Thomas Frederick “Fred” Wicker, a former circuit judge and state senator and father of U.S Sen. Roger Wicker, died Friday morning at a Memphis hospital. He was 98.
“My father spent his life in service to our country and our family,” Sen. Roger Wicker said in a statement. “A World War II veteran, a public servant, a dedicated husband and father, and faithful Christian, he was a role model for many – and he was my hero. Our family is devastated to lose him, but we are grateful for a life well-lived, the wisdom he instilled in us, and the many years we spent together. On behalf of the entire Wicker family, Gayle and I deeply appreciate the expressions of sympathy and prayers we have received.”
Fred Wicker was born in Hickory Flat and attended Holmes Junior College on an athletic scholarship. He was drafted in the U.S. Army in 1942. He served in France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, England, Luxemburg and most noteworthy in Normandy earning four battle stars.
Fred Wicker received his law degree from Ole Miss in 1948, married Wordna Threadgill and opened up his law practice in Pontotoc. He served as a city attorney, county prosecutor and served in the Mississippi Senate for three years before being appointed by Gov. John Bell Williams as circuit judge for the 1st Judicial District in 1970. He served in that seat for 20 years and retired in 1990.
Judge Wicker is survived by three children, a foster daughter, five grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.
The Environmental Protection Agency wrote in a letter Thursday that it is opening a civil rights investigation into the state of Mississippi’s role in the breakdown of Jackson’s water system.
The letter is in response to a complaint the NAACP filed on Sept. 27 under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The complaint alleges Mississippi has discriminated against the city on the basis of race, and that the state has “deprived” Jackson of federal funds intended for maintaining safe drinking water systems.
Mississippi, which has no Black statewide elected officials, is 38% Black and 59% white. Jackson is 83% Black and 16% white.
The EPA specified in the letter that it will investigate whether the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality and the Mississippi State Department of Health discriminated against Jackson in their funding of water programs. It will also investigate whether the two state agencies have safeguards and policies to protect against discrimination as required by Title VI.
“The Mississippi State Department of Health is a regulatory agency that ensures compliance, offers education and guidance, and protects the public health safety of all Mississippians,” Liz Sharlot, a spokeswoman for the state health department, said in a statement. “The Agency also works with all eligible public water systems needing funds to improve their plants through the State Revolving Loan Fund. Extensive information can be found on our website.”
MDEQ didn’t respond to requests for comment by the time this story published.
The Health Department oversees Mississippi’s drinking water revolving loan fund, a program that lends municipalities federal money to make water infrastructure upgrades. But the agency, NAACP argued in its complaint, has limited the benefits of those loans by capping loan forgiveness at $500,000 and enforcing a stricter repayment period than what Congress allows for.
The letter says that the EPA’s Office of External Civil Rights Compliance (OECRC) will contact MSDH and MDEQ in the next 10 days to explain the investigation and potential resolutions.
The NAACP also requested that the EPA include the Mississippi Department of Finance and Administration in the investigation, but the federal agency declined.
Today’s letter comes days after U.S. Reps. Bennie Thompson and Carolyn Maloney announced their own investigation into the state’s spending, in which they’ve asked Gov. Tate Reeves to provide information on the state’s allotment of recent historic federal infrastructure funding.
Reeves’ office did not yet have a comment on the EPA’s letter when this story published.
Earlier on Thursday, Jackson announced it released its own request for proposals (RFP) for a contractor to operate the city’s water plants, tanks, and well system. On Monday, Reeves accused Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba of withdrawing from the state’s unified effort to fix the Jackson water system because the mayor wouldn’t participate in the state’s contract procurement. Lumumba responded that city should have the final say on the RFP before it’s published.
While the state’s request “accurately reflects the scope of work,” the city said in a statement, Jackson’s request includes “specific terms” from the EPA that weren’t in the state’s request.
Nonprofit founder Nancy New and former welfare director John Davis, defendants in the state’s civil litigation over the misspending of millions of federal grant funds, have asked the court to stay the case until the criminal investigation concludes.
Mississippi Department of Human Services, the agency that administers welfare programs and is bringing the suit, is objecting against the stay, arguing that defendants are attempting to “avoid, or at least delay, liability for their actions.”
Now, the attorney representing New and her son Zach New is questioning the motives of the state agency, which was responsible for managing the funds in question, especially since it omitted at least one key recipient of improper welfare payments from the defendant list.
“Of course, MDHS would love nothing more than to rush this case through discovery with the cloud of criminal prosecution looming large, thereby muzzling witnesses who would reveal the depth of its wrongdoing,” wrote the News’ attorney Gerry Bufkin.
Both New and Davis have pleaded guilty to charges related to the welfare scheme and have agreed to aid officials in prosecuting other individuals “up the ladder,” Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens said after Davis’ plea hearing in September. They have not been sentenced.
Under the leadership of Davis and the politician who appointed him, former Gov. Phil Bryant, officials stole or wasted at least $77 million in federal grant funds, many of which flowed through Nancy New’s nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center to the pet projects of celebrities and politically connected figures. Some of the purchases were criminal while others simply violated federal spending regulations. Communication obtained by Mississippi Today reveals Bryant’s involvement in many conversations about the projects.
In its Oct. 11 response to the News’ motion to stay, MDHS shot back a fiery response to the defendants’ claims that the welfare agency is also responsible for the misspending.
“The New Defendants nevertheless seek to have the Court and the public absolve them of liability by pointing the finger back at MDHS, despite the fact that the New Defendants admit that they bribed MDHS’s Executive Director,” the filing reads. “But no public official or employee can approve fraudulent payments or waive statutory requirements. This strategy may generate media attention, but it is no legal defense to civil liability.”
Bufkin has argued his clients have already taken responsibility for their actions. But in response to the state Tuesday, he said the threat of an ongoing criminal investigation hinders the News from providing testimony in the civil case.
“The civil suit is the best opportunity the New Defendants have had in years to tell their story. The evidence will show that politicians, MDHS bureaucrats, and well-connected powerbrokers funneled tens of millions in welfare funds to pet projects in a series of sad and disturbing examples of TANF-flexibility gone wild,” Bufkin wrote. “The New Defendants look forward to telling their story, but unfortunately the opportunity is premature.”
In the civil case — filed more than two years after the state auditor’s initial findings — the state is attempting to recoup roughly $24 million from 38 individuals or companies that misspent or received improper welfare payments.
“The aim of MDHS’s civil suit is the same as any civil tort case: to recover damages, whether through settlement or through obtaining and executing on a judgment. It is in the public’s best interest that MDHS do so without unnecessary delays,” MDHS argued in its response.
Bufkin argued delaying the civil litigation until the criminal cases have concluded is necessary “to ensure the thorough, complete and efficient discovery of one of the most sprawling and complex cases in Mississippi history.”
The single largest purchase within the misspending scandal is the $5 million in welfare money that Mississippi Community Education Center paid the University of Southern Mississippi Athletic Foundation to build a volleyball stadium at the university on behalf of former NFL quarterback Brett Favre. MCEC also paid Favre’s company an additional $1.1 million, which texts indicate was also intended for the volleyball project, bringing the possible total to $6.1 million. Reeves’ office and the welfare agency chose not to include the athletic foundation as a defendant when it filed the complaint in May.
MDHS then terminated the private attorney it had contracted, former U.S. Attorney Brad Pigott, who spent a year crafting the case, after Pigott filed a subpoena on the athletic foundation in July. Pigott was attempting to examine the events surrounding the volleyball stadium project, including Bryant’s involvement.
“Not only has MDHS refused to pursue recovery of this $6.1 million in welfare funds, but it has actively thwarted its former counsel’s efforts to uncover facts related to the expenditure of these funds,” Bufkin wrote.
If the purpose of the state’s civil suit is to recover as much welfare money as possible, Bufkin questions why it would not pursue the single largest purchase, which has already resulted in a criminal conviction. Zach New pleaded guilty in April to defrauding the government by paying for the volleyball stadium construction under a sham lease agreement.
“MDHS argues it ‘aims’ to recover money damages, and, therefore, Defendants should not be concerned with allegations of criminality in the Complaint. Whatever motives lurk beneath the civil suit, in the post-termination of former counsel Brad Pigott era, the efficient recovery of welfare money is not one of them,” Bufkin wrote.
Current MDHS Director Bob Anderson answered questions about Pigott’s firing Tuesday during the Mississippi Legislative Democratic Caucus hearing on the scandal. He told lawmakers that the agency terminated Pigott because the attorney subpoenaed the athletic foundation without discussing the filing with him first and while he was out of town. Pigott did email a copy of the subpoena to a MDHS attorney before filing it, but Anderson said that was not sufficient notice as he was not copied on the email. Anderson also said that the agency felt that Pigott did not have the capacity to handle the breadth of the case, which includes hundreds of thousands of pages of discovery documents.
Bufkin also represents the nonprofit, Mississippi Community Education Center, that Nancy New founded and ran alongside Zach New.
Bufkin stated in his Tuesday response that even though MDHS filed the complaint in May, it did not request discovery from the nonprofit until October. He also said MDHS has not produced documents that MCEC requested through discovery in August. The court will address several motions and filings in the case, including multiple subpoenas on Bryant, at a hearing in early 2023.
A Pearl man pleaded guilty this week for his role in allowing a Brandon company to illegally dump its waste into Jackson’s worn-down sewer system.
The U.S. Department of Justice is alleging that leadership of the company, Gold Coast Commodities (GCC), intentionally deceived local and state officials about how it was disposing of its waste.
As part of its deception, the DOJ’s indictments against GCC allege, the company used businesses in Jackson to dispose of its wastewater there after officials in Brandon, where GCC is located, told the company it was illegally discharging into Brandon’s sewer system.
William Roberts, 44, an employee at one of the Jackson businesses, Partridge-Sibley Industrial Services Inc.. on Tuesday pleaded guilty to charges that he “negligently introduced and caused” GCC’s waste to be discharged into Jackson’s sewer system.
But Roberts is just one in a group of alleged bad actors the DOJ has investigated.
Water flows through the low head dam at waterworks curve on the Pearl River Wednesday, October 17, 2018 near Mayes Lake Campground in Jackson. Credit: Eric J. Shelton, Mississippi Today/ Report for America
Last month, the DOJ indicted GCC president Thomas Douglas Jr. and plant manager John Welch Sr. with felony charges of illegal disposal. A week prior, the company’s co-owner and vice president, Robert Davis Douglas, pleaded guilty to similar charges. The indictments also charge Thomas Douglas and Welch with conspiracy to defraud the government and giving false statements.
GCC, which converts animal fats and greases into biofuel, has violated clean water statutes several times spanning nearly two decades. The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality first cited GCC with a violation in 2002 for allowing waste to reach state waters.
In 1995, MDEQ gave GCC a permit to dispose in public sewer systems as long as the company pretreated its waste to limit certain pollutants, according to the federal indictments. That permit expired in 2000.
In 2016, Brandon city officials told GCC that pollutants were found at the company’s outfall leading into Brandon’s sewer system, which led into Jackson’s sewer system. Even if GCC had a proper permit to use the cities’ sewer systems, the pollutants found — suspended solids, bio-oxygen demand, and oil and grease — were still at levels hundreds of times higher than the legal threshold, the DOJ’s indictment shows.
After MDEQ issued the company a violation for the discharges, Douglas, GCC’s president, falsely told Brandon and state officials that the company never discharged into the city’s sewer system, the indictment says.
About a month later, Douglas reached out to Andrew Walker, owner of Rebel High Velocity Sewer Services in Jackson, asking him to dispose of GCC’s waste into Jackson’s sewer system because of GCC’s recent run-in with state regulators, the DOJ alleges.
Water flows through the low head dam at waterworks curve on the Pearl River Wednesday, October 17, 2018 near Mayes Lake Campground in Jackson. Credit: Eric J. Shelton, Mississippi Today/ Report for America
Walker complied and helped GCC dispose of about 3 million gallons of untreated industrial waste into Jackson’s sewer system. Rebel High took on GCC’s waste disposal for about 10 months, according to the indictment, until MDEQ discovered the ploy in October 2017 and ordered GCC to cease and desist.
Walker pleaded guilty in January 2021 to federal pollution charges for his role in the matter.
In 2018, GCC requested permission from MDEQ to build a lagoon to use as a wastewater disposal site. MDEQ granted GCC the permitting in 2019.
But MDEQ soon found infractions at the new facility. The agency detected odors from the disposal lagoon that constitute a “public nuisance,” and found that GCC hadn’t installed aerators for the facility. MDEQ issued the company a violation in 2019, and another one in 2020, for failures at the site.
In April 2021, the state issued a $505,000 fine against GCC over its wastewater handling.
Meanwhile, Jackson is working with the Environmental Protection Agency to bring the sewer system into federal compliance with the Clean Water Act. The city’s broken infrastructure results in untreated sewage regularly flowing into the Pearl River, and officials last year estimated it’ll take nearly a billion dollars to bring Jackson into compliance.
Jackson is suing GCC for damaging their infrastructure, estimating $15 million in damages. Brandon also filed a lawsuit against the company, although its case was dismissed earlier this year.
The Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame Class of 2023, from left to right: Jim Page, John Mangum, Paul Maholm, Lewis Tillman, Jeff Herrod, Carol Ross, Tony Rosetti. Not pictured: Patrick Surtain. (Photo by Hays Collins)
The Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame will induct a diverse class in 2023, including the first marksman in the hall of fame’s history, Olympic skeet shooter Tony Rosetti.
The class, to be enshrined in ceremonies next July, also includes women’s basketball player and coach Carol Ross, Major League Baseball standout Paul Maholm, Millsaps baseball player and coach Jim Page, and former college and professional football standouts Jeff Herrod, John Mangum, Patrick Surtain and Lewis Tillman.
In alphabetical order:
Jeff Herrod: A Birmingham native, Herrod was headed to the U.S. Marines before a late football scholarship offer from Ole Miss where he played for Mississippi Sports Hall of Famer Billy Brewer. When he finished at Ole Miss, Herrod was the second all-time leading tackler in Southeastern Conference history. He then played for the Indianapolis Colts where he led the team in tackles for seven of his 11 seasons and is the franchise’s all-time leading tackler.
Paul Maholm: Born in Holly Springs, Maholm chose a baseball scholarship at Mississippi State instead of bonus money from the Minnesota Twins. It was a wise decision. As a left-handed pitcher for Pat McMahon and Ron Polk, he excelled at State, where he is the fifth winningest pitcher in school history. Maholm was the eighth pick of the 2003 Major League draft. He spent 10 years in the Major Leagues with the Pirates, Cubs, Braves and Dodgers. Maholm is a member of the Ron Polk Ring of Honor at State.
John Mangum: He will be the first of the remarkable Mangum family of Magee to be inducted into the MSHOF. Mangum’s father, John Mangum, was a football star at Southern Miss and in the old American Football League. Younger brother Kris played at Ole Miss and in the NFL. Son Jake Mangum is one of Mississippi State’s all time baseball greats and is at the AAA level in the New York Mets organization. The younger John Mangum chose Alabama over Southern Miss after being the Mississippi high school player of the year and made the Alabama Team of the Decade for the 1980s before a nine-year career with the Chicago Bears. He still holds the career record for passes broken up at Alabama with 47.
Jim Page: Holds the Millsaps school record for hitting with a batting average of .487 and has coached Millsaps baseball teams to 815 victories, eight NCAA Regional appearances and one College World Series appearance. Page is a renowned hitting instructor who has coached literally thousands of Jackson-area players in summer baseball camps.
Tony Rosetti: First marksman ever in Miss. Sports Hall of Fame.
Tony Rosetti: A Biloxi native and West Point resident, Rosetti began rifle shooting as a young teen and was named to the 1970 Sports Afield All American team. He won the 1971 U.S. skeet shooting championship and was on the U.S. gold medal winning team in the 1971 Pan American Games. In 1972, he was part of the U.S. Olympic shooting team in the Munich Olympics and is in the National Skeet Shooting Association Hall of Fame. He retired from competitive skeet shooting in 1992 and now is an accomplished golfer at Old Waverly.
Carol Ross: Born in the Yalobusha County town of Oakland, Ross was an outstanding basketball player for MSHOF coach Van Chancellor at Ole Miss where she made the first SEC Women’s Tournament all-tourney team in 1980. She still holds the Ole Miss steals record with 333 and is only one of two players in school history to top 1,000 points, 500 assists and 250 steals. She later was the head coach at both Florida, where she was SEC Coach of the Year two times, and at Ole Miss. She was the head coach of the Los Angeles Sparks where she was the WNBA Coach of the Year in 2012.
Patrick Surtain: A four-sport high school star in New Orleans, Surtain played for Hall of Famer Jeff Bower at Southern Miss where he was the Conference USA Defensive Player of the Year in 1997. He was a second round choice of the Miami Dolphins in 1998 and was a three-time Pro Bowl selection in his 11-year NFL career. He was voted the NFL Defensive Back of the Year in 2002. Surtain, a member of the Southern Miss Team of the Century, now coaches for the Dolphins.
Lewis Tillman: From Hazlehurst, Tillman chose to play college ball for MSHOF member W.C. Gorden at Jackson State, where he rushed for 3,989 yards, broke several of Walter Payton’s records and was the SWAC Player of the Year in 1987 when he gained 1,474 yards. That season, in a 17-7 loss to Southern Miss, Tillman out-gained the entire Southern Miss team. He earned a Super Bowl ring with the 1991 New York Giants. He played five seasons for the Giants and then two with the Chicago Bears where he was teammates with John Mangum.
The Mississippi Republican Party, touting its unifying conservative values, kicked off a minority outreach initiative Wednesday outside of party headquarters in downtown Jackson.
The state party also announced an initiative, led in part by Attorney General Lynn Fitch, to try to increase the number of women elected officials in the state.
At the event, attended by about 20 African Americans, party officials said Republicans and Mississippians of all races hold the same conservative values.
“There is more that connects us than divides us,” said Rodney Hall of Southaven, the chair of the GOP outreach committee.
Fitch, whose office defended the Mississippi law that led to the U.S. Supreme Court decision that repealed a national right to an abortion, said: “We are very conservative about life. We are conservative about family … Now more than ever, Republican values are needed.”
In Mississippi, perhaps more so than in any state in the country, the vast majority of white residents vote Republican while most Black residents support the Democratic Party. African Americans comprise about 38% of the total state population — the highest percentage of any state in America.
There are few elected Black Republicans in the state and none in the Legislature.
At the event, state Republican Party leaders did not address some of the issues that African American elected officials often stress, such as the need to expand Medicaid to provide health care coverage for about 250,000 primarily working Mississippians. Republican leaders have blocked those efforts, leaving Mississippi as one of only 12 states in the nation not ensuring health care coverage for poor workers.
Another issue where there have been policy differences is on the elimination of the tax on groceries, the highest of its kind in the nation. Efforts to eliminate the tax have been blocked in past years by Republican leaders, though it results in poor people, many of them people of color, paying a larger percentage of their income in taxes. Plus, many have cited efforts of Republicans to ban the teaching of critical race theory as an effort to prevent the teaching of the impact of racism on the history of the state and nation.
Fitch did endorse providing Medicaid coverage for mothers for one year after giving birth. Currently, the state Medicaid program only provides 60 days of postpartum coverage, though the Biden administration mandated a year of coverage as part of the federal COVID-19 emergency order.
Many Mississippi Republicans have opposed expanding health care for poor mothers.
“We as Mississippi Republicans are eager to grow our party,” party Chair Frank Bordeaux said in a news release. “We know our plans and policies to reduce inflation, lower taxes, cut wasteful spending, secure our borders, invest in national defense, and restore American energy are appealing to all Americans. We’re going to take that message to communities where Republicans have not traditionally been as successful in order to recruit, train, and elect a more diverse group of candidates and bring thousands more freedom-loving Mississippians into our party.”
Fitch said there have been only four women elected to statewide “constitutional” office in Mississippi, and just 15% of the majority Republican Legislature is comprised of women.
There have, however, been six women elected statewide: Nellah Bailey as tax collector, Julia Henrich Kendrick as Supreme Court clerk, Evelyn Gandy as lieutenant governor and treasurer, Amy Tuck as lieutenant governor, Cindy Hyde-Smith as commissioner of agriculture and commerce, and Fitch as attorney general and treasurer.
Hyde-Smith is currently serving in the U.S. Senate as the first woman from Mississippi elected to federal office.
The posts of tax collector and Supreme Court clerk have been eliminated as elected offices.
The Biden administration’s application for student loan forgiveness is officially open. The deadline to apply is Dec. 31, 2022.
Eligible borrowers, among them hundreds of thousands of Mississippians, could see their balances erased within four to six weeks if they apply today, according to the U.S. Department of Education, the federal agency overseeing the plan.
Borrowers who want to see their balances reduced before payments resume in January should fill out the form by Nov. 15. Loan repayment has been on pause due to the pandemic since March 2020.
Though the plan is facing a raft of legal challenges, President Joe Biden has said he believes it will prevail in court. The lawsuits have already resulted in the U. S. Department of Education making a number of tweaks to the program, including removing about 800,000 borrowers from eligibility whose loans are backed by the federal government but held by commercial banks.
That lawsuit was dismissed, though it’s unclear how Mississippi will carry out its plan to tax student debt relief as income because the federal government has directed servicers to not provide 1099-Cs – the tax form needed for filing debt cancellation.
The Department of Education has said it will notify about 8 million borrowers who automatically qualify for relief. Borrowers in this group who’d like to opt out should contact their servicer by Nov. 14, according to the Washington Post.
The form, available in Spanish or English, takes less than one minute to complete – it asks for name, date of birth, phone number, email address, and Social Security Number.The form will ask borrowers to attest that they meet the income limits, up to $125,000 a year.
Some borrowers may need to verify their income after submitting the application, but the Department of Education has said it will let them know. The Washington Post reported that borrowers “who present a higher likelihood of exceeding the income limit threshold” will likely be asked to submit documentation.
Relief is capped at $10,000 for many borrowers and at $20,000 for borrowers who received Pell Grants in college. The form notes that income is calculated “based on your adjusted gross income (AGI), which tends to be lower than your total income.”
To qualify, borrowers must have taken out student loans before July 2022. Current college students are eligible for relief if their parents make less than $125,000. Borrowers with private loans are not eligible.
As many as 40 million Americans qualify for student debt relief, including 439,000 people in Mississippi. For nearly half of those Mississippians, the plan will wipe away student debt, according to an analysis by the Education Data Initiative. The average Mississippi borrower with federal student loans owes about $37,000, one of the highest average debts in the country.
The Biden administration has cast the plan as a way to ameliorate the country’s racial wealth gap. In Mississippi, Black borrowers take on higher amounts of undergraduate student debt than those of other races, according to data from a recent National Postsecondary Aid study.
Black students in Mississippi borrowed an average of $10,800 in undergraduate student debt during the 2017-18 school year, while borrowers of other races took out an average of $7,400. Black borrowers in Mississippi also took out more loans during the school year than the average Black borrower across the country, while borrowers of other races took on less debt than average.
One legal challenge that claimed the Biden Administration violated the Equal Protection Clause because it “intentionally crafted the program to benefit borrowers of color” was dismissed two days after it was filed, USA Today reported.
