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In sports, precious few records exist we can say for certain never will be broken. I know of only one.

Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hit streak, you say? It’s not likely, but it is surely possible. Wilt Chamberlain’s 100 points in a single professional basketball game? Again, not likely, but there’s always a chance a 7-foot, 10-inch version of Michael Jordan will emerge. Byron Nelson’s 11 consecutive PGA Tour victories? Even Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods could not come close. Still, such a feat is possible.

But there exists at least one sports record, this one in college football, that will stand forever. No possible way it will be broken. The 1899 Sewanee Tigers won five football games in six days en route to a perfect 12-0 season. What’s more, all five of those victories in a six-day span were shutouts. Sewanee defeated Texas 12-0 in Austin, Texas A&M 10-0 in Houston, Tulane 23-0 in New Orleans, LSU 34-0 in Baton Rouge and Ole Miss 12-0 in Memphis.

Making the feat all the more amazing was the team’s mode of transportation. This was four years before Orville and Wilbur Wright flew the first powered airplane. Sewanee made the entire 2,500-mile trip by steam-powered locomotive. Eighteen Sewanee players were on the traveling roster, but only 13 actually played in the games. No wonder they were called “The Iron Men.”

You could not make it up.

And Mississippian and Sewanee grad David Crews did not have to make it up. Crews and Sewanee classmate Norman Jetmundsen spent much of the last five years researching, interviewing, writing, shooting and making a film — “UNRIVALED” — that tells the definitive story of that remarkable Sewanee team that outscored its 12 foes 322-10.

The documentary will be the subject of a program on Feb. 22 at 5:30 p.m. at the Overby Center at Ole Miss. A 25-minute portion of the 90-minute film will be shown followed by a discussion that Charles Overby will lead with Ole Miss Athletic Director Keith Carter along with the film’s directors.

Should Ole Miss ever be foolhardy enough to attempt such a football road trip, Carter could call on a staff of dozens to arrange the travel, feed the team, wash the uniforms, attend to its medical needs, devise game plans and so much more. Back in 1899, those duties were divided between student manager Luke Lea, who in reality served as athletic director, business manager and a lot more, and head coach Herman “Billy” Suter.

It is a fascinating story and a remarkable film, which includes interviews with the likes of legendary, national championship-winning coaches Nick Saban, Vince Dooley, Bobby Bowden and Johnny Majors, as well as historian John Meachem, another graduate of Sewanee, also known as the University of the South.

At one point in the film, Bowden, who has since died, sums up the Sewanee story as only he could with his folksy, down-home charm. “It’s unbelievable,” Bowden says, excitedly. “How in the world could anybody do that?”

Other factors make the achievement all the more astounding. Football, then more than now, was a brutal sport with very little protective padding and few rules to prevent punching, gouging, kicking and other forms of mayhem. Substitutions were for cowards. If you came out of a game, you were out for the duration. Often injured players stayed in the game, stumbling and dazed from injuries.

There was no such thing as a forward pass. It was straight-ahead, physical football. Only the strong survived and some of the strongest did not. Says Dooley, “There were 17 or 18 deaths one season.” The closest thing to a pass was when offensive players would pick up a ball-carrying teammate and heave him over the line.

You might wonder, as I had, why a team in the remote Tennessee foothills would embark on a such a seemingly foolhardy six-day, five-game marathon. Turns out, it was all about dollars. Vanderbilt was Sewanee’s big rival in those days and the annual trip to Nashville pretty much funded the football team. That year, there was a dispute over how the gate receipts would be divided. It went unresolved. With the Vanderbilt game canceled, Lea, the student manager, was forced to raise money by other means.

Long road trips to, say, Austin or New Orleans would eat up all the money earned from the games. So Lea essentially decided to kill five birds with one stone: one road trip, five games. Somehow, his players were up to the task.

They were not big men. The Sewanee star and team captain was Henry “Diddy” Seibels, a running back who weighed all of 170 pounds. He scored two touchdowns in the victory over Texas, despite suffering a huge gash over his left eye that was patched with plaster of paris. He never left the game.

The team’s right end, Hugh Miller Thompson Pearce, was better known as Bunny and hailed from Jackson. Bunny Pearce stood 5 feet, 3 inches and weighed in at 125 pounds. In a 1944 interview with the famous sports writer Grantland Rice, Coach Suter said of Pearce: “He was a fine end. One hundred and eight pounds of his weight was brains and heart. What else matters?”

The fifth of the five victories in six days was over Ole Miss at Memphis. Sewanee had defeated LSU 34-0 the day before. The bruises and gashes and sore muscles added up. The Iron Men rode the train overnight from Baton Rouge, sleeping in a coach car, and then took the field the next afternoon. Reported The Commercial Appeal: “As the bandaged boys in purple took their positions, Coach Suter applied fresh plaster over the cut which Seibels received in the Texas game.  The sight of the Sewanee men as they stood ready for the referee’s whistle was enough to create a wholesome respect for them.”

Despite Sewanee’s physical woes, the Tigers prevailed 12-0. On the exhausting trip, they had defeated five of the Deep South’s football powers by a combined score of 91-0. They returned to Sewanee the next day, conquering heroes and were treated as such.

They were feted by a parade, a bonfire, fireworks, cannon fire, a feast and more. Think about it: They had been gone only a week. They had won five great victories in six days. They had achieved something nobody had ever done before — or has done since. Or will in the future.

Nobody would ever be foolish enough to try.

The post ‘Unrivaled’: The Sewanee Tigers were a team for the ages appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Note: This analysis first published in Mississippi Today’s weekly legislative newsletter. Subscribe to our free newsletter for exclusive early access to weekly analyses.

Mississippi faces a critical teacher shortage due in part to lawmakers paying them less than any other state. Meanwhile, many of the teachers we do have don’t have the classroom resources — and sometimes even actual classrooms — they need to adequately teach their students.

Agencies that provide critical government services are hemorrhaging staff because state employee salaries have been so low for so long that staffers are entering the more lucrative private sector.

Businesses across the state struggle to attract and retain workers because the prospective workers often lack the specific education or skills necessary to do those jobs effectively.

Aging roads, closed bridges and broken water systems are disrupting the everyday lives of so many Mississippians. Police and ambulance services are reporting staff shortages that could jeopardize the ability to provide timely emergency attention. Hospital leaders are begging lawmakers to help keep them afloat as they continue struggling to weather the pandemic.

Mississippi’s house is not in order. Mississippians across the state are struggling. They’ve been struggling. But these realities appear to have escaped Republican leaders inside the Capitol.

Speaker of the House Philip Gunn is exerting every ounce of political capital he has to eliminate the Mississippi personal income tax, which accounts for about one-third of the state’s general fund revenue to fund basic government services like the ones listed above. In response, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann offered a shallower income tax cut, but one that many believe also threatens the state’s ability to fund basic public services.

“We have done everything,” Gunn said recently. “We have funded all of the government. We have excess money. Let’s give it back.”

READ MORE: Inside the income tax cut battle between House and Senate leaders

Mississippi currently has more money than it ever has. Revenue is currently soaring, thanks in large part to federal stimulus dollars that have poured into the state — both to individuals and to the state government. Many are calling this moment a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to address some systemic problems the state has long faced. Others are just calling it once in a lifetime.

Republican leaders aren’t walking onto the floor of the Beau Rivage, but they sure look poised to place the biggest bet of their lives. To sell their income tax cut proposals, they’re pointing to projections that are based solely on the best guesses of economists. Keep in mind, these projections are often very wrong because they are guesses. (This current fiscal year, revenue collections will likely be about $1 billion off last year’s “best guess.”)

The bet Republicans are making, in essence, is that Mississippians will spend the income tax money they’re “saving” them in other ways, and that other tax collections will rise. No state has ever fully phased out a personal income tax, so there’s true way to know if this bet will pay off.

If they’re right, the Mississippi state government will continue to be funded. If they’re wrong, government budgets will have to be slashed to balance the state budget and Mississippians will miss out on even more basic government services that they’re already not getting enough of.

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The prevailing question that everyone is asking as they watch how legislative leaders navigate the next few weeks: Can Mississippi really afford this tax cut?

Ask teachers, who have long been underappreciated and underpaid by lawmakers. Gunn and Hosemann are pushing their own versions of a pretty substantial pay raise for teachers that will cost the state about $200 million more per year. Education groups aren’t so sure the pay raises — not withstanding basic public education services — will be funded in perpetuity if this tax cut bet doesn’t pay off.

“If Mississippi has plenty of money, the Legislature has no excuse for not fully funding public schools and bringing teacher pay to the Southeastern average — before giving away any state funds,” wrote Nancy Loome of public education advocacy group The Parents’ Campaign. “If Mississippi does not have sufficient state funds to properly provide for our children and teachers, we certainly can’t afford a tax cut.”

Ask retirees, a majority of whom don’t currently pay income tax, what they think about having to pay a higher sales tax on many of the things they spend their money on. Ask advocates for lower-income Mississippians, who could likely pay more in taxes if the Gunn plan is adopted.

“The (tax cut proposal) is like putting lipstick on a pig. No matter how you dress it up or down, eliminating the income tax is bad for Mississippi, especially the state’s working families, communities of color, and retirees,” advocacy group One Voice wrote in January. “The state’s surplus is not enough to support much-needed investments in the public services that Mississippians want, like quality schools, affordable healthcare, solid infrastructure, safe neighborhoods, and affordable housing nor is it enough to support yet another tax cut that largely benefits the state’s wealthiest.”

Ask the leaders of Mississippi’s largest businesses, who continue to publicly maintain that cutting the income tax will not help them attract and retain a better workforce.

“The Mississippi tax environment was not high profile nor even discussed significantly as a priority,” said a report released by the Mississippi Economic Council last week. To compile that report, MEC held 51 town-hall style forums with business and community leaders across the state and from numerous sectors from July through September of 2021. The income tax issue didn’t even come up at any meeting until the end of August.

“There was the thought (eliminating the income tax) could drive other costs up and it could hurt the state budget and households,” the business council’s report said.

The Tax Foundation, a conservative think-tank, said that Mississippians paid $614 per capita for income taxes in 2020. That’s a nice chunk of change that no one would turn down. But considering so many government services aren’t already provided, what would that extra spending money really look like for Mississippians? Is it real relief?

For teachers, it could be some extra money to buy their students classroom supplies and teaching resources that aren’t covered by the state. For drivers, it could be a new set of tires that need replacing because the roads are in such bad shape. It could provide some relief for Mississippians who pay higher water bills as systems continue requiring costly repairs, or higher medical bills because understaffed hospitals will have to drive up costs.

For Mississippians looking for better jobs, it could be tuition money for the skills training that they can’t currently get in their county, or gas money to drive long distances to places where the jobs actually exist.

The income tax money that taxpayers would be “saved” would, in many cases, have to be spent plugging holes that lawmakers have left themselves — Mississippians forced to spend money they wouldn’t otherwise have to because lawmakers didn’t do their jobs well in the first place.

While Republican leaders continue to use best guesses to allay all these concerns, Mississippians may soon be forced to watch their big bet play out over the course of the next few years. And the stakes sure will be high.

The post The Mississippi Republican income tax bet appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Last year, Disability Rights Mississippi – a nonprofit organization that advocates for Mississippians with disabilities – started hearing about new problems at state-run psychiatric facilities. 

The facilities were dealing with staffing shortages similar to hospitals around Mississippi. And no matter how many colleagues they lost, staff who remained had to provide round-the-clock care to the same number of residents with serious mental illness or intellectual or developmental disabilities.

Like its counterparts in other states routinely do, the group requested records from the Mississippi Department of Mental Health to get a better understanding of what was going on inside these facilities. But the Department, arguing the organization was overreaching, blocked the effort – and now the two groups are duking it out in court.

Disability Rights Mississippi is the state’s “protection and advocacy (P&A) system,” charged by Congress with advocating for people with disabilities and investigating reports of abuse and neglect in programs that serve them. The group sent nearly identical letters to 10 mental and behavioral health facilities around the state, asking to see recent incident reports and to get them on a regular basis in the future. 

The goal, executive director Polly Tribble told Mississippi Today, was to identify patterns and understand what residents were experiencing. 

But DMH refused to turn over the reports. State lawyers claimed the group’s “boilerplate” letters didn’t demonstrate “sufficient probable cause” to justify a systemic investigation of the facilities. 

Adam Moore, the communications director for the Department, said he can’t discuss pending litigation. The attorney general’s office also declined to comment on an ongoing case. 

The lawyers for DMH argue the organization “simply hoped to embark on a fishing expedition” with its request for records. They say the letters, which didn’t mention the staffing shortage issue or describe the suspected neglect or abuse, didn’t justify access to the incident reports. 

But to DRMS and their counterparts in other states, the case is straightforward: federal law gives these organizations broad investigative and monitoring authority. Reviewing incident reports is part of that work. 

Why, Tribble asks, is DMH fighting to withhold the reports?

“It makes you wonder if they’re trying to hide something,” she said. 

The history of the P&A system begins with Fox News host Geraldo Rivera. 

Fifty years ago, Rivera was an investigative reporter for ABC News in New York. He took a camera to Willowbrook State School, a facility for people with developmental disabilities on Staten Island. The neglect and abuse he revealed there provoked widespread public outrage and led Congress to enact the laws creating P&A systems and tasking them with advocating for people with disabilities. 

In each state, staff at the P&A systems have the right to visit facilities caring for people with mental illness and talk with staff and patients. They try to become known as a resource for families, and as a place to go with concerns about potential abuse or neglect. 

Dave Boyer, managing attorney for community integration at the National Disability Rights Network, the D.C.-based umbrella group for the P&A systems, said they generally have broad latitude to get information about facilities.  

He estimated that between 150 and 200 court cases have challenged their access to records, information and site visits over the last 40 years. In all but about 10 of those, the court sided with the P&A system. 

“Overall, it’s very rare for a P&A to lose an access case,” he said. 

Staff from DRMS regularly visit Mississippi’s mental health facilities. Sometimes investigators discover problems themselves. 

Other times, they get calls from staff and family members.

A document filed in the lawsuit shows how this can work. On Nov. 10, DRMS notified the South Mississippi Regional Center in Long Beach that it was opening an investigation into the treatment of a resident, separate from its broader investigation at the center of the lawsuit.

“A contract employee stated that she had previously observed dried feces in the hair, in the ears, and on the cheeks of several residents when they were brought in for routine grooming,” the letter says. “She also noticed a ‘mold and mildew’ type substance on the scalp of the named individual.”

Three months later, the same contract employee saw the resident again. Her scalp had become “raw and infected.” 

“The contract employee informed the nurse that the shampoo being used was alcohol-based and was likely causing great pain… when applied to her broken scalp.” 

The resident is nonverbal. 

 An advocate visiting the facility also asked to see the area where residents receive grooming services and found it was “dirty” and “in subpar condition,” the letter said. DRMS asked for records and staff interviews to carry out its investigation. 

But not all of the reports DRMS receives focus on a single resident or incident. Tribble said last year, DRMS started getting reports of staffing shortages leading to neglect at DMH facilities.

DMH director Wendy Bailey has sounded the alarm on staffing shortages, too. In her December presentation to the legislative subcommittee allocating funds from the American Rescue Plan Act, she said staffing issues at state-run facilities and at the community mental health centers were affecting care. 

Some facilities, like the crisis stabilization units, could reduce the number of available beds to ensure adequate staffing. That’s not possible at the facilities serving people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. 

“For our IDD (intellectual and developmental disabilities) regional programs, you can’t decrease bed capacity,” she said. “That’s their home. We have to have the staff there to take care of the individuals 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with high needs.”

In an email to Mississippi Today, Moore said the agency had lost more than 1,000 employees since January 2020 – about a sixth of all employees at the time. 

“As of January 2022, there were 4,970 DMH employees at 11 program locations around the state, compared to 6,062 in January 2020,” he wrote. 

In August 2021, DRMS requested incident reports from the Mississippi State Hospital in Whitfield, near Jackson, which operates 311 hospital beds and a 276-bed nursing home. 

Reviewing all the incident reports at a facility could help DRMS identify patterns and problems, Tribble said. Maybe one staff member’s name would show up again and again. Maybe there would be more incidents during a particular shift. 

An attorney general’s office lawyer wrote to DRMS rejecting the request, arguing it was beyond DRMS’ authority and would be “unduly burdensome.’

In October, DRMS sent letters requesting incident reports from nine other facilities. The state’s attorney rejected those requests, too. 

“Unless DRMS’ request is narrowed to a complaint or sufficient probable cause justifying a request for incident reports, including but not limited to, a date the alleged incident occurred and an individual specified in its request, none of DMH’s programs will comply at this time,” wrote special assistant attorney general MaCall M. Chastain. 

In November, DRMS sued DMH, arguing federal law requires the agency to share the records. 

Boyer said the P&A systems in some states get incident reports regularly “just as a matter of course.”

Nancy Anderson, associate director of the Alabama Disability Advocacy Program, DRMS’ counterpart in Alabama, said her organization has done what DRMS attempted to do here: launch what they call a “systemic investigation” after receiving tips that pointed to a possible pattern of abuse or neglect.

“Based on triggering complaints, we use the systemic investigation to more broadly look at the patterns and practice of that facility to see what is going on,” she said.
Devon Orland, legal director at the Georgia Advocacy Organization, said her organization regularly obtains incident reports through records requests as part of their work to monitor facilities. Those reports are redacted, but if GAO staff notice something troubling, they request and receive an unredacted copy. 

If Orland hears about a series of issues at a facility, she will assert probable cause to open an investigation and make a broad request for records like incident reports. 

“Our access authority is very broad,” she said. “And there’s a reason for that: because history has demonstrated that people who are pushed away and out of society are really vulnerable to abuse and neglect … If we don’t have access, we can’t protect (them).”

One of the major arguments the state has presented is that DRMS has failed to show it has “probable cause” to broadly investigate abuse and neglect in state-run facilities. 

In a filing on Feb. 8, DMH said the letters sent to the 10 facilities did not contain any specifics to support the records being released. 

In other cases, where DRMS has provided more detailed information about why it is seeking records tied to a specific instance of suspected abuse and neglect, DMH has shared it, lawyers for the agency maintained. They cited the Nov. 10 letter in which DRMS described the conditions at South Mississippi Regional Center as an example of a viable probable cause claim.

But Tribble and other P&A staff around the country say courts have said P&A systems generally get to determine whether they have probable cause to investigate. 

“We’re kind of the judge in this,” Boyer said. 

In January, U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves invited the U.S. Department of Justice to weigh in by March 14. 

In an email, a Justice Department spokesperson told Mississippi Today the department is aware of Reeves’ invitation but can’t comment further.

DMH has been fighting the Justice Department in another case in Reeves’ courtroom for nearly six years. In 2021, Reeves ordered the appointment of a monitor to evaluate DMH’s progress in providing more services at the community level, instead of institutionalizing people at state-run hospitals. 

The Attorney General is appealing Reeves’ order to the 5th Circuit. It argues the state has already expanded community services and that Reeves has installed “perpetual federal oversight” of the system. 

To mental health advocates in Mississippi, the two court battles suggest DMH isn’t interested in having anyone look too closely at its work.

“We all speak about transparency,” Tribble said. “Well, this is a time when they can be transparent, and they have chosen to fight it.”

The post ‘They have chosen to fight it’: Mental health agency withholds records appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann joined Mississippi Today editor-in-chief Adam Ganucheau to discuss his priorities for spending hundreds of millions in federal stimulus dollars. They also discussed the dueling House and Senate income tax cut proposals. 

Listen to more episodes of The Other Side here.

The post Podcast: Delbert Hosemann on tax cuts, federal spending appeared first on Mississippi Today.

In this episode of Mississippi Stories, Mississippi Today Editor-at-Large Marshall Ramsey visits with the talented Merc B. Williams. Merc is a comedian, host, writer and speaker who appeared on Comedy Central’s “Hart of The City” Season 2, created by comedian Kevin Hart, and produced by Joey Wells, and Leland “Pookey” Wiggington. Merc represented Jackson, Mississippi in the newest installment of the series.

Merc created Laugh Your Way To Work, a web series that showcases his comedic talents to followers on an array of everyday topics during their morning commute. Williams also is a regular writer/contributor to So FN Dope Magazine, based in Sacramento, California, and hosts Late Night Jxn; a variety show centered around all things Mississippi: News, television, movies, comedy, and the arts.

He’s also 1/3 of the “Hilarious Homies” along with fellow comedian Nardo Blackmon and comedienne Rita Brent and co-creator of the “Funny For The Free” comedy show; a show held bimonthly showcasing comedians from in and around the Jackson, MS area. He’s also one half of the “Vibe Controllers” podcast along side his identical twin brother and fellow artist Cocky McFly. To hear “Vibe Controllers”, click here.

The post Mississippi Stories: Merc B. Williams appeared first on Mississippi Today.

As Mississippi’s political leadership bickers about whether to pass the House tax cut plan or the more modest Senate plan or the more outlandish plan of Gov. Tate Reeves, it might be worth remembering that the state is not even halfway into enacting the state’s largest tax reduction plan in history.

In 2016, the state passed a plan to cut taxes by $415 million in 2016 dollars by fiscal year 2028. By the end of the current 2022 fiscal year, about $206 million of that tax cut will have been enacted, according to projections put out in 2016 when the Legislature, led to a large extent by then-Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, approved the Taxpayer Pay Raise Act.

“I keep telling people that if we do nothing we will have a big tax cut this year,” said Sen. David Blount, D-Jackson.

That 2016 proposal cut the tax on personal income by about $150 million. The rest of the tax cut is going to businesses, with a substantial portion (about 75% according to a 2017 Mississippi Today analysis) going to large out-of-state corporations.

In addition, in the four-year legislative term before the pivotal 2016 session, about 50 tax cuts, primarily for businesses, were enacted at a combined cost of at least $140 million annually, according to data compiled earlier by the Department of Revenue.

Meanwhile, as those tax cuts go into effect and other much larger tax cuts are contemplated, some say Mississippi’s political leaders continue to whistle past the graveyard.

“We are not paying state employees, our roads are crumbling. We have not funded the schools,” Sen. Hob Bryan, D-Amory. said. “We don’t have water and sewer. We can cut taxes and not have a functioning society. That is where we are heading now.”

The Mississippi Adequate Education Program, which provides the state’s share of the basics to operate local school districts, would need $362 million this session to be fully funded — a total of about $45 million more than the current Senate tax cut proposal. The House plan, championed by Speaker Philip Gunn, would cost about $1.4 billion when fully enacted. Reeves’ plan would cost about $1.8 billion.

Since 2007, the last time the MAEP was fully funded, it has been underfunded $3.1 billion. As inflation increases, that shortfall will be even more consequential as the cost of gas for buses and other supplies rise.

While some might see state leaders whistling past that proverbial graveyard, others have a different view.

“… Let’s find a way to get rid of the income tax,” Gunn said. “Now is the time to give money back to the people. We have done everything. We have funded all of the government. We have excess money. Let’s give it back.”

A skirmish, though a respectful one, broke out last week between state House and Senate leaders about the impact of their competing tax plans.

Projections developed by the Legislative Budget Office, at the request of Senate leaders using assumptions on revenue growth and spending based on historical trends, indicate that the House plan would put the state in the red by more than $250 million by fiscal year 2024.

But House leaders counter the Senate projections do not take into account the current, perhaps historic revenue growth.

Truth be known, if the Legislature continues on its current spending path, there would be enough money to enact the first two years of the House plan, which incidentally are the only two that are not contingent on growth triggers to be enacted. The state currently has unprecedented revenue growth thanks to multiple factors, most all related to the economic environment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

But 1979 might provide some context for legislators. That year with state revenues way up, as they are now, legislators passed at the time the largest tax cut in the state’s history — reducing the income tax and eliminating the sales tax on prescription drugs and utility bills.

But three years later, recognizing the state’s needs, legislators backtracked and increased the taxes on income and sales to pay for kindergartens, provide teachers a raise and to address other education issues.

Still, for the 1980s, revenue collections remained sluggish, forcing major budget cuts.

Finally in 1992, legislators overrode the veto of then-Gov. Kirk Fordice to increase taxes again — the sales tax from 6% to 7%.

It is questionable at best whether politicians in today’s environment would be brave enough to take the action their counterparts did in 1982 and 1992.

The fear that legislators in today’s political environment would never vote to raise taxes to address needs is the reason many are so afraid of any more tax cuts.

“If that revenue goes away this year, it will never come back,” said Sen. Derrick Simmons, D-Greenville.

The post Are politicians ‘whistling past the graveyard’ with tax cut proposals while still phasing in past cuts? appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Despite unprecedented revenue growth, both the House and Senate have put forth state budget proposals for the coming fiscal year that spend less state funds than what was appropriated during the 2021 session.

But Senate Appropriations Chair Briggs Hopson, R-Vicksburg, cautioned, “We are far from the finish line. This is just the starting line.”

Last year the Legislature appropriated $7 billion in state support funds for education, health care, law enforcement and for other vital needs that are funded with state general fund tax collections and other state funds. Both the House and Senate have passed budget plans of $6.6 billion.

The action taken earlier this week is the opening salvo for the 2022 session in developing a budget for the budget year starting July 1. The final product will be negotiated between House and Senate leaders in late March during the final scheduled days of the 2022 legislative session.

“Yes, I’m sure (spending) is going to increase in negotiations — it always does,” said House Appropriations Vice Chair Karl Oliver, R-Winona.

In developing the budgets, legislators are dealing with unprecedented growth in state tax collections. In the past fiscal year, the state collected $1.1 billion more than was budgeted and is on pace to do about the same for the current fiscal year.

Those surpluses are fueling discussions in both chambers of a tax cut.

READ MORE: Inside the income tax cut battle between House and Senate leaders

While the recent action might be “the starting line,” the proposals still indicate the conservative approach leaders apparently are taking in developing a budget. Both proposals do little to address the funding shortfall in the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, which provides the basics of operating local school districts. It would take about $360 million in additional money to fully fund MAEP, a funding formula set into law by the Legislature.

The budget also does not address the possibility of expanding Medicaid as is allowed under federal law to provide health care coverage to primarily the working poor. House Speaker Philip Gunn has indicated that he would not support expanding Medicaid.

Plus, the two budget plans, as they passed both chambers in their original forms, do little to address the rising costs agencies face from inflation.

Hopson conceded that moving forward inflation needed to be factored into the budgets.

“It is definitely a factor…(to) determine how far dollars will go,” said Hopson.

Oliver said, “Everybody’s aware of inflation — that’s a big topic of conversation right now.” He said inflation is part of what’s driving proposed pay raises for Department of Public Safety law officers and others in the budget.

Both Democrats and Republicans expressed concern that pay raises for state employees are needed during the current climate where salaries are being increased in the private sector to attract workers. But Hopson said safeguards are in plan to help ensure agency heads do not exceed their authority to provide pay raises.

“There seem to be a real concern about employees being overpaid and agencies trying to pay their employees more,” said Sen. Hob Bryan, D-Amory. “…It is very easy to see the cost of a salary. That is a dollar amount. We know the amount. We can deal with it. What we don’t see is the real cost of the key people in government, the super competent. When those people go, you incur a lot of other costs that you do not see in the cost of their salaries.”

The budget plans include $25 million for state employee pay raises. The intent of the funds is to ensure all employees are paid at least the minimum salary that they should receive under a new compensation system developed by the state Personnel Board. About 19,000 of the 24,000 Mississippi state employees who fall under the state Personnel Board guidelines received a raise of up to 3% in January to put their salaries in line with the new compensation plan, entitled SEC2. The $25 million will try to complete that realignment, Hopson said.

The largest new expenditure in both the House and Senate proposals is to fund the teacher pay raise plans that passed earlier this session. The Senate plan has about $170 million for its pay raise proposal with the plan to provide another $45 million raise in the 2023 session. The House has about $215 million for its plan.

On a separate, but related track, legislators are also working to decide how to spend $1.8 billion in federal COVID-19 relief funds. Those funds can be spent on water and sewer improvements throughout the state and for various COVID-19 related items. The final decision on how to spend those funds, like the overall budget, will likely be decided in the final days of the session, which is scheduled to end in early April.

The post Even as revenue soars, lawmakers propose spending less than in 2021 appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi public schools will have access to mental and health care services for students for free as soon as August, education officials announced Thursday. 

The Mississippi Department of Education approved a $17.6 million grant for telehealth and teletherapy services available within schools provided by the University of Mississippi Medical Center. 

The Department of Education initially planned to begin with a pilot program, but then decided to launch the program statewide instead. 

“The more we started finding out about (telehealth services), we really felt that if there was an organization or entity that could just launch this statewide and get more children access to it, then why not?” said Carey Wright, state superintendent of education.

The program is being funded by the American Rescue Plan Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) and will last from July 2022 through September 2024. The program will start serving its first schools at the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year.

The grant will cover laptops for video conferencing and specially equipped stethoscopes and otoscopes that transmit information to the doctors or nurse practitioners on the other end of the call. 

Healthcare providers will supply urgent care, mental health care, remote patient monitoring, and specialty consultations to children in any district across the state that has access to a school nurse.

“When you really look at the distribution of doctors in Mississippi, you have plenty in Jackson, Hattiesburg, Tupelo, and Biloxi, but you get out to (those rural counties) and you are really in a health care desert,” said Dr. John Gaudet, a Hattiesburg pediatrician and former president of the state chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. “Telehealth is a way to keep kids learning, keep kids engaged in school and keep from having to pull them out to drive 40 miles for an appointment that could’ve been accomplished rapidly and easily by telehealth.” 

The pandemic has also caused increasing mental health issues for children, which Wright says this program also aims to address. 

“Statewide, we need to do a really good job of training our teachers and leaders on the signs and symptoms of children and adults that are struggling from mental health and social-emotional issues, and this will give them the great platform to gain access (to treatment) through our school nurses,” said Wright. 

The grant specifically partners with the UMMC Center for Telehealth, which has been recognized nationally for excellence in telehealth. 

“Healthy children learn, and children that aren’t healthy don’t,” Wright said. “If we could provide a way to make sure that our children are healthy and, if need be, families are healthy or staff are healthy and make the access that much easier…then that’s one thing we can cross off the list and don’t have to worry about anymore.”

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