Six years ago this week, House Speaker Philip Gunn and then-Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves held a surprise news conference to announce their intention to scrap the Mississippi Adequate Education Program formula that determines the amount of state funds each local school district should receive.
Then-Gov. Phil Bryant quickly jumped on board.
Seldom, if ever, has an initiative supported so publicly by what was then the three most powerful people in state government failed so spectacularly.
The legislative leadership quickly contracted with New Jersey-based EdBuild to develop a new funding formula with hopes of enacting it as soon as the 2017 legislative session. Despite the support of the political triumvirate, the plan stalled during the 2017 session.
Not to be deterred, the leadership came back in the 2018 session with a renewed commitment to replace the MAEP. The plan did pass the House but was defeated in the Senate by a combination of all the Democrats, allied with a group of Republicans, much to the chagrin of Reeves, then the presiding officer of the upper chair.
After that stunning defeat, little was heard about the rewrite. During the 2019 state elections, Reeves, who ran and won the office of governor, seldom talked about the need to scrap the MAEP. Gunn and other legislative incumbents running for re-election also were mum for the most part about the need to replace the funding formula.
Crickets all around.
In the new term, after that 2019 election, the issue has not resurfaced. It is of note that Delbert Hosemann, who won the office of lieutenant governor in 2019, was supported significantly by many of the education groups that opposed efforts to replace the MAEP.
When building their case for the rewrite, the state’s political leadership argued the new funding formula would be more efficient in getting to the students the money needed to provide a quality education.
“Doing what’s best for kids, we believe, is increasing funding in the classroom while not increasing funding in the district office,” Reeves said at the time.
But the leadership sent mixed messages. They contended, almost simultaneously, that the new formula would provide more funds for local schools while maintaining that the state could not afford MAEP.
“To fully fund MAEP is impossible if other essential services are to be provided to Mississippians,” wrote House Education Chairman Richard Bennett, R-Long Beach, at the time. But at the same time, Gunn and others were offering charts showing local school districts would get more funds under the new EdBuild formula.
Both could not be true.
The MAEP was considered landmark legislation when it was enacted in 1997. It developed an “objective” formula to determine the amount per pupil needed to provide an adequate education. Each district would be responsible for providing a minimum level of those funds through local property taxes. Wealthier districts would provide a greater share because their property taxes would generate more revenue. The state would provide a greater share of the funding in the poorer districts.
The formula is credited with Mississippi not losing an equity funding lawsuit. The equity funding lawsuits maintained that states were not properly funding poorer districts. Many states lost those lawsuits in the 1980s and 90s, including Arkansas and Texas.
While still considered landmark legislation still to this day, the MAEP has been fully funded only twice since it was fully enacted — the last being in 2007. In that year, nearly all politicians running for office, including incumbent Gov. Haley Barbour, pledged that fully funding MAEP would no longer be an issue. But in 2008, the so-called Great Recession hit and MAEP has not come close to being fully funded since.
For the current school year, the program is underfunded $279.3 million and has been underfunded $3.35 billion since 2008.
State Sen. Hob Bryan, D-Amory, helped write the school funding formula in 2007 and made the motion in the 2018 session that killed the effort to replace the formula.
He said the whole effort to scrap the formula was “to remove an objective method of funding the schools so that people could not identify by how much they (schools) were being underfunded.
“That objective formula was going to be replaced with the speaker saying how much to fund the schools.”
Under the replacement formula, the Legislature, instead of that objective formula, would determine the per pupil amount needed to provide a quality education.
Whether there will be an effort to make the rewrite of the MAEP or its underfunding an issue in the 2023 campaign season remains to be seen.
But what is certain: during the period where the MAEP was underfunded by $3.3 billion, the state Legislature approved tax cuts that will total about $1.5 billion.
While former Gov. Phil Bryant fights a subpoena within Mississippi’s civil suit over welfare misspending, another defense attorney is now requesting he turn over even more records related to NFL hall of famer Brett Favre’s concussion drug company and other welfare projects.
The new subpoena, filed Friday, seeks communication between Bryant and Favre related to the pharmaceutical startup companies Prevacus and PreSolMD — including correspondence Mississippi Today first uncovered and published in its investigative series “The Backchannel” in April. The texts showed that just before they began receiving welfare money from defendant Nancy New’s nonprofit, Favre and Prevacus founder Jake Vanlandingham offered Bryant stock in the company.
“It’s 3rd and long and we need you to make it happen!!” Favre wrote to the governor in late December 2018.
“I will open a hole,” Bryant responded, piggybacking on the football metaphor.
The texts showed Favre also briefed Bryant when the company began receiving funding from the state and that Bryant agreed to accept the stock after he left office – until State Auditor Shad White’s early 2020 arrests derailed the arrangement. Bryant explained to Mississippi Today that he didn’t read his texts carefully enough to appreciate what the men were saying or asking of him.
“I can clearly see why you’re following those trails,” Bryant said. “And it doesn’t look good. Should I have caught it? Absolutely. I should’ve caught it. Was I extremely busy as governor? I can’t even describe to you what it is like on a daily basis as governor. This was not on the top of my list. This was not something that I was looking at every day. I’d get a text and it just kind of glance through it. I’d say, ‘Good.’”
Bryant has not been charged civilly or criminally within the welfare case.
Civil suit defendant Austin Smith, who received nearly $430,000 in welfare contracts, is subpoenaing the Prevacus documents as part of his defense, which argues that the state is denying him equal protection under the law by arbitrarily naming his as a defendant while excluding other individuals he says are just as responsible for the misspending, namely Bryant.
Smith is the nephew of former Mississippi Department of Human Services director John Davis, who was initially charged in 2020 and recently pleaded guilty to several state and federal charges within the welfare scheme. Davis’ crimes relate to welfare money he funneled to professional wrestler brothers Brett DiBiase and Ted DiBiase Jr., sons of famed WWE character Ted “The Million Dollar Man” DiBiase.
Smith is also subpoenaing Bryant for any of his communication related to several other welfare-related projects or alleged events first reported by Mississippi Today, including a fitness program by trainer Paul Lacoste, a virtual reality academy by Lobaki Inc., advertising campaigns with conservative talk radio station SuperTalk and “Families First,” treatment for Bryant’s nephew that the governor and his welfare officials facilitated, and the firing of Debbie Hood, wife of former Democratic candidate for governor Jim Hood.
“Governor Bryant’s personal involvement in these misexpenditures would have communicated to Governor Bryant’s immediate subordinate, John Davis, and to Governor Bryant’s long-time, personal friend, Nancy New, that Bryant did not require TANF (welfare) funds to be used exclusively for the benefit of needy families, but that the governor ratified and approved use of TANF funds for non-TANF purposes,” Smith’s attorney Jim Waide wrote in his June 24 answer to the complaint. “Thus, to the extent that Governor Bryant’s immediate subordinate, John Davis, and close personal friend, Nancy New, were expending TANF funds for non-TANF purposes without ‘full and open competition,’ Governor Bryant is jointly responsible.”
Currently, Bryant is fighting an earlier subpoena from Gerry Bufkin, the attorney representing Nancy New, Zach New and their nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center. That subpoena seeks Bryant’s communication related to the use of $5 million in welfare funds to build a volleyball stadium at University of Southern Mississippi.
As a result of the court battle, both Bufkin and Bryant’s attorney Billy Quin have released never-before-seen text messages over the last month to support their arguments. Bufkin argues based on the messages in his client’s possession, more communication could exist showing Bryant’s involvement in directing welfare funds. Quin rejects the notion Bryant did anything wrong and asserts that the governor had no idea welfare funds were involved in the volleyball project.
Nancy New’s son and assistant director for her nonprofit, Zach New, pleaded guilty to defrauding the government by paying the USM athletic foundation to build a volleyball stadium and disguising the payment as a lease agreement.
But the welfare misspending scandal, and Bryant’s potential role in it, extend far beyond the volleyball stadium. Waide’s latest subpoena seeks the most comprehensive set of records so far — including any communication between Bryant and Auditor White “concerning whether you (Bryant) are liable for misappropriation by MDHS” — in an attempt to uncover Bryant’s actions within the welfare scandal.
White, who previously ran Bryant’s political campaign and was initially appointed to his position by the former governor, began investigating the welfare case after an MDHS employee brought a small tip of suspected fraud to Bryant, who turned that over to White in June of 2019. Most of the misspending occurred within a federal program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, known for providing the welfare check to very poor families. Mississippi Department of Human Services, which administers federal safety net funds for the state, is an agency under the direct control of the governor’s office.
Though the largest purchases in the initial 2020 indictments against New and her son were the investments in Prevacus and PreSolMD — companies Bryant was consulting at the time of the arrests, purporting not to have any knowledge that they had received welfare funds — White called Bryant the whistleblower of the case.
White has previously said it would have been Davis’ duty to reject improper funding requests from the governor, not the governor’s responsibility to know the rules and laws around agency spending.
Of communication publicly available so far, Bryant’s texts surrounding the Prevacus deal are perhaps the most explosive.
Vanlandingham, Favre, Nancy New and her sons Zach and Jess New are all defendants in the civil suit brought by Mississippi Department of Human Services. While New has pleaded guilty to several state criminal charges related to the scheme, Favre and Vanlandingham have not faced criminal charges.
The civil complaint alleges they knew that the money they were seeking for Prevacus was coming from the state’s welfare department. Prevacus purported to be developing a pharmaceutical nasal spray called Prevasol that is supposed to reduce harmful swelling and inflammation when used after impact to the head. Vanlandingham has since sold his idea for the medication to Odyssey Group International, an acquisition company the scientist said he is now working with to conduct clinical trials for the drug.
MDHS’s complaint alleges that the agreement between Prevacus and the New nonprofit “falsely pretended” that their purpose was to secure “clinical trial sites” for the drug development to be located in Mississippi.
“The written agreement was a sham, as it concealed the material fact that the actual purpose of the transaction was financially to benefit Defendants Nancy New, Zach New, Jesse New, Jacob Vanlandingham, Brett Favre, Prevacus and PreSolMD.”
MDHS’s complaint, which had to receive approval from the governor’s office before filing, does not mention the former governor in its narrative.
Smith’s subpoena asks Bryant for any of his communication, including texts, instant messages, letters, etc., between Bryant and the following people: Jake Vanlandingham, Brett Favre, John Davis, Teddy DiBiase, Nancy New, Zach New and any employees from MDHS, the governor’s office or the attorney general’s office, containing the terms:
Prevacus
PresolMD
Education Research Program that Addresses Brain Injury Caused By Concussions
MCEC
FRC
It also asks for the following records:
All Documents and Communications that contain information concerning Prevacus including all proposals, offerings, updates, or memoranda of any kind concerning Prevacus and PreSolMD.
All Documents and Communications relating in any way to any ownership interest in Prevacus and PreSolMD that You had, have, or that was proposed or suggested to You by any person.
All Documents and Communications between You, or anyone on Your behalf, or anyone acting upon Your instructions, and the Mississippi Development Authority or any other public or private entity concerning funding for Prevacus or PreSolMD or any of their respective projects, infrastructure, products, or proposals.
All Documents and Communications relating in any way to any personal or ownership interest You have or had in any real property or real property development in Mississippi, including, without limitation, any real property or real property development associated with the name Traditions or any similar name, on which, or in relation to which, a Prevacus or PreSolMD presence, of any kind, was proposed, suggested or considered.
All Documents and Communications between you, Ted DiBiase, Sr., Ted DiBiase, Jr., and Brett DiBiase in which there were discussions concerning how monies might be paid to any of the DiBiases, or any company controlled by the DiBiases. Companies controlled by the DiBiases include, but are not limited to, Price Ventures, LLC, Familiae Orientem, LLC, Heart of David Ministries, Inc.
All Documents and Communications between you and John Davis concerning providing funding for Ted DiBiase, Jr., and Brett DiBiase or Heart of David Ministries, Inc., Familiae Orientem, LLC, Price Ventures, LLC, or any company owned or controlled by any of the DiBiases.
All Documents and Communications in which payments of Federal or State funds or funds of MCEC could be, or were, paid to Paul Lacoste or Victory Sports Foundation, Inc.
All Documents and Communications concerning Tate Reeves’ efforts to obtain funding for Paul Lacoste or for Victory Sports Foundation, LLC.
All Documents and Communications in which a meeting with Paul Lacoste to discuss a contract with him or his company, Victory Sports Foundation, Inc. was planned.
All Documents and Contracts which mention funding for Labocki, Inc., or mention contracting with Lobaki, Inc. and/or Lobaki Foundation, or mention obtaining a contract for Lobaki, Inc. and/or Lobaki Foundation, to be funded by Federal or State monies, or to be funded by MCEC.
All Documents and Communications in which you discussed advertising or authorization of payment for advertising by Telesouth Communications d/b/a Super Talk while you were Governor.
All Documents and Communications in which you discussed treatment for Noah Malone while you were Governor.
All Documents and Communications which you had with John Davis or Nancy New concerning treatment for Noah Malone while you were Governor.
All Documents and Communications in which treatment for Logan Dillon, or payment of treatment for Logan Dillon was discussed while you were Governor.
All Documents and Communications in which the employment and/or termination of Debbie Hood as an employee of FRC was discussed.
All Documents and Communications concerning advertising services to be provided for MCEC or FRC, MDHS, or “Families First” while you were Governor.
All Documents and Communications concerning payment of advertising services for MCEC, FRC, MDHS, or “Families First.”
All Documents and Communications concerning payment of advertising services to Cirlot Advertising from funds belonging to MCEC, FRC, MDHS, or “Families First.”
All Documents and Communications which you had with Steve Davenport concerning advertising services to be done by Telesouth Communications or Super Talk while you were Governor.
All Documents and Communications between you and State Auditor Shad White concerning whether you are liable for misappropriation by MDHS.
A number of challenges continue to burden the mothers and children of Mississippi, especially after the landmark decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed Mississippi’s abortion trigger law to go into effect, banning abortion in nearly all cases.
In the wake of Roe’s overturning, advocates and activists have put even more pressure on state leaders to help rectify problems such as postpartum Medicaid expansion, overall access to health care, infant mortality and more.
On Sept. 27, the Senate Study Group on Women, Children and Families, a committee created by Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, held the first of a series of hearings to ascertain the breadth of these issues.
As reported by Senior Political Reporter Geoff Pender, “46% of Mississippi children are in single-parent homes. One in five children experienced hunger in the last year. Nine out of 1,000 babies in Mississippi die. In the rural Delta, there are 4,000 children for every one pediatrician — statewide that number drops only to 2,000 per — and many counties have no OB/GYN. Many mothers do not receive proper prenatal or postpartum care. Mississippi has alarming rates of premature, low-weight babies being born.”
Organizations representing Black women have criticized the Senate committee for the lack of members who are Black women, with only one out of nine members.
“Black women and babies experience a disproportionate share of the state’s highest-in-the-nation rates of stillbirth, low birth weight, and infant mortality,” writes Pender.
“What we’re asking for here is just a right to life,” said Angela Grayson, lead organizer for Black Women Vote Coalition and advocacy and outreach coordinator for The Lighthouse. “The data is here. The data shows that [extending postpartum Medicaid coverage] is good legislation and that that is what we need here in Mississippi for Black women to be able to go through the childbirth experience and not have the unnecessary burdens of inadequate health care.”
In the United States as a whole, 5.42 per 1,000 live births died before their first birthday. In Mississippi, those figures only continue to rise — 5.7 among white infants, 8.12 statewide and 11.8 among Black infants.
And among the leading causes of infant mortality, while birth defects lead the nation, Mississippi infants mostly face premature birth — the highest rate in the country, pregnancy and delivery complications, and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or SIDS.
The Jackson City Council has agreed to pay Richard’s Disposal a day after the company said it would halt garbage collection, both WLBT and WAPT reported Friday.
The TV stations reported that the news of this settlement, which pays the company $4.8 million for work it’s done since April, temporarily prolongs the city’s trash collection. This comes after Richard’s Disposal sued the city over unpaid services.
On Thursday, the company said it would stop picking up Jackson’s garbage after Saturday, after the city council refused to pay the company.
The reports Friday cite attorneys for the city council, Deshun Martin and John Scanlon, as confirming the settlement. Mississippi Today, however, reached out to both Councilwoman Virgi Lindsay and Jackson spokesperson Justin Vicory on Friday afternoon, and neither could confirm the reports.
Lindsay told Mississippi Today that the council agreed during an executive session Thursday to negotiate with Richard’s Disposal up to the reported settlement amount, but said she wasn’t aware that the agreement took place.
The dispute among city officials over which garbage collector to hire continues to drag on after Jackson’s contract with Waste Management expired in September 2021. Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba has repeatedly called on city council members to approve a contract with Richard’s, arguing that the company would be able to save the city money. The city council continually voted against doing so, however, questioning the need to move away from Waste Management.
The City of Jackson has agreed to federal oversight of its roadblock policy in a settlement announced this week.
The lawsuit over the roadblock policy was filed in February by the Mississippi Center for Justice (MCJ) and the MacArthur Justice Center, and has been in settlement negotiations since early March.
The Jackson Police Department calls the roadblock policy “Ticket Arrest Tow.” It is used around the city to check if drivers have valid licenses, insurance and registration. Police officials say the roadblocks also allow officers to see if a driver has an active warrant.
Under the terms of the settlement, roadblocks will be required to be evenly distributed across Jackson, may not be used for general crime control, and may only be implemented in specific circumstances relating to alcohol and drug consumption or high rates of car crashes. It also requires the Jackson Police Department to record and report data regarding its use of roadblocks and to distribute know-your-rights flyers at each checkpoint.
The federal court enforcement of this settlement will continue for the next four years.
Between Jan. 4 to March 18, Jackson police officers made 208 arrests – 10 for felonies, 198 for misdemeanors – from its roadblocks, according to information obtained through a public records request shared with MCJ.
During that period, Jackson police officers also issued 1,149 citations and towed 186 vehicles.
Members of the Mississippi Alliance for Public Safety, who reached out to MCJ about the roadblock issues, spoke with over 80 people in South and West Jackson, where they said they’d heard most of the roadblocks were occurring, and found many had negative experiences.
People said they felt inconvenienced and unable to move in and out of their communities. Alliance members heard a story about a mother who walked home with her children in the rain because her car was towed after going through a checkpoint.
Timothy Halcomb, expresses his gratitude regarding the outcome of a class action lawsuit calling for an overhaul of JPD’s “Ticket, Arrest and Tow” (TAT) program, during a press conference held Friday, Oct. 7, 2022, in Jackson’s Smith Park. the press conference. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Timothy Halcomb, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said he got involved after his experience with a roadblock in his community in South Jackson.
‘We live in a poor neighborhood, but that doesn’t make us criminals,” Halcomb said at a press conference Friday. “Why are they doing this to us?”
Cliff Johnson, director of the MacArthur Justice Center, said he believes this policy was borne out of concern about violent crime, but police officers address the problem by focusing their efforts on minor crimes.
“One thing I would urge the residents of Jackson to think about is, when we demand action from the police, we need to be careful what we ask for because we just might get it,” Johnson said.
Johnson offered compliments to the city on its handling of the lawsuit for their willingness to negotiate, and in doing so, for saving the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in litigation fees.
The legal team said their goal was to have roadblocks completely eliminated, citing a body of evidence that roadblocks disproportionately impact poorer residents and do not meaningfully reduce crime. While this goal was not achieved, they said the settlement reduces harm to residents and they will continue to monitor Jackson’s adherence to it.
“While we continue to hold Jackson accountable for civil rights violations just as we would any other police department across the state, we do so because we want this capital city to be great, we believe that it can be,” Johnson said. “I believe that the settlement we’ve announced today, and the people who’ve put it together in the way they have, is really good news that we are moving in the right direction.”
Paloma Wu, MCJ’s deputy director of impact litigation, said they also have evidence that roadblock policies are a problem across the state, one she intends to continue pursuing.
“(Roadblocks) waste precious police resources needed for responding to violent crime, and make poor residents poorer without making them safer,” Wu said.
Editor’s note: Vangela M. Wade, president and CEO of the Mississippi Center for Justice, is a member of Mississippi Today’s board of directors.
After years of administrative and structural issues, the Jackson water system suffered a failure exacerbated by the flooding of the Pearl River and leaving thousands of citizens with little to no clean water for a week. Amidst that, the city was already under a boil water notice that is no longer in effect.
Alex Rozier, Mississippi Today’s data and environment reporter, answered questions on Reddit about long-term plans to address the city’s water issues, the One Lake project and more.
Q: I have a question regarding the long-term “plan” to fix the water that everybody says is necessary to get funding, but depending on who you ask: either nobody has taken the time to put it together over all these years, or it exists you just can’t see it yet.
Who does the city have putting this plan together? I really hope it’s someone with actual technical expertise, and not just delegated city council members.
And I actually read that 45-pagereport Lumumba keeps pointing to as a plan that is referenced in the article you link. A list of currently ongoing projects and a “wishlist” from each councilperson is not a “long-term plan”, the majority of it isn’t even about water. I really hope they didn’t pay AJA Management much for that piece of paper. Might want to check their connections to the city government.
A: It’s a great question, and I think the confusing part about it is that the city has a number of “plans.”
The 45-page report you talked about was done by AJA, SOL and Neel Schaffer, published in 2020. That’s probably the closest thing we’ve seen to plan during Mayor Lumumba’s administration, but it’s unclear how closely the city has been following it, which is something for us to follow up on. That accounts for about $80 million in water spending over five years.
But there’s another — seemingly more comprehensive — plan that Jackson crafted with the EPA, and which, according to the city, shows the $1 billion spending need that the mayor keeps mentioning. The issue is that plan is hidden behind a court-ordered non-disclosure agreement.
One thing the mayor keeps bringing up is the cost of making a plan; the 45-page document cost the city $200k to produce, he said. He argues that it’s not worth it to spend money in order to keep updating the city’s plans if the state/fed governments aren’t going to fund those plans.
The questions I have about all this are: how much did the city “lacking” a plan prevent the state/feds from sending money? Did they ever offer feedback as to what the plan is missing?
While it’s fair to say the city hasn’t been super clear about what its plan is, I’m also skeptical of state/fed officials saying that’s why they haven’t been able to better fund Jackson.
Q: [Are there] any other cities in the state on the brink of having this happen?
A: As far as cities’ drinking water, I’m not positive about all of them, but I do know Greenville is having some issues.
From what I can tell, the more widespread issue is with rural water services. Experts will tell you that Mississippi, for its population size, has way, way too many local water governing bodies, many of which are too small to fund repairs, and don’t have the required expertise. The state has 1,200 public water systems, 70% of which serve a population of 1,000 or less.
Add on the fact that a relatively large portion of MS is still on private wells.
The solution, those experts would say, is to consolidate. That can be tricky when you’re trying to get one water authority that’s doing well to join with another that’s in some debt. But I believe there is federal money available to help push those mergers through.
As far as cities go, I’m more aware of their wastewater issues, which are very widespread (I wrote about that recently here, although that story doesn’t include the Coast, which is definitely no exception).
Q: Mayor Lumumba sued Siemens for $225 million back in 2019. The city settled for only $90 million. Only $14 million of the settlement went into the water/sewer system and $30 million went to attorneys. 1). Can you list out where all the settlement money went? 2). Can you list who the attorneys were and their area of expertise?
A: I haven’t personally reported on the Siemens issue, but the Clarion Ledger did a good story breaking that down here.
Like you said, $30 million went to attorneys; $46 million was split between the city’s general fund, enterprise fund, and paying down city debt. About $10 million was earmarked for meter and billing fixes. WLBT also has a recent story on this.
Q: I read where the city hadn’t been collecting water bills. Is this true? Why?
A: A lot of that goes back to the Siemens issue mentioned in the other question about the faulty meters, so the city can’t read how much water people are consuming correctly. Some of that is the cutoff moratoriums that have been on and off the last few years.
Overall, as a recent EPA report showed, about half of the water Jackson puts out is “nonrevenue,” either because of billing issues or water getting lost due to leaks in the aging pipes.
Jackson is rolling out new meters, which it says it’ll be finished doing by next March. Fixing the billing issue would be a huge funding boost — as of that EPA report, Jackson had lost 32% of its water revenue because of the broken meters.
But even after the billing is fixed, there’s still a long-term question of how a city where 1 in 4 live below the poverty line, and where the population has dropped 20% in the last 40 years, can afford to keep its infrastructure running. A lot of federal money is coming into Jackson, but it’s not near the billion dollars the mayor claims Jackson needs.
Q: My question is about the Ross Barnett Reservoir and its effect on Jackson wastewater management and flooding.
I saw a passing reference recently to a debate about building another lake near Jackson (possibly as a new catchment area at the Rez, the story wasn’t clear). Apparently, hydrologists were saying this would be necessary in any case to control flooding, but this was nixed by the state government over funding and objections from people further down the Pearl River. Didn’t say who was objecting or why.
Aside from the other questions of mismanagement, do you think the state’s decision not to build this second lake has made the situation in Jackson and the surrounding area worse? Is it possible that another catchment area at the Rez would have reduced the strain on the OB Curtis plant?
A: I think you’re talking about the One Lake plan, which is more about flood control (and recreational benefits) than drinking water/wastewater. Although I am curious to find out if that plan would do anything about the huge amounts of untreated wastewater flowing into the Pearl.
If you’re interested I did a kind of long story about the project in 2020.
Q: What will the MDEQ or MSDH do about the reoccurring sewage excursions into the streets and Pearl River?
A: On the state level, that falls on MDEQ; MDEQ and EPA are in charge of making sure Jackson is implementing the measures outlined in the 2013 consent decree, which, because of funding and staffing issues, the city is not doing. It’s estimated that it’ll cost $945 million to make the upgrades required in the consent decree. Jackson is planning to use ARPA money on this, but that’ll be a small amount of the total needed.
I’m hoping to do some more reporting on this soon, but in the meantime these are a couple of helpful links if you’re interested in following:
Faculty and staff have a simple request for members of the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees leading the search for a new president at University of Southern Mississippi – pick a leader who knows how to listen.
“My hope is that the next president would value my voice as it has felt valued these last seven years,” said Anna Jo Berry-Barrett, a dean’s assistant in the College of Arts and Sciences,at the listening session held by the IHL on campus Monday.
But from the jump, the voices of rank-and-file faculty and staff have been all but excluded from the decision-making process as the commissioner and powerful board members leading the presidential search have stacked an advisory group with politically connected alumni, major donors and high-level administrators.
A review of the 15-member Search Advisory Constituency (SAC) shows that nine are local lawmakers and members of the university foundation and alumni boards. The constituency has just four faculty members, all of whom have duties at the director-level or higher, and only one is a staff member, the interim vice president for research.
Members of the constituency for this search were selected by Tom Duff and Gee Ogletree, IHL Board trustees and USM alumni who are leading the search, and Commissioner Alfred Rankins, according to an email from Caron Blanton, IHL’s director of communications.
“Both Co-Chairs are graduates of USM and active members of the Alumni Association, so they know many members of the Southern Miss Campus Community,” Blanton wrote. “As Commissioner, Dr. Rankins also knows many members of the community.”
It’s unclear to what extent Duff, Ogletree and Rankins sought names or recommendations from USM; Blanton did not say. The university’s communications department referred all questions to IHL.
At Monday’s listening session, Duff touted the constituency as “very diverse” in terms of different stakeholders on campus.
“It has faculty members, staff members, alumni,” he said. “It has everybody that is a stakeholder in this university and in its mission within the state.”
IHL convenes an advisory group for every presidential search. Members are primarily responsible for helping the board filter feedback from the listening sessions and in comments on IHL’s website to create a “draft profile” for prospective candidates.
The constituency used to be an actual committee that would meet to discuss prospective candidates and even participate in interviews, but IHL has narrowed the group’s responsibility through policy changes over the years.
Still, many on campus said they would have appreciated being included in the constituency, even if its responsibilities are nominal. One faculty member told Mississippi Today the lack of representation for university employees seems indicative of IHL’s true intentions – to select a president who represents the board’s political aims, not the interests of people who actually make Mississippi’s third largest university run.
“To me, that just kind of shows the regard, or lack thereof, that the board has for the faculty,” said Denis Wiesenburg, a professor of marine sciences. “And yet the faculty are the backbone of the university.”
As the president of USM’s faculty senate, Wiesenburg was elected by professors to represent their interests. But he said no one from IHL reached out to him about participating in the constituency, even though he has served on it before, in 2001, and the faculty senate president is traditionally a member.
Also left off the panel was the president of the staff council, which is a counterpart to the faculty senate. The council did not respond to Mississippi Today’s request for comment, but at Monday’s listening session, several members said they wanted the next president to represent their needs too.
“We have alums, we have faculty, we have staff and we have students,” said April Broome, a staff member in the office that oversees student organizations. “That middle word tends to get lost a little bit.”
The presidential search at USM comes at a fraught time for higher education in Mississippi. In the Legislature, conservatives have taken aim at academic freedom via Senate Bill 2113, the anti-critical race theory bill, and many faculty are worried that tenure is next following recent changes to IHL’s policies.
In this environment, Wiesenburg said it would be easier for IHL to get buy-in from the faculty, at least, if trustees had involved them in the search process.
“That’s kind of management 101 for me,” he said.
By the end of the 20th century, faculty participation in presidential searches became “the norm” at colleges across the country, according to research by the American Association of University Professors.
As universities across the country increasingly rely on consulting firms, faculty participation in presidential searches has seemed to wane. Committees with real duties – like sitting in on interviews or voting on candidates – have been replaced with listening sessions or surveys.
IHL has followed this trend to some extent, but faculty in Mississippi have long questioned whose input the board actually takes into consideration.
In years past, IHL sought nominations from the universities for the advisory committee. Members would participate in the hiring process, “the entire candidate interview process,” according to IHL’s past press releases.
But trustees also frequently ignored the committee’s recommendations. This happened most recently in 2019 when trustees chose not to interview some of the committee’s highest-rated applicants for chancellor of the University of Mississippi. Many alumni of Mississippi’s historically Black universities have long felt that IHL ignores their preferred presidential candidates.
IHL is aware of this perception. At a board retreat in March, trustees approved a litany of changes to IHL’s search committee policy to better reflect how board members use the advisory group in practice.
Other policy changes from April included new language that the board “may, at its discretion” appoint a group; under the previous language, the commissioner “shall prepare a list of the proposed membership.” Trustees also removed the requirement that diversity be reflected in terms of “race and gender.”
Another change the board made was to make members of the constituency confidential, even to each other. In late September, trustees recalled this change at a special-called meeting in late September, voting to strike it from the policy.
USM’s search committee has three Black members, and all are men.
Of the nine alumni in the constituency, four are members of the USM Foundation, including Chuck Scianna, Joseph Quinlan, Kelsey Rushing and Louie Ehrlich. Two members – Jarvis Wilbert and Alvin Williams – represent the alumni association with a third, Alan Lucas, being a member of the “alumni hall of fame.” Two more alumni are the mayors of Hattiesburg and Gulfport.
IHL’s past advisory groups have been more representative of faculty. For the 2006 presidential search, USM’s advisory committee had 25 members, chosen “based on recommendations by university and community constituencies,” according to a press release.
The committee included 15 professors, a graduate student, the faculty senate president and the chair of USM’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors. There was just one member of the alumni association, the president-elect.
In 2012, another IHL press release shows the 38-member committee for the search that culminated in Rodney Bennett’s appointment as the tenth USM president had more input from alumni and the university foundation with eight members. But faculty and staff still had a majority with 21 names.
“The Board is grateful to all of those who volunteered to serve or nominated someone for this important committee,” Robin Robinson, the IHL board member who chaired the 2012 search, was quoted in the press release.
Duff, in his opening remarks at Monday’s listening session, tried to allay criticism of the search. He said he hoped stakeholders at the listening session would take the trustees’ attendance as a sign of good faith. Stakeholders who could not attend the meeting, he added, were invited to detail the qualities they’d like to see in USM’s next leader in a comment on IHL’s website.
“I hope this will show to each of you just how important this decision is,” he said. “Oftentimes, the IHL is painted through the media or through people are perhaps not caring or not that interested, but I want you to know – and it was told to me by one of the trustees as we walked up this morning – this is a great institution, and we need to make the right choice.”
One of the largest operators in Mississippi’s fledgling medical marijuana industry did not follow state regulations, according to Department of Health documents obtained by Mississippi Today.
But the department’s response so far — to write Mockingbird Cannabis LLC a letter listing “corrective actions” — has competitors crying foul. They say Mockingbird was allowed to grow and harvest a crop improperly and on the cheap in plastic- and cloth-covered greenhouses that will allow them to beat others growing in buildings to market as the state’s medical marijuana program gets rolling.
They also say the department appears to be giving big-money Mockingbird special treatment that will shut out others, particularly smaller home-grown Mississippi companies.
“(Mockingbird) has come in and thrown a lot of money around and they are expecting to be pandered to,” said Zack Wilson, chief operating officer of Good Flower Farms, a smaller grower in Potts Camp. “Pictures don’t lie. They have broken the damned law. What is the state going to do to them? That’s what everybody wants to know.”
Others in the industry shared similar sentiments but would not comment publicly. Mississippi Today was supplied photos taken from outside one of Mockingbird’s growing sites that show what appear to be violations of state regulations. One regulation is that “cultivation activities are not visible or accessible to the public.” Through a records request, Mississippi Today obtained Health Department photos and correspondence documenting other problems.
Health Department inspectors on Sept. 14, after receiving complaints likely from competitors, found that a Mockingbird grow site was out of compliance with several state growing regulations. Among the department’s findings at the site: Mockingbird was growing plants in greenhouses with tarp or clear plastic walls (some rolled up and some with large holes in them) and lax security that included a loosely chained back fence gate with a padlock.
In this photo submitted to Mississippi Today, taken outside a Mockingbird Cannabis site near Raymond, marijuana plants are seen growing in a plastic-covered ‘hoop house.’ Credit: Submitted photo
State regulations say “all cultivation activities must take place in indoor, enclosed, locked and secure facilities” that have a “complete roof enclosure supported by connecting permanent walls, constructed of solid materials extending from the ground to the roof.” The regulations also specify a long list of stringent security requirements including “commercial grade locks on all external doors.”
Health Department inspectors, records show, also found that Mockingbird was growing plants without the required state “seed-to-sale” tracking tags attached.
Mockingbird’s CEO, in a lengthy interview with Mississippi Today, said the company has corrected minor issues and that the complaints are sour grapes from competitors because the company took a “calculated risk” investing millions before a state program was approved, giving it an edge on competition. It plans to have marijuana product ready soon, likely the first major batch for the program lawmakers approved this year after years of debate and stalls.
“I will tell you we haven’t done anything we didn’t disclose to the Department of Health and in our application,” said Mockingbird CEO Clint Patterson, a former prosecutor from Oklahoma. “We feel like we have gone above and beyond to be good citizens, compliant with law enforcement and compliant with the Department of Health.”
Patterson said that of the 15,000 or so plants Mockingbird was growing at its secondary facility, only 30-50 did not have tags. He said the company had tags for the plants, but just hadn’t attached them and quickly rectified that.
Law enforcement also received calls about Mockingbird, and state Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell said Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics officers went out to the site and looked into it. But he said once they learned Mockingbird was a licensed grower, they backed off. He said the way state medical marijuana laws are written, the Department of Public Safety cannot participate in regulating the industry, and it would be up to the Health Department to call them in “if they felt something was egregious enough.”
Health Department officials refused to answer Mississippi Today’s questions about the company.
The greenhouse effect
It’s unclear whether Mockingbird’s cultivation license covers the former plant nursery where inspectors found issues. The site, at a property called Standing Pine, is about 12 miles away from Mockingbird’s licensed indoor growing facility outside Raymond, which is listed as its “physical address” on the state’s registry of medical marijuana cultivator licenses.
Cultivators are allowed only one growing license. Mockingbird says its license covers the Standing Pine site on Parsons Road as well as its main indoor growing facility on Springridge Road. Patterson said Mockingbird clearly stated in its application that it planned to use the Standing Pine location and supplied multiple photos, including pictures of the greenhouses it planned to use, and other information in its roughly 700-page application.
Competitors say this is bunk, that cultivation licenses are supposed to be for one location, and that they were told they couldn’t grow in greenhouses.
Wilson said he had bought 15 greenhouses before the medical marijuana program was up and running, but was later told by the Health Department he couldn’t use them, so he built a structure with 7-foot tall steel walls. He said another grower he knows was also not allowed to use greenhouses he had.
Growing in greenhouses allows faster, cheaper growth of a type of marijuana plant that can be used for processing into edibles and other products. In legislative debate and hearings on medical marijuana, proponents assured reluctant lawmakers that the state’s program would be secure and strictly regulated and growing would be “indoors” to provide more security, prevent contamination and make regulation easier. At the time, farmers in the Delta complained that they were being shut out of the program in part because of the high cost of constructing such facilities.
“I have five different places I would love to grow at right now, but they wouldn’t let me grow at five different addresses,” Wilson said. “We were told it all has to be at the same location … If somebody puts in a 770-page application, that’s not an application, that’s trying to blanket them with paperwork … What if I put something in my (application) that I wanted to use butt-naked school children for cultivation and they didn’t catch it? Just because you put something in there and the department overlooked it doesn’t mean it’s right.”
Mockingbird facility photos from the Mississippi Department of Health.
The department’s public registry of licensed cultivators lists Mockingbird’s cultivation facility for its license as “physical address” 1577 Springridge Road. State regulations say, “A license shall be issued for the specific location identified on the application, and is valid only for the owner, premises and name designated on the application and Department issued license and the location for which it is issued.” Patterson points to this regulation as allowing the Standing Pine cultivation on Parsons Road. Others point to it as clearly not allowing it.
State Rep. Lee Yancey, one of the lead drafters of the state’s Medical Marijuana Act, declined to answer most questions about the issues with Mockingbird. He said for now the Health Department is in charge of interpreting what the rules are and that, “If the statute is not clear enough, we will address it (in the Legislature).”
As for growing facilities, Yancey said, “My understanding was that it was to be an enclosed, locked facility, but how you define that — I guess that’s the issue. Right now, the Health Department will interpret what that means … I think the legislative intent was walls and a ceiling and a floor … We will be looking at tweaks to things in January.”
Sen. Kevin Blackwell, the lead drafter of the legislation, could not be reached for comment and did not respond to a message seeking an interview.
‘Hoop houses’ and ‘Dutch sunhouses’
Patterson, in a lengthy telephone interview with Mississippi Today with a Mockingbird lobbyist listening in, said he believes his company has been compliant with all regulations and “they had some corrective action for us and we complied … very, very quickly.”
“They made it very clear they weren’t issuing violations, they were issuing a corrective action,” Patterson said. “… When we applied, we were very upfront about what we were going to do and where we were cultivating. We spent $30 million in the state of Mississippi, and we hired Mississippi people and we bought our supplies in Mississippi and we did this before there was a program, because we believed in the voice of the people in wanting this law passed — they voted resoundingly on Initiative 65, a mandate … This is typical in this industry that when a program starts, whoever has taken that calculated risk, the competitors will typically complain.”
During the lengthy interview, Patterson explained that “our main structure (at Standing Pine) is a Dutch-style sunhouse, that has a permanent foundation, like a foundation you would see in a house — concrete, plumbed, has drainage in it and permanent structured walls, has retractable function.”
“When they approved our application, we assumed we were good,” Patterson said. “But when they came back out, they want hard plastic on the walls.”
Patterson said he was unfamiliar with details of Health Department photos showing walls with no covering or with thin, clear, plastic or torn cloth tarp covering. But he said all the buildings are being secured per Health Department requests and follow-up, including a teleconference between the department and Mockingbird officials.
Patterson denied that Mockingbird had been growing marijuana in “hoop houses,” which are half-circle shaped greenhouses made of curved tubing and covered in plastic sheeting.
“Greenhouses are fundamentally different than hoop houses,” Patterson said. “… We are only growing in greenhouses that have concrete foundations with draining and plumbing.”
But when sent a copy of a photo of a hoop house with open walls with marijuana plants growing at Standing Pine that was supplied to Mississippi Today, Patterson corrected his earlier statements.
“As to the picture, I’ve asked internally and it appears that was a staging area staff set up this summer to apply (plant tracking) tags,” Patterson wrote in a text message after the interview. “We spotted that with our own internal controls. Management at the facility identified that was not an appropriate building, and all plants were moved. Again, we found that ourselves. Those plants weren’t there when Dept of Health inspected us and they aren’t there today. We never flowered plants in that building.”
Mockingbird facility photos from the Mississippi Department of Health.
Also during the interview, Patterson said the medical marijuana law passed by the Legislature refers to greenhouses and 3-foot tall walls with retractable tops in the definition of acceptable growing facilities. But later, he messaged: “I checked with our legal folks and the words greenhouse and three-foot high walls was in earlier drafts, but was not in the final bill.
“However, to be clear, the definitions do allow for a permanent grow house that we operate, and as I mentioned previously, we did show the department exactly where and how we intended to grow.”
During his interview, Patterson repeatedly referred to Mockingbird’s 163,000 square-foot facility that once housed the state Department of Revenue on Springridge Road as “our indoor facility,” and said no plants were ever transferred from Standing Pine to the Springridge Road building.
“The idea that we would do that and expose plants to spiders, mites and pests and then move them to our indoor facility where it’s completely pristine … the idea that we would do that and expose our indoor to all those pollutants is ridiculous,” Patterson said.
But when asked if that meant he considered Standing Pine to be outdoor growing, Patterson said, “I’ve never called Standing Pine outdoor. A greenhouse is considered indoor in the industry. Outdoor is in a field, row cropping.”
Mockingbird facility photos from the Mississippi Department of Health.
Corrective actions, plants harvested
It’s unclear what, if anything, the Health Department — which didn’t want the task of regulating medical marijuana in the first place — will do, beyond sending Mockingbird Cannabis LLC the Sept. 21 letter telling it to take “corrective actions.”
Health Department spokeswoman Liz Sharlot, when Mississippi Today asked to interview someone at the department, initially said, “I am always happy to answer any written questions.” But after being provided written questions, she said, “I am unable to answer your questions at this time as this is an ongoing investigation.”
But the Health Department’s letter to Mockingbird didn’t indicate any ongoing investigation and said, “Please notify our office, in writing, of completion of Mockingbird’s corrective actions and provide documentation and timelines of actions taken.”
Mockingbird responded in writing to the Sept. 21 letter on Oct. 3, noting that, “While I understand that our inspection was instigated by false, anonymous accusations submitted to your department, we are nevertheless pleased that you were able to tour and inspect both of our cultivation facilities and welcome any suggestions for improvement.”
The company said it had immediately tagged the untagged plants inspectors found and “processes have been updated to ensure no future delays in applying tags.”
Mockingbird facility photos from the Mississippi Department of Health.
The company also said it has hired a new security company — prior to the inspection — and is beefing up security at Standing Pine, including “increased internet capacity, installed additional camera systems, and ordered updated siding and doors for certain greenhouses” and that it will not add new plants there until everything is updated.
“Per our discussion, Mockingbird will harvest the majority of plants at the greenhouse facility today, emptying the largest greenhouse and preparing it for security updates,” the letter said. “We have also worked to update security at the three smaller greenhouses on the property to hold any remaining plants that could not yet be harvested.”
‘This will put other people out of business’
The regulations the Health Department helped promulgate and is supposed to enforce have a “Schedule of Disciplinary Actions” including large fines, suspension or revocation of licenses for a variety of first, second and third violations. Its rule says, “In addition to any applicable criminal actions, the following schedule shall be used when administratively disciplining medical cannabis establishments for violating statutory and/or regulatory requirements.” It says the department has the right to increase the penalties based on aggravating circumstances but does not address waiving the penalties that “shall be used.”
Those penalties include a fine of $5,000 for first offense “Failure to comply with security requirements,” a fine of $5,000 for “Failure to accurately track inventory,” and a $10,000 fine and one week suspension for “Willful failure to accurately track inventory.”
Activities outside of the rules, state regulations say, “may be considered suspected illegal activities and reported to proper authorities as such.”
Wilson said Mockingbird being allowed to harvest the greenhouse plants means, “They were given a head start, a huge advantage over everyone else in the state.”
“They grew enough marijuana in that one grow to fully stock every dispensary — millions of dollars worth,” Wilson said. “… It’s funny, they were the ones that lobbied to get all these rules into place to make it harder for a small guy like me to get a license. Everything has to be indoor with solid walls … But then they just drown the state with paperwork and call their greenhouses indoors. No, hell, it’s not … If that place is legal, how come it’s not finished out yet?
“Yes, this will put other people out of business,” Wilson said. “What they have done is crush the small Mississippians in this business.”
