OurTupelo

Speaker of the House Philip Gunn sits down with Mississippi Today Editor-in-Chief Adam Ganucheau to discuss his massive tax proposal, which would eliminate the state’s personal income tax, cut the highest-in-the-nation grocery tax, and raise the sales tax and several other taxes.

Listen here:

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Mississippi’s voter identification requirement could be at risk if the state Supreme Court strikes down the medical marijuana initiative approved by voters in November.

After all, the same process employed to put medical marijuana on the ballot was used in 2011 to enact a mandate that Mississippi voters must have a government-issued photo identification to vote.

Would it not make sense that if one was improperly on the ballot then so was the other?

Perhaps the Supreme Court could or would walk a tight rope and rule that it is too late to challenge the voter identification requirement since it has been in effect for a longer time.

In the case of medical marijuana, the city of Madison filed a lawsuit before the November general election challenging the process used to gather the signatures to place the issue on the ballot.

When the initiative process was placed in the Constitution in the early 1990s, Mississippi had five congressional districts. To successfully place an initiative on the ballot, signatures must be obtained equally from all five of those districts. The state now has four congressional districts making it mathematically impossible, the city of Madison contends in its ongoing lawsuit, to meet the constitutional mandate.

For countless initiative efforts since Mississippi lost a U.S. House seat based on the 2000 Census, initiative sponsors had been striving, based on the instructions they received from the Secretary of State, to gather one-fifth of the signatures from the five congressional districts in effect in the 1990s. Everyone accepted that as a commonsense approach.

But then along came the city of Madison and its lawsuit. The Supreme Court punted on deciding the issue before the November general election, but it has now agreed to hear oral arguments on the case in April.

If the Supreme Court does strike down the medical marijuana initiative, it only makes sense that some group would file a lawsuit demanding that voter identification also be found invalid.

Incidentally, the only other initiative to make it completely through the process and be approved by voters since 2000 was a Farm Bureau-sponsored proposal that prevents the government from taking private property through eminent domain for the use of another private entity. Farm Bureau argued that eminent domain should only be used to take private property for public use, such as for roads. Voters in 2011 agreed with Farm Bureau by an overwhelming margin. That year, 63% voted in favor of the requirement that a person had to have a government-issued photo identification to vote, and 73% approved the Farm Bureau proposal limiting the use of eminent domain.

It could be less likely that the eminent domain initiative would be challenged should the court rule against medical marijuana. But what is a certainty is that many voting rights groups oppose voter ID, saying it has a history of suppressing voter turnout among minorities. On the other hand, state Republicans hailed the voter ID requirement as a major victory when it was passed.

Many state Republican leaders now are hoping the state’s high court strikes down the medical marijuana initiative. Many state leaders have lamented that the initiative severely limits the ability of state and local governments to regulate and to tax what could be a lucrative marijuana industry.

Earlier this session, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann expended considerable political capital to garner the votes to pass a bill in the Senate to create a medical marijuana program that would go into effect should the Supreme Court strike down the initiative. Hosemann’s effort to pass the bill led to the Senate being in session to near 2 a.m. earlier this month.

The bill, which is now pending in the House, places many more restrictions on the medical marijuana program than does the initiative. Perhaps the biggest difference is that the Senate bill gives the state the authority to levy taxes on the program, with a large portion of the revenue from the taxes designated for education.

It almost appears the Senate is sending a message to the Supreme Court justices that voters will not be too mad if the initiative is struck down because there would still be a medical marijuana program under the Senate bill. Interestingly, Hosemann counted his enactment of the voter ID program approved by voters as one of his crowning achievements during his tenure as secretary of state.

To ensure that achievement remains intact, Hosemann might need to develop a voter identification bill just in case that proposal also is struck down by the courts.

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Let’s just hope that the variants don’t cause the boulder to roll back down the hill.

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We want to share the experiences of Mississippians getting a COVID-19 vaccine. Whether you’ve already received both doses or are still trying to book an appointment, this form is for you.

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Marie Gaston still remembers all the food her parents cooked when she was growing up. The aromas of fried chicken, green beans, cabbage, candied yams and fried potatoes often floated from the kitchen. Gaston said her parents cooked full meals like this nearly every day.

Among the youngest of her three sisters and five brothers, Gaston, a Water Valley native, said her parents cooked not only for her and her eight siblings, they also cooked for other families in their tight-knit neighborhood.

“We were in a subdivision with five other houses, and it was more like with our big family, everybody else came,” Gaston said. “So Mama always cooked this big ol’ pot of different foods. It was something.”

As she grew older, Gaston, like many children, eagerly joined her parents in the kitchen, helping prepare the food. Often she was tasked with peeling potatoes and cleaning chitterlings. 

Today, this is what Gaston does for a living — preparing, cooking and serving soul food — at her restaurant Table 6-4-72 in Water Valley.

“It was something I wanted to do from watching my mom,” Gaston said.

Table 6-4-72, named in honor of Gaston’s birthday, opened last year at its current location next to Larson’s Cash Saver on South Main Street. She arrives at her restaurant every morning at 7 a.m. to prepare for a busy day serving a lunch buffet, to-go plates and dinner from a rotating menu lined with soul food favorites like barbecue chicken, pork steak, green beans, macaroni and cheese, baked beans, potato salad, cornbread and a variety of pies and cakes.

“I just wanted something fulfilling, and that’s why I went into soul food,” Gaston said. “I want to cook food that’s going to stick to your ribs.”

The term “soul food” originally came to be in the civil rights era, during the Black freedom struggle in the United States and the Caribbean. The food itself can be connected to the period of chattel slavery in the U.S., with roots stemming to West Africa, where many enslaved Africans were brought to the U.S., according to Catarina Passidomo, a University of Mississippi professor of anthropology and Southern studies.

Soul food as cuisine is rooted in the creative ways enslaved African Americans in the Deep South pulled together meager food rations to create a delicious, home-cooked meal. Much of what we know today as soul food — rice, beans, greens and pork — are a direct reflection of this.

“Soul food as an idea has held particular significance for the descendents of enslaved people, for whom it signified physical and cultural survival, creative autonomy and resistance in the face of oppression,” Passidomo said.

Coffeeville native Katherine Pollard, 65, grew up surrounded by family, who, like Gaston’s, would share food with the community. Coffeeville was a segregated town for the majority of Pollard’s childhood, until she was about 14 years old, and without easy access to transportation and big box grocery stores like today, sharing food was not just a generous gesture. It was a necessity for survival.

“Everybody took care of everybody. If somebody killed a hog, everybody in the community got meat,” Pollard said in a 2019 oral history interview. “They just did everything. That’s probably the only thing mom would go to the store and buy was flour because at one time they made their own meal.”

Similar to Pollard, James Wright’s family relied on the land to survive, growing crops like corn and cotton to sell and to eat. Wright, now 60, grew up in Water Valley seeing his father work as a sharecropper while also sustaining the family farm to provide for the family of 13 — a mother, a father and 11 children.

“We grew a garden because we were self-sufficient. Everything that we ate and we used, we raised,” Wright said in a 2019 oral history interview. “And I hear people talk about being hungry, not having. I have never gone to bed, might not have had an extravagant meal, but I always had food.”

Passidomo said the clear connection between food, land and labor have been largely lost in today’s society. 

Although food plays a fundamental role between community and culture, in today’s society, people are seeing less and less the direct relationship between food systems and the land and labor used to produce it, Passidomo said. Yalobusha County natives Wright, Pollard and Gaston say they all grew up knowing the value of soul food’s importance to Black culture and its connection to the land.

However, families, friends and communities can’t join together and share food and culture as they once were able safely do so before COVID-19.

“The pandemic has reminded many of us how much we value sharing meals with friends and family,” Passidomo said.

That’s part of what Gaston loves about being a restaurant owner — the power food has to bring people together. For her, it reminds her of her childhood, when her eight siblings, two parents and the families from the neighborhood would gather at the dining room table to share a meal. She said now many of her customers have become like family, regularly dining in, ordering takeout and making conversation.

“Sometimes now, I still have to tell myself ‘it’s COVID’ because I love to embrace people, love to show the love,” Gaston said.

Editor’s note: A full archive of photos and additional oral history interviews, like the ones mentioned in this article, are available online in The Black Families of Yalobusha County Oral History Project Archive, which emerged after Dottie Chapman Reed, Water Valley native, and author of the column and book “Outstanding Black Women of Yalobusha County” in the North Mississippi Herald, and Jessica Wilkerson, a former history and Southern Studies professor at the University of Mississippi, collaborated. In the spring 2020, Dr. B. Brian Foster, a sociology and Southern Studies professor at the University of Mississippi, took over as director of the project and will collaborate with UM students and Reed on its expansion in the next phase of the project known as the Mississippi Hill Country Oral History Collective.

The post ‘Food that’s going to stick to your ribs’: The significance of soul food in Yalobusha County appeared first on Mississippi Today.

There is a guy who is super worried about my car’s extended warranty. Or at least I think he is because he keeps calling me about it. So when I heard there would be a review of the state’s infrastructure (which was battered hard by the recent winter storm), I figured maybe we should get one of those fancy extended warranties.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Infrastructure Review appeared first on Mississippi Today.

A new report from economists with the state’s university system says Mississippi’s economy, personal income and population would decline under Gov. Tate Reeves’ proposal to phase out individual income tax over a decade.

The analysis, led by state economist Corey Miller for the University Research Center division of the state Institutions of Higher Learning, used economic modeling to analyze Reeves’ proposal to phase out the state’s individual income tax. The report was conducted before the proposal the state House passed this week to phase out the income tax while increasing sales and other taxes, but the URC did include a separate analysis of raising the state sales tax to cover reductions in income taxes. That showed “slightly positive” effects on gross domestic product, income and population over the same period.

Meanwhile, an analysis commissioned by the conservative policy group Empower Mississippi released Thursday says either Reeves’ straight income tax phase out or the House swap from income to consumption taxes would yield positive benefits for the state economy and people’s income.

Findings of the URC report by state economists on the straight income tax phase-out included:

• Total revenue collected by the state would decrease each year from 2022 to 2035 if the state individual income tax is phased out over the next decade per Reeves’ plan. This would equal $1.745 billion by 2035.

• The phase out, without a commensurate increase in sales taxes, would bring a decrease of 11,735 jobs, or 1%, by 2035.

• The state’s real GDP would see a loss of $709 million, or .7%, by 2035 and would continue to decrease beyond then.

• Population would decline by 33,382 people by 2035, or about 1.1% of the current population.

• Real personal income for the period would decline by 1.2%.

The URC modeling to phase in a sales tax increase — going from 7% to 10.75% by 2031 — as the individual income tax is phased out included:

• Total revenue collected by the state would see an increase of $48 million by 2035, higher during some intervening years.

• Real state GDP would increase about $98 million by 2035.

• Personal income would see slight increases and population would see a maximum increase of 10,028 people in 2029, down to 6,774 people by 2035.

The URC report, titled “Fiscal and Economic Implications of Changes to the Sales Tax and Individual Income Tax in Mississippi,” was conducted using a fiscal and economic model created by Regional Economic Models Inc. the report said. It took into account “indirect effects” of tax changes, such as people spending more, but also saving more as income rises from tax cuts and private sector jobs — at least early on — replacing those lost from government cuts.

The report noted that Reeves’ income tax elimination plan — included in his executive budget recommendation to lawmakers — was vague or “unformulated” in some areas.

Reeves advocates phasing out the state’s individual income tax without raising other taxes, and said economic growth — in part spurred by the tax cuts — would cover the lost revenue. Reeves said the phased elimination of the lowest bracket of income tax — passed when he was lieutenant governor in 2016 — shows that all personal income taxes could be phased out over time without a corresponding increase in other taxes.

The House Republican leadership is pushing a measure to phase out the individual income tax over 10 years, but with increases in sales taxes — to 9.5% — and other taxes to offset the cuts. The House plan also would cut the sales tax on groceries from 7% to 3.5% within five years.

Empower Mississippi on Thursday released a year-long report based on modeling both Reeves and the House plans. It was authored by Jorge Barro, an economist at the Baker Institute at Rice University; Joseph Bishop Henchmen, of the National Taxpayers Union Foundation; and Russ Latino, President of Empower Mississippi.

Barro said: “In either case there are positive effects, higher income … economic growth.”

But Latino said Empower’s study showed that large increases in sales or other consumer taxes would not be required to eliminate income taxes without tanking the state budget.

In a statement Empower said its analysis showed: “… that Mississippi has struggled over the last decade, with the lowest median household income in the country, the second-lowest labor force participation rate, and stagnate real GDP and population growth. Meanwhile, revenue to the state government has increased by nearly a third, and Mississippi has the 17th highest tax burden in the country.

“Comparatively, the nine states without an income tax have a tax burden that is roughly half that of Mississippi, while experiencing far greater revenue growth. … The median household income in the nine income tax-free states is 56 percent higher than Mississippi’s and higher than the national average. The total economic growth in these states is a full order of magnitude greater than Mississippi’s, and considerably greater than the national average. Perhaps most importantly, these states have seen population growth of 13 percent over the last decade, more than double the national average and 6,500 percent greater than Mississippi.”

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Yasmine Brown was running an errand outside Indianola, her hometown, on Jan. 6 when her roommates called. A positive test result had confirmed it: The exhaustion they were feeling was COVID-19. Brown, a senior at the University of Mississippi who had been preparing to leave for Oxford in the next week, couldn’t believe it. 

“I was caught off guard, in disbelief, shocked. Like, dang,” she said, “they really tested positive.’”

It was not how the 21-year-old double major had pictured the start to her last semester of undergrad. But then again, college in general had not gone the way Brown had hoped it would since the coronavirus pandemic started nearly a year ago. The previous spring semester, Brown struggled to pay for groceries after her on-campus job cut her hours. Then, in the fall, the monotonous grind of online classes caused her to rarely leave her room. A self-described “over-thinker,” she felt on the brink of a mental breakdown. 

Before the pandemic, Brown wanted to pursue a master’s degree immediately after graduating. Now she was day-dreaming about taking a gap year. Like many people struggling during the pandemic, Brown said she was starting to realize “I need a year or a semester off to figure out what I’m truly passionate about.” 

In the weeks since Mississippi’s eight public universities reopened for the spring semester in mid-January, Mississippi Today spoke with students and faculty across the state about their college experience in the time of the coronavirus.

Their viewpoints were mixed, ranging from little criticism about their school’s pandemic response plan to wishing the university community had more input. Some were glad to be face-to-face in classrooms again, while others wanted to remain online. But everyone said that nearly a year of the pandemic, of losing jobs, getting sick, and seeing friends and family die, has left them deeply fatigued, with little energy remaining for the semester. 

“I feel like I’ve been in school for a month already,” Tyler Yarbrough, a public policy major and student senator at UM, said in a phone call on Jan. 29. 

That morning, the 21-year-old senior slept through his alarm for 8 a.m. Spanish, his last in-person class before he graduates in May. He doesn’t regret it, and he knows he’s not alone.

“Everybody is tired,” he said. 

Among the most striking effects of COVID on Mississippi’s college campuses is the relative absence of activity. At dusk on a Thursday in late January, Jackson State University, Mississippi’s largest historically Black college with a student body nearly 7,000 strong, was mostly empty. The occasional student wandered past the gym; free parking spots lined the streets. 

Though more students are living on-campus this semester due to sports that were postponed in the fall, JSU has stayed mostly online, only slightly increasing the number of face-to-face classes. In the before times, JSU associate professor of history Janice Brockley compared campus to a nesting tree. 

“It was pretty lively,” she said. “We taught in the same building we all had our offices in — there’s alway people around, and people doing things. Students talking to each other, classes coming and going.”

“I guess none of it was wildly exciting,” Brockley added ruefully. “But daily life.”

Students miss campus daily life too. For one, they say it’s been easier to fall behind on studying or forget an assignment when they don’t physically attend class. 

“It’s up to you to look on Canvas every day and make sure you’re up to date,” said Jacori Daniels, JSU’s student body president. “You get an email,” he added. “But an email is really easy to miss.” 

It’s also harder to learn. At Delta State University, Jasmine Evans, a psychology major, is taking her last upper-division courses before she graduates in December. She said the pandemic has already disrupted her studies this semester. When she spoke with Mississippi Today on Feb. 3, her class on addiction, which was supposed to meet in a lecture hall, had been delayed for over three weeks because the professor was exposed to COVID-19. 

Another class Evans is taking, biological psychology, is held online. The curriculum is complex, and the online lectures are hard to parse. Normally, Evans would raise her hand or linger after class to ask the professor about the material. But that’s not possible over Zoom. As a result, she’s found herself turning more to her classmates for help. 

Evans is not the only student who has struggled to adapt.

“It took me a long time to figure out how to study,” said Dameia Graham, a masters student in public health at Mississippi University for Women who takes classes online. Graham started in the fall with a full-time courseload and a part-time job. But the pace of virtual learning proved challenging. 

“I’m used to getting A’s for the most part,” she said, “but I was not making A’s.” 

To keep up, Graham ended up quitting her job and dropping a class. In her bedroom at her childhood home in Vicksburg, she pushed herself to study in new ways, like quizzing herself with DIY tests. Now, she’s been able to enjoy her degree program this semester, but “it really did take a minute.”

Brockley, like many professors whose classes are now online, hasn’t stepped foot on JSU’s campus this year. Since teaching from home, she’s had to modify her instructional approach. In lieu of written class discussions, she asks students to respond to her lectures with voice recordings in an effort to mimic the Socratic method. She still finds it hard to establish rapport. 

“I don’t feel nearly in touch with the students as I would normally,” she said. With online classes, “you don’t have that fluid give and take. You can’t directly respond to what they’re saying, and I miss that.”

Even as students and faculty miss being on campus, some schools have faced criticism for their approach to reopening. 

Last fall, Mississippi Valley State University posted, as it does in the middle of every semester, the spring course offerings. About 36% of classes were online, 20% were hybrid, and the rest were in-person. Then on Jan. 4, the school announced it was departing from that plan. Students and faculty were informed that all classes would be online for the first three weeks, after which the administration would “reassess the environment due to COVID-19 and make modifications to instructional methods as determined, including beginning to phase in-person instruction.” 

MVSU saw this plan as a way to ease anxiety among students about returning to campus, said Kathie Stromile Golden, the provost and vice president for academic affairs.

“We figured that would give people time to think, give students time if they needed to change their schedule,” she said.

But some MVSU students assumed this decision meant they could live at home for the semester, not realizing the school’s intent was to revert to the original course schedule come the first week of February. As the Jan. 25 deadline to register for classes approached, these students learned via emails from professors their classes would soon be held in-person. This led a number of students, namely those living overseas and out-of-state, to scramble to switch to classes that would stay online, even opting for ones that would not count toward their major, said Rodkell Barber, a junior studying speech and communication. 

The 20-year-old said he wasn’t affected by the change because he was already living on campus in a double-dorm room. But he understood why his friends in California and Florida were confused and upset. 

“You never know, what if COVID gets back, and they have to catch a flight and go right back across the country?” he said, referring to when MVSU asked students during spring break last year not to return to the residence halls. “It’s unpredictable.”

MVSU’s decision affected faculty too. Kathryn Green, a 68-year-old professor, now has to go to campus once a week to teach general-ed world and African-American history. Before leaving, she puts on a double-layer cotton mask she has lined with a coffee filter. Her classroom, which has no windows, is outfitted with a plastic divider to separate her from the approximately 40 students. After class finishes, a cleaning crew mists the room with disinfectant. (Green said MVSU gave her the option of teaching in an auditorium, but she doesn’t like setting up her laptop with the projector there).

Green was initially apprehensive about teaching in-person due to her age. She has no way of ensuring a COVID-postive student does not come to class because MVSU, like every university in Mississippi, does not require students to get tested on-campus. At the same time, Green, who is due to get her second vaccine soon, wanted to be in the classroom out of a sense of duty to her students.

“There is an emotional connection with students, and we try our best to get our students through,” Green said. “We try our best to make administrative decisions work for the students.” 

“Grocery store workers aren’t getting (vaccinated), and I go to the grocery store,” she added. “So I better step up and do my part.” 

The only students on campus required to get tested by Mississippi universities are student athletes. For everyone else, the onus is on them. While it’s unclear how schools would enforce required testing, students and professors told Mississippi Today this honor code system has a serious flaw: Not everyone on university campuses can be relied on to take measures to ensure they don’t contract COVID-19. For example, about two weeks after classes started this year at UM, the Oxford Board of Aldermen voted to reinstate a city-wide mask mandate in response to calls and emails about maskless people queuing in the Square, the town’s central gathering place filled with shops and restaurants. 

While some students party, others have spent hours outside work and school advocating for the vulnerable people on their campuses. This is in part because students feel like they have a perspective the university often ignores: At MSU, for example, Tyler Packer, the student association president, is one of just two African Americans on the school’s 37-person COVID-19 task force. He said he’s urged the administration to consider the stigma Black students may feel toward the vaccine.

At UM, DeArrius Rhymes, a student senator, said he felt compelled to act early last semester after watching reports of outbreaks and student parties circulate the news. In September, Rhymes along with six student senators co-signed a resolution urging the university to increase on-campus testing for students living in the dorms. A week later, the university announced it would offer free asymptomatic testing. 

“As a student leader, I felt like we had to make a lot of important decisions,” Rhymes, a senior studying chemistry, said. It seemed like UM wasn’t “doing anything,” he added. “We had to urge them to set up more testing, challenge them to respond in a better way.” 

This semester, Rhymes and other student senators say they are continuing to pressure UM to improve its COVID response plan. One of their initiatives is a resolution asking UM to expand on-campus childcare for students, faculty and staff. Rhymes said it was important to him to advocate for this, because he doesn’t want people to forget that college during the pandemic is only made possible by the labor of facilities staff, many of whom are Black women. 

“I’m not sitting back and watching,” Rhymes said. “Service workers, people in the cafeteria who clean up after us, they need support out of respect for being human.” 

At the same time, Rhymes is still a student. Trying to hold the university accountable comes on top of passing his chemistry labs and studying for medical school. The morning he spoke to Mississippi Today, Rhymes had been catching up on emails. 

“From the time I wake up to the time I go to sleep, I’m always doing something,” Rhymes said. “I wake up, try to go to the gym, have a meeting or two each day and, if not, catch up on school work. Then maybe I’ll have some alone time. It’s like, when you think the day is over, I know it’s not.” 

Brown, the undergrad from Indianola, didn’t make the drive to Oxford until Jan. 21, ten days after the semester started. When she got back, she wiped her room down with Lysol and Clorox bleach. Because Brown and her roommates live in university-owned housing, they asked UM if professional cleaners could sanitize their apartment. She says the school denied this request because her roommates chose to quarantine in the apartment in lieu of isolation housing. 

Brown was frustrated the university couldn’t offer more support. 

“The school has resources for cleaning supplies,” she said. “There should’ve been something they were able to do.” 

Between school and work and worrying about COVID-19, students and professors say it’s easier than ever to feel siloed off from the rest of the campus community. At MVSU, Barber, the junior, has spent much of his semester sitting in his dorm room doing assignments. Normally a social person, he said it’s been hard not to dwell on what this school year could have been, the goals he had hoped to accomplish: Running for Royal Court, working out more, road-tripping to Atlanta for his first Pride. 

“I feel like I’m really stuck in this parallel universe,” he said. “The great part about coming to school is that we could be active and be around each other. Now that I’m just stuck in my room, I feel like I could’ve stayed home.”

“But at the same time, I’m trying to cherish it,” he continued. He’s tried, as often as is feasible, to meet up with his friends on the lawn or go to drive-thru movies. “I’m a junior, so I know my time is almost ending … I might as well soak it in even though it’s COVID still, try to have the fun that I can … I kinda feel like I’m getting robbed of my experience.” 

Brown feels the same. Seeing her professors, mentors and friends on-campus has helped a lot, she said. She’s coping better this semester. Her anxiety has abated. But these glimpses of normalcy come with their own kind of sadness. 

“It’s bittersweet,” she said. “Like, well, dang, I didn’t get the full experience I wanted my senior year. I’m getting a little piece of the cake, but I don’t have the whole slice.” 

After she graduates in May, Brown has decided to take a gap year in the Dallas Fort-Worth area before pursuing a masters degree. She picked it because she likes the city’s atmosphere—the same reason why she chose to stay in Mississippi for college. 

“It’s a place I feel like I could fully survive,” she said. “It feels like family.”

The post ‘It’s bittersweet’: Students, faculty reflect on college in the time of COVID appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mardis Jones, a government contractor, had just secured a sweet deal with the Tunica County Board of Supervisors to run the county’s one-of-a-kind housing rehabilitation program when he got the call from Linda Fay Engle-Harris in late 2014.

Engle-Harris, a now 66-year-old retired schoolteacher, was living in a white cottage with bright blue detail that was left to her by her parents and on the verge of collapse.

Under his county contract, Jones earned $12,000 a month to vet applications for county-funded home repairs and manage the expenses, according to a 2019 report by the state’s legislative watchdog committee that sharply criticized the program administration and eventually led to a State Auditor’s investigation.

He stole an additional $765,000, soaking up 80% of the program funds over about six years, State Auditor Shad White alleged in embezzlement charges announced Thursday.

“Not livable,” Jones concluded after visiting Engle-Harris’ Robinsonville home, according to a 2015 Washington Post article detailing the county’s use of hundreds of millions it earned since its casino boom in the 1990s. “An immediate need … Messed up.”

Jones also turned Engle-Harris away, telling her: “We have a huge waiting list and the board doesn’t want me to move you ahead of the others … You’re looking at a wait of about five years … It’s not my call. The money is shorting up … I wish I could do more.”

For the next five years, Jones allegedly diverted payments from the program to himself, including funds he claimed he was using to help Engle-Harris, while Engle-Harris lived through worsening conditions. The floor in her bathroom had caved in, but a contractor could not properly repair it because of the muddy foundation underneath, so he built her a wooden box and installed the toilet on top of it.

“That’s how we were using the bathroom, on top of a wooden box,” she told Mississippi Today this week.

“Gosh it was just horrible. We spent four years with a heater that we had to MacGyver a line through, through the furnace which had fallen to the ground.”

Last June, after the walls in Harris’ home completely separated from the wooden floor, she said she took $10,500 from her retirement — all she had left — and paid a contractor to make whatever improvements he could.

“He tried to do his best,” Engle-Harris said. “When he finished, he told me, ‘Let me know when you want me to tear it down.’”

Rehab is a critical type of assistance in a place like Mississippi, which has a much higher percentage of homeowner households compared to other states, but where dwindling populations and industry have perpetuated poverty and left structures to decay in many rural communities.

Across the state, nearly 60% of all housing units are over 40 years old and about 15% are valued at under $50,000, according to census data gathered by the Mississippi Home Corporation.

The need far outweighs the resources available for these kinds of home improvements, especially when the bulk of government investment in low-income housing — namely Section 8 rent vouchers and the tax credits developers use to build affordable units — is targeted towards renters.

Low-income apartments might be the most cost efficient model for addressing immediate housing needs, advocates admit, but this ignores the role home ownership plays in a family’s upward economic mobility — the kind of multi-generational wealth building that can break cycles of poverty and strengthen the middle class.

Some funds are available for homeowner rehab through a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development grant called the HOME Investment Partnership Program, but it is one of the only sources of these dollars.

That’s what made the now defunct Tunica County-funded program so unique and one reason the misspending represents such a missed opportunity for local residents.

The 2019 report from the Joint Legislative Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review scrutinized the Tunica County Board of Supervisors’ role in giving the contract to Jones, but only Jones has faced criminal charges.

Auditor’s agents arrested Jones and issued a demand letter for nearly $1.1 million, which includes interest and investigative expenses. The office said it is the second largest demand letter in its history. He could face up to 40 years in prison and a $45,000 fine. Mississippi Today could not reach Jones on his publicly listed phone numbers and because he had not yet been arraigned, the court did not have information about who his attorney will be.

“I can’t help but be discouraged when another program intended to help the poor is stolen from,” White said in a release, referencing a massive alleged embezzlement scheme his office uncovered within the state’s welfare agency last year.

PEER revealed convoluted and sloppy contracting practices as the administrative structure of the program, originally run by the North Delta Regional Housing Authority when it began in 1998, changed over the years.

Jones had been working as the Tunica County Housing Director for the authority, the public housing agency that administers HUD programs in the area, in 2014 when he splintered off to create his own nonprofit.

The board immediately moved to give the contract to Jones’ nonprofit, Tunica County Housing Inc., which was distinct from but close in name to another nonprofit, Tunica County Housing Project Inc., that helped run the program in previous years.

But a 2014 attorney general opinion stated that the county must operate the program through a public housing authority, not a nonprofit, so the board created a contract with North Delta Regional Housing Authority that required it to pass the money and operational duties of the program to Jones.

The contract, which county officials never actually signed, did not outline any oversight responsibilities for the authority, so taxpayers essentially paid the agency “$6,000 annually to write twelve checks.” PEER described the deal as “excessive and deprives the housing program of funds that could be better used for the program’s intended purposes.”

“Is it equitable? Probably not,” North Delta Regional Housing Authority administrator John Schmidt said of the contract. “That’s what we agreed on.”

Schmidt said he was skeptical of the county’s deal with Jones and justified the money his agency received by saying they have to “stock pile money for situations such as this — having to talk to reporters, maybe having to get attorneys, whatever.”

The county completely shut down the program, which faced a dwindling budget in addition to alleged theft, last June amid the investigation into Jones’ dealings. John Perry, attorney for the board of supervisors, said no supervisors have been implicated in any crime and he strongly believes they had no involvement in the scheme.

The county funded the program using revenue from the casinos, which meant as the economy declined, the budget shrunk from roughly $1 million a year in its early years, Schmidt said, to $330,000, making it more challenging to administer.

Additionally, the program capped awards to each homeowner at $25,000. This amount is much less than what many homes need for the investment to be worthwhile — including Engle-Harris’. (There is no cap for rehab projects through the HOME program; it can go as far as tearing down and rebuilding a qualified homeowner’s house).

Tunica County Administrator Billy Willis told Mississippi Today he is looking at ways to jump start more rehabilitation projects in the county and assist Engle-Harris.

After more than five years, Engle-Harris has not received any help to salvage her home — despite the nation reading her story, locals setting up a GoFundMe in her name and even a university architecture school designing and drafting blueprints to build her a new home. All they needed was for the county to tear the house down, she said.

“About a month after everything kind of died down, they just did a complete about face and I didn’t see them anymore. They didn’t talk to me. They didn’t come over. Conditions got worse,” Engle-Harris said of county officials.

At one point, she said she called the housing office to ask for an update and a receptionist told Engle-Harris her file was gone.

County code enforcement has recommended condemning the house and a homeless services agency helped Engle-Harris and her mentally disabled brother Johnny move into an apartment — a government subsidized development — in December.

The organization, Mississippi United to End Homelessness, has agreed to pay their rent for several months. But the assistance won’t last forever and she doesn’t think she’ll be able to afford rent in the future. The last time she stopped by her house, she discovered the window on her front door shattered.

“We’re considered homeless,” Harris said. “We thought we were secure. Like any other homeowner: This is my home. This is where I live. I don’t need to go anywhere else.”

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