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Mississippi Department of Wildlife Fisheries and Parks Director Sam Polles, the longest tenured director in the agency’s history, has announced his retirement after 29 years.

“The department is one of a very few agencies that touches the lives of citizens all across this state every single day,” Polles said in a message to MDWFP employees on Monday.

Polles, appointed by Gov. Kirk Fordice in 1992, has served under five governors.

In his message, Polles said: “Our Wildlife Management Areas now offer the sporting public high quality hunting opportunities unlike any in the Southeast, and our state lakes system and other public waterways provide anglers with storied fishing experiences which no doubt will be shared with families and friends for generations.”

Polles said his resignation is effective Tuesday.

Deputy Director Lynn Posey said that he will temporarily oversee agency operations until an interim — then permanent — director is named.

“This is an end of an era over here,” Posey said of Polles’ retirement. “I think he’s done an excellent job.”

MDWFP is governed by a five-member commission, with members appointed by the governor. When choosing a director, the commission sends a list of three people to the governor, who chooses one, subject to approval by the state Senate.

Commissioner Leonard Bentz said: “Dr. Polles has been a great leader for that department over the last 29 years. He brought that department to the professional organization it is today because of his leadership.”

Polles’ accomplishments with the agency include expanding wildlife management areas and state lakes system providing more hunting and fishing opportunities, implementing new systems for purchase of licenses and registrations, and construction of the new Mississippi Museum of Natural Science and MDWFP state headquarters.

But not everyone was pleased with his leadership. Mississippi Sierra Club Director Louie Miller said, “Sadly under Dr. Polles’ tenure, state parks have been allowed to deteriorate from what was once a showcase for Mississippi, into the dilapidated condition they are currently in.”

READ MORE: Lawmakers consider privatizing Mississippi’s dilapidated, underfunded state parks

“To add insult to injury, while Mississippians were celebrating the Christmas holiday, Dr. Polles was busy executing plans to hand over our state parks to private, out-of-state, for-profit corporations for the next 30 years … We hope the next Director will serve the public’s best interest in managing our cherished natural resources rather than yielding to special interests.”

READ MORE: Move to privatize state parks halted – for now – amid heated debate

MDWFP recently put out a request for proposals for private companies to manage operations of Hugh White, John Kyle, John P. Cossar and Wall Doxey state parks. Miller and other opponents of this move said it is ill timed because the state has billions of dollars in federal stimulus money that could be used to improve the state’s dilapidated parks.

MDWFP has faced budget cuts over many years and said it didn’t have the money to maintain and upgrade the state’s 25 parks.

The post Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks director retiring after nearly 30 years appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Delta State University has announced funeral arrangements for Lusia “Lucy” Harris Stewart, the basketball legend who led the university to three consecutive national championships and became the first Black woman inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. 

A funeral service will be held on Saturday, Feb. 5 at 11 a.m. in the Walter Sillers Coliseum at Delta State University. Visitation will be held the day prior from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Bethesda Five Points Center in Greenwood. 

Harris, a native of Minter City, Miss., was the only Black woman on Delta State’s Lady Statesmen when she led the team to its first national title in 1975. A year later, the 6-foot-3 center scored the first basket in Olympic womens’ basketball history at the Montreal Games. 

“Now that’s a record that’ll never be broken,” Harris said in “The Queen of Basketball,” a 2021 documentary about her life. 

There was no WNBA league when Harris graduated from Delta State in 1977, so she married her high school sweetheart, George Stewart. She turned down an offer to play with the New Orleans Jazz and took a job coaching basketball at Amanda Elzy High School in Greenwood, where she had learned to play the game. 

“Lucy was truly the first superstar of the women’s game,” Langston Rogers, the Delta State sports information director in the 1970s, told Mississippi Today’s Rick Cleveland. “She just dominated. Nobody could dominate a game like Lucy could.”

Harris passed away at age 66 on Wednesday, Jan. 18, in a therapy facility in Mound Bayou.

READ MORE: Why did an NBA team draft Lucy Harris? A Mississippi guy was involved.

The post Funeral service for Lusia “Lucy” Harris set for Feb. 5 appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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

The right for Mississippians to bypass the Legislature and place issues on the election ballot would be restored under a proposal approved Monday by the House Constitution Committee.

Mississippi has been without a ballot initiative process since May 2021, when the state Supreme Court struck down the medical marijuana initiative passed by voters in November 2020 and the entire ballot initiative process. The court ruled the process invalid because language in the state Constitution mandated that the required number of signatures necessary to place an issue on the ballot be gathered equally from five congressional districts. Mississippi has had only four congressional districts since losing one as a result of the 2000 Census.

READ MORE: Mississippi Supreme Court overturns medical marijuana program and ballot initiative process

While the state has lost a congressional district, various entities in state government are still configured based on the five districts, such as the board that oversees the state’s 15 community colleges. And other initiatives that remain in state law have been approved based on the five districts.

The proposal passed Monday, Constitution Chair Fred Shanks, R-Brandon, pointed out, would require a pro rata share of signatures be gathered from whatever number of congressional districts the state has.

It would allow for citizens to amend general law, not the Constitution. The process ruled invalid last May by the Supreme Court allowed solely for the amending of the Constitution. Shanks and various other legislative leaders said they would prefer the process be used to amend general law because amending the Constitution requires the approval of voters.

But after a citizen-sponsored initiative is approved by voters under the proposal, the Legislature cannot change it for two years unless in case of an emergency, and even then it would take a two-thirds vote of each chamber to do so.

The proposal is expected to be considered in the coming two weeks by the full House. It will require a two-thirds vote of both the House and the Senate, and if it passes through the Legislature, Mississippi voters would have to approve it at the ballot box for it to go into effect.

Both House Speaker Philip Gunn and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann have expressed support for restoring the initiative process. But Hosemann has assigned the Senate bill that would restore the process to two committees, making it more difficult to pass.

Importantly, the House proposal passed out Monday does not allow for legislators to place a competing alternative to the citizen-sponsored initiative on the ballot. In recent years, initiative sponsors have complained that legislators have placed alternatives to the citizen-sponsored initiative on the ballot, creating a convoluted voting process that many said caused confusion at the ballot box.

READ MORE: Will lawmakers be willing to give up some of their power by restoring ballot initiative?

Legislators placed an alternative to a medical marijuana initiative on the ballot in 2020 and in 2015 had an alternative to an initiative that sought to place a greater commitment to public education in the state Constitution.

“As long as we are doing away with the legislative alternative measure, I am good with it,” Rep. Jeramey Anderson, D-Escatawpa, said in the House Constitution Committee hearing.

Feb. 1 is the deadline to pass bills and constitutional amendments out of committee in their originating chamber, and the Senate proposal had not been considered in either chamber as of late Monday evening. But even if the Senate legislation to restore the initiative is not passed out of the committees by Tuesday’s deadline, the issue will remain alive in the legislative process because the House proposal is alive.

The House proposal, like in the version overturned by the Supreme Court, would require signatures be gathered equaling 12% of the total in the last gubernatorial election to place an issue on the ballot. And sponsors still would have 12 months to collect the signatures.

The proposal would create a database in the Secretary of State’s office to allow citizens to check whether they are listed as signers of a petition to place an issue on the ballot. Shanks said there have been complaints by some that they were listed as signing an initiative petition when they did not.

The post House committee makes first move to restore ballot initiative process appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi’s senior Senator Roger Wicker recently said on the Paul Gallo radio show, “The irony is that the Supreme Court is at the very time hearing cases about this sort of affirmative racial discrimination while adding someone who is the beneficiary of this sort of quota,” and has received national criticism for it. Vowing to choose from a particular pool of qualified candidates is nothing new for presidential candidates. Both President Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump pledged to nominate women to the Supreme Court. And I am not sure why having a Supreme Court that looks like the face of America is a bad thing.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Wicker Wordle appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said at a Monday press conference that he was “pushing back” against a notice of non-compliance the Environmental Protection Agency sent the city last week, citing delays in the supply chain for needed parts at the water treatment facility.

Last week, the EPA told Jackson that it had fallen behind state health department requirements by not repairing an electrical panel at the O.B. Curtis water treatment plant. The panel broke during a fire at the plant last spring, taking pumps out of operation and reducing water pressure for parts of the city.

In a December letter to the city, the Mississippi State Department of Health alerted officials that it had 30 days to provide a plan for correcting the issue, and 120 days to fix it. The EPA notice stated that Jackson missed the first deadline, which was Jan. 14.

Lumumba said the city had ordered the parts to fix the panel, but widespread supply chain issues are delaying the order.

“I agree with the EPA’s overall approach to environmental justice, and one that looks to bring resources to cities that are tasked with these challenges,” Lumumba said. “But with that being said, I want to be clear, the City of Jackson is actually pushing back on the latest letter of non-compliance.

“Like everything in the distribution chain in our world, we are waiting on the parts. So Jackson is not in a position in order to fix a panel without the parts that are provided by a sole source.”

MSDH’s set deadline for fixing the panel is April 14, which City Engineer Charles Williams said he doesn’t expect Jackson to meet. He said the city ordered the parts on Jan. 13, and expects them to arrive around April 22.

When a WAPT reporter asked why the city waited so long to order the part, Williams declined to go into further detail, saying instead the city has followed protocol.

Lumumba added that the delay “shouldn’t be a surprise” given the city’s communication with the vendor, General Electric, and the EPA. He also said despite the disagreement, he’s generally aligned with the federal agency’s approach and that they communicate every other week.

Williams also touched on the city’s ongoing distribution troubles, as south Jackson is still receiving low water pressure. Despite making progress at the end of last week, Williams said the city had to cut back how much water it sent out after noticing turbidity, meaning that there isn’t enough water in the city’s storage tanks to restore pressure. He expects to see progress during the week, but didn’t provide an exact timeline.

He also added that he expects to have all six of O.B. Curtis’ membrane trains running within the next two weeks. The city took one of the trains offline two weeks ago after it failed an integrity test from MSDH.

The post Mayor Lumumba pushes back on EPA letter, cites supply chain issues appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Jackson State University’s Faculty Senate passed a resolution Friday opposing legislation that seeks to ban the teaching of critical race theory in Mississippi. 

The faculty senate at Mississippi’s largest historically Black university is the first to formally speak out against efforts by the Legislature to curtail discussion of racism in the state’s K-12 and college classrooms. 

In the Jan. 27 resolution, the faculty senate writes that it “resolutely rejects any attempts by bodies external to the faculty to restrict or dictate university curriculum on any matter, including matters related to racial and social justice, and will stand firm against encroachment on faculty authority by the legislature or the Boards of Trustees.” 

Earlier this month, every Black senator in Mississippi walked out of the chamber when the Senate passed SB 2113. The bill’s description states it will “prohibit” critical race theory, but the language in the legislation is more broad and includes that no public school or public college or university “shall make a distinction or classification of students based on account of race.”

The House has not yet taken up its bill, HB 437, which is more specific and would ban teaching fourteen “divisive concepts,” including that “racial equity and gender equity … should be given preference in education and advocacy over the concepts of racial equality and gender equality.” 

These bills would impede faculty at Jackson State faculty from fulfilling the university’s mission of providing a quality education to students from diverse communities, the resolution states. Specifically, the resolution denounces the House bill’s definition of “divisive concepts,” which the faculty senate called “indeterminate, subjective, and chills the capacity of educators to explore a wide variety of topics based on subjective criteria that are inapposite from the goals of education and the development of essential critical thinking skills.” 

READ MORE: CRT bill passed out of Senate committee likely unconstitutional, opponents say

“Educating about systemic barriers to realizing a multiracial democracy based on race or gender should be understood as central to the active and engaged pursuit of knowledge in the 21st century,” the resolution states. 

The resolution calls on the administration at Jackson State to join the faculty senate in opposing anti-critical race theory legislation. 

“In a nation that has for centuries struggled with issues of racial inequity and injustice, many students do not have adequate knowledge of BIPOC and LGBTQI history and the policies that contributed to inequities,” the resolution states. “Jackson State University has a responsibility and opportunity to help build equity and social justice.”

The post Jackson State faculty denounce CRT legislation 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.

Chris McDaniel walks into Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy’s office with his family on Jan. 3, 2023, places his left hand on a family Bible, raises his right hand, and is sworn into the 118th Congress of the United States.

This scenario, though premature to consider, is not nearly as improbable as it may seem.

McDaniel, the far-right flamethrower who gained national notoriety while twice trying to win a U.S. Senate seat in recent years, could finally make it to Washington if he wanted it. 

And, according to people close to McDaniel, he is considering it with about one month before the March 1 qualifying deadline.

“My polling numbers are stronger than they’ve ever been, so I’m keeping all of my options open at this time,” McDaniel told Mississippi Today on Monday. 

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The race for Mississippi’s 4th Congressional District is wide open. There’s a 10-year incumbent in Congressman Steven Palazzo, but that incumbency may mean little considering he’s being investigated by the House Ethics Committee for allegedly misspending campaign funds.

READ MORE: Ethics report shows ‘substantial’ evidence of Rep. Palazzo wrongdoing

As of this week, at least six other Republicans have announced their intentions of challenging Palazzo in the primary. This list includes some high-profile names like Jackson County Sheriff Mike Ezell, state Sen. Brice Wiggins and retired bank executive Clay Wagner.

The district itself is the most Republican in Mississippi, and it’s among the reddest in America. In 2020, former President Donald Trump won 68% of the vote in the 4th District. It features big population centers like the Gulf Coast, Hattiesburg, and up through the Free State of Jones — McDaniel’s home turf.

But it’s not just Jones County where McDaniel has always enjoyed his biggest support. He lays claim to the I-59 corridor, from his home county all the way down through Pearl River County.

Results from the two statewide campaigns McDaniel has run prove that he has a tight grasp on the 4th Congressional District.

In the 2018 special U.S. Senate election, he earned 54,000 votes in the 4th Congressional District alone. That special election featured four total candidates in a “jungle primary,” including incumbent U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, the hand-picked Republican of the establishment, and well-known Democrat Mike Espy.

That same year, the last midterm primary, Palazzo earned just 30,000 votes — about 20,000 votes shy of McDaniel.

The 2014 Republican primary provides a more apples-to-apples vote comparison. That year, McDaniel was running for the U.S. Senate against longtime incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran, and Palazzo was running for his third term in the U.S. House.

In the Republican primary for the House in August 2014, Palazzo won handily with 54,286 votes. In the Senate runoff for precincts in the 4th Congressional District that same year, McDaniel earned 67,000 votes in a close loss to Cochran — about 13,000 more than Palazzo.

Though running in different races in both 2014 and 2018, McDaniel earned more votes in the 4th Congressional District than the district’s incumbent congressman.

There are some obvious caveats. First, most obviously, McDaniel and Palazzo weren’t running against each other. 

And the political landscapes of 2014, with the nation closely scrutinizing the Senate primary, and 2018, when a first-term Republican president was trying to retain a House majority, could be seen as lightyears away from the realities of today. But not much has changed, at least politically and electorally, in Mississippi’s 4th.

And with so many candidates in the crowded primary, it seems likely that there will be a runoff if no single candidate can garner 50% of the vote. How might McDaniel’s chances look given that dynamic?

All that said, the first question is the most simple: Will McDaniel run? 

On Jan. 6, McDaniel posted to his Facebook page a photo of himself speaking in a church: “Huge crowd tonight. Patriots are awakening. Change is coming!” 

On Jan. 27, he wrote a similar post: “Speaking to conservatives from around the state. People are awake; change is coming!”

While a devout Chicago Cubs fan, McDaniel’s very favorite pastime seems to be stirring the pot on Facebook and making people wonder whether he’s running for higher office.

He enjoys the relatively humble lifestyle of a state senator. And being a congressman can be… well, miserable. With two-year terms, you’re constantly running for office, the weekend red-eyes between Washington and Mississippi wear you down, and it seemingly takes eons to rise in the ranks of Congress.

If he does run, it will certainly make for an interesting few weeks in Mississippi.

The post Chris McDaniel considers bid for Congress. Here’s how he could win. appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi Today’s Bobby Harrison and Geoff Pender get the lowdown on redistricting from Rep. Jim Beckett, who is handling the task in the Mississippi House. Beckett is putting together a consequential puzzle: redrawing the 122 House districts to match population shifts found in the 2020 Census.

Listen to more episodes of The Other Side here.

The post Podcast: Inside the ‘daunting’ task that is legislative redistricting appeared first on Mississippi Today.

In 1939, a movie theater was built in an outlying neighborhood of Jackson called Fondren. Originally called, The Pix, the theater closed and reopened in the 1960’s as Capri theater. In this episode of Mississippi Stories, Mississippi Today Editor-At-Large Marshall Ramsey sits down with the trio who helped bring Capri back to life. Developers David Pharr, Jason Watkins and restauranteur Robert St. John talk about how the $13 million redevelopment of the long-dormant theater came about and how it is already helping the booming Fondren neighborhood. With a combination of movies, food and bowling, The Pearl Tiki, Highball Lanes, Capri and upcoming Ed’s Restaurant show how a dream can come to life, no matter what a global pandemic can throw at it.

The post Mississippi Stories: David Pharr, Jason Watkins and Robert St. John appeared first on Mississippi Today.