mid-year report appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Some days you remember for a lifetime. Here’s a memory from 61 years ago, the day I met Corky Palmer, the future Hall of Fame Southern Miss baseball coach who died Wednesday at 68 after a prolonged illness.

Corky was 7, and I was 8. Future college and NBA basketball coach Tim Floyd — he was still Timmy at age 7 — had invited Corky, my brother Bobby and me the Floyds’ house on Mamie Street in Hattiesburg for a backyard baseball game.

“You’re gonna really like my new friend, Corky,” Timmy had told me. “He’s a good ballplayer, and you aren’t going to believe the way he talks. He’s more country than Gomer (Pyle).”

So we started playing ball, Bobby and I against Timmy and Corky, a chunky little guy with a round face, baggy shorts and a crewcut. Early on, Bobby hit a sharp ground ball right at Corky, who bent over to catch it, only to have it go right through his legs. Six decades later, the scene is as vivid as it was comical. Corky stayed bent over and watched through his legs as the ball kept going into some hedges. When Cork looked back up, his eyes were as big around as donuts. He really could not believe he had missed it. 

“Well, I’ll be a sardine sandwich!” Corky shouted before turning around and retrieving the ball.

Corky did not miss many balls that day, nor any day we played baseball from then on, which was a lot. Corky became a catcher, a damned good one. He was a sports junkie, but first and foremost he was a baseball guy, just like his daddy, who everyone knew as Punchy Palmer.

Punchy Palmer, a former star all-around athlete Hattiesburg High, was a fixture at baseball parks around Hattiesburg. Didn’t matter whether one of his sons was playing or not. If baseball was being played in Hattiesburg, Punchy Palmer was there. And he was always dispensing homespun baseball wisdom to anyone who would listen — and you were crazy if you didn’t because Punchy knew his stuff. 

Corky soaked in all that knowledge and went on to become a catcher for Hattiesburg High and then on to Southern Miss, where he caught for Pete Taylor’s ballclubs in the mid 1970s. He was a solid hitter but he was a marvelous catcher. He really was like a coach on the field.

Doug Munn was Southern’s ace pitcher for much of that time. “Corky caught me for four years and back then we called our own pitches,” Munn said Wednesday. “I don’t think I shook him off once in the entire four seasons. We were always on the same wave length. 

“Corky was a joy to pitch to, just a great receiver. He was framing pitches back before that was a thing. I never worried about bouncing a breaking pitch, because Cork blocked everything. Nothing got by him. More importantly, he was a great friend and such a super quality person. Corky was just the best.”

Some folks are meant to be doctors or lawyers or teachers. Corky Palmer was meant to be a baseball coach. He knew it. Everybody who knew him knew it. There was never a doubt.

He steadily moved up the coaching ladder one rung at a time from small-town high schools, to bigger high schools, to Meridian Community College where his teams became a national powerhouse and won 409 games while losing just 160. He moved to Southern Miss as an assistant coach under fellow Mississippi Sports Hall of Famer Hill Denson in 1997 and then became the head coach the next year. Over the next 12 seasons Southern Miss won 458 games and lost 281. His teams qualified for eight NCAA Regionals, including seven straight.

He announced his retirement in April of 2009 with his injury plagued team seemingly going nowhere. And then it happened. Much like Ole Miss this past season, the Golden Eagles got hotter than Mississippi asphalt in August. A late season win streak vaulted them into the NCAA Tournament as a 3-seed. Then they won a regional at Georgia Tech. Then they won a Super Regional at Florida. And then they went to Omaha for what remains Southern Miss’ only appearance in the College World Series. 

At Omaha, Palmer won over the national media with that same countrified twang and witticisms that blew away Timmy Floyd, my brother and me when we were little boys. The ESPN announcers and all the national writers were smitten.

Mighty Texas outlasted Southern Miss in a first round in a 7-6 heartbreaker. The next day at practice, Palmer told everyone he was going to pitch J.R. Ballinger in an elimination game against North Carolina.  He pointed to a light pole in centerfield. “You see that big ol’ light pole out there,” Corky said. “If I asked Jimmy Ray Ballinger to go out there and climb that light pole right now, he’d be out there in seconds shimmying up that pole. He wouldn’t ask why, he wouldn’t ask anything. He’d just go out there and find a way to climb that big ol’ pole. I don’t know how he’ll do against North Carolina. They are a great hitting club. But I do know this: Jimmy Ray is going to give me everything he’s got. I love that boy. He’s what I call a company man. He’s a country boy, so you know me and him get along.”

Well, North Carolina got the best of Jimmy Ray and Southern Miss. But Corky Palmer’s last game as a baseball coach was in Omaha at the College World Series. How splendid is that?

Joe Paul, Southern Miss interim president and a close friend of Palmer’s spoke for thousands when he issued this statement Wednesday: “The University of Southern Mississippi family mourns the loss today of Golden Eagle baseball coaching icon Corky Palmer. While our hearts break at the notion of his special presence not being with us, we do take solace that he has moved from suffering to a rightful and well-earned eternal peace. I am fortunate to have been blessed to claim Corky as my Southern Miss classmate and my friend. His impact on generations of young men ripples out in to the world of baseball and beyond. Corky was definitely one of a kind, and we will honor and cherish his memory here at Southern Miss always…”

As it happens, Tim Floyd and I were together Wednesday when we received the news, which was expected but nonetheless painful to hear.

There were several moments of silence. But before long we were telling Corky stories, smiling because how could you not when talking about such a memorable character and friend.

Tim summed it up pretty perfectly: “Corky lived his dream and he lived it in his hometown doing what he loved. What’s more, he touched countless people while he was doing it. Think about it. When you get right down to it, how many people can say that?”

The post Corky Palmer: Hall of Fame coach, Hall of Fame character appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The budget reconciliation bill approved over the weekend by Democrats in the U.S. Senate and now pending a vote in the House does not provide help for poor Mississippians trying to obtain health insurance.

While generally praising the bill, Sharon Parrott, president of the Washington D.C.-based Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, said, “However, the current bill does nothing to make affordable coverage available to the more than 2 million people with incomes below the poverty line who are uninsured because their states have refused to adopt the Medicaid expansion. Most of the people in the Medicaid coverage gap live in the South and three in five are people of color.”

An earlier version of the bill, considered last fall, provided a mechanism for people living under the federal poverty level (about $13,550 annually) to obtain health insurance. The proposal was designed specifically to provide a health care option for the poor in the 12 states, including Mississippi, that have not expanded Medicaid. But at the time Senate Democratic leadership could not muster the 50 votes needed to pass what is known as the reconciliation bill. Democratic senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona rejected the far-reaching $3.5 trillion bill for various reasons, not necessarily related to the health care provision.

Over the weekend, Sinema and Manchin got on board to help pass a scaled-down, $669 billion version of the reconciliation bill – called the Inflation Reduction Act – that provided numerous items, including:

• Various tax credits and other incentives for electric vehicles and other green energy technology.
• A 15% minimum tax on large corporations.
• Caps on insulin for Medicare recipients.
• A provision that allows Medicare to negotiate the costs of drugs.
• Continuing subsides to help people purchase private insurance on the health care marketplace exchange.

The health care provision that was in the earlier version of the bill but removed from last week’s proposal would allow those falling under the federal poverty level to obtain private health care coverage paid for by the federal government on the health care exchange.

Under current law, people who earn below the federal poverty level do not qualify for marketplace policies.

Two million Americans could access health care coverage through the plan, with the bulk of those being in Texas, Florida, Georgia and North Carolina, according to an analysis by Judith Solomon, a health policy analyst with the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. Primarily Republican politicians in Southern states have been opposed to Medicaid expansion.

In Mississippi, studies have estimated that between 200,000 and 300,000 primarily working Mississippians could qualify for coverage if the state would expand Medicaid.

If Mississippi were to expand Medicaid under current law, the federal government would pay 90% of the health care costs with the state paying the remainder. Gov. Tate Reeves, House Speaker Philip Gunn and others have argued Mississippi cannot afford the costs of expanding Medicaid, though multiple studies have found that the expansion, including the infusion of billions of dollars in federal funds, would actually increase state revenue collections.

Of course, still dangling in front of the non-Medicaid expansion states is a sizable incentive to expand Medicaid. The federal American Rescue Plan, passed in early 2021 as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, provides additional incentive for states to expand Medicaid. The incentive in Mississippi to expand Medicaid is more than $600 million over a two-year period.

The Inflation Reduction Act will likely pass the House in the coming days and be sent to President Joe Biden, who is expected to sign it into law.

The post Plan to help poor Mississippians with health insurance stripped from latest federal bill appeared first on Mississippi Today.

In a rare vote that set her apart from most Senate Republicans, U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith voted on Saturday to keep a proposal in the Inflation Reduction Act that would have capped the price of insulin at $35 per month for patients with private health insurance. 

The U.S. Senate passed a major budget package that will invest hundreds of billions of dollars into clean energy, health care subsidies and deficit reduction, but not before Republican senators forced the removal of the insulin price cap proposal. 

Seven Republicans voted with Democrats to keep the insulin price cap in the bill, including Hyde-Smith. However, the 57-43 vote to waive budget rules still fell short of the 60 votes needed to keep the proposal in the final bill. 

Republicans did not challenge a provision that places the same price cap on insulin for Medicare patients. 

The vote from Hyde-Smith was surprising because of her opposition to the bill as a whole, which she voted against. Hyde-Smith supported the insulin proposal because of the aid it would provide her constituents, she said in a statement to Mississippi Today. 

Mississippi had the highest rate of diabetes in the nation in 2016, according to the Mississippi Department of Health, with over 308,000 adults estimated to be living with the disease. Mississippi had the second-highest diabetes mortality rate in the nation in 2020, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. 

“We must find a sensible solution to lower drug prices for the American people, especially now that everyone is struggling from the pressures of high inflation,” Hyde-Smith said. “I strongly opposed the Democrats’ tax and spend plan, but liked the chance of capping insulin costs even if that plan may not have been a perfect fix.  I will continue to work toward improving access to affordable insulin for Mississippians and others across the nation with diabetes.”

The price of insulin in the United States is far higher than in any other country. According to a Rand Corporation study from 2020, the average price of a vial of insulin in the U.S. was $98.70 in 2018, while the same insulin only costs $12 in Canada and $7.52 in the United Kingdom. 

The price disparity was worse when Rand looked at the price of rapid-acting insulin. The average cost of this insulin in 35 other countries was just over $8. In the U.S., it cost $119. 

Sen. Roger Wicker voted against the insulin price cap, citing an opposition to government price controls, but supported a separate amendment proposed by Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., that would have lowered insulin costs by providing $3.1 billion to federally qualified health centers to cover the costs of discounted insulin and epinephrine for certain patients through 2026. That amendment also failed due to a 50-50 vote split evenly along party lines. 

“ … I believe that imposing government price controls on private insurance is the wrong way to lower costs. Instead, I have pushed for alternatives that would help lower-income Americans get access to cheaper insulin and end regulatory barriers that have kept lower-cost insulin away from the market,” Wicker said in a statement to Mississippi Today.

He continued: “I hope to continue working with Senator Hyde-Smith and my other colleagues on a truly bipartisan package to help lower insulin costs without setting a government price control.”

The post Hyde-Smith, in rare deviation from the party line, votes to cap insulin prices appeared first on Mississippi Today.

When the state’s advocacy organization for people with disabilities couldn’t get the Department of Mental Health to turn over records that could show abuse or neglect at state-run psychiatric facilities, it sued. This week, the two parties reached a settlement that will allow the advocacy group to access reports of serious incidents involving staff and residents through an online system. 

“The Department of Mental Health is going to allow us to see what we need to see,” said Polly Tribble, executive director of the nonprofit Disability Rights Mississippi, the group that sued the mental health department. “We can do our job.”

Department spokesperson Adam Moore said in an email to Mississippi Today that the settlement will provide extra transparency. 

“Though the incident reports included in this agreement were already being reported to the Attorney General’s Office and all other required licensure entities, Disability Rights will now be able to access these reports at any time and request additional documentation if needed,” he said. 

Last year, Disability Rights began hearing about how staffing shortages were leading to neglect at the state hospitals. The group is Mississippi’s “protection and advocacy (P&A) system,” charged by the U.S. Congress with advocating for people with disabilities and investigating abuse and neglect at programs that serve them. Each state has a P&A. 

The advocacy group sought incident reports from 10 mental and behavioral health facilities around the state, a broad request intended to identify potential patterns and trends. But the state refused to turn over the reports, arguing that the group hadn’t shown “probable cause” to launch a systemic investigation and was undertaking “a fishing expedition.”

The Department of Justice sued the state of Mississippi over its failure to provide adequate community-based mental health services in 2016. U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves sided with the federal government and last year ordered the state to comply with a reform plan overseen by a special monitor. 

Disability Rights sued the agency in November after months of negotiations over the records.

Tribble was surprised the lawsuit was necessary; her organization has always had a good relationship with the Department of Mental Health, she said. 

On Wednesday morning, Disability Rights staff used the new system to access incident reports for the first time, though there are still some technical kinks to work out. 

“Our intention all along has been to look at the reports and see if there’s any patterns of abuse by a particular staff person, but also to see if the staffing shortage is having an effect on incidents,” she said. “Which I suspect it is. But we don’t know.”

The Justice Department filed an amicus brief siding with the advocacy organization in March. The brief asked the court to order the department to turn over the incident reports from its facilities. 

“During its routine monitoring activities, DRMS advocates observed troubling issues, including understaffing, unreported incidents, patient neglect, nonuse of COVID protocol and precautions by onsite staff, and staff-on-resident injuries and incidents,” the brief said. “Most importantly, the existence of incident reports regarding specific individuals inherently indicates that unusual events involving those individuals, such as harm or an error or omission in care, have occurred.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice declined to comment for this story. 

Lawyers at the attorney general’s office represented the Department of Mental Healthin the suit. 

“The State remains committed to serving Mississippians in need of mental health and substance use services and we were pleased to be able to reach a resolution in this case,” Michelle Williams, chief of staff for Attorney General Lynn Fitch, said in a statement.

Earlier this year, the advocacy group settled another lawsuit with the department after it denied a request for records relating to the Mississippi State Hospital’s forensic unit, which serves people who have been diverted from jail or prison, usually because they have a mental illness that makes them unfit to stand trial. The organization wanted to investigate after getting reports of mistreatment. 

Tribble said that settlement, too, allowed her organization to get the records it had initially sought. 

Even as the Department of Mental Health says it is trying to comply with the court-ordered settlement agreement and expand community mental health services, the state attorney general is still fighting the ruling. Last year, the office appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, where it is arguing that the department is already providing needed services and that Reeves has unconstitutionally installed “perpetual federal oversight” of the state agency. 

Oral arguments have been tentatively scheduled for the week of Oct. 3.

The post ‘We can do our job’: Disability rights group wins access to mental health agency’s records appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The Mississippi Department of Human Services hired an accounting firm, using welfare dollars, to ostensibly get to the bottom of who stole or misspent millions in federal grant funds and try to recoup them.

But never-before-published emails Mississippi Today obtained through a records request show Gov. Tate Reeves’ appointed MDHS director pushed to limit who and what the hired forensic audit could examine. And he tried to keep the state auditor and other law enforcement agencies out of the mix.

“This is nothing but a whitewash to show that MDHS was not complicit in this problem, except for (former MDHS Director) John Davis,” a deputy in state Auditor Shad White’s office wrote to White in April of 2020 after reviewing the proposal MDHS drafted to solicit an auditing firm.

White’s office was to be a “third party” to a contract with a forensic auditor. But MDHS pushed to limit the Office of the State Auditor’s involvement and even at one point omitted language requiring the independent auditor to contact OSA or other law enforcement if it spotted potential crimes — a standard practice in audit contracts.

Gov. Reeves said he appointed MDHS Director Bob Anderson, a former prosecutor, in March of 2020 to clean up the welfare agency. Weeks into Anderson’s administration, he clashed with White over the forensic audit proposal, records show. White pushed to expand the breadth of the review and provide more OSA involvement.

“We should be on the same side – the side of the taxpayers, trying to find the misspending that happened at DHS and all the people responsible,” White wrote to Anderson in April of 2020 during heated negotiations about the forensic audit proposal. “In my view, you are either for an audit that will reveal those things, like the audit we have proposed, or you are not. Your proposal as it stands would waste taxpayer money and not reach the issues that need to be reached.”

Neither Reeves nor Anderson would agree to an interview about the forensic audit issues or provide comment in response to Mississippi Today’s findings.

READ MORE: Welfare head says surprise subpoena led to attorney’s firing. Emails show it wasn’t a surprise

White, who is involved in separate state and federal criminal investigations into the welfare scandal, appeared to win some concessions on the final forensic audit contract. At the same time, he objected to MDHS having access to the auditor’s office’s workpapers.

But in the end, the prominent national accounting firm Clifton Larson Allen hired for the audit noted it was limited — and in some cases “severely limited” — in what and whom it could examine in its probe and said it could likely have found more misspending if allowed freer rein.

MDHS recently lamented the forensic audit’s limitations, and attempted to lay those limitations off on Auditor White’s office. But communications between the two during spring of 2020 indicate MDHS pushed for severe limits on the probe.

“If I were you, I would want to know where the misspending happened and who is responsible, not spend my time negotiating downward an audit with OSA,” White wrote to Anderson. “If you want to spend DHS money on this audit so that the current staff can avoid looking bad, without you discovering who was involved with the misspending, then you will bear the responsibility for that and any additional misspending that happens going forward. I will not participate.”

Gov. Reeves, who oversees MDHS and appointed Anderson, recently said the CLA forensic audit is the lodestar for the state’s lawsuit against numerous people and businesses to try to recover some of the at least $77 million in misspent welfare money. He also made clear he’s calling the major shots at MDHS when it comes to the lawsuit.

Reeves fired the attorney MDHS had hired to recover the money after the attorney went beyond the scope of the forensic audit. The attorney tried to subpoena records about possible involvement of former Gov. Phil Bryant and his wife, former NFL football star Brett Favre and the USM Athletic Foundation — many of whose board members are large campaign donors and political supporters of Reeves. Reeves said attorney Brad Pigott should have stuck to the metes and bounds of the forensic audit, and accused him of having a political agenda and seeking the media spotlight when he went beyond it.

READ MORE: Gov. Tate Reeves says ousted welfare scandal lawyer had ‘political agenda,’ wanted media spotlight

White has criticized Pigott’s firing and said the state should seek to recover all the misspent money it can. He said he will make sure state and federal criminal investigators have the records Pigott attempted to subpoena.

At the time MDHS was preparing the forensic audit proposal request, White was already gearing up to release a report in May of 2020 that questioned $94 million in MDHS spending and illustrated systemic failures of the welfare department.

White’s audit found that the welfare department continually violated the law by spending funds from a federal program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, a federal block grant notorious for being used as a slush fund in some states on projects that did not fulfill the purposes of the grant or did not serve the needy.

But the forensic audit by an independent firm, not White’s report, would be the document the state would use to determine who to bring civil litigation against to recoup misspent funds.

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Some people, including at least one criminal defendant arrested in February of 2020, expected a forensic audit to significantly contradict White’s narrative about widespread misuse. An email White sent his deputies alludes to the perception some had that the auditor’s office had an agenda in going after MDHS.

“I’m also tempted to tell them this is a great way to determine if we’re auditing to ‘frame’ a ‘narrative’ or not: just let a private CPA have broad leeway to confirm or disprove our findings,” White wrote.

Emails Mississippi Today obtained now reveal that MDHS’s current leadership may have attempted to place its thumb on the scale to mitigate exposure for the agency as a whole, including dozens of employees who reviewed expenditures and contracts.

“To be completely honest — this is a half-hearted attempt to complete a forensic audit that has completely erased our input,” wrote Stephanie Palmertree, financial and compliance audit director for the state auditor’s office who headed up much of its MDHS probe. “And seeing how MDHS is defending the clearly fabricated contract procurements that they have completed, I’m not sure I would trust the current staff to choose an independent auditor. This is a PR attempt at making MDHS look like they did all they could.”

READ MORE: 7 baffling things about Mississippi’s welfare fraud scandal case

As part of the discovery process in the civil case, Mississippi Community Education Center, the nonprofit founded by criminal defendants Nancy New and her son Zach New, has asked for communication from MDHS related to the forensic audit to examine how it may have artificially targeted select vendors. 

In his email response to a missive from White in April 2020, Anderson said, “My objective is and has been since I arrived here at MDHS to ferret out the misspending and the responsible parties … We’re trying to fashion an RFI (Request for Information) that captures the agreement between both the agencies and that defines the parameters of what will be an expensive and lengthy audit undertaking.”

The contract with CLA was for up to $2.1 million. But according to a review of expenditures on the state’s transparency website, MDHS has only paid the firm less than $800,000, one of few times the agency has appeared frugal with spending federal welfare dollars on things other than poor people.

At one point, in response to White’s office suggesting changes to the audit proposal, Anderson said, “Much of what we took out relates to the criminal investigation … which is not the purpose for this forensic audit since the criminal case is already indicted …”

White took umbrage with this and responded: “You are aware that the statement ‘the criminal case is already indicted’ is incorrect; I’ve told you and the public that the case is still being investigated. More indictments are possible. Even if the investigation were not still ongoing, one would want criminal activity reported to law enforcement.

“… I’m not sure why you removed both your previous language and OSA’s language on reporting criminal activity,” White wrote to Anderson. “… Also, there is some confusion about what a ‘forensic’ audit is. The AICPA (American Institute of Certified Public Accountants) notes that the term forensic means to be suitable for use in a court of law. Removing the language that says this audit may serve as evidence in a legal proceeding is to remove part of the audit’s very purpose.

“The same could be said for removing the language about how auditors may be called to testify in court,” White wrote. “And the same could be said for removing language requiring misappropriations to be ‘listed by individual, as could be proven in a legal proceeding.’ This audit should trace expenditures to completion and show, with findings that could stand up as evidence in court, who directed that spending, whether those people are inside or outside DHS.”

Asked for comment about limitations on CLA’s forensic audit, a spokesman for White’s office said, “We will let CLA’s audit speak for itself on areas where CLA believed they had adequate information to conduct the audit and where CLA was limited.”

In its audit reports delivered in September of 2021, CLA noted that it was not given access to former DHS Director John Davis’ computer hard drive and it was initially limited in whose emails it could examine.

“CLA was unable to obtain a copy of John Davis’ MDHS hard drive, as it was in the possession of the (Office of State Auditor) investigative division. Additionally, the scope of work limited CLA’s review of emails to include only John Davis’ MDHS emails. If other electronic evidence had been made available to CLA, additional information not currently known to CLA could impact the findings communicated in this report.”

READ MORE: ‘It doesn’t look good’: At 3-year mark, more questions than answers in Mississippi welfare fraud scandal

White’s spokesman said: “As we have explained previously, the hard drive (it was actually his computer) was obtained through our criminal investigation. We do not make evidence obtained in a criminal investigation available to anyone outside of law enforcement. That includes private CPA firms. Of course, we obtained that computer from DHS. If DHS backed up any files on the computer to their network, that could be made available per a public records request. We would also remind you that, while we will not provide the computer to a private CPA firm, we have made all of our evidence, including the hard drive, available to the FBI.”

CLA also noted that the New nonprofit, Mississippi Community Education Center, did not provide records to the auditors and did not cooperate with its probe. Much of the theft and misspending in the scandal occurred through MCEC, which was helping run a statewide anti-poverty program called Families First for Mississippi.

White’s spokesman said: “Despite pledging to assist auditors, the News failed to provide MCEC’s original documentation of spending to CLA, as CLA noted. CLA was given access to copies of all the MCEC documents (contracts, invoices, general ledger reports, etc.) that the auditor’s office had. Unfortunately, copies are not considered original documentation. Only MCEC could provide original documentation. Without original documentation, CLA had to note that their audit was limited. DHS ultimately decided to not pursue obtaining original documents from MCEC after MCEC failed to cooperate. OSA was asked to use our subpoena power to obtain documents from Heart of David, and we did.”

But in a supplemental forensic audit report released in April, Clifton Larson Allen noted that they didn’t even have access to a lease agreement that the State Auditor possessed, and were forced to retrieve it from a news article.

Another deputy in White’s office who reviewed MDHS’ drafts for a forensic audit proposal, at the time noted, “Very limited scope outside of TANF (federal welfare dollars). We know SSBG, CCDF and SNAP funds were also misused. They’ve even limited the scope to contracts directed by Davis to only TANF contracts … Firm is only required to alert MDHS of potential criminal activity, not us, the federal government or law enforcement.”

White, at the time, wrote to Anderson: “Obviously criminal activity should be reported to us, not just DHS, as we are the state’s chief law enforcement agency for crimes involving public funds. DHS’s failure to report criminal activity to the Auditor’s office has been a problem in the past.”

White’s spokesman this week explained that OSA auditors, as routine, repeatedly asked DHS staff over several years if they knew of fraud at the agency, and “… Staffers repeatedly failed to report any fraud in these meetings.”

While it was admittedly incomplete, the forensic audit report released in October 2021 did not significantly reverse White’s findings. It determined a total of $77 million was misspent: $36.1 million in welfare purchases that broke federal rules, including $12.4 million worth of possible fraud, waste or abuse, plus an additional $40 million that auditors said they did not have proper documentation to analyze.

THE BACKCHANNEL: Full coverage of Mississippi’s welfare scandal

The post ‘A whitewash’: Emails show MDHS pushed to hamstring probe into welfare misspending appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The post Marshall Ramsey: The Next Epidemic appeared first on Mississippi Today.

With high school football season about two weeks away, Tyler takes questions from Rick about the upcoming season. Who’s hot? Who’s not? And which players could contend for Player of the Year in Mississippi?

Stream all episodes here.

The post Podcast: High school football and those loathsome Mets appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi is now the world’s leader in putting people behind bars — more inmates per capita than any state or nation, including China, Russia and Iran, according to the World Population Review. 

“Is there a political price to be paid for foolishly sticking with a failed system that’s made us the world capital of mass incarceration?” asked Cliff Johnson, director of the MacArthur Justice Center at the University of Mississippi School of Law. “What’s it going to take for Mississippians to realize that the mass incarceration we have carried out for decades has made us less safe, rather than safer?” 

Across the U.S., the number of those in prison in the U.S. is 16% lower today than before the pandemic, according to the Vera Institute of Justice, but Mississippi’s rate is skyrocketing, rising more than 1,500 in less than six months. That population now exceeds 18,000 — the highest rate since April 2020. 

“We have perfected throwing people away for long periods of time,” Johnson said, “and yet after decades and decades of this approach, Mississippians are more fearful about violent crime than any time I remember.” 

In September 2013, Mississippi had as many as 22,490 inmates behind bars. In the years since, reforms and an aggressive Parole Board, headed by a veteran law enforcement officer, reduced the number of inmates to the lowest level in two decades. On Feb. 7, that population fell to 16,499, according to MDOC. 

But with Gov. Tate Reeves’ new board chairman, a former Chevron executive he put in charge in January, that trend has reversed itself. 

On Aug. 1, the prison population hit a high of 18,080. 

If this current trend continues, Mississippi would top 19,000 inmates before the end of the year and would surpass 22,000 inmates before the end of 2023. 

That additional prison population would cost taxpayers more than $100 million a year, based on the $53.72 per-day cost computed by the state’s legislative watchdog. 

“We’re stuck in this futile cycle of throwing more money at prisons,” Johnson said. “Even with the Department of Justice breathing down our necks, we can’t handle the people we have.” 

The Justice Department began investigating the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman in 2020 after MCIR and ProPublica reported on the increases in grisly violence, gang control and subhuman living conditions. In April, the department reported that the prison’s conditions violate the Constitution. 

The department is investigating other prisons as well. 

Promises, Promises in Prison Reform 

When Gov. Phil Bryant, a Republican, signed House Bill 585 into law in 2014, the measure drew widespread praise from conservatives and liberals alike because it promised to reduce the prison population, save millions —  $266  million, to be exact — and reinvest some of the money into programs for offenders. 

Instead, all of those savings went back into the state’s coffers, helping to pay for huge phased-in corporate tax cuts enacted in 2016, because the state was struggling to meet revenue estimates. 

Last year, Reeves signed legislation aimed at expanding parole eligibility to 3,000 more inmates, believing it could be a “net positive for Mississippi.” He later bragged about the significant reduction in inmates at Parchman. 

“I believe in second chances,” he said in an April 22, 2022, tweet. “I trust my Parole Board appointees to make wise decisions.” 

But since his appointment of a new chairman in 2022, the numbers of paroles have declined. 

When Steven Pickett chaired the board between 2013 and 2021, he said about six of every 10 inmates who appeared before the Parole Board earned their release. The board typically saw about 5,000 inmates a year. 

Now the board is rejecting far more requests. So far this year, about three-fourths of inmates who have appeared before the board have been rejected for parole. 

At the same time Mississippi is filling up its prisons, the state is lagging in programs that would help ensure that inmates don’t return. 

“The Mississippi Department of Corrections can’t have a rodeo or enough GED classes, because we don’t have the staffing,” Johnson said. “We probably can’t support more than about 12,000 incarcerated, but we’ve got 18,000.” 

Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain convinced state lawmakers to raise salaries of correctional officers in the 2022 legislative session. 

While hiring officers has proved a struggle, he said Tuesday, “We’re gaining ground. We’re going to show the Justice Department we’re moving along.” 

By fall, he hopes to have 80 schools for inmates to gain certification in engine repair, plumbing, welding, carpentry and other fields. 

By doing this, “we’ll reduce recidivism, and we’ll reduce violence,” he said. “About half of the 4,400 inmates we release each year will have a skill or trade.” 

He ran a similar program at the Louisiana State Penitentiary and saw the recidivism rate drop to less than 10%. 

He called Mississippi’s program “way more intense. We’re meeting a need.” 

Rather than hiring teachers on the outside, he’s using inmates certified in these fields to teach, he said. 

He praised the Parole Board. “We don’t want gangsters getting out,” he said. 

With this new training program for inmates, “we’re going to turn the curve,” he said. “We already have people from Alabama coming to see how we do things.” 

Alternatives to Prison Part of the Solution 

Cain has also started an alcohol and drug program at the once-shuttered Walnut Grove Correctional Facility that houses 32 inmates in a 90-day addiction program. 

Pickett said such programs play an important role in treatment for Mississippi inmates, three-fourths of whom are battling alcohol or drug problems or both. 

For example, he said, if a parolee is caught with meth and has failed to report to his parole officer for two months, what should the Parole Board do? 

Send him back to prison? Or to treatment? 

Locking him up in prison for a year won’t cure his addiction, Pickett said. “All we are doing is putting him in a place that’s dangerous. Meth is just as prolific in prison as it is on the streets. It’s very, very sad.” 

The other option would be the Technical Violation Center. 

State Public Defender Andre de Gruy said the state needs to do a better job of utilizing this center. 

“Now that we’re number one in mass incarceration,” Johnson said, “we ought to stop and take a collective timeout and have a long conversation about whether we’re satisfied and whether we’ve had a good return on the billions we’ve invested. 

“Are we locking up more people because there’s something about Mississippians that make them morally deficient or more likely to commit crime? Or is there something more to this story?” 

Email Jerry.Mitchell@MississippiCIR.org. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. 

This report was produced in partnership with the Community Foundation for Mississippi’s local news collaborative, which is independently funded in part by Microsoft Corp. The collaborative includes the Clarion Ledger, the Jackson Advocate, Jackson State University, Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, Mississippi Public Broadcasting and Mississippi Today. We’re also making it available to the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting through a Mississippi Poverty Reporting Collective funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and managed by Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity. 

Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting is a nonprofit news organization that is exposing wrongdoing, educating and empowering Mississippians, and raising up the next generation of investigative reporters. Sign up for our newsletter. 

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