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The Senate is expected to pass its state income and grocery tax cut plan on Wednesday’s deadline to do so, sending it to an unreceptive House that wants to go further and eliminate the income tax altogether.

“This is a measured approach, and we are doing something fiscally responsible, and we can come back in four years and see where we are and go from there,” said Senate Finance Chairman Josh Harkins, author of the Senate plan. “I think we’ve taken into account inflation, all those other concerns — I think there’s going to be (an economic) downturn, a dip … Our plan is easy to understand, it provides instant relief for taxpayers with a rebate and cut in the grocery tax, and it’s responsible.”

As lawmakers enter the homestretch of the 2022 legislative session, the Republican House and Senate leadership are at loggerheads over tax cuts. The two appear so far apart on this major issue that many political observers fear it could hinder other legislation as lawmakers are scheduled to get down to brass tacks on setting a state budget, spending billions in federal pandemic relief and agreeing on other issues to wrap the session around the end of March.

House Speaker Philip Gunn, who has vigorously championed the total phase-out of the state income tax (along with an increase in sales tax) for two years, has referred to the Senate plan as a “token” tax cut that would provide little relief to taxpayers. With state coffers overflowing, Gunn said now is the time to overhaul the state’s tax structure and eliminate the individual income tax.

Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann has decried the House plan as foolhardy, eliminating a third of the state’s revenue and upending state tax structure at a time of great economic uncertainty and volatility. He notes Republicans have for years disparaged using “one-time” money for recurring expenses. He said the influx of money into the state budget is from Congress dumping trillions of federal dollars into the economy and “if ever there was one-time money in Mississippi, this is it.”

READ MORE: The Mississippi Republican income tax bet

The Senate’s tax cut plan would cost about $317 million a year, plus a one-time cost of $130 million. It would:

• Phase out the 4% state income tax bracket over four years. This would mean people would pay no state income tax on their first $26,600 of income, a savings of about $50 a year.
• Reduce the state grocery tax from 7% to 5%, starting in July.
• Provide up to a 5%, one-time income tax rebate in 2022 for those who paid taxes. The rebates would range from $100 to $1,000.
• Eliminate the state fee on car tags going into the general fund, which would be about $5 off the cost of a new tag, $3.75 for renewals.

The House’s $1.5 billion tax cut plan would:

• Eliminate taxes on the first $40,000 of income for an individual and $80,000 for a couple in 2023, saving individuals about $1,300 and couples about $2,600 a year.
• Phase out the income tax over the next decade or so, pending budget growth “triggers” are met.
• Increase the sales tax on most retail items from 7% to 8.5%, and cut the cost of car tags in half.
• Reduce the grocery tax eventually from 7% to 4%.

Senate Bill 3164, the Tax Relief Act of 2022, passed the Senate Finance Committee on a voice vote with a smattering of “Nos” from both Democrats — who argue the state has too many unmet needs to cut taxes — and more conservative Republicans, who think it doesn’t go far enough.

READ MORE: Inside the income tax cut battle between House and Senate leaders

“This is just a sad situation,” said Sen. Hob Bryan, D-Amory, during committee debate. “The only reason we are here is because there is a fixation at the other (House) end of this building with eliminating the income tax. That’s not being pushed by anyone from Mississippi, but from a bunch of out-of-state organizations that believe we don’t need any taxation at all … I don’t hear the hue and cry from my constituents for it.

“… Did you all campaign on eliminating the income tax?” Bryan said. “The out-of-state people don’t care what happens with this. It’s a box to check off on their ideology … This is not a partisan issue. Maintaining highways is a function of government, not partisanship. Are we going to abolish the gas tax and not spend any money at all on roads? We have for years disregarded the law on how we fund our public schools. We’ve got the money now, why are we not doing that?

“This proposal is not as misguided as the House proposal, but I think it’s still a bad idea,” Bryan said.

Sen. Chris McDaniel, R-Ellisville, said: “I’m going to support this bill, but I don’t think it goes far enough.

“The House at least has put the proper framework before the body, income tax elimination,” McDaniel said. “That’s the long term play, that’s the proper play … We have roads. The question is are we going to have a functioning economy, which we haven’t had for a long time … It’s not our money. We should not forget that. It’s not roads vs. anarchy … We’re hearing that even minor tax cuts would be cataclysmic, and that just doesn’t make sense.”

Sen. Jeremy England, R-Vancleave, said he spent the last weekend back home at ball fields and the talk among parents was inflation. He said one he talked with owns a local ice cream shop.

“He said they’re looking at inflation and having to increase prices 20% to deal with it,” England said. “He was concerned about any increase in sales tax (like the House plan), and worried that would result in customers not coming in. We are not raising any sales tax or any other tax with this plan.”

McDaniel noted how far apart the House and Senate proposals remain.

“I sense both of these bills will die, and the people of Mississippi will continue to suffer under this tax structure,” McDaniel said.

The post With Senate set to pass its income tax cut, House hasn’t budged on its desire for elimination appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The post Marshall Ramsey: The Bright Side appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi hospitals have about 3,000 total nursing vacancies — equivalent to one-fifth of the state’s entire nursing workforce — according to a recent survey from the Mississippi Hospital Association.

Health care workers, especially nurses, have left the state during the pandemic to better paying jobs with temp companies or hospitals outside of Mississippi. As a result of the shortage and the omicron variant surge, hospitals in the state have been forced to cut capacities by closing beds.

Singing River Health System’s three Gulf Coast hospitals currently have more than 200 nursing vacancies, 50 of which are at Ocean Springs Hospital. The challenges the hospital system faces were highlighted in The New York Times’ Feb. 18 episode of The Daily.

In this photo gallery, Mississippi Today went inside the walls of Ocean Springs Hospital to follow a day in the life of the health care workers and patients there.

The post Inside a Mississippi hospital hard-hit by nursing shortage appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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

Tougaloo College announced a $10 million donation to fund scholarships for low-income students from Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and his wife Patty Quillin as part of the pair’s efforts to financially support historically Black colleges. 

The donation will be shared equally with Brown University, Carmen Walters, Tougaloo’s president, said at a press conference on Monday. 

Tougaloo will use its portion to bolster its $22 million endowment and set up a need-based scholarship for low-income students. The remaining $5 million will create a scholarship fund at Brown University in Rhode Island to support students who participate in the long-running academic partnership between the two colleges. 

Hastings’ donation is the largest that Brown-Tougaloo Partnership has received in its 58-year history. The partnership began in 1964 after state lawmakers attempted to revoke Tougaloo’s charter during the civil rights movement.

The $5 million scholarship fund will support at least 10 undergraduate students and four graduate students will benefit from the scholarship fund each year, Walters said. 

The donation is “transformational” for Tougaloo, said Sandra Hodge, the vice president for institutional advancement, and will “significantly (bolster) the college’s ability to provide scholarship support to current students and also allow the college to recruit more talented students who might not otherwise be able to attend.” 

Hastings said he was compelled to donate to Tougaloo because the college’s history and religious mission is similar to his alma mater, Bowdoin College. He wanted to support a historically Black college, he said, because he realized over the last 10 years “that the economic gaps in wealth, in assets, in endowments are pretty profound and totally unfair.” 

Hastings said that his gift is a “small part of closing that gap.” 

During the press conference, Walters talked about the important role that Tougaloo plays in Mississippi. The college is an “economic engine,” she said, that has historically educated about 40% of Black physicians and dentists in the state. 

The post Netflix CEO donates $10 million to Tougaloo College appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Gov. Tate Reeves on Monday announced two executive orders aimed at helping children of military families, and helping protect and expand the state’s military installations and supporting industries.

“As long as I am governor, Mississippi will do everything in our power to support our military members and their families,” Reeves said at a press conference, flanked by state military leaders.

One order Reeves signed creates the Military Star Schools Program, to help military family school children who have to frequently change schools when their parents receive new postings and who deal with other issues such as parents being away for deployments. Reeves said there are about 7,300 school-aged children of active duty military families in Mississippi.

Col. Cynthia Smith, commander of the 186th Air Refueling Wing at Key Field Air National Guard Base in Meridian, said that statistics show children in military families switch school six to nine times K-12. She said her family knows firsthand how difficult that can be for children and spouses of military members.

The new program, administered by the state Department of Education, would require schools to apply for the Military Star designation. The schools would have to designate a staff member as an ambassador to military families and maintain a web page on the school’s website with resources for military families. They would have to have peer-to-peer programs to help students coming in to the school and would have to offer training for staff on issues military children and their families face.

State Superintendent Carey Wright said many Mississippi schools already provide support to military families and she expects “our schools and districts will jump at the chance to join this program.”

Reeves also signed an order creating the Mississippi Defense Communities Development Council — overhauling a council that has worked for years to prevent military base closures in Mississippi during federal cutbacks and realignments.

Reeves appointed Tom Williams, president of the Meridian Airport Authority, to chair the new council. Williams said the new organization aims to be “proactive, rather than reactive” in expanding, improving and protecting the state’s military installations, which Williams said account for 6.5% of the state’s economy.

The MDCDC will be overseen by the Governor’s Office of Military Affairs in the Mississippi Development Authority, and each of the state’s 12 active duty, Guard or shipbuilding installations will be represented.

The post Governor announces programs to help military families, expand installations appeared first on Mississippi Today.

In sports, precious few records exist we can say for certain never will be broken. I know of only one.

Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hit streak, you say? It’s not likely, but it is surely possible. Wilt Chamberlain’s 100 points in a single professional basketball game? Again, not likely, but there’s always a chance a 7-foot, 10-inch version of Michael Jordan will emerge. Byron Nelson’s 11 consecutive PGA Tour victories? Even Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods could not come close. Still, such a feat is possible.

But there exists at least one sports record, this one in college football, that will stand forever. No possible way it will be broken. The 1899 Sewanee Tigers won five football games in six days en route to a perfect 12-0 season. What’s more, all five of those victories in a six-day span were shutouts. Sewanee defeated Texas 12-0 in Austin, Texas A&M 10-0 in Houston, Tulane 23-0 in New Orleans, LSU 34-0 in Baton Rouge and Ole Miss 12-0 in Memphis.

Making the feat all the more amazing was the team’s mode of transportation. This was four years before Orville and Wilbur Wright flew the first powered airplane. Sewanee made the entire 2,500-mile trip by steam-powered locomotive. Eighteen Sewanee players were on the traveling roster, but only 13 actually played in the games. No wonder they were called “The Iron Men.”

You could not make it up.

And Mississippian and Sewanee grad David Crews did not have to make it up. Crews and Sewanee classmate Norman Jetmundsen spent much of the last five years researching, interviewing, writing, shooting and making a film — “UNRIVALED” — that tells the definitive story of that remarkable Sewanee team that outscored its 12 foes 322-10.

The documentary will be the subject of a program on Feb. 22 at 5:30 p.m. at the Overby Center at Ole Miss. A 25-minute portion of the 90-minute film will be shown followed by a discussion that Charles Overby will lead with Ole Miss Athletic Director Keith Carter along with the film’s directors.

Should Ole Miss ever be foolhardy enough to attempt such a football road trip, Carter could call on a staff of dozens to arrange the travel, feed the team, wash the uniforms, attend to its medical needs, devise game plans and so much more. Back in 1899, those duties were divided between student manager Luke Lea, who in reality served as athletic director, business manager and a lot more, and head coach Herman “Billy” Suter.

It is a fascinating story and a remarkable film, which includes interviews with the likes of legendary, national championship-winning coaches Nick Saban, Vince Dooley, Bobby Bowden and Johnny Majors, as well as historian John Meachem, another graduate of Sewanee, also known as the University of the South.

At one point in the film, Bowden, who has since died, sums up the Sewanee story as only he could with his folksy, down-home charm. “It’s unbelievable,” Bowden says, excitedly. “How in the world could anybody do that?”

Other factors make the achievement all the more astounding. Football, then more than now, was a brutal sport with very little protective padding and few rules to prevent punching, gouging, kicking and other forms of mayhem. Substitutions were for cowards. If you came out of a game, you were out for the duration. Often injured players stayed in the game, stumbling and dazed from injuries.

There was no such thing as a forward pass. It was straight-ahead, physical football. Only the strong survived and some of the strongest did not. Says Dooley, “There were 17 or 18 deaths one season.” The closest thing to a pass was when offensive players would pick up a ball-carrying teammate and heave him over the line.

You might wonder, as I had, why a team in the remote Tennessee foothills would embark on a such a seemingly foolhardy six-day, five-game marathon. Turns out, it was all about dollars. Vanderbilt was Sewanee’s big rival in those days and the annual trip to Nashville pretty much funded the football team. That year, there was a dispute over how the gate receipts would be divided. It went unresolved. With the Vanderbilt game canceled, Lea, the student manager, was forced to raise money by other means.

Long road trips to, say, Austin or New Orleans would eat up all the money earned from the games. So Lea essentially decided to kill five birds with one stone: one road trip, five games. Somehow, his players were up to the task.

They were not big men. The Sewanee star and team captain was Henry “Diddy” Seibels, a running back who weighed all of 170 pounds. He scored two touchdowns in the victory over Texas, despite suffering a huge gash over his left eye that was patched with plaster of paris. He never left the game.

The team’s right end, Hugh Miller Thompson Pearce, was better known as Bunny and hailed from Jackson. Bunny Pearce stood 5 feet, 3 inches and weighed in at 125 pounds. In a 1944 interview with the famous sports writer Grantland Rice, Coach Suter said of Pearce: “He was a fine end. One hundred and eight pounds of his weight was brains and heart. What else matters?”

The fifth of the five victories in six days was over Ole Miss at Memphis. Sewanee had defeated LSU 34-0 the day before. The bruises and gashes and sore muscles added up. The Iron Men rode the train overnight from Baton Rouge, sleeping in a coach car, and then took the field the next afternoon. Reported The Commercial Appeal: “As the bandaged boys in purple took their positions, Coach Suter applied fresh plaster over the cut which Seibels received in the Texas game.  The sight of the Sewanee men as they stood ready for the referee’s whistle was enough to create a wholesome respect for them.”

Despite Sewanee’s physical woes, the Tigers prevailed 12-0. On the exhausting trip, they had defeated five of the Deep South’s football powers by a combined score of 91-0. They returned to Sewanee the next day, conquering heroes and were treated as such.

They were feted by a parade, a bonfire, fireworks, cannon fire, a feast and more. Think about it: They had been gone only a week. They had won five great victories in six days. They had achieved something nobody had ever done before — or has done since. Or will in the future.

Nobody would ever be foolish enough to try.

The post ‘Unrivaled’: The Sewanee Tigers were a team for the ages appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Note: This analysis first published in Mississippi Today’s weekly legislative newsletter. Subscribe to our free newsletter for exclusive early access to weekly analyses.

Mississippi faces a critical teacher shortage due in part to lawmakers paying them less than any other state. Meanwhile, many of the teachers we do have don’t have the classroom resources — and sometimes even actual classrooms — they need to adequately teach their students.

Agencies that provide critical government services are hemorrhaging staff because state employee salaries have been so low for so long that staffers are entering the more lucrative private sector.

Businesses across the state struggle to attract and retain workers because the prospective workers often lack the specific education or skills necessary to do those jobs effectively.

Aging roads, closed bridges and broken water systems are disrupting the everyday lives of so many Mississippians. Police and ambulance services are reporting staff shortages that could jeopardize the ability to provide timely emergency attention. Hospital leaders are begging lawmakers to help keep them afloat as they continue struggling to weather the pandemic.

Mississippi’s house is not in order. Mississippians across the state are struggling. They’ve been struggling. But these realities appear to have escaped Republican leaders inside the Capitol.

Speaker of the House Philip Gunn is exerting every ounce of political capital he has to eliminate the Mississippi personal income tax, which accounts for about one-third of the state’s general fund revenue to fund basic government services like the ones listed above. In response, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann offered a shallower income tax cut, but one that many believe also threatens the state’s ability to fund basic public services.

“We have done everything,” Gunn said recently. “We have funded all of the government. We have excess money. Let’s give it back.”

READ MORE: Inside the income tax cut battle between House and Senate leaders

Mississippi currently has more money than it ever has. Revenue is currently soaring, thanks in large part to federal stimulus dollars that have poured into the state — both to individuals and to the state government. Many are calling this moment a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to address some systemic problems the state has long faced. Others are just calling it once in a lifetime.

Republican leaders aren’t walking onto the floor of the Beau Rivage, but they sure look poised to place the biggest bet of their lives. To sell their income tax cut proposals, they’re pointing to projections that are based solely on the best guesses of economists. Keep in mind, these projections are often very wrong because they are guesses. (This current fiscal year, revenue collections will likely be about $1 billion off last year’s “best guess.”)

The bet Republicans are making, in essence, is that Mississippians will spend the income tax money they’re “saving” them in other ways, and that other tax collections will rise. No state has ever fully phased out a personal income tax, so there’s true way to know if this bet will pay off.

If they’re right, the Mississippi state government will continue to be funded. If they’re wrong, government budgets will have to be slashed to balance the state budget and Mississippians will miss out on even more basic government services that they’re already not getting enough of.

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The prevailing question that everyone is asking as they watch how legislative leaders navigate the next few weeks: Can Mississippi really afford this tax cut?

Ask teachers, who have long been underappreciated and underpaid by lawmakers. Gunn and Hosemann are pushing their own versions of a pretty substantial pay raise for teachers that will cost the state about $200 million more per year. Education groups aren’t so sure the pay raises — not withstanding basic public education services — will be funded in perpetuity if this tax cut bet doesn’t pay off.

“If Mississippi has plenty of money, the Legislature has no excuse for not fully funding public schools and bringing teacher pay to the Southeastern average — before giving away any state funds,” wrote Nancy Loome of public education advocacy group The Parents’ Campaign. “If Mississippi does not have sufficient state funds to properly provide for our children and teachers, we certainly can’t afford a tax cut.”

Ask retirees, a majority of whom don’t currently pay income tax, what they think about having to pay a higher sales tax on many of the things they spend their money on. Ask advocates for lower-income Mississippians, who could likely pay more in taxes if the Gunn plan is adopted.

“The (tax cut proposal) is like putting lipstick on a pig. No matter how you dress it up or down, eliminating the income tax is bad for Mississippi, especially the state’s working families, communities of color, and retirees,” advocacy group One Voice wrote in January. “The state’s surplus is not enough to support much-needed investments in the public services that Mississippians want, like quality schools, affordable healthcare, solid infrastructure, safe neighborhoods, and affordable housing nor is it enough to support yet another tax cut that largely benefits the state’s wealthiest.”

Ask the leaders of Mississippi’s largest businesses, who continue to publicly maintain that cutting the income tax will not help them attract and retain a better workforce.

“The Mississippi tax environment was not high profile nor even discussed significantly as a priority,” said a report released by the Mississippi Economic Council last week. To compile that report, MEC held 51 town-hall style forums with business and community leaders across the state and from numerous sectors from July through September of 2021. The income tax issue didn’t even come up at any meeting until the end of August.

“There was the thought (eliminating the income tax) could drive other costs up and it could hurt the state budget and households,” the business council’s report said.

The Tax Foundation, a conservative think-tank, said that Mississippians paid $614 per capita for income taxes in 2020. That’s a nice chunk of change that no one would turn down. But considering so many government services aren’t already provided, what would that extra spending money really look like for Mississippians? Is it real relief?

For teachers, it could be some extra money to buy their students classroom supplies and teaching resources that aren’t covered by the state. For drivers, it could be a new set of tires that need replacing because the roads are in such bad shape. It could provide some relief for Mississippians who pay higher water bills as systems continue requiring costly repairs, or higher medical bills because understaffed hospitals will have to drive up costs.

For Mississippians looking for better jobs, it could be tuition money for the skills training that they can’t currently get in their county, or gas money to drive long distances to places where the jobs actually exist.

The income tax money that taxpayers would be “saved” would, in many cases, have to be spent plugging holes that lawmakers have left themselves — Mississippians forced to spend money they wouldn’t otherwise have to because lawmakers didn’t do their jobs well in the first place.

While Republican leaders continue to use best guesses to allay all these concerns, Mississippians may soon be forced to watch their big bet play out over the course of the next few years. And the stakes sure will be high.

The post The Mississippi Republican income tax bet appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Last year, Disability Rights Mississippi – a nonprofit organization that advocates for Mississippians with disabilities – started hearing about new problems at state-run psychiatric facilities. 

The facilities were dealing with staffing shortages similar to hospitals around Mississippi. And no matter how many colleagues they lost, staff who remained had to provide round-the-clock care to the same number of residents with serious mental illness or intellectual or developmental disabilities.

Like its counterparts in other states routinely do, the group requested records from the Mississippi Department of Mental Health to get a better understanding of what was going on inside these facilities. But the Department, arguing the organization was overreaching, blocked the effort – and now the two groups are duking it out in court.

Disability Rights Mississippi is the state’s “protection and advocacy (P&A) system,” charged by Congress with advocating for people with disabilities and investigating reports of abuse and neglect in programs that serve them. The group sent nearly identical letters to 10 mental and behavioral health facilities around the state, asking to see recent incident reports and to get them on a regular basis in the future. 

The goal, executive director Polly Tribble told Mississippi Today, was to identify patterns and understand what residents were experiencing. 

But DMH refused to turn over the reports. State lawyers claimed the group’s “boilerplate” letters didn’t demonstrate “sufficient probable cause” to justify a systemic investigation of the facilities. 

Adam Moore, the communications director for the Department, said he can’t discuss pending litigation. The attorney general’s office also declined to comment on an ongoing case. 

The lawyers for DMH argue the organization “simply hoped to embark on a fishing expedition” with its request for records. They say the letters, which didn’t mention the staffing shortage issue or describe the suspected neglect or abuse, didn’t justify access to the incident reports. 

But to DRMS and their counterparts in other states, the case is straightforward: federal law gives these organizations broad investigative and monitoring authority. Reviewing incident reports is part of that work. 

Why, Tribble asks, is DMH fighting to withhold the reports?

“It makes you wonder if they’re trying to hide something,” she said. 

The history of the P&A system begins with Fox News host Geraldo Rivera. 

Fifty years ago, Rivera was an investigative reporter for ABC News in New York. He took a camera to Willowbrook State School, a facility for people with developmental disabilities on Staten Island. The neglect and abuse he revealed there provoked widespread public outrage and led Congress to enact the laws creating P&A systems and tasking them with advocating for people with disabilities. 

In each state, staff at the P&A systems have the right to visit facilities caring for people with mental illness and talk with staff and patients. They try to become known as a resource for families, and as a place to go with concerns about potential abuse or neglect. 

Dave Boyer, managing attorney for community integration at the National Disability Rights Network, the D.C.-based umbrella group for the P&A systems, said they generally have broad latitude to get information about facilities.  

He estimated that between 150 and 200 court cases have challenged their access to records, information and site visits over the last 40 years. In all but about 10 of those, the court sided with the P&A system. 

“Overall, it’s very rare for a P&A to lose an access case,” he said. 

Staff from DRMS regularly visit Mississippi’s mental health facilities. Sometimes investigators discover problems themselves. 

Other times, they get calls from staff and family members.

A document filed in the lawsuit shows how this can work. On Nov. 10, DRMS notified the South Mississippi Regional Center in Long Beach that it was opening an investigation into the treatment of a resident, separate from its broader investigation at the center of the lawsuit.

“A contract employee stated that she had previously observed dried feces in the hair, in the ears, and on the cheeks of several residents when they were brought in for routine grooming,” the letter says. “She also noticed a ‘mold and mildew’ type substance on the scalp of the named individual.”

Three months later, the same contract employee saw the resident again. Her scalp had become “raw and infected.” 

“The contract employee informed the nurse that the shampoo being used was alcohol-based and was likely causing great pain… when applied to her broken scalp.” 

The resident is nonverbal. 

 An advocate visiting the facility also asked to see the area where residents receive grooming services and found it was “dirty” and “in subpar condition,” the letter said. DRMS asked for records and staff interviews to carry out its investigation. 

But not all of the reports DRMS receives focus on a single resident or incident. Tribble said last year, DRMS started getting reports of staffing shortages leading to neglect at DMH facilities.

DMH director Wendy Bailey has sounded the alarm on staffing shortages, too. In her December presentation to the legislative subcommittee allocating funds from the American Rescue Plan Act, she said staffing issues at state-run facilities and at the community mental health centers were affecting care. 

Some facilities, like the crisis stabilization units, could reduce the number of available beds to ensure adequate staffing. That’s not possible at the facilities serving people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. 

“For our IDD (intellectual and developmental disabilities) regional programs, you can’t decrease bed capacity,” she said. “That’s their home. We have to have the staff there to take care of the individuals 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with high needs.”

In an email to Mississippi Today, Moore said the agency had lost more than 1,000 employees since January 2020 – about a sixth of all employees at the time. 

“As of January 2022, there were 4,970 DMH employees at 11 program locations around the state, compared to 6,062 in January 2020,” he wrote. 

In August 2021, DRMS requested incident reports from the Mississippi State Hospital in Whitfield, near Jackson, which operates 311 hospital beds and a 276-bed nursing home. 

Reviewing all the incident reports at a facility could help DRMS identify patterns and problems, Tribble said. Maybe one staff member’s name would show up again and again. Maybe there would be more incidents during a particular shift. 

An attorney general’s office lawyer wrote to DRMS rejecting the request, arguing it was beyond DRMS’ authority and would be “unduly burdensome.’

In October, DRMS sent letters requesting incident reports from nine other facilities. The state’s attorney rejected those requests, too. 

“Unless DRMS’ request is narrowed to a complaint or sufficient probable cause justifying a request for incident reports, including but not limited to, a date the alleged incident occurred and an individual specified in its request, none of DMH’s programs will comply at this time,” wrote special assistant attorney general MaCall M. Chastain. 

In November, DRMS sued DMH, arguing federal law requires the agency to share the records. 

Boyer said the P&A systems in some states get incident reports regularly “just as a matter of course.”

Nancy Anderson, associate director of the Alabama Disability Advocacy Program, DRMS’ counterpart in Alabama, said her organization has done what DRMS attempted to do here: launch what they call a “systemic investigation” after receiving tips that pointed to a possible pattern of abuse or neglect.

“Based on triggering complaints, we use the systemic investigation to more broadly look at the patterns and practice of that facility to see what is going on,” she said.
Devon Orland, legal director at the Georgia Advocacy Organization, said her organization regularly obtains incident reports through records requests as part of their work to monitor facilities. Those reports are redacted, but if GAO staff notice something troubling, they request and receive an unredacted copy. 

If Orland hears about a series of issues at a facility, she will assert probable cause to open an investigation and make a broad request for records like incident reports. 

“Our access authority is very broad,” she said. “And there’s a reason for that: because history has demonstrated that people who are pushed away and out of society are really vulnerable to abuse and neglect … If we don’t have access, we can’t protect (them).”

One of the major arguments the state has presented is that DRMS has failed to show it has “probable cause” to broadly investigate abuse and neglect in state-run facilities. 

In a filing on Feb. 8, DMH said the letters sent to the 10 facilities did not contain any specifics to support the records being released. 

In other cases, where DRMS has provided more detailed information about why it is seeking records tied to a specific instance of suspected abuse and neglect, DMH has shared it, lawyers for the agency maintained. They cited the Nov. 10 letter in which DRMS described the conditions at South Mississippi Regional Center as an example of a viable probable cause claim.

But Tribble and other P&A staff around the country say courts have said P&A systems generally get to determine whether they have probable cause to investigate. 

“We’re kind of the judge in this,” Boyer said. 

In January, U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves invited the U.S. Department of Justice to weigh in by March 14. 

In an email, a Justice Department spokesperson told Mississippi Today the department is aware of Reeves’ invitation but can’t comment further.

DMH has been fighting the Justice Department in another case in Reeves’ courtroom for nearly six years. In 2021, Reeves ordered the appointment of a monitor to evaluate DMH’s progress in providing more services at the community level, instead of institutionalizing people at state-run hospitals. 

The Attorney General is appealing Reeves’ order to the 5th Circuit. It argues the state has already expanded community services and that Reeves has installed “perpetual federal oversight” of the system. 

To mental health advocates in Mississippi, the two court battles suggest DMH isn’t interested in having anyone look too closely at its work.

“We all speak about transparency,” Tribble said. “Well, this is a time when they can be transparent, and they have chosen to fight it.”

The post ‘They have chosen to fight it’: Mental health agency withholds records appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann joined Mississippi Today editor-in-chief Adam Ganucheau to discuss his priorities for spending hundreds of millions in federal stimulus dollars. They also discussed the dueling House and Senate income tax cut proposals. 

Listen to more episodes of The Other Side here.

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