In the parlance of Mississippi Supreme Court justices, the word “shall” means maybe when it comes to fully funding public school districts. But when justices are talking about giving themselves a pay raise, “shall” means shall — or got to get ‘er done.
Earlier this year, Mississippi Supreme Court Chief Justice Michael Randolph ordered pay raises of roughly $15,000 annually for Supreme Court justices, Court of Appeals judges and trial judges based on action taken by the Legislature in 2012. That 2012 bill said the judges “shall” have their salaries “fixed at a level… recommended by the state Personnel Board.”
Juxtapose Randolph’s actions with a unanimous 2017 decision by the Mississippi Supreme Court saying that the Legislature did not have to fully fund the Mississippi Adequate Education Program even though state law says concisely “effective with fiscal year 2007, the Legislature shall fully fund the Mississippi Adequate Program.”
The Supreme Court justices, including Randolph, ruled then that the Legislature could just ignore the word “shall.” The Supreme Court did not rule, as many believed it would, that if legislators were not going to follow the law, they should change it so it no longer said the Adequate Education Program “shall” be fully funded. It seems that it would be simple enough to remove the word shall and incorporate, for instance, “it is the intent of the Legislature to fully fund the MAEP.”
MAEP, of course, is the mechanism used to provide the state’s share of funding to pay for the basic operation of local school districts, ranging from teacher salaries to utilities to janitorial services. It provides funding based on a district’s wealth, with poorer districts receiving more state funding than more affluent school systems. The Adequate Education Program has been fully funded only twice since its full enactment in 2003 and has been underfunded a cumulative $2.8 billion since 2008, according to data compiled by The Parents’ Campaign.
The similarities are striking when examining what happened when the current language saying MAEP “shall” be fully funded was passed in the 2006 legislative session and when the bill saying judges “shall” get a raise based on Personnel Board recommendations was enacted in the 2012 session.
In 2006, then-Gov. Haley Barbour signed into law the bill saying full funding for MAEP “shall” be phased in over a three-year period unless funds were available to fully fund it sooner. A big press conference was held.
In 2012, after an intensive lobbying campaign to provide judges a pay raise, a bill was passed to phase in salary increases for judges over a three-year period. Another section of the same bill said after 2019, judges “shall” get a pay raise based on Personnel Board recommendations.
The stark difference in what happened in 2012 and 2006 is that in 2006 legislators and Barbour bragged about the fact that a compromise had been reached where MAEP would be fully funded henceforth. The compromise came after years of legislative wrangling over the MAEP funding level.
In his 2007 State of the State speech after the 2006 legislation was passed, Barbour proudly proclaimed, “I am confident that in March, you will send me and I will sign an appropriation that fully funds the MAEP formula for next year. I expect that formula to be funded consistently at 100% in the years to come.”
On the other hand, the section of the 2012 legislation allowing the judiciary to bypass the constitutionally created legislative appropriations process was done with little or no discussion or fanfare. Various legislators have said they did not know the section was in the bill when it was passed.
The 2012 bill marks perhaps the only time legislators have given state elected officials the authority to bypass the Legislature and give themselves a pay raise.
No doubt, a strong case can be made that Mississippi judges are underpaid in comparison to the salaries of the judiciary in other states — more importantly surrounding states. According to the National Center for State Courts, most Mississippi judges earn less than their counterparts in surrounding states.
But that should not be surprising. After all, Mississippi school teachers, university and community college staff, indeed most all state employees, are near the bottom nationally in pay and also earn less than their counterparts in surrounding states. Mississippi also is near the bottom in terms of expenditures per pupil, health care access and multiple other areas.
Many groups also would like to be able to bypass the Legislature and get pay raises “to the extent sufficient funds are available” based on Personnel Board recommendations.
Of course, the judges have the added advantage in ensuring their raises since they have the constitutional mandate to interpret the law. But the word “shall,” the justices have decided, means shall for themselves.
Couples Ethyl and Robert Kennedy (left) and Perian and Charlie Conerly (right) at Charlie’s induction into the College Football Hall of Fame in New York in 1966.
Perian Conerly’s eyes always sparkled when she told stories, as she so often did. She was a beautiful woman, inside and out, and a natural storyteller possessing plenty of material to tell. She also could write, and write well, and we will get to that.
One of my favorites was her story about the 1958 NFL Championship Game, the one that football historians credit with putting professional football on America’s center stage. The New York Giants played the Baltimore Colts. Charlie Conerly, Perian’s husband, was the Giants quarterback. Johnny Unitas quarterbacked the Colts. The two had a shootout that became NFL legend that day.
“Charlie threw a touchdown pass to Frank Gifford that put the Giants ahead by three points late in the game,” Perian told me. “There wasn’t much time left and they took a vote for MVP, and Charlie won.”
Rick Cleveland
Then, in the last two minutes, Unitas passed the Colts down the field to set up a field goal and send the game into overtime. The Colts scored first in overtime to win the game. Another vote was taken for MVP. Unitas won and was presented a shiny new Corvette. Unitas gave the car to his wife.
Said Perian back in 2002, “I always said Dorothy Jean Unitas was driving around Baltimore in my car.”
Perian Conerly died Thursday in her hometown of Clarksdale. She was 94 and had out-lived her beloved Charlie by 25 years. Perian remained very much a part of Mississippi’s sports scene in her later years, usually presenting the C Spire Conerly Trophy to the state’s top college football player at the annual Conerly Trophy Banquet. On occasion, one of Charlie’s old Giants teammates, Gifford, Pat Summerall or Kyle Rote — all dead now — would emcee the event as a favor to Perian and a tribute to their pal, Charlie.
In the 1950s, Charlie and Perian were the toast of New York — he the ruggedly handsome quarterback and the original Marlboro man, she the Southern belle with movie star glamour, a naturally warm personality and all that charm and wit.
From all accounts, she was the first female sports writer, who wrote columns for the New York Times, among other publications. She was the first female member of the Football Writers of American Association (FWAA). Once, she appeared on the old “What’s My Line” TV show and dazzled both the panel and audience and was joined late in the show by her husband.
Perian Conerly
Back in 2001, long after Perian had ceased writing, I called to tell her that Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post had been judged the best sports columnist in American newspapers. Perian was pleased. “I don’t know her, but I do know her daddy, Dan Jenkins,” Perian said. “He’s a wonderful writer. It must run in their blood.”
Perian could write. Consider this paragraph from her book “Backseat Quarterback” first published by Doubleday in 1963. Perian was writing about meeting Charlie at a swimming pool in 1947: “I was immediately taken with his dark good looks and engaging shyness. And he had lean, low-slung lines peculiar to athletes and Cadillacs. I have always been partial to both.”
In her columns and her book, she wrote intelligently and with much wit. She took a complicated sport and broke it down in the simplest of terms. She wrote cleverly in terms even a novice fan could easily digest. And she had great sources, people named Gifford, Rote, Summerall and Chunkin’ Charlie Conerly.
She had been the editor of her college newspaper, “The Spectator,” at what is now Mississippi University for Women. After marriage, Perian approached the editor of the Clarksdale paper with the idea of writing a weekly column about life in New York during the football season. The column was instantly a hit, so she approached The Clarion Ledger about also publishing the column. Suddenly, she was syndicated. The North American Newspaper Alliance learned of the column and sought to publish on a much wider scale. The New York Times was among the subscribers.
Perian once told me she thought many of the newspaper editors “were intrigued by the idea of a woman sports writer. I mean, back then it was just unheard of.”
All that happened decades before the controversy of women writers being barred from — or allowed into — the supposed sanctity of men’s locker rooms.
“Heavens no,” she answered once when asked her if she had ever considered entering a post-game locker room.
There was no need to, really. She already had trusted inside sources. And she slept with the star quarterback.
In our NextGen Mississippi survey, we asked Mississippians why they left the state. Here’s a sampling of what they said.
“I left Mississippi because there is a lack of opportunity, of diversity, of experience. I grew up in Mississippi and went to college in Mississippi, but as soon as I could leave, I did. It’s home and it’s beautiful, but it’s a state that is hurting — deeply, bitterly divided at the core. I believe in Mississippi, but I’m constantly let down.”
“I left Mississippi as soon as I graduated from college to seek a life in a more inclusive place. I never felt fully accepted for who I am or at home in Mississippi.”
“I couldn’t afford to live alone in Mississippi anymore and actually start paying back my student loans.”
“I left because there is a severe lack of career opportunities in the state. Oppressive laws and leadership don’t help, either.”
“There’s so much to love and I am proud of my upbringing there, but there’s nothing left for me. I also don’t want to fight the uphill battle that comes with Mississippi politics, leadership decisions, and the often backwards way things get done. Love the people, love the culture, but the flaws are too much for me.”
“I left immediately post-graduation because there are no real job opportunities within my profession; at least of the caliber that I desire to work in.”
“I left for better more diverse job opportunities and better support of women.”
“I left for better-ranked schools, and I’ve stayed away because there are no job opportunities in Mississippi that could come close to competing with what I can find on the coasts. I wish coming home was a better option for me.”
“I left Mississippi to pursue better education opportunities and gain a better perspective of the rest of the country.”
“I have left and come back, twice. I leave for opportunity: more money, more education, more diverse options. I come back to try to change my home state.”
View more responses and take the NextGen Mississippi survey here.
The U.S. Supreme Court this week eliminated one of the reasons cited by Mississippi Republican leaders for not expanding Medicaid.
The nation’s highest court rejected, in a 7-2 decision, a lawsuit asking that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — better known as Obamacare — be struck down. It was the third such lawsuit rejected by the Supreme Court in recent months. The lawsuit was filed by Texas and joined by 17 other Republican-led states, including by former Gov. Phil Bryant on behalf of Mississippi.
A key provision in the Affordable Care Act is the expansion of Medicaid to provide health care coverage to primarily the working poor. The lawsuit rejected Thursday by the U.S. Supreme Court asked that the entire law, including the expansion of Medicaid, be tossed out.
One of the reasons state leaders, such as Gov. Tate Reeves, has used for not expanding Medicaid is that there was no assurance, they claimed because of the lawsuits, that the program would remain in place. They argued that if they expanded Medicaid in Mississippi and the program was dropped by the federal government, the state would be left responsible for providing health insurance to up to 300,000 Mississippians or dropping their coverage.
Twelve states, including Mississippi, have not expanded Medicaid. While state leaders have cited the possibility of the federal government or the courts eliminating a program that 38 states participate in, the primary reason Mississippi leaders said they do not want to expand Medicaid is because it will mean additional costs to the state.
“I am not open to Medicaid expansion,” Republican House Speaker Philip Gunn said at the end of the 2021 session in April. “… I don’t see Medicaid expansion as something that is beneficial to the state of Mississippi. I just don’t think the taxpayers can afford it. That is what it boils down to is the taxpayers. It is their money. I just don’t have taxpayers calling saying we want you to raise taxes so we can expand Medicaid.”
The federal government pays 90% of the costs for Medicaid expansion. Medicaid expansion proponents have argued that in addition to the 90% match, the influx of federal money — estimated at $1 billion per year — would be an economic boon to the state.
Plus, the American Rescue Plan, approved by Congress earlier this year and signed into law by President Joe Biden, offers additional financial incentive for the holdout states to expand Medicaid. It has been estimated that the incentive would be more than $600 million for Mississippi over a two-year period.
The lawsuit was essentially rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court this week because the majority said the states could not prove any harm from the Affordable Care Act.
If the Supreme Court had ruled in favor of the Texas lawsuit, that could have placed health care coverage in jeopardy for 31 million Americans and could have placed in jeopardy coverage of pre-existing conditions for millions more.
The Texas lawsuit said among the reasons the law should be rejected is that in recent years under former President Donald Trump, the mandate that people had to purchase insurance was dropped. They claimed in earlier Supreme Court rulings the individual mandate was cited as a tax and with that tax removed the law was unconstitutional.
A private school district in Mississippi has terminated the contracts of all teachers at two of its schools and failed to pay them for days already worked, a signal that their doors will close for good and leave dozens of children without specialized education they struggle to find at public schools.
Both Oxford University School and the North New Summit School in Greenwood are members of the New Learning Resources School District, which has struggled financially since its owner was accused of defrauding the state and federal government.
Last week, Mississippi Today reported that New Summit School in Jackson, which also missed paydays for its teachers, was working on a court custodianship to take over operation of the school. But the custodianship does not apply to the other New schools.
The parents of students at New Summit School in Jackson worked to have the school placed under a custodianship, legally approved on June 1, in an effort to keep the school operational. Gary Herring, the court-appointed school custodian, sent an email to New Summit staff saying that the custodianship would begin without any funds to make payroll and he could not guarantee their success.
Nancy and Zach New originally stepped away from the New Learning Resources School District following their arrest for an alleged welfare embezzlement scandal, Clarion Ledger reported, but a federal grand jury also indicted them for defrauding the Mississippi Department of Education through the New Learning Resources School District.
The New Learning Resources School District focuses on providing specialized services for students with behavioral or learning disabilities. As a private school group with public accreditation from the Mississippi Department of Education, schools in the district are funded through a combination of tuition payments and Education Scholarship Accounts, a voucher that allows public school dollars to follow special needs students to private schools.
Teachers at North New Summit, New Summit, and Oxford University School are all owed six paychecks for work already completed, according to four teachers who did not want their names printed for fear of retaliation. Teachers at Oxford University School estimated that the school district owes them between $3,000 and $6,000 for work already completed, depending on the teacher’s yearly salary. Oxford University School and North New Summit teachers received their termination letter on June 11.
While New Summit School in Jackson did not begin experiencing paycheck uncertainty until March, the Oxford University School has paid their teachers late almost every pay period since late September. Three teachers confirmed that the school consistently delivered their paychecks 3-5 days behind schedule.
When one teacher attempted to report this to the Department of Labor, the department told her that a claim for non-payment would become void once the teachers were paid each time.
The Oxford University School, founded in 1984, was not acquired by the New Learning Resources School District until 2019. Mississippi Today previously reported that the owners defrauded the Mississippi Department of Education through invoices from New Summit School and North New Summit, but the indictment did not name Oxford University School as part of the scheme.
One teacher from the Oxford University School pointed out that while this partnership was intended to help the school thrive, it is ultimately the reason that they are closing.
Several teachers voiced concerns about what happened to the tuition money that parents paid if it was not being used to pay their salaries. Teachers interviewed from the Oxford University School were also frustrated by the lack of communication from administrators.
“It was so dishonest for [New Learning Resources] to take advantage of a situation where you still had money coming in and people who really cared [at the school] not making much money anyway and to just not say anything,” one teacher said.
Teachers were unsure if parents had been informed that the schools would be closing.
The letter terminating Oxford University School and North New Summit teachers did not specify whether the schools would be closing for the upcoming school year, according to a copy obtained by Mississippi Today. The letter did say New Learning Resources would not have the funds to make further salary payments.
Keith Davis, the principal of North New Summit School, could not be reached to discuss the future of school. Roy Balentine, the interim director of New Learning Resources, and Nancy New also did not return calls or text messages to Mississippi Today.
Nancy and Zach New have both pleaded not guilty to all charges and are awaiting trial.
Elee Reeves, wife of Governor Tate Reeves, at the grand opening of the newest MDHS Resource and Referral Center in Jackson. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Standing between two large, plastic trunks — faux branches and leaves crowding the ceiling of a former hotel-turned-government-office — Mississippi welfare officials announced the opening of a new child care resource center.
Mississippi Department of Human Services Director Bob Anderson, at the grand opening of the newest MDHS Resource and Referral Center. Anderson spoke of how this resource and referral center will be beneficial to early childhood development and child care by networking state wide with other resource and referral centers. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
The colorful, well-decorated office, stocked with educational materials, toys and craft supplies, exists as a place for child care providers and parents to share ideas and receive training.
The language officials used to describe the new downtown Jackson center — “interactive space,” “lending library,” “resource and referral”, “network of support” — evoke images of the disgraced welfare program, Families First for Mississippi, that occupied the space before it.
The fake trees, previously purchased by embattled nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center using money from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant, embodied the nature of that now-defunct program: a façade.
TANF is the federal fund that states may use to provide cash assistance, what used to be called the “welfare check,” to very poor families.
But the new Resource and Referral Centers have a more defined mission to bolster and support private child care centers, the primary vehicle for early childhood development in the state, and they are funded by the Child Care Development Fund, not TANF.
“I’m so glad that we’ve been able to put this together. These are ideas that our child care division put together themselves. They designed this space themselves. Except for the trees, which were already here,” Mississippi Department of Human Services Director Bob Anderson said at the Wednesday ribbon cutting, eliciting laughter from press conference attendees. “They didn’t design the trees. We inherited those.”
The announcement comes from a department still reeling from an alleged $4 million embezzlement scandal that broke last year and an audit that uncovered the misuse of up to $94 million in federal dollars intended to provide assistance to needy Mississippians.
Officials made no mention Wednesday of what else they inherited.
Since Gov. Tate Reeves appointed Anderson to run the agency in March of 2020, the new director has implemented stronger procurement practices, financial controls and increased accountability among the department’s welfare grantees. Anderson also secured from the 2021 Legislature a $90 increase to the monthly welfare benefit — from $170 to $260 — the first cash assistance hike families have seen since 1999.
Similar to TANF, the Child Care Development Fund block grant provides child care vouchers directly to low-income families who need help affording daycare so they can go to work. But the federal government also encourages the state to use the flexible money on other programs, like training to improve the quality of care and promote early childhood education in private centers across the state.
Now, with the federal government increasing the child care block grant by $3.5 billion nationally in 2021, the state agency seems poised to redirect their focus to the child care industry, a major touchpoint between the state and families with small children, to improve early childhood education.
“Early childhood development is obviously important to me,” Elee Reeves, the wife of Gov. Reeves, said at the ribbon cutting. “What an amazing resource these centers are going to be across our state. I just think this is fabulous.”
Two child care initiatives implemented under former Gov. Phil Bryant’s administration also became defunct in Reeves’ first year as governor. One was Early Childhood Academies, through which the Mississippi Community College Board was supposed to provide training to private centers. And the other was a revamped quality rating system that replaced the former “star” rating of child care centers with either a “standard” or “comprehensive” designation.
The department is still partnering with individual community colleges in the state to help train child care center employees, though they are no longer called academies. The standard-comprehensive rating model was a dud, causing frustrations among child care providers.
Chad Allgood, director of the MDHS Division of Early Childhood Care and Development, told Mississippi Today that the most recent rating system expected quality improvements of centers but did nothing to provide resources to help usher that growth.
Mississippi Department of Human Services Director of Early Childhood Care and Development Chad Allgood. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
“Throughout the years I’ve worked in early childhood, I’ve seen a lot of change hit this industry. There have been some not-so-great decisions that have been made that have really, really impacted childcare providers in a negative way,” Allgood said. “…Knowing what childcare providers have had to deal with as you’ve seen these very large-scale changes, systematic changes, we don’t want to put them through that again.”
“When we go into their centers, it should be to help, not to point fingers and say, ‘You’re doing this wrong. You’re doing this wrong,’” Allgood added.
Allgood noted the particularly challenging time childcare providers have faced during the pandemic. At one point, as many as 70% of centers had ceased operations, Anderson said.
“We’re back to almost 90% capacity that has reopened, which is fantastic,” Allgood said. “And I will say that, in and of itself, is a testament to the dedication of our child care providers.”
For more than a year prior to the Wednesday ribbon cutting, the first floor office at 750 N. State Street had sat abandoned. Families First, the multi-million-dollar resource program for impoverished Mississippians, was previously located in the space, called the State Street Center. But it closed in February of 2020, just before the pandemic ravaged the nation’s economy and put millions out of work.
The former Families First State Street office sat empty on Mar. 18, 2021. The office, which was supposed to assist needy families, shut down shortly after Nancy New, the owner of the nonprofit, Mississippi Community Education Center, that ran it, was arrested on embezzlement charges. A Mississippi Department of Human Services spokesperson said the agency was in the midst of renovating the space for early childhood development programs.
At that time, officials had just arrested Nancy New, the owner of Mississippi Community Education Center, which ran the center. The nonprofit is now defunct and has not filed its required annual reports to the Secretary of State’s office since 2018, a year it pulled $27.2 million in revenue.
Nancy New, her son and employee Zach New, the nonprofit’s accountant Ann McGrew and the former welfare agency director John Davis all await trial after pleading not guilty to conspiring to embezzle more than $4 million in welfare dollars from the nonprofit.
“We got to take a sneak peek at the center and the incredible services they provide to Mississippians,” conservative talk news radio station Supertalk wrote about Families First in September of 2019, when the State Street center opened.
In reality, the center offered virtually no direct services and served very few people for the amount of federal grant money, tens of millions, the nonprofit was receiving.
“We’ve got a learning library … parenthood classes. We’ve got a computer lab where we can do our online diploma program,” Will Lamkin, operation coordinator for the Families First center, said in a promotional video produced at the 2019 ribbon cutting. “We have centers all over the state that are more informational based, where this one is really hands on. And it’s super interactive.”
The morning before the February 2020 arrests, during a visit to the center, Lamkin told Mississippi Today the welfare-funded organization’s main goal was getting people off of welfare.
Instead, officials were using the money that flowed through Families First to enrich their family and friends, pay for lobbyists, luxury vehicles, religious concerts, expensive getaways, publicity events with famous athletes and even a speeding ticket, a state audit published in 2020 revealed.
Families First for Mississippi used an existing network of centers called Family Resource Centers, which dated back to the 1990s, to boast a presence in all 82 counties.
The Resource and Referral Network, the name of the new center on state street, has existed for many years as well, Allgood said, but has not been well marketed in the past. Allgood called it a “hidden treasure.” He hopes the center in downtown Jackson will serve as a model for future network sites, two more of which the department plans to open soon.
“This is what we call the discovery zone,” Allgood said during the Wednesday tour, attended mostly by Mississippi Department of Human Services or other state employees. “This specific area, we want children, we want their families, we want child care provides to come in, to interact with the different areas, play with the materials that are on the shelves. This is a very interactive space.
Mississippi Department of Human Services Director of Early Childhood Care and Development Chad Allgood, at the grand opening of the newest MDHS Resource and Referral Center. The newest resource and referral center will network state wide with existing resource and referral centers. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
“We’re going to be offering, as Bob said, some pretty extensive training, what we call technical assistance, which is on-site, teaching early childhood teachers how to implement these things in the classroom. What we’re going to be setting up here are things that they can replicate using resources, using our make-and-take station.”
“This fun space that you’re looking at behind me, this is called our make-and-take area. And this is actually a place where teachers can come and make things … for their classroom,” Allgood said, standing in a room that used to be a free food pantry — containing mostly canned corn and green beans. Now the room is filled with colorful craft paper and shelves of bins holding glue, scissors and more.
Gov. Tate Reeves told hundreds of business leaders on Wednesday that his main regret about his handling COVID-19 is that he didn’t deem all businesses essential and let them remain open during the height of the pandemic.
Reeves quoted William Faulkner as he bemoaned all the natural and man-made disasters he’s had to “endure” since he took office in 2020, including the pandemic, flooding and ice storms, a prison death and overcrowding crisis and the largest government embezzlement case in state history. He addressed about 800 members of the Mississippi Economic Council, the state’s chamber of commerce, in its annual meeting — the first large in-person gathering MEC has hosted since the pandemic.
“The biggest regret I had from 2020, and I did it because I believed it was the right thing to do to protect our economy from overzealous local elected officials, we worked with the Trump administration and made the decision to define some businesses as essential,” Reeves said. “It turns out about 80% or 85% of all businesses were defined as essential during that time, but as I look back on it I realize that I made a mistake, because the fact of the matter is that every single business in Mississippi is essential.”
After his speech, Reeves demurred on whether he regretted issuing any shut-down or other orders to slow the disease’s spread, but said that on whole, Mississippi’s per capita COVID-19 rates were on par with the rest of the nation, “even though we had little restrictions.” He said, “We got more right than we got wrong.”
But with 10,736 COVID-19 infections per 100,000 residents, Mississippi has the 21st highest infection rate in the country. Mississippi’s vaccination rate is the lowest in the country, although Reeves did not mention vaccination efforts in his speech.
“I think anybody in America can look back and nitpick decisions that were made,” Reeves said after his speech.
Reeves in his speech quoted author Donna Tartt: “‘Sometimes you can do all the right things and not succeed. And that’s a hard lesson of reality.’”
“I know that we made every decision based upon the data that we had at that time, but I also know that every single decision did not turn out exactly the way we wanted it to,” Reeves said.
Reeves told business leaders that despite the pandemic, new capital investment in Mississippi for 2020 reached $1.7 billion, far above the 10-year average of $900 million a year. He also vowed that the state’s revamped workforce training program, Accelerate Mississippi, will be a “game changer” for state business development.
MEC’s outgoing Chairman Anthony Wilson, president of Mississippi Power, thanked Reeves for allowing business leaders to help with pandemic policy decisions and said, “You have been a consistent supporter of the business community.”
Wilson noted that MEC’s first large in-person gathering since the pandemic included another first — its stage was under a huge new Mississippi state flag, without the divisive Confederate battle emblem of the state’s old flag. MEC helped pushed lawmakers to remove the old flag.
“Without a doubt, taking down the controversial state flag was a defining moment for our state,” Wilson said. He said the state has “removed a significant impediment” to growth and prosperity by changing the flag.
MEC’s incoming chairman is Retired Maj. Gen. Augustus “Leon” Collins, former state adjutant general over the state Army and Air National Guard, and the first Black person to obtain general officer rank in the Mississippi National Guard. Collins is now CEO of MINACT Inc., a workforce training and management company.
Collins asked the large crowd to “breathe” after he took the stage, and noted “how great it is to do that without a mask over our faces.”
“I think it’s a new day and we have an opportunity for a new beginning here in Mississippi,” Collins said.
Mississippi Today reporter Will Stribling contributed to this report.
One year later, Reeves has been allocated the $50 million but has spent only $20.7 million of that amount.
Reeves’ office, when contacted by Mississippi Today, would not provide any details of how the public money has been allocated and spent. But we obtained a breakdown from the Department of Finance and Administration, an agency that falls under the governor’s control.
Reeves allocated those funds to eight agencies — most of which fall under his direct control, according to information provided by DFA.
Governor’s spending
As of the end of May, the governor’s CARES Act funding disbursement consists of:
Supreme Court: $2.5 million allocated and $459,568 spent
Attorney General: $232,734 allocated and no money spent
Auditor: $3 million allocated and $606,588 spent
Department of Revenue: $1.5 million allocated and fully spent
Department of Finance and Administration: $6.7 million allocated and $692,482 spent
Mississippi Development Authority: $2.8 million allocated and $2.75 spent
Department of Corrections: $812,855 allocated and fully spent
Mississippi Emergency Management Agency: $32.5 million allocated and $13.9 million spent
Agencies contacted by Mississippi Today say they have used the funds to deal with issues related to combatting COVID-19. For instance, DFA spent $692,482 for such items as mailing out the checks to businesses that received grants through the CARES Act, to offset losses during the coronavirus lockdown and for other issues related to helping agencies that received CARES Act funding.
“How the remaining funds will be spent is yet to be determined, but they will be used on the unexpected expenses related to the pandemic as they arise,” said Marcy Scoggins, a spokesperson for DFA.
When the Legislature appropriated the funds in the summer of 2020 in multiple areas, such as grants for businesses, grants to health care providers to help with their effort to combat COVID-19 and in a litany of other areas, the CARES Act funds had to be spent by the end of the 2020 calendar year. But later in the year, the federal law was changed, giving states until the end of 2021 to spend the funds. But the money appropriated by the Legislature – with the exception of the $50 million provided to Reeves — still had to be spent by the end of 2021. It was incorporated into state law that most of the money not spent by then was deposited into the trust fund that provides unemployment compensation.
Other ways the money was spent
The judiciary originally was appropriated $2.5 million in CARES Act funding last summer by the Legislature. The Court spent nearly $1.5 million of that amount and returned the rest because of the mandate that the funds had to be spent by the end of 2020. But the governor also appropriated $2.5 million to the courts.
Beverly Kraft, a spokesperson for the courts, said the governor’s funds have been spent in accordance with oversight of the Department of Audit to help the judiciary statewide in dealing with COVID-19 issues and protocols.
Logan Reeves, a spokesman for the Department of Audit, said the agency had used the funds from the governor to provide oversight of all the CARES Act funding the state received to ensure it is being spent in accordance with federal mandates.
“We are trying to provide oversight on the front end,” Reeves said.
Jacob Manley, a spokesman for the Department of Revenue, said the $1.5 million the agency received from the governor has been spent:
On law enforcement: $870,300
On computer equipment: $397,595
On cleaning equipment and personal protection equipment: $73,988
On COVID-19 employee leave: $97,152
On administering the small business relief payment program created by the Legislature: $34,722
On complying with Centers for Disease Control safety guidelines: $26,240
Melissa Scallan, a spokesperson for the Mississippi Development Authority, said the agency spent $2.8 million “on administration of the CARES Act programs — Back to Business, rental assistance, independent schools, healthcare providers. We had a call center, set up a website, etc. so we could take applications and process them.”
MEMA, which received the largest allotment from the governor, has spent the funds on various COVID-19 response items, including $1.9 million for salaries, $1.5 million for a call center and $4 million for commodities purchased related to the coronavirus, according to Malary White, a MEMA spokesperson. MEMA has been responsible for procuring much of the PPE for the state and for many healthcare providers during the pandemic.
