The Mississippi State Board of Education waived passing score requirements for high school end-of-course assessments and the third grade literacy test this school year.
The board also voted to allow schools and districts to suspend the assignment of letter grades, which measure school and district performance, for the 2020-21 year.
Although passing requirements are waived, state testing will still be administered. Carey Wright, state superintendent of education, and other education officials have said it is important to have that data to determine the impact of the pandemic on student learning. It is also mandated by the U.S. Department of Education.
Based on a 2013 law called the Literacy-Based Promotion Act, third graders in Mississippi public schools must pass a reading test to continue to fourth grade. This year, third grade students who do not pass the test will still be promoted and receive additional support in the fourth grade, according to the board.
High schoolers take tests in Algebra I, English II, Biology and U.S. History, and will not be prevented from graduating if they don’t pass these assessments this year.
Gov. Tate Reeves in April issued an executive order granting the State Board of Education the ability to suspend or amend state laws and policies if necessary to cope with the effects of the coronavirus.
Earlier this month Wright told lawmakers the Mississippi Department of Education would be making these recommendations in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. She said she felt it was important for this to be a “year of grace” and that holding children accountable in this way would be unfair. On Thursday, the board approved her recommendations.
Board Chair Jason Dean emphasized that assessment and accountability will return to normal in the 2021-22 school year, barring any unforeseen circumstances.
The board also approved adjustments and waivers of parts of the state’s Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) plan, including identifying struggling schools and the timelines for improvement in those schools.
House Speaker Philip Gunn, R-Clinton, said Thursday that the House will start meeting online as COVID-19 spreads at the Capitol, but he expressed no interest in recessing the legislative session as a safety precaution.
By Thursday afternoon, at least two senators and possibly more have contracted the coronavirus since lawmakers began the 2021 session on Jan. 5. One House member had tested positive.
Though legislative leaders adopted safety guidelines this session, many lawmakers at the Capitol have been regularly seen without masks, and others have held maskless meetings in small spaces. Visitors to the Capitol have also been seen wearing masks improperly or not at all.
Gunn said the one member in his chamber who tested positive had the coronavirus last week. He said based on that test, an unspecified number of House members were quarantined. That quarantine is slated to end Friday. Gunn said the House leadership was following the recommendations of State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs.
Senate leadership on Thursday announced that they, too, would allow senators to attend committee meetings online starting next Monday. Several senators are expected to receive quarantine orders after being exposed to at least two COVID-19 positive colleagues. A third senator on Thursday was displaying symptoms but had yet to test positive.
Gunn said House members can fully participate and vote online. Senate Rules Vice Chair Walter Michel, R-Ridgeland, said the Senate needs to have enough members attend committee meetings in person at the beginning to establish a quorum. The members can then leave the committee room and participate via Zoom.
In both chambers, the plan is to have a link on the legislative web page to allow the public to access the meetings via the internet.
Before the session began, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who presides over the Senate, proposed recessing the session until later this year. He cited fears that another outbreak would occur at the Capitol. In June 2020, a COVID-19 outbreak at the Capitol infected at least 49 lawmakers, including Hosemann and Gunn, and was responsible for the death of at least one Mississippian.
Before the Senate adjourned for the weekend on Thursday, calls for the session to be recessed intensified amongst some members of the Senate.
Sen. Derrick Simmons, D-Greenville, said he agreed with Hosemann that the “best course in light of what we are dealing with is to suspend the session… A lot of members have said it was not a matter of if we would have an outbreak, but a matter of when.”
The Senate is unable to recess for a long period of time without the consent of the House. At this point with no agreement from the House, the plan is for both chambers to conduct more business online.
“We have a plan to allow us to work and to work in a safe manner,” Gunn said Thursday. He said he “would like to see a vote” from senators to see if a two-thirds majority, which is required to recess the session, actually supports the idea of postponing.
The Legislature is at the point in the session where most of the work is done in committee meetings instead of in the chamber before the full membership. Gunn said in the coming days as the committee work continues, both the committee meetings and the full sessions, which will be brief each day, will be conducted online.
Some members of the Mississippi Senate are expected to receive a quarantine notice from the Mississippi State Department of Health, notifying them not to return to the state Capitol until they receive a negative test for COVID-19.
On Thursday morning, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who presides over the Senate, abruptly adjourned the upper chamber until Monday. After gaveling out, Hosemann told Mississippi Today that one senator had received the quarantine notice. He anticipated others would, though he did not have a number.
Members who receive the notice would be those who had close contact with the two senators — perhaps more — who have contracted COVID-19 the past few days. As of midday Thursday, a third senator was displaying symptoms but had yet to test positive.
At least one House member also has received a positive test, officials told Mississippi Today earlier this week.
The coronavirus is spreading at the Capitol after lawmakers have been in the building since Jan. 5. Though legislative leaders adopted safety guidelines this session, many lawmakers at the Capitol have been regularly seen without masks, and others have held maskless meetings in small spaces. Visitors to the Capitol have also been seen wearing masks improperly or not at all.
Hosemann proposed postponing the 2021 session until later in the year, but that proposal was rejected by House leadership, including Speaker Philip Gunn.
In announcing that proposal in late December, Hosemann cited fears that another outbreak would occur at the Capitol. In June 2020, a COVID-19 outbreak at the Capitol infected at least 49 lawmakers, including Hosemann and Gunn, and was responsible for the death of at least one Mississippian.
Before the Senate adjourned for the weekend on Thursday, the Senate Rules Committee announced that when senators return to Jackson on Monday, safety precautions will be strengthened.
Sen. Walter Michel, R-Ridgeland, who is the vice chair of the Rules Committee, said the goal is to post committee agendas online the day before any called meeting. The meetings will be confined to two larger rooms, and the proceedings will be streamed online that can be accessed from the legislative website. In addition, senators can participate in the committee meetings online via Zoom if they choose.
But Michel stressed that in order to establish a quorum for the meetings, enough senators would have to show up in person. They could then leave the room and participate via Zoom. The committee chairs will have the discretion of limiting in-person attendance at the meeting for members of the public if the meeting is being streamed online.
As Michel outlined the new procedures, many senators expressed interest in recessing for a period of time until more vaccinations are administered.
The House will convene in session at 2 p.m. on Thursday, when that chamber is expected to receive an update on the coronavirus.
I have been rolling my eyes — smiling, happy, and annoyed — all day. I feel so indifferent.
I’m the daughter of a retired schoolteacher-ish Black woman who was 13 years old in Tylertown, Mississippi, when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. She grew up in the height of Jim Crow segregation, and her senior high school class was among the first in the Deep South to integrate.
I’m the step-daughter of a proud Army Special Forces vet who, after retiring, drove trucks — a man who fought in Desert Storm and led several missions he can’t tell anyone about and twitches a little if you mention certain things. My dad isn’t a conservative, but he is still a man from Monticello, Mississippi, who grew up poor and uninvolved.
I’m the granddaughter of people who got to breathe and digest all they’d done in the civil rights movement. They’d grown fatigued after Medgar, Martin and Malcolm were killed, but they reengaged in local matters and built community with the folks in Walthall County. My grandpaw had a garden that grew greens and other fresh vegetables that he let anybody take. The family owned a funeral home and would help folks who needed assistance burying their loved ones. It was a selflessness that couldn’t be taught.
To honor this moment when Biden and Harris were sworn in, my mama wore chucks and pearls. My daddy wore his Army Special Forces hat. They sat in the living room in complete awe that they lived to see a Black man become president and a Black-Asian American woman become vice president.
My parents and grandparents lived in a time where this moment was a wild dream and never completely fathomable. They are proud and happy today, and it is so pure. I understand their excitement on a deeply personal and unexplainable level.
But as they fell asleep on the couch after Biden and Harris took their oaths, I immediately began to feel my politics take over and my own contradictions take center stage as I processed this moment in history.
I have recently begun to wrestle with a lot of my values and beliefs — my upbringing and the world I want to see in my lifetime. All of it is real, but often, it’s all contradictory. I feel that especially hard today.
I cringed as Jennifer Lopez sang “This Land,” and not even four minutes later, one of the Indigenous folks I follow reposted on Instagram: “… As it’s sung at the inauguration, it is a reminder of how this country came to be. It is erasure of the Indigenous history and anti-Indigenous. This IS stolen land.”
After reading that post, I was undone. I thought back to all the things Mississippi Studies and no other History Class in my public schooling ever taught me. I thought about the truth of who and what both Biden and Harris represent, and who they have been and not been in their political careers.
None of us are perfect, and all deserve grace. But I am struggling with what we are holding ourselves as hostage to in our choices and within the possibilities for our democracy.
All we have done with this election is borrow more time.
I, myself, made an intentional decision last year to help us borrow that time. In 2016, I supported Bernie Sanders. His policies and ideas align closely with mine. But after talking to my mama last year — my mama understands something about this country that I will never know — I made a conscious decision to vote for Biden. I felt he gave us the best chance to defeat Trump.
I was strategic, learned and calculated in that decision AND clear that my vote was a deliberate and intentional decision to buy more time.
Today, all I hear is Angela Davis saying, “… we cannot rely on governments, no matter who is in power, to do the work that only mass movements can do.”
I want us to keep imagining beyond. For the life of me, I don’t want us to become complacent.
Complacent is what we became in the Obama era. I’m petrified that this moment will feel so symbolic, just like it was in 2008, and that we get comfortable. The electoral work of our movement shouldn’t cease. I want us to recalibrate and reassess what our collective agenda will be over the next four years, across ideologies and practices that center the lives and wellbeing of Black folks.
I want us to all get comfortable in our contradictions — those of us who call ourselves organizers, thought leaders of/in movement, freedom dreamers, “political operatives at the intersection” of all of this, or whatever fancy titles we’ve given ourselves. Because when we get honest, we can work.
My mama wouldn’t believe this, but the honesty and love of Black women in Mississippi, especially her, have been my moral compass in this complex electoral work I do. Because of her and a few of my elders, I’m not tethered to any idea of political purity. I learned early on when I began my nonprofit electoral organizing work to not stress myself out with ideological purity, either.
I am the daughter of that schoolteacher, the step-daughter of that truck driver with the military background, the granddaughter of those selfless community builders. I really do understand my parents’ happiness today and what it would have meant to my grandparents.
But I am also a girl who came of age in the 1990s, a millennial who is a student of the freedom struggle, Ella Baker style. I’ve learned the teachings of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, and I have a deep respect for the Republic of New Afrika. I AM INDIFFERENT!
I’m not happy. I’m not unhappy. I’m just clear.
Never doubt that I am always clear and always calculated in my work. As are my people. The South — Mississippi, more specifically — continues to show this country, especially down ballot, that this ain’t the Old South.
So, here we are in this moment and we still have work to do.
We still must organize.
We still must become more clear and more aligned as a movement.
We must know our roles and play them well.
And we must get honest about the contradictions so that we can clear the air and move.
The state Senate on Thursday unanimously passed a $1,000 a year teacher pay raise that will bring starting teachers’ salary to $37,000 a year.
The measure now heads to the state House, but Speaker Philip Gunn this week said the House will not tackle the issue until later in the session, once state revenue and budget estimates become more firm.
Under Senate Bill 2001 teachers with zero to three years experience with a bachelor’s degree would see a $1,110 increase, bringing their annual pay to $37,000. This is still below the Southeastern regional average of $38,420 and national average of $40,154. A study by the National Education Association of starting teacher salaries for 2018-2019 ranked Mississippi’s pay 46th among states.
Last school year (2019-20) the average salary for all Mississippi teachers no matter experience was $46,843, according to the Mississippi Department of Education.
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann is pushing the pay raise and promising more in subsequent years — a major campaign promise in his successful campaign in 2019. Hosemann noted the bill was “No. 1,” the first filed and assigned in the Senate.
Recently, Gov. Tate Reeves, who also promised teacher pay raises when he campaigned for governor, said he would sign the proposed Senate raise if it makes it to his desk, although he did not advocate a raise in the budget recommendation he sent lawmakers.
Last year, a similar proposed raise passed the Senate but died in the House amid budget uncertainties from the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2019, Mississippi teachers received a $1,500 raise.
The raise would cost taxpayers about $51 million a year, Senate Education Chairman Dennis DeBar Jr., a Republican from Leaksville, said. He noted that a recent report shows the state’s roughly $6 billion budget is running about $325 million above revenue estimates. He and Hosemann said state finances appear sound and the state can afford the teacher raise.
House Ways and Means Chair Trey Lamar, R-Senatobia, said if legislators look at reducing or eliminating the income tax this session, they should also explore reducing the 7% sales tax on groceries.
“I don’t understand why we have to be 50th in that,” he said, referring to Mississippi having the highest state-imposed sales tax on groceries. A few states that allow local governments to impose an additional sales tax on top of the state levy, such as Alabama, have a higher tax on food in some local jurisdictions, but no state has a higher statewide sales tax on groceries.
In November, Gov. Tate Reeves proposed phasing out the income tax over a multiple year period. In the past, House Speaker Philip Gunn, Lamar and other House leaders also have endorsed reducing or eliminating the income tax. But Lamar said recently as his committee looks at the income tax issue this year it should include an in-depth look at the tax structure.
“We want this to be a bipartisan effort,” Lamar said. Many Democrats have long championed eliminating the grocery tax.
The 7% tax on food generates between $267 million and $315 million annually for the state. Lamar, who chairs the powerful House committee that handles tax and revenue legislation, said that reducing or eliminating the income tax and the sales tax on food would require some type of shift to another tax or source of revenue to generate funds for the state.
“Whatever we do, I do not want to do harm to the state budget,” he said. In addition, Lamar said he wants his committee to work on the issue this session, but he acknowledged it may take more than a year to complete the process.
Lamar’s counterpart, Senate Finance Chair Josh Harkins, R-Flowood, also said he will study the issue of the income tax cut this session.
“We need to take a deep dive into fiscal policy and take a look at what we can to do to be more competitive,” he said. But Harkins added legislators need “to be responsible” to ensure that tax cuts do not put the state in a financial bind.
“I tell people part of fiscal conservatism is fiscal responsibility. We have to be careful how we do it if we do it,” he said when asked specifically about cutting the income tax.
Under the current tax structure, a family of four earning $80,000 would owe $2,489 in state income taxes.
The income tax generates about $1.9 billion in revenue and accounts for about one-third of the total general fund revenue. In 2016, the Legislature passed and then-Gov. Phil Bryant signed into law a massive tax cut that will reduce revenue to the general fund by an estimated $416 million annually in today’s dollars by fiscal year 2028. Part of that tax cut was the phase out of the 3% personal income tax bracket.
For years, Mississippi has placed a 3% tax on the first $5,000 of taxable income, 4% on the next $5,000 and 5% on taxable income over $10,000. The legislation passed in 2016 began the phase out of the 3% bracket starting in fiscal year 2019. That phase out will conclude in 2022 and result in a reduction to the general fund of about $150 million, according to the Department of Revenue.
Reeves wants to continue that phase out to completely remove the income tax. He and others argue it would promote economic growth and even attract new residents to the state.
Others dispute that argument and say history does not bear out the fact that the growth will occur. And many say the income tax should not be reduced or eliminated while Mississippi – the poorest state in the nation – levies the highest tax in the nation on food.
Plus, Lamar said, reducing or eliminating the food tax would benefit everyone.
“Republicans have to eat. We all have to eat,” he said.
Mississippi Today is pleased to announce two new members of the Mississippi Today team: Molly Minta, higher education reporter, and Candace Mckenzie, an emerging reporters fellow.
A Florida native, Minta joins Mississippi Today as the newest member of the education team. Her work will be in partnership with Open Campus, a nonprofit news organization focused on higher education, and the Woodward Hines Education Foundation, a Mississippi nonprofit that believes postsecondary degrees and credentials are vital in improving the lives of Mississippians, building communities, and strengthening our workforce.
“Higher education in Mississippi is a sorely under-covered beat, and I can’t wait for Molly to start digging into complex and important issues facing Mississippians such as access to financial aid, declining state funding or how the pandemic has affected student learning,” said Managing Editor Kayleigh Skinner. “It’s incredibly important to have a reporter covering Mississippi’s higher education landscape, which plays a role in everything from our state workforce’s preparedness to residents’ earning potential and willingness to stay in Mississippi.”
Prior to joining Mississippi Today, Minta worked for The Nation and The Appeal.
“I am so excited to be joining the talented team at Mississippi Today as the first reporter dedicated to covering higher education,” Minta said. “Between COVID-19 and the student-led protests for racial justice, this is a crucial time for higher education in Mississippi. There are so many stories to be told, and I can’t wait to get started.”
Mckenzie, a Raymond native, will help bolster Mississippi Today’s public education and mental health coverage, and she’ll work closely with newsroom reporters on investigative projects.
“I am actually pretty honored to be working with Mississippi Today because I am a part of an organization that values so much of what I personally value, which is a vital aspect of my professional life,” she said. “Not only does Mississippi Today share many of the same values as I do, but its methodical approach to journalism for all Mississippians is something I am excited for as a growing journalist.”
She earned an associate’s degree from Hinds Community College before transferring to Millsaps College, where she will graduate this spring. During her time at Millsaps, Mckenzie served as editor-in-chief of The Purple and White student newspaper and collaborated with administration, alumni, students and several others to revive the defunct print paper to an online destination for campus news.
“I had the pleasure of working with Candace when I advised The Purple and White at Millsaps,” said Adam Ganucheau, editor-in-chief at Mississippi Today. “Every day I worked with her, she showed just how sharp and driven she was. She’s deeply curious about some of the state’s biggest problems, making her the perfect fit for us. She’s a tireless leader, and she’s earned the respect of everyone she’s worked with. I know she’ll bring that passion with her to Mississippi Today, and we can’t wait to learn from her.”
The Millsaps senior is also working with the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting on a comparative investigative report on domestic violence against women of color in Mississippi and Texas.
The Mississippi Ethics Commission says charter school board members are subject to state ethics laws, which prohibit conflicts of interest that could lead to the misspending of public dollars.
But several operators and advocates of Mississippi charter schools, which receive taxpayer funding, say they should be exempt from those laws.
The conflict was brought to light by Ethics Commission opinions filed in 2020 after two charter schools were discovered to be spending their public funding with board members’ employers.
The revelations highlight long-standing tension between charter school and traditional public school advocates, who say charter schools need to be held to the same standards as other public governing bodies.
“The state ethics laws are not overly burdensome; they simply say that members of state agency governing boards cannot profit off of state funds by directing contracts to their own businesses or employer,” said Nancy Loome, executive director of the public education advocacy group The Parents’ Campaign. “All public school board members must abide by those rules, and charter school board members should, as well.”
Charter schools are, by law, public schools funded by local and state tax dollars. They do not charge students tuition and are held to the same academic and accountability standards as traditional public schools. These schools are often the subject of scrutiny because they are allowed more flexibility than public schools in how they operate.
Mississippi’s charter school law, adopted by lawmakers in 2013, is the only one in the nation that does not have a specific conflict of interest provision in it, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
Charters are required by state law to operate as nonprofit organizations and must adhere to IRS regulations that require conflict of interest disclosures. However, those nonprofit regulations are much less strict than several key ethics laws that public schools are subject to, including the banning all business between the organizations and board members’ companies.
Traditional public schools, meanwhile, are subject to the more stringent state ethics laws, including that school boards cannot do business with individual board members’ companies.
“All we’re saying is members of public charter school boards have to live by the same rules as members of every other type of school board,” Tom Hood, the executive director of the Ethics Commission, told Mississippi Today. “They’re not getting treated any worse or any better.”
The ethics questions arose after Ambition Prep, a K-8 charter school in Jackson, used federal funding in 2018 to contract with an insurance company owned by one of the school’s board members. Ambition Prep officials told Mississippi Today they followed their own conflict of interest laws and were not aware they had to adhere to the state ethics laws.
“Nobody knew or stated (at that time) that charter schools had to follow the ethics laws,” said DeArchie Scott, the school’s founder and executive director.
A separate charter school also attempted to enter into a contract with a board member’s professional development company but stopped at the request of the Mississippi Charter Authorizer Board, the board that oversees charter schools in the state.
The Ethics Commission responded in a 2020 ruling that all of the state’s charter school governing board members are subject to all the restrictions of the state ethics law, just as traditional public school board members, lawmakers and other public officials are.
The commission reasoned that because charter schools receive public dollars and their boards are subject to other laws such as those that require open meetings and the Public Records Act, “members of charter school governing boards are ‘public servants’ as defined (in the law), and are subject to all the applicable provisions of the Ethics in Government Law.”
Several charter school operators disagreed with both Ethics Commission rulings.
On Dec. 14, 2020, a lawyer for Ambition Prep wrote a letter to the commission, asking it to reconsider whether charter school board members are subject to state ethics laws. The commission declined.
Members of the charter school community argue the Ethics Commission’s take on their role goes against the intention of the charter school law that was passed in 2013, and that the law does not explicitly state board members are subject to ethics laws.
Some also say there may be unintended consequences as a result of the opinions.
Rachel Canter, executive director of Mississippi First Credit: Mississippi First
Rachel Canter, executive director of the nonprofit education group Mississippi First, was involved in the creation of the charter school law prior to its passage in 2013.
“It’s a big legal shift from the understanding that everybody had about charter schools for the seven years prior to (the Ethics Commission opinions), which was that charter schools are overseen and held accountable, according to the charter school law, in their contract by the authorizer board and not by any other government agency or entity,” Canter said.
She said charter schools have already operated under nonprofit rules — the looser IRS regulations — that aim to prevent conflicts of interest.
“We in the nonprofit world have something called arm’s length negotiation, which says if you’re a board member and something comes before the board in which you have a financial interest, you have to recuse yourself and leave the room,” Canter said. “But if it’s in the best interest of the organization, the decision can still be made (to approve the arrangement).”
Canter also noted that charter schools’ finances are audited annually by the Charter School Authorizer Board. She said the effect of the opinions is essentially stating to charter schools that they now must operate under a different set of rules.
“Charter schools are saying you’re trying to make us governmental organizations and we are not government organizations,” she said.
Jon Rybka, the CEO of RePublic Schools, a Nashville-based charter operator with three schools in Jackson, said charter schools are unique and face different challenges than other governmental entities. Rybka pointed out that in Mississippi, charter schools are “both governmental entities and nonprofits” and believes that they should be governed by regulations that are tailored to their unique situations.
“If I had to guess, every mission-driven school, church or nonprofit has board members that are involved because they care about the mission, so they’re probably involved in the mission in other areas as well,” Rybka said. “I just don’t want to see this ruling getting in the way of good people bringing their resources to the mission.”
Amanda Johnson, Executive Director of Clarksdale Collegiate Charter School. Credit: Staci Lewis
Amanda Johnson, executive director of Clarksdale Collegiate Public Charter School in Clarksdale, said she is concerned about the opinions’ impact on charter schools’ flexibility and autonomy.
“When I think about why I do this work and why I believe in charters, part of it is because they are set up to be different and be provided with some additional flexibility, appropriate flexibility, that allows the schools to operate in a different way than a traditional district,” Johnson said. “It’s not that we are above ethics laws or behaving ethically, but we should not be under the same rules and regulations that a governmental agency would be under.”
Johnson, along with others, also says that restrictions like these are part of the reason charter schools have not expanded in Mississippi as they have in other areas. Since 2013, when the charter school law was passed, only eight charter schools have opened in the state, six of which are in Jackson.
“There are charter schools, CMOs (charter management organizations), that operate in other states that the Authorizer Board has tried to attract, legislators have tried to attract (to Mississippi) and haven’t been able to,” said Johnson. “Making this work more restrictive is going against what charter schools were designed to be. It makes it less attractive (to CMOs) and more difficult (for schools) to recruit board members as well.”
But others disagree with the sentiments of the state’s charter operators and say it’s important for charter schools to be held to the same standards as traditional public schools.
“There have been many unfortunate stories from other states of charter school laws leading to scandals involving misuse of taxpayer funds,” Loome, with The Parents’ Campaign, said. “Thankfully, Mississippi law protects children and taxpayers from that sort of unscrupulous activity.”
President Donald Trump, in his final hours in office, granted pardons and commutations to dozens of people, including a campaign staffer of Gov. Tate Reeves who now works for the state, and others convicted of crimes in Mississippi.
“I am very humbled by the president thinking enough of me to do this,” said David Clanton, who served as political director on Reeves’ gubernatorial campaign and is now employed as director of surplus property for the state Department of Finance and Administration. “… A lot of people were involved in this — many people, I’m not going to say names.”
Trump fully pardoned Clanton for his conviction in the early 1990s of “false statements and related charges.” Clanton’s charges stem from farm subsidies fraud when Clanton served on the USDA’s Agriculture Stabilization and Conservation Service in Mississippi. Clanton’s case was involved in a federal investigation into then-U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy, for which Espy was indicted but later acquitted. A federal investigative report said that Clanton participated in a “Mississippi Christmas tree scheme” to allow farmers to fraudulently receive hundreds of thousands in crop subsidies.
A White House release on the pardons said that U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, Wesson Mayor Alton Shaw and others supported Clanton’s pardon, but made no mention of Reeves, who is a staunch supporter of Trump. Wicker’s office declined to comment on the pardon.
Clanton also declined comment on the case, other than, “It was a long time ago, and I don’t really remember much about it … it did have to deal with farm subsidies.” Reeves’ office did not immediately respond to request for comment on Wednesday, including a question of whether he had any qualms about Clanton serving at DFA after a conviction involving government fraud.
The Trump release said that, “Mr. Clanton’s supporters testify to his contributions to the community, especially with respect to issues surrounding rural healthcare. Mr. Clanton has been active with 4-H Clubs and other organizations in his community.”
Trump’s other pardons for Mississippi crimes are:
Dr. Robert S. Corkern – Batesville physician Corkern pleaded guilty to bribery in 2012 in a federal case alleging multi-million dollar health care fraud in North Mississippi. Trump said the pardon is supported by Sens. Wicker and Cindy Hyde-Smith, former Gov. Phil Bryant and others.
“This pardon will help Dr. Corkern practice medicine in his community, which is in dire need of more doctors as it has struggled to keep up with demand for emergency services,” the Trump release said. “Dr. Corkern served in the Mississippi Army National Guard and has generously provided his services to low-income patients.”
Joey Hancock – Hancock was convicted of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute a controlled substance. Trump’s release said: “Senator Roger Wicker, and Mr. Hancock’s employer, pastor, and other members of his community all support this pardon … Following his release from prison, Mr. Hancock has been a hard-working employee and active in his church and community.”
Steven Benjamin Floyd – Floyd, who joined the Marine Corps at age 17 and saw combat in Iraq, pleaded guilty to one count of bank robbery by extortion. Trump’s release said: “Since his release from prison in 2009, Mr. Floyd has exemplified the power of second chances, and is raising a family and owns a successful car repair business. Mr. Floyd’s dedication to service includes helping extinguish fires set during the recent unrest and repairing widows and disabled veterans’ cars free of charge. President Trump thanks Mr. Floyd for his past military service and for his commitment to his community.”
Trump issued 73 pardons and 70 commutations in his final hours in office — as presidents traditionally do. His pardons included one of his former campaign fundraisers, a former political strategist and two well-known Hip Hop artists.
