Mississippi Today’s Bobby Harrison and Geoff Pender talk with Rep. Chris Bell, D-Jackson, about the myriad of issues facing the 2022 legislative session, ranging from taxes, to teacher pay to medical marijuana and others. Bell also stressed the need to address issues facing the city of Jackson to help the state as a whole progress.
In this episode of Mississippi Stories, Mississippi Today Editor At Large Marshall Ramsey sits down with Dr. Jeannine Herron, neuropsychologist, reading expert and widow of Civil Rights photojournalist Matt Herron.
Thanks to a connection between the Mississippi Museum of Art and the Barksdale Reading Institute, pre-school children in Jackson will be experiencing an innovative approach to reading and writing this semester because of an acquisition of civil rights photographs by MMA. MMA recently acquired 80 vintage photographs of the Civil Rights Movement taken by renowned photojournalist Matt Herron, mostly of events in Mississippi that occurred in 1963 -65. He died in 2020 and left a legacy of historic photos behind. This acquisition will give MMA the distinction of having the largest museum collection of vintage Herron photographs in the country.
The connection to the Barksdale Institute is Dr. Jeannine Herron, Herron’s wife, who is a neuropsychologist who came to Jackson in 1963 to honor Medgar Evers’ life by joining hundreds of grieving citizens who walked down Lynch Street after his murder. She also started the first Head Start program in the country in Mississippi. Herron and Ramsey discuss the photographs, her time in Mississippi, the importance of reading, the program in Jackson and how a child learns to read.
A day after the massive tax cut bill championed by Republican Speaker Philip Gunn passed the House, a member of his leadership team took bold action.
Normally the mindset after the passage of such landmark legislation would be to leave good enough alone and send the proposal to the other side of the Mississippi Capitol for Senate consideration.
Instead, House Ways and Means Chair Trey Lamar, R-Senatobia, asked that the vote on the bill be reconsidered. What’s the deal? The speaker and his team won a big victory. Why would they want to call the bill up for further consideration, giving people who voted for it the day before an opportunity to change their mind and vote against it?
“I have some good news,” Lamar told the members. He said after further study it was determined that the state could afford to reduce the tax on car tags by 50% instead of the 35% in the original bill.
When the bill was first considered in the 122-member House, 12 members (all Democrats) voted against the proposal. On the second consideration after the good news about the car tags was added to the bill, only four members (all Democrats) voted no.
“It is hard to vote against the car tag reduction,” said Rep. Bryant Clark, D-Pickens, who voted for the proposal both times but has opposed past tax cut efforts offered by Republicans.
“In Washington County, the biggest complaint we get is on the costs of car tags,” said Rep. John Hines, D-Greenville, another Democrat who voted for the proposal twice, though he has opposed past tax cut plans.
The cold hard truth is that legislative Republicans can pass tax cuts (requiring a 60% supermajority) without the help of Democrats. But some wondered after the vote on the tax cut last week why the Democrats did not at least put up a fight.
In the past Democrats have opposed efforts to phase out the income tax as Gunn’s proposal would do because it also increased the sales tax. The sales tax is generally viewed as a regressive tax that places more of a burden on the poor.
The proposal put forth this year by Gunn increases the sales tax on retail items from 7% to 8.5%, making it more palatable to many Democrats than the proposal he unsuccessfully offered last year that increased the sales taxes to 9.5%. Both this year and last year, Gunn’s proposal also has included the popular-among-Democrats proposal to reduce the sales tax on groceries. This year’s proposal reduces the sales tax on groceries from 7% to ultimately 4%.
But the big change this year that caught the attention of Democrats is the reduction in the car tag tax, which is notoriously high in Mississippi.
The other major objection to tax cuts has been that the state has too many needs to be reducing taxes.
That argument might carry less weight with legislators as the state maintains a potential surplus of more than $2 billion because of unprecedented revenue growth for the past fiscal year of 15.9%, followed by anticipated double-digit growth for the current year.
The growth is not unique to Mississippi. Most states are experiencing strong revenue growth thanks to an unprecedented infusion of federal funds into states to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, strong wage growth by workers and inflation. Because of inflation, people are paying more for products, resulting in higher sales taxes being collected by the state.
“Before lawmakers commit to expanding public programs, raising salaries, cutting taxes, or other new costs, they should consider the long-term implications of these decisions,” the well-respected Pew Charitable Trust pointed out in a recent release. “State coffers may be full now, but this will not always be the case — and states face a wide range of challenges including rising costs, narrowing revenue streams, and emerging risks from issues like advanced technologies and aging populations “
Of course, Mississippi still has issues like underfunded schools, a lack of health care access and low pay for state employees. Many believe the state Legislature should be doing more to financially shore up the Public Employees Retirement System, which is legally committed to providing pension benefits to state employees, teachers and local governmental employees.
Despite those needs and thanks to that revenue surplus, Gunn, Gov. Tate Reeves and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann all have voiced support for tax cuts of varying degrees.
Perhaps as legislators ponder those tax cut proposals, they will consider the impact such action will have on the ability of the state to meet its long-term needs.
But if they still go forward with tax cuts, it is difficult to envision part of the package not being a reduction in the cost of car tags.
A school nurse told students and families on Tuesday there were so many cases of COVID-19 in the school it was “almost impossible to contact trace” and for all seventh through 12th graders to assume they’d been exposed as a result.
The situation at West Lincoln Attendance Center in Brookhaven, where there is not a mask mandate – and its quick transition to a hybrid model of instruction following the holiday break – is not unique.
Schools are battling staffing and substitute teacher shortages, closures and a large number of student absences as teachers and administrators attempt to kick off the spring semester.
Omicron, the dominant and extremely contagious strain of the coronavirus, is making its way across the state, and schools are not spared. The state saw a record-high number of new cases on Thursday with over 8,000 Mississippians testing positive in a single day.
The Department of Health reported 1,541 teachers and staff who had tested positive across 633 schools for the week of Jan. 3-7, the highest number of positive staff reported at any point in the pandemic.
On top of logistical and health challenges, school leaders are also dealing with students and families’ COVID-19 fatigue. Oxford School District Superintendent told his school board last week he wasn’t sure the community “would stomach another mask mandate.” A board member made a motion to require masks anyway, but other board members did not support it.
On Thursday, the district announced it would be closed on Friday and extend the observance of the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.
“Today, we have a total of 107 staff members out and 58 of those are classroom teachers,” a memo sent to parents and students stated. “… WIth so many employees out, it is difficult to provide the quality of instruction our students are accustomed.”
Roberson and another district-level administrator had been acting as elementary school principals earlier in the week after four administrators tested positive for COVID-19, the district’s public relations official told Mississippi Today.
The Yazoo County School District delayed its in-person start date an additional two days after more than 10 faculty and staff members were either quarantined or sick with the virus, said Superintendent Ken Barron.
All students and staff returned to campus this week, and each school has seen hundreds of absent students in the first three days of school.
Barron, along with many other school leaders, emphasize they’re doing everything they can to keep kids in school, including the mask mandate that has been in place since the beginning of the school year.
“As long as we have enough adults up here to hold school, we will be here,” he said.
Teachers and staff who got vaccinated by the end of last year were eligible for a financial incentive, which Barron said has helped reduce infection and quarantine numbers in that group. The district has also continued to require masks all year.
“We are trying everything we can to stay open,” he said.
Nearly 7,000 students in Vicksburg Warren School District on Friday began a five-day, district-wide quarantine, according to a press release. Schools and offices will be closed until Wednesday of next week.
School officials did not provide current case and quarantine numbers for the district, but public relations official Christi Kilroy said the “numbers were climbing rapidly this week.”
“The safety of our students and staff is always on our minds and, with numbers rising quickly, the board felt it best to do a shutdown,” she said in an email. “With so many out, we were also having difficulty covering staff needs to keep schools and offices open.”
In the DeSoto County School District, where masks are not mandatory, Superintendent Cory Uselton said the district’s biggest challenge right now is staffing issues. Despite increasing substitute teacher pay this year, they have still had to utilize teacher’s assistants as substitutes and some teachers have had to forego their planning periods to cover a colleague’s class.
A few classrooms across the district are currently quarantining, following the Department of Health’s guidance that a classroom should isolate if three students test positive, but Uselton said at this time there have not been enough clusters to necessitate switching an entire school to remote learning.
He said all teachers have been told to be prepared to pivot to virtual learning within 24 hours notice, and said that while this surge has been tough on both teachers and students, he is proud of the work teachers are doing to continue educating despite the circumstances.
Sen. Kevin Blackwell recited Bob Dylan’s “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” — “everybody must get stoned” — and passed out various sized hemp samples before the Senate on Thursday passed a long-debated Mississippi medical marijuana program.
The vote on Senate Bill 2095 was initially counted as 45-5, well beyond what would be considered a veto-proof majority, but subject to change as it was by use of morning roll call and senators could change their votes or check in through the end of the day.
The measure was held on a technical motion, but is expected to move to the House on Monday. Its passage is expected to be a heavier lift there, but Rep. Lee Yancey — who has worked with Blackwell for months on the legislation, said he’s confident it will pass, if not by a veto-proof two-thirds majority. On Thursday several House members, including Yancey, stood on the Senate floor or gallery during the debate.
“He’s just handed me the football,” Yancey said after he congratulated Blackwell.
Gov. Tate Reeves threatened a veto of an earlier version of the legislation, saying it allowed patients too much marijuana and would be a toehold for recreational use. The bill the Senate passed had been tweaked, lowering the amount from 4 ounces a month to 3.5 ounces, but that would still appear to be far more than Reeves wanted, and the daily dosage unit in the bill was left the same, 3.5 grams, which Reeves said would amount to 11 joints a day.
Blackwell, a Republican from Southaven, passed out a 1.5-gram hemp cigarette, a 3.5-gram packet of hemp, and a 1-ounce package. He noted that it was recently said on a radio program that an ounce was the size of a loaf of bread.
“I don’t know where they get their bread,” Blackwell said, as some lawmakers passed around the samples while others declined.
Blackwell gave a brief history lesson on how cannabis has been used as medicine for centuries and is now legal in 35 other states then spent the next two hours successfully fending off amendments to the bill. One, he said, was a killing amendment offered by Sen. Angela Burks Hill, R-Picayune. It was a “strike all” that would have rewritten the entire bill to prohibit patients smoking marijuana, required pharmacists to distribute it and limited production to four place statewide.
Hill said she was trying to ensure the state had a conservative medical marijuana program that wouldn’t morph into recreational use as has happened in many other states.
“You don’t smoke medicine,” she said.
Other offered amendments included one from Sen. Barbara Blackmon, D-Canton, to allow outdoor growing of medical marijuana “and let Mississippi farmers take advantage of this new cash crop.”
Blackwell countered that regulation of the product “from seed to sale” would be difficult and having lots of outdoor farms would open the program to the black market and organized crime, as has happened in other states.
“We are not Oklahoma, and this program is not going to be Oklahoma 2.0,” Blackwell said.
He assured senators that he and others have done much work over months to ensure the program would be medical, not recreational or expanding the black market, and well regulated.
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann recently called it the most scrutinized legislation in recent history and said Thursday, “It’s been well vetted, including again here today on the Senate floor.” Hosemann said he has not talked with Reeves about the bill and does not know if he’s still considering a veto. Other House and Senate leaders said the same Thursday.
“I think he has been briefed on the bill,” Hosemann said.
Lawmakers are attempting to reenact a medical marijuana program after voters overwhelmingly passed one in 2020, only to have it shot down on a technicality by the state Supreme Court. But the Legislature in this conservative state has struggled for years with the issue, despite growing voter sentiment — and even a citizen-passed ballot initiative — that the state join most others in legalizing marijuana for medical use.
Advocates of medical marijuana, including many who pushed for passage of Initiative 65, watched the Senate vote from the gallery and were in a celebratory mood after.
Bethany Hill, president of We Are the 74 — a group named for the 74% of voters who chose Initiative 65 over another option in 2020 — said she’s confident the measure will pass the House and that Reeves will withhold his veto stamp.
Hill said she was pleased to see Blackwell hand out samples showing various weights and measures of hemp.
“The governor’s colorful description of cannabis has kind of scared people,” Hill said. “You can’t get 11 joints out of 3.5 grams … If he vetoes it at this point, that’s insane. I think he’s kind of backed off.”
Blackwell on Thursday told lawmakers that the state’s medical marijuana program, if passed into law, will require ongoing monitoring and likely future legislative tweaks but “It will be one of the better bills throughout the nation.”
At the end of his time presenting the legislation to the Senate, Blackwell said: “We talked about a lot of things up here today, but one thing we didn’t talk a lot about was the people that we are doing this for. There are a lot of sick folks out there that this is going to help, and there are a lot of people that have been waiting a long time.”
After the vote, Blackwell had to return to the mic to ask, “that the samples that I sent out please be returned to us.”
One fact I’ve learned over the decades: If there’s a huge football game or event – anywhere – there’s a Mississippian, usually several, somehow involved.
Rick Cleveland
It was true in the National Championship game Monday night, when Horn Lake native Nakobe Dean terrorized Alabama’s defense and Gulfport native Matt Luke’s offensive line took over the game in the fourth quarter of Georgia’s 33-18 victory. There was also Georgia quarterback Stetson Bennett, who resurrected his career at Jones College in Ellisville, making the key passes on plays called by former Southern Miss head coach Todd Monken.
And it was true also earlier this week when 2022 the class of the College Football Hall of Fame was announced and three men with strong Mississippi ties – Dennis Thomas, Sylvester Croom and the late Billy “Spook” Murphy – all made the grade. Thomas, of Heidelberg, played and coached at Alcorn State. Croom, an Alabama native, famously became the SEC’s first Black head coach at Mississippi State. Murphy, who grew up in Arkansas, was a two-time All-SEC tailback at Mississippi State before becoming a legendary coach at then-Memphis State.
Thomas and Croom made the Hall of Fame as players, Murphy as a coach. Thomas just might be the most interesting story of all.
In 1973, Dennis Thomas, an Alcorn center, beat out Walter Payton for SWAC Offensive Player of the Year.
Thomas, an offensive lineman, was two times an All American at Alcorn. And, get this: In 1973, the legendary Walter Payton’s spectacular junior season at Jackson State, Thomas, not Payton, was named the SWAC’s Offensive Player of the Year. That season, Payton rushed for 1,139 yards, scored 24 touchdowns, kicked two field goals and 13 extra points. Thomas, a center, just blocked. Clearly, he must have knocked people over like bowling pins. After all, Jackie Slater, who blocked for Payton, went on to become a Pro Football Hall of Famer, considered one of the greatest offensive linemen in his history of the sport.
And you may ask, how in the world is that possible? A center beat out one of college football’s all-time legends for Player of the Year.
Says Thomas, who now lives near Tampa, Fla., “Walter and I were arch-rivals but also friends. After he went to Chicago and went on to become a big star in the NFL, he used to kid me about me winning that award over him. I told him, I said, ‘Walter, as well as you could run, I could block. If you’d have had me blocking for you, you would have rushed for 2,000 yards.’ We both got a big laugh out of that.”
Thomas played high school ball at Southside High in Heidelberg in Jasper County, where he was coached by Archie “The Gunslinger” Cooley. James Brooks recruited Thomas to Alcorn, where he played for another College Football Hall of Famer, Marino Casem. At Alcorn, Thomas’ position coach was none other than Jack “The Ripper” Spinks, the first Black player from Mississippi to play in the NFL.
We’re getting deep into Mississippi football history here, much of it previously unwritten.
“Jack Spinks was the ultimate tactician as far as playing offensive line,” Thomas says. “He knew every technique. What’s more, he was a great man. You know, he was part of every championship Coach Casem won at Alcorn.”
Cooley also coached Thomas at Alcorn, before going on to fame as head coach at Mississippi Valley State where he coached Jerry Rice and Willie Totten and rewrote the NCAA offensive record books. On Nov. 4, 1984, a Sunday, Alcorn and Mississippi Valley State, both undefeated, played what has become known as “The Game of the Century” before the largest crowd in history of Veterans Memorial Stadium. It was Marino “The Godfather” Casem coaching against Archie “The Gunslinger” Cooley. Coaching defense for Alcorn was none other than Dennis Thomas. Valley was averaging nearly 60 points per game. Alcorn usually won with defense. It really was a classic matchup.
Dennis Thomas, today.
“We studied Valley’s offense and all the personnel groupings they used,” Thomas said. “Lots of times, we could tell by how they lined up, and who was in the game at the time, what plays they were going to run.”
Alcorn defeated Valley 42-28, using a defensive scheme devised by Thomas and Casem.
Surely, Thomas’ extensive research of Valley’s formations and personnel groupings helped. So did cornerback Isaac Holt’s smothering defense of Rice. Holt had his hands on Rice on virtually every play.
Said Holt, after the game, “Coach Casem told me the officials can’t call holding on every play.”
And they didn’t. It remains one of the great days in Mississippi football history.
Thomas went on to become head coach at South Carolina State and then athletic director at Hampton University, before becoming the commissioner of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) from 2002 until last December.
Croom and Murphy made football history in different ways: Croom as a two-time All American at Alabama and then as a head coach at Mississippi State, and Murphy, as the coach who built a rock-solid football program at Memphis.
Before that, Murphy was the tailback in the single-wing offense of coach Allyn McKeen, when McKeen’s Bulldogs were a SEC powerhouse. In fact, McKeen gave Murphy his famous nickname “Spook.” McKeen called Billy Jack Murphy a “speed spook.” That was shortened to Spook – and it stuck.
And perhaps that’s enough Mississippi football history for one day.
The Hinds County District Attorneys Office is asking a grand jury to consider new information gathered during its investigation into Nancy and Zach New, figures in Mississippi’s welfare scandal.
The state has also asked Hinds County Circuit Court Judge Faye Peterson to postpone the New case, which is set for trial on Feb. 7, to give the grand jury enough time to convene. The recent motion suggests the state expects a grand jury to hand down new criminal indictments against the News, which will likely have many parallels to the first.
Meanwhile, attorneys for the News wrote a scathing 12-page motion accusing State Auditor Shad White, who originally investigated the case, of attempting to try their case in the media.
“Auditor White’s statements went beyond the information contained in the indictments and instead amounted to character attacks and assurances that those charged were indeed guilty,” the attorneys wrote. “White’s emphasis on ‘influential people,’ ‘politically connected’ persons, and allegations of stealing from the poor for personal gain gave the story special pique and media saturation across Mississippi.”
Attorneys for another defendant in the scheme, former welfare director John Davis, made similar arguments in his case recently.
The News’ motion asks the court to suppress White from speaking to the media — even though there is already a gag order in the case — and also asks the judge to move the trial, known as a change of venue, “due to the relentless actions taken by the State Auditor to poison the jury pool.”
The auditor’s office declined to comment for this story.
A Hinds County grand jury first accused the News in 2020 of each defrauding the state and embezzling over $4 million in federal dollars their nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center received from Mississippi Department of Human Services. A year later, a grand jury combined their charges into one case.
The News are also facing separate federal charges related to public school funds they allegedly bilked from the government for their private schools. Most recently, U.S. District Court Judge Judge Carlton Reeves set trial in that case for May 9.
The state criminal charges address just a fraction of a sprawling alleged scheme that resulted in $70 million wasted or misspent, according to auditors. Though the money was supposed to help the poor and prevent poverty, much of it enriched the friends and families of powerful officials.
In October, a forensic audit revealed new details about the state’s welfare spending, but because the News did not cooperate with the audit, the accountants could not parse out exactly what happened to $40 million the New nonprofit spent. The public still doesn’t know where millions went.
“The State of Mississippi has conducted a through (sic) investigation of the financial and corporate records of the Defendant Nancy New, her Co-Defendant, Zachary New, as well the various corporations in which those defendants hold either ownership or directorship interests or positions in,” the state’s latest motion reads. “…additional involvement of a Hinds County Grand Jury is necessary to address specific instances of potential criminal conduct … which may result in a superceding (sic) indictment.”
What makes the New case so complicated is the manner in which they kept their books. The News had several bank accounts for each of the family’s ventures — from Mississippi Community Education Center to New Learning Resources, most well known as New Summit School, to New Learning Resources Online to Spectrum Academy and private LLCs, such as 204 Key or Avalon Holdings, which shared a $6 million commercial loan with NLR, documents show. The nonprofit MCEC was the one receiving the welfare funds, but in their accounting, fund sources were co-mingled. Over the last two years, welfare agency officials and the auditor’s office have expressed their difficulty following the money.
“This has become a numbers case,” Nancy New told reporters in November of 2020, before a judge issued the first gag order.
Prosecutors allege the News took welfare money from their nonprofit to make personal investments of over $2 million into a biomedical startup that was trying to develop a new drug to prevent the damaging effects of concussions. The companies, Prevacus and PreSolMD, were started by Florida scientist Jake Vanlandingham. Brett Favre had endorsed and invested in the companies. The former NFL quarterback even hosted meetings at his house with welfare officials and the scientist, during which they came up with the deal.
Vanlandingham promised the News a 2% share “and getting paid regularly,” and Zach New told Vanlandingham to put the stock in the name of N3 LLC, public records show. Vanlandingham told Mississippi Today in 2020 that while he knew the nonprofit was associated with a public grant, he had no idea their money came from the federal welfare program.
