Mississippi Today recently published “The Backchannel” investigation, which used never-before-published text messages to explore former Gov. Phil Bryant’s role in the state’s welfare scandal. Before the series published, Bryant sat down with Mississippi Today for a three-hour interview. Journalists Anna Wolfe and Adam Ganucheau discuss how the interview came about, what it was like inside Bryant’s office, and how it’s been perceived since the series published.
Close attention will be focused on the normally low-key Mississippi Ethics Commission when it considers and rules on whether members of the House Republican Caucus, led by Speaker Philip Gunn, violate the state’s open meeting law when they meet behind closed doors.
The open meetings case might be the most high-profile issue to be considered by the Ethics Commission since 2013 — another case involving the Mississippi House and Speaker Gunn.
In that case the Ethics Commission, in a 5-3 vote, reversed previous rulings to find in favor of Gunn.
The case involved whether House members who worked for health care providers could vote on funding for Medicaid, which provides the largest chunk of revenue for many health care providers in Mississippi. For years, based on Ethics Commission rulings, legislators who worked in the health care profession did not vote on Medicaid funding bills because of the perceived conflict of interest.
This became an issue in the 2013 session when House Democrats blocked the Medicaid bill, demanding a vote on expanding Medicaid to provide health care coverage to primarily the working poor. Gunn and the Republican majority opposed expanding Medicaid, but for various reasons did not want to vote on it.
The problem was that the state Constitution requires approval from a majority of the membership, instead of just those voting, to pass a budget bill. In other words, 63 yes votes were needed in the 122-member House. With House members not voting based on the Ethics Commission ruling, the vote of a majority of the membership could not be garnered to approve the Medicaid appropriations bill.
The 2013 regular session ended with no Medicaid budget. Then-Gov. Phil Bryant said he believed he could run the Division of Medicaid without legislative funding. Not many, though, took that claim seriously.
Instead, Gunn asked the Ethics Commission to rule on whether the House members who worked in the health care profession had a conflict of interest if they voted on the Medicaid budget.
The commission reversed previous rulings that previously said the members should not vote because of the conflict of interest.
“This is a difficult decision for all of us,” said Paul Breazeale of Jackson, then a member of the Ethics Commission and part of the majority who voted to reverse past rulings. “We do have rulings that differ in the past. It is a timely issue.”
Tom Hood, the executive director of the commission but not a voting member, defended the ruling. He said since the previous Ethics Commission ruling barring legislators employed in health care from voting on Medicaid, there had been state Supreme Court rulings saying legislators whose spouses were teachers could vote on education funding. If the spouses of teachers could vote on education funding, then legislators working in health care should be able to vote on Medicaid funding, the commission reasoned.
The most fascinating part of the ruling was that the Ethics Commission added that legislators working in health care could vote no on Medicaid expansion. But members who would vote yes should not vote because that would be a conflict of interest.
The mental gymnastics for the commission to reach that conclusion remains a mystery for many nearly a decade later.
In the current case before the Ethics Commission, Gunn will be asking the panel to conclude that his Republican Caucus meetings do not violate state law even though the state Supreme Court has ruled in past cases that if a majority of a governmental body meets behind closed doors to discuss policy, it is considered a violation of the open meetings law.
“A public body must strictly comply with the (Open Meetings) Act when a quorum assembles and discusses a matter under its supervision, control, jurisdiction or advisory power,” the commission wrote in a separate case recently involving a legislative committee.
The 77-member Republican Caucus constitutes much more than a majority of the 122-member House and meets regularly where issues before the Legislature are discussed.
In a late January interview with Mississippi Today where Hood was asked if the House Republican Caucus meeting violated state law, he said, “Neither the courts nor the Ethics Commission have dealt with a case on those facts.”
Gunn argues that the meetings do not violate state law because the Republican caucus is not an official “public body.” But the flip side of that is the Republican caucus does include enough members of the Mississippi Legislature to take official action.
It is of note that, based on research done by the state of Maine, 12 states have provisions in their law saying party caucuses are exempt from their open meetings laws.
Gov. Tate Reeves vetoed a bill intended to make it easier for some people who lost their voting rights as a result of a Jim Crow-era provision of the state’s 1890 Constitution to regain their right to vote.
The constitutional provision, originally written to keep Black Mississippians from voting, prohibits those convicted of certain felonies from being able to vote unless their suffrage rights are restored by a two-thirds vote of both chambers of the Legislature or by a gubernatorial pardon.
House Judiciary B Chair Nick Bain, a Republican from Corinth who drafted the language that was vetoed, said during the session many courts already are restoring voting rights to those whose crimes are expunged. He said he believes that was the original intent of the legislation, and the bill he offered during the 2022 session, simply “clarified” that all judges should be granting the rights to vote to those whose crimes are expunged.
But Reeves vetoed the “clarifying” language on Friday.
“Felony disenfranchisement is an animating principle of the social contract at the heart of every great republic dating back to the founding of ancient Greece and Rome,” the Republican Reeves wrote in his veto message, which was filed with the Legislature on Friday.
“In America, such laws date back to the colonies and the eventual founding of our Republic,” Reeves continued. “Since statehood, in one form or another, Mississippi law has recognized felony disenfranchisement.”
Mississippi is one of a handful of states — less than 10 — that places a lifetime ban on voting for those convicted of certain felonies unless through the action of the Legislature or the governor. Most states restore the right to vote at some point after a person has completed his or her sentence.
It is difficult and rare for a Mississippian to have his right to vote restored through the legislative process. Typically, fewer than five people are successful each year in navigating the Mississippi legislative maze to regain voting rights. The Legislature approved suffrage bills during the 2022 session to restore voting rights to just five people.
In the 1890s, the Mississippi Supreme Court said the disfranchisement of felons was placed in the Constitution “to obstruct the exercise of the franchise by the negro race” by targeting “the offenses to which its weaker members were prone.” The provision’s intent was the same as the poll tax, the literacy test and other Jim Crow-era provisions that sought to prevent African Americans from voting, according to a lawsuit filed challenging the constitutionality of the provision.
The crimes placed in the Constitution where conviction would cost a person the right to vote were bribery, theft, arson, obtaining money or goods under false pretense, perjury, forgery, embezzlement, bigamy and burglary. Those were crimes that the 1890 framers believed African Americans were more likely to commit.
In 1968, the crimes of murder and rape were added as disenfranchising crimes. But even today, a person could be convicted of writing a bad check and lose the right to vote, but be a major drug kingpin locked up in prison and still vote.
The Legislature has never allowed the public to vote on whether to allow an easier method to restore voting rights.
A 2018 analysis by Mississippi Today found that 61% of the Mississippians who have lost their rights to vote are African American, despite the fact that African Americans represent about 38% of the state’s total voting-age population.
The vetoed bill, Senate Bill 2536, also established a registry of those convicted of public corruption. It will be up to the Senate leadership to decide whether to try to overturn the gubernatorial veto during the 2023 session.
In the 2020 session, which was Reeves’ first as governor, he became the first governor since 2002 to have a veto overturned.
The felony disenfranchisement provision of the Mississippi Constitution is currently being challenged in federal court based on its “racist origins.” The state of Mississippi, led by Attorney General Lynn Fitch, is fighting to preserve the Jim Crow-era provision.
It is not clear how the Reeves veto will impact the litigation.
Bain, who was unavailable for comment, had said during the session he did not believe the language was controversial, but just an attempt to ensure all judges were treating those who had their records expunged the same in terms of the restoration of voting rights.
Nancy New, a once prominent private school and nonprofit founder, and her son Zach New pleaded guilty to state criminal charges in Mississippi’s sprawling welfare scandal on Friday.
The 69-year-old former educator is pleading guilty to four counts of bribing a public official, two counts of fraud against the government, five counts of wire fraud and racketeering. Her deal comes with a total maximum sentence of 99 years, with 25 to serve.
But state prosecutors have recommended that the state judge wait to sentence Nancy New until she receives a sentence in her separate federal case — which is expected to produce a sentence of no more than ten years — and then sentence her to equal or lesser time to run concurrently with the federal sentence.
In other words, state prosecutors recommend Nancy New serve her entire sentence in federal prison and serve no additional time for the state charges above what she serves in the federal case. She pleaded guilty in the federal case earlier this week to one count of money laundering, which carries a maximum sentence of ten years.
Zach New, the 39-year-old vice president of his mother’s nonprofit, pleaded guilty to the same charges, minus racketeering. His charges come with a total maximum sentence of 75 years, with 17 to serve. State prosecutors have offered him the same deal to serve only the number of years he receives in the separate federal case. He pleaded guilty in the federal case to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, which comes with a maximum sentence of five years.
Both Nancy and Zach New have agreed to cooperate with prosecutors and testify against their co-defendants. Both state and federal criminal investigations are ongoing and could result in charges against additional people, sources close to the probes say.
Under the state plea deal, the News will serve whatever sentence they receive in federal prison, instead of Mississippi’s state prisons with notoriously barbaric conditions.
The News, who could also pay more than $3.6 million in restitution as part of the plea deal, are changing their plea earlier than he was required since their state trial was not set to take place for at least three months. Their petitions filed Friday include new details about their role in the bribery and theft of funds from the Mississippi Department of Human Services, the state’s safety net agency.
In these cases, the News separately scammed both the Mississippi Department of Human Services out of welfare funds and the Mississippi Department of Education out of public education dollars. The News ran the nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center, which received tens of millions of federal grant funds as a subgrantee of the Mississippi Department of Human during the administration of then-welfare director John Davis.
Three of the wire fraud charges relate to financial transfers they made from the nonprofit to the private, for-profit school district called New Learning Resources, then to a drug company in Florida called Prevacus, as well as transfers they made directly from the nonprofit to Prevacus.
Text messages published earlier this month in Mississippi Today’s “The Backchannel” investigation reveal that right before the News agreed to funnel welfare money to Prevacus, the company’s owner and former NFL quarterback Brett Favre offered former Gov. Phil Bryant company stock in exchange for help Bryant provided when he was governor. Bryant appeared to agree by text to accept that offer after he left office, Mississippi Today reported. Favre even referenced in texts to Bryant the public funding that the company was receiving from the state and Nancy New. Bryant responded positively.
The News were accused also of funneling embezzled funds to an affiliate of Prevacus, called PreSolMD, but those transfers were not included in the counts to which the News recently pleaded guilty. The companies allegedly received $2.15 million in stolen federal grant funds.
In 2017, the News also made an “off the books” purchase of a black GMC Yukon for Davis, the state welfare agency director, and two of his senior executives at their request to incentivize them to keep agency funds flowing to the nonprofit. Davis is also facing charges, to which he’s pleaded not guilty, related to the scheme.
The News also hired WWE wrestler Brett DiBiase on a salary of $250,000 and Davis’ nephew Austin Smith, knowing that they weren’t qualified for the jobs, and gave Davis unrestricted access to the nonprofit’s credit card.
They also defrauded the state by transferring $1.2 million to Victory Sports Foundation, run by local former football player Paul Lacoste, knowing the foundation was not eligible for the funds and by paying $4 million to build a volleyball stadium, a payment he and others disguised as a “lease.”
Another count of wire fraud relates to the construction of a virtual reality center in downtown Jackson, which the News also helped disguise as a lease.
The nonprofit also at one point transmitted $3,000 to Davis, which he distributed to attendees of “Law of 16,” a professional development presentation conducted by retired WWE wrestler Ted “Teddy” DiBiase Jr., who himself collected more than $3 million in welfare funds.
Nancy New’s racketeering charge, which is not included on Zach New’s guilty plea, relates to her and Davis transferring money from her nonprofit to a rehab facility in California, where Brett DiBiase was receiving treatment.
Mississippi Brave Michael Harris II would seem to be on a fast track to Atlanta, his hometown. (Courtesy Mississippi Braves)
Outfielder Michael Harris II, the No. 1 prospect in the Atlanta Braves organization, has gotten off to a blistering start with the Class AA Mississippi Braves.
Rick Cleveland
Harris hit safely in the Braves first 10 games and was one of only three players in all of Minor League baseball to do so. He has reached base in all 12 M-Braves games and is hitting .319 with three doubles, two triples and four stolen bases. That’s after being the Atlanta Braves Minor League player of the year in 2021 at Class A Rome and spending much of spring training 2022 with the parent club.
Harris has, as baseball folks say, all the tools. The 21-year-old Atlanta native can hit (one), hit for power (two), field (three), throw (four) and run really fast (five.) He is that rare five-tool player, and, actually, Harris has six. He can pitch, as well. In fact, most Major League Baseball scouts projected him as a pitcher, not an everyday player before the Atlanta Braves drafted him in the third round in 2019 and decided quickly they wanted him on the field every day — not once every five days.
Harris gets all that talent honestly — and he’s not the first Michael Harris to display his baseball talents on a Mississippi diamond. His dad, Michael Harris I, was a standout for longtime Alcorn State baseball coach Rat McGowan back in the mid 1980s, and he was versatile, too. The elder Michael Harris, who goes by Mike, played every position except catcher for the Alcorn Braves. He once retired 26 batters in a row before settling for a one-hit shutout against Rust College. As a junior he helped the Alcorn Braves win a game against Alabama at Tuscaloosa. He could hit. He could run. In fact, he was playing semi-pro baseball at age 18 in Atlanta when an Alcorn State assistant coach saw him, called McGowan and told his boss, “I found us one.”
The elder Harris grew up playing youth league baseball at Gresham Park in the Atlanta suburb of Decatur. The younger Harris began playing T-ball at the same park at age 3. When this writer caught up by telephone with Michael Harris I on Thursday evening, he had just finished umpiring a game for 10-year-olds at the same ballpark where he and his son learned the sport.
“Just trying to give back,” the elder Harris said. “Can’t get enough of it I guess.”
Michael Harris won the Rawlings Gold Glove as the most outstanding fielding outfielder in minor league baseball in 2021. (Mississippi Braves)
No way the elder Harris could ever count the hours he has spent at Gresham Park, especially watching his son develop into the player who was heavily recruited by colleges before signing a $548,000 bonus contract with the Braves.
The father says the son showed promise through all the youth leagues, but it was when he was in the ninth grade, playing for the high school varsity team, the father first believed the son might have a future playing the sport.
“That was when he really started to grow, put on some muscle,” Michael Harris I said. “That’s when you could really see the potential, see what he could become.”
What the junior Harris has become is a 6-foot, 190-pound package of talent, just now getting what baseball people call his “man strength.”
That strength was evident during Thursday batting practice when laced line drive after line drive deep into the opposite field. (The younger Harris bats left-handed, but took a few turns from the right side of the plate with no noticeable fall off.)
“I used to switch hit,” he said. “I still like to mess around with it.”
Harris hit .294 with gap power (26 doubles, three triples, seven homers) last year at Rome. The Braves believe he can become a 25-30 home run guy as his strength continues to develop.
Brian Snitker, the former M-Braves manager who now manages the World Champion Atlanta Braves, was mightily impressed with Harris this spring in Florida.
“I’m all over Michael Harris,” Snitker told reporters there. “I love that kid. It’s hard not to. That’s what they look like. He just needs more experience.”
The Braves would like for Harris to spend at least most of this season at Pearl. But there seems little doubt the master plan is for Harris — perhaps as soon as 2023 — to play beside Ronald Acuna Jr. in the Braves outfield. Like Acuna, Harris plays both center and right fields.
Bruce Crabbe, the Mississippi Braves new manager, calls Harris “a real pro” and talks not only about the immense talent but also “his rare professionalism at such a young age.”
“The kid know what it takes, and he works at every part of his game,” Crabbe said. “He’s such a smooth runner it’s hard to tell how fast he’s really going, but it’s fast. He hits the ball to all fields with power, and he’s only going to get stronger. He just needs reps. He’s so smart. He just gets it.”
As for Michael Harris II, his dream always has been to play for the Atlanta Braves, his hometown team. He says playing with the Big League club this spring made him realize how close that dream is to becoming reality.
“I’ve just got to put in the work, and I’ll do that,” he said. “Whenever they feel like they need me, I plan to be ready.”
LELAND — The Black Bayou Water Association, which now connects to nearly 3,000 rural customers in the Delta, was started about 30 years ago by a rice and soybean farmer with no water service experience.
David Koehn, now 76, had plans to build a mobile home park on his land in Washington County, but didn’t have a central water source to offer residents. At the time, Koehn and others in the area drank from their personal shallow well, usually filled with brown, iron-laden water.
So the farmer went home-by-home to see who’d want to pay for a new water service. He took out some loans, found local volunteers to form a board, and by 1991 had the Black Bayou Water Association up and running, serving about 350 homes.
David Koehn, Black Bayou Water Association general manager, shows water from the kitchen faucet at his rural Leland home, Friday, Mar. 25, 2022. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
“It started as a community service and it turned into a career,” Koehn said.
Black Bayou eventually built a reputation in the area for its clear water. It’s common in the Delta to see brown tannins flowing out of the tap because of years of Mississippi River flooding, he explained.
Over the years, the water association picked up new customers and merged with other small utilities. Now, the utility serves about 2,800 homes across multiple counties, with connections stretching over 60 miles from Shaw to Mayersville.
But about ten years ago, the rural water service ran into a legal hurdle: the chlorine it relied on to remove the brown coloring violated EPA limits on disinfectant byproducts, which have a number of health risks such as liver and nervous system damage, as well as increasing the risk of cancer. The byproducts, or DBPs, form when chlorine reacts with organic matter in the water.
On the left is unfiltered tap water from a Black Bayou Water Association customer. On the right is store-bought water. Credit: David Vaughn
Black Bayou now treats its groundwater with reduced chlorine, which, while not posing any health risks, means that most of the homes paying for the utility’s service are getting brown water.
Some, about 600, are getting clear water from a new $1.5 million plant, paid for through USDA loans. The facility there uses a polymer that coagulates the small bits of organic material in the water, which then settle out.
Koehn said that the goal is to replicate that process for the remaining 2,200 connections. But, in order to reach all of its far-spread customer base, the small utility needs $14 million for a new plant and distribution.
Mississippi is filled with small water systems in need of assistance like BBWA: of the state’s 1,200 public water systems, about 70% are rural systems serving 1,000 homes or less, most of which were built in the late 1960s or early 1970s.
Their issues range from aging wells, to delivery lines that are too small, to lacking a backup power source when a storm hits. Several other utilities are facing the same compliance issues as BBWA.
The Black Bayou water treatment facility located in rural Leland, Friday, March 25, 2022. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Black Bayou water treatment facility in rural Leland, Friday, March 25, 2022. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Organic matter called sludge that settles at the bottom of a water holding tank is released during the treatment process at the Black Bayou facility in Leland, Friday, March 25, 2022. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Water in a Black Bayou water treatment plant storage tank. Impurities settle at the bottom of the tank and are siphoned off, Friday, March 25, 2022. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Organic matter called sludge that settles at the bottom of a water holding tank is released during the treatment process at the Black Bayou facility in Leland, Friday, March 25, 2022. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Jon Baldwin, Black Bayou water treatment plant operator, describes how polymers are added to remove solids and other contaminants from the water, Friday, March 25, 2022. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Black Bayou Water Association water tower located in rural Leland, Friday, March 25, 2022. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Using an app on his cell phone, David Koehn, Black Bayou Water Association general manager, can monitor the water treatment facility from where ever a signal is available, Friday, Mar. 25, 2022. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
When news came last year of incoming support through the American Rescue Plan Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Mississippi Rural Water Association (MRWA) asked its member utilities what amount they needed. The survey showed a combined need of $700 million, but only a third of the state’s rural water associations had responded.
Earlier this month, the Legislature appropriated $300 million of APRA funds for rural water associations, and made another $450 million available through a matching program for cities and counties to make water improvements.
“No, it’s not going to near about be enough,” CEO of the Mississippi Rural Water Association Kirby Mayfield said of the ARPA money. “But this is going to be big, it’s going to be huge for our systems. It’s like I’ve been telling (our members): ‘We’ll never see this again in our lifetimes, take advantage of it.’ This is our chance to get things right.”
Mayfield, who brought the survey’s findings to the Senate Appropriations Committee late last year, discussed how many of the older, small rural systems have expanded over the years and are now failing to serve adequate water pressure to every home.
“They didn’t need but a two-inch line going down that road because there weren’t but five houses down that road,” Mayfield said. “And today that road might have 50 houses on that road, and the same two-inch line is trying to serve those 50 customers.”
In his testimony to state lawmakers, he described the financial burden that old and breaking infrastructure is putting on the water associations, which often serve low-income populations: in 2013, the EPA estimated that the national average water loss was 16%. In Mississippi, Mayfield estimated that it’s around 35%.
With so many small utilities around the state, some experts have recommended consolidating rural water associations to save money on resources and combine expertise among board members.
In some cases, like with Black Bayou, nearby utilities are happy to merge. But others, Mayfield explained, are hesitant to take on the debts of struggling nearby utilities. He added that ARPA funds could be used to alleviate such costs and encourage consolidation.
Madison County school officials placed more than 20 books in restricted circulation last week following complaints from parents about their contents.
Students must have parental permission to check out one of the restricted books in the district’s elementary, middle, and high school libraries.
A team of educators will review the challenged books for “mature content” and make recommendations to district leaders, said Gene Wright, director of communications for Madison County Schools.
“These books may contain content that requires more mature thinking to appropriately process in the context of the literature. We want to partner with parents in terms of what reading material their students are checking out,” Wright said. “Our district values the free exchange of ideas and respects parents’ different views regarding what reading material is appropriate for their children.”
Nationally, book bannings have been on the rise over the last year, hitting a record high since the American Library Association started tracking the challenges 20 years ago. The association also said that the majority of challenged books were by or about Black or LGBT individuals.
The books currently in restricted circulation in the Madison County School District are:
“Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie
“All American Boys” by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely
“American Born Chinese” by Gene Luen Yang
“Beloved” by Toni Morrison
“The Benefits of Being an Octopus” by Ann Braden
“Black Friend: On Being a Better White Person” by Frederick Joseph
“The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison
“Dear Martin” by Nic Stone
“Discovering Wes Moore” by Wes Moore
“Eleanor and Park” by Rainbow Rowell
“The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas
“I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter” by Erika Sánchez
“Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini
“Let Me Hear a Rhyme” by Tiffany D. Jackson
“Love, Hate, and Other Filters” by Samira Ahmed
“Monday’s Not Coming” by Tiffany D. Jackson
“Out of Darkness” by Ashley Hope Pérez
“Piecing Me Together” by Renee Watson
“Queer, There, & Everywhere” by Sarah Prager
“Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson
“Touching Spirit Bear” by Ben Mikaelsen
“Uglies” by Scott Westerfeld
The district confirmed that there are some challenged books that have never been checked out and that a full checkout history of each title will be available in the coming months. The district also said that the challenged books were primarily available in middle and high school libraries.
Lindsey Beckham, who identified herself as the contact point for Mississippi’s chapter of Mass Resistance during the Ridgeland library hearings, first became interested in library content as a part of her concerns regarding critical race theory. She, along with other parents, reviewed the schools’ online library catalogs for titles that had been challenged in other parts of the country, according to their research.
“The topics that are being discussed in these books had no business being in a public school, nothing I want my children reading,” she said. “Going through and reading some of the excerpts from these books, the subjects, the topics are very dark, very disturbing, very heavy even for me as an adult.”
Beckham, who has one homeschooled daughter and one daughter at Germantown Middle, read an excerpt from one of the books at the most recent school board meeting, a video of which made the rounds on social media. Four days later, the books were placed in restricted circulation and principals sent letters home to parents explaining the situation.
Dalen Owens Grant, a mother of two children in the Madison school system, doesn’t take issue with the district’s method of handling the concerns, but she worries about how it bodes for the future.
”My problem is, just because they don’t want their children to read it, I don’t think their parenting ideas should be parenting everyone’s children,” she said.
Grant called it “unfair” that the list primarily contains books about minorities. The libraries won’t accurately portray the whole community if the books are removed, she said.
“Even if they get what they want out of this … if it’s not ‘The Kite Runner’ now, it’s going to be another book next week,” Grant said. “I just hope the school district is ready.”
The Madison County School Board plans to present a policy to handle future book challenges at its May 9 meeting.
Every public university but Jackson State University will raise tuition rates this coming school year, continuing a trend that puts the cost of college increasingly out of reach for the average family in Mississippi.
The Institution of Higher Learning Board of Trustees approved the new tuition rates at its regular meeting Thursday. The board voted to waive a requirement to wait 30 days after introducing new tuition rates in lieu of immediate adoption.
For the coming school year, average in-state tuition will increase by $177, from $8,219 to $8,396 a year. Average out-of-state tuition will increase from $11,803 a year to $12,197 a year. Room and board will increase to $5,655 a year.
Students at Mississippi Valley State University will see the highest increases from $6,928 to $7,274, about $346 a year, but tuitionwill remain the lowest of all eight universities. Mississippi State University will continue to have the highest in-state tuition rate at $9,248 a year, up from last school year’s rate of $9,110.
At the board meeting, John Pearce, IHL’s associate commissioner of finance, said the universities cited “a lot of inflationary costs that are happening right now,” as well as salary increases, as the reason for the tuition increases.
Commissioner Alfred Rankins added that without support from the Legislature, the universities would have needed to increase tuition even more.
“Trustees, I do want to point out that had it not been for the generous increase in appropriations we received from the Legislature, the institutions would have had to raise tuition even higher than what we see presented here today,” Rankins said.
The Legislature allocated about $411 million in education and general funds to Mississippi’s eight universities, a 14.5% increase from last year’s appropriation. Caron Blanton, IHL’s spokesperson, wrote in an email that IHL’s appropriations bills don’t allocate a specific amount for salary increases but that “the amount appropriated is sufficient to cover a salary increase for university employees and some additional funds for operating costs.”
Jackson State was the only university that did not increase tuition last year. In 2020, every university but Delta State University decided not to increase tuition due to the pandemic.
Mississippi’s eight public universities have all steadily increased tuition since 2000 as the Legislature has decreased funding for higher education. Tuition now comprises the majority of universities’ revenue in Mississippi. According to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, tuition accounted for 54% of public university revenue in 2018 in Mississippi, compared to 25% in 2008.
This means college is increasingly unaffordable for the average family in Mississippi who has seen their income stagnate. That is one reason why more than half of Mississippi college students graduated with an average of $29,714 in student debt in 2020, according to the Institution for College Access and Success.
Many low-income students in Mississippi qualify for state and federal financial aid. But some lawmakers and the Post-Secondary Education Financial Assistance Board, which oversees financial aid in Mississippi, have been trying to find ways to limit the number of students who can qualify for the state’s three undergraduate grant programs.
Last year, the Post-Secondary Board proposed eliminating the state’s three grant programs, including the Higher Education Legislative Plan for Needy Students, or HELP, grant, which pays for all four years of college for low-income students.
In its place, the board proposed the Mississippi One Grant. Under that program, more students would qualify for aid but Black and low-income students on average would lose thousands of dollars in college financial aid while white students would gain money.
