A federal judge has approved a $626 million settlement in a lawsuit filed against the state of Michigan, the city of Flint and others on behalf of thousands of children affected by the Flint water crisis.
The same lead attorney in the Michigan case recently helped file two federal lawsuits claiming hundreds of children in Mississippi’s capital city of Jackson have also been harmed by dangerous levels of lead and lack of access to clean drinking water.
Corey Stern, one of the architects of the Michigan settlement, said in a statement that it’s the largest such settlement in Michigan history, representing more than 4,000 children. He recently said that Flint was the “canary in the coal mine” for other water crises including in Jackson.
“This settlement would not have been possible without the children and families of Flint relentlessly taking a stand against those who failed to keep them safe,” Stern said in a statement Wednesday. “… Although this is a significant victory for Flint, we have a ways to go in stopping Americans from being systematically poisoned in their own homes, schools and place of work. The big banks that financed Flint’s water supply switch in 2014, and the water engineering companies that failed to ensure the switch was safe still have not been held accountable …
“And similar cycles of environmental injustice are playing out in Benton Harbor where yet another Michigan city has denied predominantly Black and brown communities their rights to clean drinking water, and in Jackson, Mississippi, where I recently filed a lawsuit on behalf of 600 children who have also been exposed to lead in city-provided water.”
The Mississippi lawsuits claim that children were exposed to dangerous levels of lead for years and that numerous Jackson and state officials attempted to cover it up.
The lawsuits allege that the city learned of its lead problem within its water well system in 2013 and was warned again in 2014 but instead of addressing the problem, the city attempted a quick fix that made it worse.
The litigation was filed against the city of Jackson, the state Department of Health, Trilogy Engineering Services and other current and former city and state officials including Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba.
Jackson’s water system is crumbling after years of neglected maintenance and upgrades. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has said the system poses “imminent and substantial” danger to consumers.
Whether it’s tracking the bright pink eggs of invasive snails, hunting feral hogs, upgrading airport facilities, barricading against Gulf waves, or training estheticians, Mississippi leaders are continuing to leverage funds from the 2010 BP oil spill towards a wide-ranging and long-lasting restoration effort.
On Tuesday the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality presented to Coast stakeholders about those projects and dozens of others during the agency’s annual Restoration Summit, which updates the public on how the state is spending the roughly $2 billion provided to it after the 2010 disaster.
After last year’s 10th anniversary of the destructive oil spill, Mississippi Today reported that the state had remained in the early stages of addressing ecological priorities, while completing several expensive non-environmental projects. Local stakeholders also criticized the state for not having a cohesive plan for spending the funds.
Since 2016, the state has spent just over $200 million for more than 90 projects that address either an ecological or economic need on the Coast, according to data from MDEQ. In total, the state has budgeted about $580 million in completed or ongoing projects; Mississippi will continue to receive the rest of the $2 billion over the next decade.
Over the last two years, the state has prioritized spending towards restoring its shoreline and coastal habitat; that includes nearly $11 million that went to the Hancock County Living Shoreline, helping to fund a new 46-acre marsh completed this summer. In total, the state has spent $40 million on that project, by far the most expensive one so far.
Several million in recent spending has also gone towards acquiring and managing property to conserve habitat and improve downstream water quality, such as the more than $5 million for land along the Pascagoula River.
Non-environmental spending in the last couple years includes $7 million on a road in Jackson County to reduce traffic along I-10, and $3.6 million that went towards completing the Mississippi Aquarium.
As for total spending so far, about $127 million, or 63%, has gone towards environmental projects versus non-environmental projects. Yet non-environmental projects still comprise about 70% of completed project spending.
As MDEQ Director Chris Wells told Mississippi Today last year, much of the scientific work is not visible and takes years of research, creating a frustrating contrast with the conspicuous economic and infrastructure projects.
During Tuesday’s event, Wells showed a video with testimonials of those impacted by BP spending, including graduates from a work-ready program, oyster gardeners, and a land manager tracking down the invasive apple snail.
Also on Tuesday, Gov. Tate Reeves announced 16 new projects totaling $62 million funded through the RESTORE Act, which were recommended to him by his Gulf Coast Advisory Committee.
Below is a list of those, as well as an updated table of current and completed projects listed on MDEQ’s restoration site:
RESTORE Act Direct Component (aka Bucket 1) Funding:
Water Quality Improvement Program ($1.1 million) — implementation of new, repaired, or upgraded stormwater and wastewater systems including septic to sewer conversions.
Mississippi Coast Coliseum and Convention Center ($1.54 million) — funding for design, permitting, construction, and installation of parking lot and outer concourse safety and security features. A continuation of previously-funded improvements.
Commercial Proving Grounds for Space to Sea Floor Environmental Monitoring ($1.65 million) — development of airborne and waterborne unmanned systems to test and calibrate new systems from private, educational, governmental, and military entities.
City of Moss Point I-10 Commercial Corridor Improvements ($2.2 million) — improve access, connectivity, and safety of the Moss Point Interstate Commerce District to enhance the city’s economy and quality of life.
Hancock County Tech Park at Stennis Airport ($2.2 million) — construct a building to house the Department of the Army’s Joint Airborne Lidar Bathymetry Technical Center of Expertise (JALBTCX), which has outgrown its existing incubator space.
Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport Site Expansion and Facility Relocation ($3.19 million) — expand the airport’s 241-acre runway-adjacent Project Ready site to attract industrial aerospace investment. Also, demolish the antiquated vehicle fleet maintenance facility and build a new facility adjacent to the airport’s maintenance building.
Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport Project Ready Site Mitigation and Prep ($4.18 million) — funding for the mitigating, clearing, and grubbing of an economic development site at the airport.
Broadwater Marina Restoration Project ($5.5 million) — funding to return to public use 30 acres of state-owned lands that includes future tourism and economic development potential.
Hancock County Fairgrounds Revitalization/Hancock County Multipurpose Arena ($6.05 million) — upgrades and improvements to the 80-acre fairgrounds and multipurpose arena including facilities and infrastructure to foster economic growth.
Washington Street Avenue Gateway (Jackson County — $6.6 million) — construct pedestrian-friendly features including sidewalks, crosswalks, landscape the median, and install mast arm signals for safety for Washington Avenue in Ocean Springs.
Accelerate Mississippi Public/Private Workforce Training Partnership ($2.2 million) — develop and foster workforce development through Accelerate Mississippi in the three coastal counties.
Coastal Habitat Management Fund ($3.3 million) — provide funding for management plans and management on existing and newly-acquired coastal preserves tracts.
Beachfront Resilience ($4.95 million) — additional funding for enhancing and repairing Highway 90 boardwalks and sidewalks along with dune plantings and fencing to address sand migration onto Highway 90.
Gulf Coast Center of Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) Fusion ($5.5 million) — project will focus on developing an Information Technology (IT) workforce for economic expansion, innovation, and societal growth.
Improvement of wastewater quality and solid waste disposal from Shrimp Processing industry ($5.5 million) — funding for improvements to wastewater treatment and solid waste disposal from the shrimp processing industry.
City of D’Iberville working waterfront and commercial seafood harbor ($6.6 million) — a project to build a mixed-use working waterfront and seafood harbor in D’Iberville.
A federal judge has rejected former President Donald Trump’s effort to block Jan. 6 investigators from accessing hundreds of pages of White House records related to the riot at the U.S. Capitol, determining that the former president has no authority to overrule President Joe Biden’s decision to waive executive privilege and release the materials to Congress.
“Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President,” Judge Tanya Chutkan wrote in her 39-page ruling.
Trump immediately appealed the decision, but the National Archives, which houses Trump’s White House records, is still planning on turning over a number of documents on Friday unless a court intervenes. These documents include White House call logs, video logs and schedules related to the Jan. 6 riot and three pages of handwritten notes from Mark Meadows, who was Trump’s chief of staff at the time.
Chutkan’s ruling is a major victory for the Jan. 6 committee in the House, which is led by Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson. The record will help the committee in its pursuit of more records or information from people who have been subpoenaed but haven’t testified in front of the committee. The House committee has subpoenaed multiple people close to former President Donald Trump, and added ten former administration officials to the list on Tuesday.
Committee investigators are hopeful the White House records will provide insight into Trump’s months-long and ongoing campaign to portray the 2020 election as rigged, as well as his efforts to use the power of his administration to aid his attempt to overturn the election.
Thompson, the chairman of the House select committee, has said the committee is open to subpoenaing former President Donald Trump “if the evidence” leads them there.
Thompson called the ruling a “big deal” as he learned of it live on CNN’s “Cuomo Prime Time” program. Thompson said that he looks forward to investigators “going through (the documents) with a fine-tooth comb to make sure that our government was not weaponized against its citizens.”
In her ruling, Chutkin declined a request to look at Trump’s records document by document and wrote that the incumbent president is the person in the best position to protect the interests of the executive branch. She also noted that though the committee has made sweeping requests for requests, it does “not exceed” its legislative power.
“The court holds that the public interest lies in permitting — not enjoining — the combined will of the legislative and executive branches to study the events that led to and occurred on January 6, and to consider legislation to prevent such events from ever occurring again,” Chutkan wrote.
Thomson told Chris Cuomo in the Tuesday night interview that the former president should stop trying to block the release of White House records through court challenges.
“We are a nation of laws,” Thompson said. “So if you take your issue to court, and lose, then you need to man up, and deal with it and not be a spoiled brat.”
The 14-member Legislative Budget Committee, with Gov. Tate Reeves breaking tradition and not attending, adopted a revenue estimate Wednesday for the coming fiscal year of $6.49 billion — a $566 million increase over the projection used to develop the budget for the current fiscal year.
State law requires the governor and budget committee to agree on a revenue estimate to begin the task of developing a budget for the new fiscal year, which begins July 1, 2022.
In the past, with few exceptions, the governor and budget committee have met jointly to adopt the revenue estimate in November before the start of the next legislative session in January. But Reeves, who has been at odds with the legislative leadership over his refusal to call a special session to approve a medical marijuana program as supported by voters in 2020, opted to send a letter and a representative to Wednesday’s meeting.
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who is presiding over the committee this year, read the governor’s letter that said he concurred with the revenue estimate recommended by a panel of state’s financial experts. Members of the budget committee then approved the estimate provided by the group of financial experts, which includes State Economist Corey Miller.
Speaking of the strong state tax collections, House Speaker Philip Gunn said, “We have an opportunity — an opportunity to give money back to the taxpayers. If ever conditions were right to do that, it is now.”
Both Gunn and Reeves have offered separate proposals to phase out the state’s tax on personal income, which accounts for about one-third of general fund revenue. Gunn’s proposal also has included increases in other taxes, such as on retail items, to offset the loss revenue. Reeves has not proposed any additional revenue to make up for the cut in the income tax.
When asked Wednesday if the Legislature is still planning on providing a salary increase for teachers, the speaker said, “Absolutely.”
Brenda Scott, chair of the Mississippi Alliance of State Employees, said that state employees also are in need of a pay raise, especially considering the issues they have faced during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We have lost the lives of state employees with COVID-19,” she said. “State employees feel so unappreciated. A state employee appreciation day will not fix that.”
Before adopting the revenue estimate, which will be used to craft a budget proposal, Miller told the legislators that the large influx in federal money provided to battle COVID-19 is helping to drive the Mississippi economy and the surge in tax collections. The state, like the federal government, is poised to see economic growth, though the state is projected to return to its pre-COVID levels of employment much later than the nation as a whole.
The state, like the nation, is seeing a significant increase in wages, driven in part by a shortage of workers accelerating supply chain issues and giving rise to inflation. He said the state wages are projected to grow by 4.7% during the current calendar year.
“The projected growth in personal income, if realized, will mark the largest annual increase since 1981,” Miller told the legislative committee members.
He said the supply chain issues and inflation increases are not expected to subside until 2022.
Miller added many people who lost their jobs during the pandemic have opted not to return to the workforce. Some decided to retire early and some are looking for jobs other than the employment they had pre-pandemic. He said the search for new jobs is particularly true for people employed in the service sector.
With the adoption of the revenue estimate, the next steps in the state budgeting process are for Reeves to release his proposal prior to Nov. 15, and for the budget committee to release its recommendation on Dec. 7.
Then, the full Legislature will begin work in January to craft a general fund budget funding education, health care, law enforcement and other aspects of state government for the new fiscal year beginning July 1.
State Rep. Robert Johnson, D-Natchez, the House minority leader and member of the Legislative Black Caucus, said Democrats and Black Caucus members would be developing plans on how to use the massive amount of federal money the state is receiving at the same time revenue collections are surging.
“We have people who need help,” Johnson said last week on Mississippi Today’s “The Other Side” podcast.
Baseball is over (except for Atlanta Braves fans still celebrating), but high school football playoffs, college football’s crunch time, the yo-yo New Orleans Saints all have our attention. What’s more, the college basketball regular season tips off in the Magnolia State this week. There’s something for everyone, including ESPN GameDay coming to Oxford, Jackson State at 8-1 and Ole Miss, State and Southern Miss all facing Top 20 foes.
BILOXI — Gov. Tate Reeves told reporters during a Tuesday press conference he has no immediate plans to call lawmakers to Jackson for a special session.
That means Mississippi is no closer to having a medical marijuana program or funding an incentive program that keeps nurses and health care workers from leaving their hospitals jobs at alarming rates.
Without a special session, lawmakers won’t meet until the regular session begins on Jan. 4. Nurses and hospital leaders have told Mississippi Today for the last two months they cannot wait that long.
Hospitals are anticipating the nursing and health care worker shortage to grow worse this winter, leaving hospitals statewide to close hundreds of more beds that should be open to patients. In a letter sent to Reeves on Nov. 5, chief nursing officers at 36 hospitals across Mississippi begged the governor to step in.
“Chief Nursing Officers are predicting that staff shortages will result in closing over 500 acute care hospital beds over the upcoming months,” the nurses wrote in the letter. “The shortage is driven by losses in the nursing workforce which are attributable to burnout, fatigue and, to a growing extent, nurses who took travel nursing positions and made significantly higher wages and now desire to take time off.”
When Mississippi Today broke the story about the nurses’ letter on Friday, Reeves’ office had not responded to submitted questions about the nursing crisis. The governor had previously said publicly that he would consider an incentive program and was in discussion with legislators about a special session.
But on Tuesday, Reeves was in Biloxi at the Gulf Coast Coliseum to announce how the state would spend $62 million in federal funds related to 2010’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill on south Mississippi projects.
At the event, a reporter asked Reeves specifically if he had any short-term plans to address the immediate needs of hospitals and nursing staff. He did not address the question directly, instead giving a five-minute answer that spoke only to the state’s ongoing, long-term workforce development plans.
Legislative leaders, however, already have a bill they wrote weeks ago that would create a funding program to assist the state’s struggling hospitals. Their proposed program would allow hospitals to give their most in-demand workers a $5,000 bonus for agreeing to stay at their job for at least five more months.
They sent that bill, along with a promised agreement between the House and Senate, to the governor on Sept. 30. But the could-be program funding cannot be allocated this year unless Reeves calls a special session to allow lawmakers to officially pass it.
Hospitals leaders have repeatedly said throughout the pandemic their inability to compete with salaries from out-of-state hospitals and temporary staffing is the main reason they are hemorrhaging health care workers.
“We have a labor shortage in virtually every industry in Mississippi right now,” Reeves said in response to Mississippi Today’s question. “The reason we have a labor shortage in Mississippi is because we have a labor shortage in virtually every industry in America because of the far-left policies of the Biden administration.”
Reeves — after explaining how high school graduation rates have improved under his administration — pointed out the state has a shortage of respiratory therapists, doctors and “every health care sector,” emphasizing it’s a problem every state is facing.
“We’ve got to continue to encourage more and more Mississippians to go into the field of health care and we will continue to do so,” Reeves said. “It is certainly an issue, and one that we are aware of, and continuing to look at ways to address it.”
In a recent interview with Mississippi Today, a Singing River nurse said 12 people left her nursing staff in just one week. From March 2020 to mid September, the hospital system — which has three hospitals on the Gulf Coast — lost 289 nurses, or more than a third of its overall nursing staff.
Singing River’s leadership has been vocal about the shortage. Hospital CEO Lee Bond is pushing lawmakers to make an even broader incentive program that gives nurses $20,000 bonuses spread over two years.
Meanwhile, legislative leaders continue to await word from the governor about a potential special session regarding medical marijuana. Legislative leaders worked all summer to draft a bill after the Mississippi Supreme Court struck down a medical marijuana initiative that was overwhelmingly approved by Mississippi voters in 2020.
Reeves, over the summer, regularly said he was open to calling a special session for medical marijuana and even the nursing crisis stopgap. But since lawmakers finalized bills for both programs, the governor has remained silent about whether he will call a special session at all.
Rep. Robert Johnson, the Democratic House leader, last week joined a growing chorus of lawmakers who say passing a medical marijuana program during a special session would free them up to focus more on pressing issues when they go back into regular session in January.
“With everything we need to do with this state, that we’re going to spend even a day on something that has been talked about so much bothers me,” Johnson said on Mississippi Today’s “The Other Side” podcast. “It continues to be a moving target, and we’re going to end up spending most of our session debating medical marijuana when we have so many other issues to focus on.”
Mississippi tax revenue collections through October, the first four months of the fiscal year, are about $160 million above the amount collected during the same period last year, according to the most recently released revenue report.
Through October, the state has collected $2.2 billion, which is 7.75% above the amount collected from various taxes during the same period in 2020.
The October revenue report released by the Legislative Budget Committee staff continues a trend of soaring revenue collections that began in the summer of 2020 as federal COVID-19 relief funds poured into the state. For the month of October, the state collected $584 million in revenue — up $47.3 million from the amount collected in October 2020.
The soaring revenue collections come as legislative leaders and Gov. Tate Reeves work to finalize budget proposals for consideration when the Legislature meets in full session in January to begin the task of developing a budget to fund state programs, such as education, health care and law enforcement, for the new fiscal year beginning July 1.
The 14 members of the Legislative Budget Committee, including Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and Speaker Philip Gunn, are slated to meet Wednesday to agree on a revenue estimate with Reeves for the coming fiscal year.
That estimate will signify the early projection of revenue expected to be collected during the upcoming fiscal year to fund the state budget.
In developing that budget, the committee and the governor are likely to consider multiple factors, including:
The state’s economic outlook, which impacts revenue collections.
The current revenue collections.
The fact that the state collected $924.5 million or 15.9% more in revenue during the past fiscal year, which ended June 30, than it did in the previous year, meaning the state treasury is flush with funds.
According to the October revenue report, just about all categories of state revenue collections are up for the year. The largest single source of revenue, the sales tax on retail items, is up $165.4 million or 26%, while the use tax, imposed on internet and other out-of-state sales, increased $10.3 million or 7.7%. The second largest source of revenue — the tax on personal income — increased only $6.6 million or less than 1%, while the corporate income tax decreased $32.8 million or 17.2%.
Another category that saw a decline in revenue collections is the tax on cigarettes, alcohol and beer, which dropped $5.1 million or 5.3%.
The decline is not surprising since liquor sales soared last year early in the pandemic as the governor shut down much of the state. Most other sources of revenue increased.
After the revenue estimate is adopted Wednesday, the governor is slated to release his budget proposal before Nov. 15, according to state law. It is possible that the governor will include in his proposal recommendations on how the state should spend $1.8 billion in federal American Rescue Plan funds that are supposed to be used to combat COVID-19, but in reality the state has considerable discretion on how the funds are spent.
The budget committee is slated to release it proposal in early December.
Both the governor and legislative leaders have indicated their hopes of providing a teacher pay raise during the upcoming session. In addition, the governor has proposed phasing out the state’s income tax, which accounts for about one-third of revenue collections. Gunn has proposed phasing out the income tax, but also raising other taxes, such as the tax on retail items, to offset the loss revenue.
In 2018, Georgia lawmakers voted to create the state’s first financial aid program specifically for working-class students. A year later, a higher education board in Utah redistributed millions of dollars in financial aid to prioritize students who couldn’t afford college on their own. Virginia’s governor followed earlier this year with a proposal to use American Rescue Plan funds to increase aid for low-income students.
Across the country, a trend is taking shape: States are increasingly looking to shift financial aid dollars to working-class students, mainly in an effort to boost the number of people in the workforce with college degrees.
Not Mississippi.
Last month, a little-known state education board proposed a drastic overhaul of financial aid in Mississippi. Under the Post-Secondary Board’s proposal, the state’s three main existing financial aid programs would be consolidated into a single award called the “Mississippi One Grant.”
If the policy is adopted by the Legislature in 2022, white students would see their financial aid awards increase, while Black and low-income students’ awards would decrease by hundreds, in some cases thousands, of dollars, putting Mississippi at odds with how other states are seeking to distribute financial aid.
As state lawmakers consider whether to take up the proposal this legislative session, Mississippi Today talked with national experts about how this program compares to those in other states.
Historically, states have used financial aid as a tool to help students afford college. This goes back to the 1970s when Congress created the LEAP Program, which provided a matching incentive for states to create need-based financial aid programs.
Two decades later, a shift occurred. In 1993, using funds from the state lottery, Georgia developed the HOPE Scholarship, which awards aid solely on the basis of merit. Fourteen states, primarily those in the South, followed by creating similar programs. By 2008, state spending on merit-based programs had ballooned by 230% over the prior 10 years, according to the National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs (NASSGAP). In comparison, spending on need-based programs increased by 105%.
The growth in merit-aid programs can be partly explained by their popularity, said Tom Harnisch, the vice president for government relations at the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association.
“Merit-based aid programs are very popular with policymakers because they help out students from middle and upper-middle income and even wealthy families, and those people vote,” he said.
That movement is starting to lose steam. Harnisch said that states seem to be moving back to need-based aid programs and away from the kind of model the Post-Secondary Board has proposed Mississippi adopt.
“There’s a growing sense of, while all state financial aid is important, how do you get the best bang for your buck?” Harnisch said. “And that is through investing in students based on their financial need.”
Most states now offer undergraduate grant programs that factor in a student’s income, according to NASSGAP. And the states that don’t are considering revamping their programs. Higher ed boards in Louisiana and Missouri are facing calls to redistribute financial aid to working-class students who need help paying for college.
There are several reasons for the trend back toward need-based aid. One significant driver, said Frank Ballmann, the director of federal relations at NASSGAP, is a new focus on the state-level at increasing the number of college graduates in the workforce.
“That’s really where states tend to focus more on need-based aid because you could have say, a rich kid — that student is going to get a degree regardless of if you give aid or not,” Ballmann said. “Only question is if you’re gonna keep them in the state.”
Research is mixed on whether merit-aid policies are an efficient way for states to meet their workforce goals. Merit-aid is often touted as one way to stop brain drain, but it’s unclear if this is the case in Mississippi: A study from Mississippi State University research center NSPARC commissioned in 2018 found that the Mississippi Eminent Scholars Grant did not increase in-state enrollment of high-achieving students.
“The causality can get pretty muddled pretty quickly when you think about it,” said Sarah Pingle, the vice chair of the Education Commission of the States. “Did the presence of this merit aid program cause someone in the higher-income bracket to want to achieve in high school and go right to college and be successful?”
Merit aid also tends to do little to help working-class students attend or graduate from college. This is because states typically use ACT or SAT scores to evaluate merit, and these tests tend to favor white, wealthier students.
“Test scores reflect a bunch of things, but there is a very strong relationship between ACT and SAT scores and every possible measure of socioeconomic status: family income, parental education, the money available to their local school district,” said Bob Schaeffer, the executive director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing. “When you use test scores to award state tuition aid, you end up giving the majority of the money, the lion’s share of the money, to kids who’ve had the most opportunities in life.”
Need-based aid, on the other hand, is seen as an effective tool for states wanting to produce more college graduates, another reason for the new trend. In Mississippi, NSPARC found that about 75% of students who received HELP as a degree-seeking freshmen graduated in six years, compared to about 67% of students who were eligible for HELP but did not receive it.
Georgia created its first need-base grant in 2018 partly in an effort to increase the number of college graduates in the state, though it has yet to fully fund the program. Utah redesigned its financial aid programs specifically to be more fair in how it doles out help for college. The student who led Utah’s redesign task force told the Salt Lake Tribune in 2019 that the new program was “an attempt to be more equitable.”
As Mississippi’s legislators consider the One Grant, Harnisch said he hopes they focus on Mississippi’s own workforce development goals: The state has set a goal to have 55% of its workforce complete college by 2030.States across the country have modeled the best policies for tackling this gap, he said — and it’s not the one Mississippi is considering.
“The key thing for states like Mississippi is to invest in need-based aid programs,” Harnisch said. “Those programs help the students who are on the margins, who may or may not go to college. That’s the dial that can be most easily moved, and those are the students who often will stay in the state.”
Mississippi Today managing editor Kayleigh Skinner will join 30 newsroom leaders for the Poynter Institute’s seventh annual Leadership Academy for Women in Media.
The program, hosted online, is designed for women and nonbinary journalists who directly manage people to learn to manage teams more effectively, develop and communicate their strategic vision, and steer their organizations toward greater success.
“We are thrilled to welcome our final cohort of women leaders this year,” said Doris Truong, director of training and diversity at Poynter. “Every cohort inspires because we see the members’ ongoing commitment and passion for journalism. These are also leaders who are dedicated to self-improvement that will have a ripple effect with their staff as they work toward more diverse and inclusive news products.”
Those chosen for Poynter’s Leadership Academy for Women in Media passed through multiple rounds of review with an emphasis to ensure diversity across race, ethnicity, geography, age, platform/medium, organization size and expertise. Reviewers included Poynter staff and faculty, as well as a volunteer committee of program graduates.
Skinner joined the Mississippi Today staff in January 2017 as an education reporter and has advanced to a senior staff member in her four years with the organization. She served as deputy managing editor before assuming the role of managing editor in July 2020. She works alongside editor-in-chief Adam Ganucheau to manage the newsroom’s daily and enterprise reporting and craft broader editorial strategy. She is a member of Mississippi Today’s management team, where she plays a key role in organizational development and long-term vision for newsroom growth.
The Poynter Institute for Media Studies is a global leader in journalism education and a strategy center that stands for uncompromising excellence in journalism, media and 21st-century public discourse.
