OurTupelo

BAY ST. LOUIS – Marc Magilari leaned against a railing at a community civic center, perched above the railway as a CSX freight train roared by. 

It was the fourth train to come through Bay St. Louis that Wednesday, just after 4 p.m. Magilari, a spokesman for Amtrak, and a small camera had been keeping watch since 8 a.m. to survey the train traffic. It rolled footage of hours of empty tracks live on Twitch. 

In a railroad beef that’s been building for years, Amtrak has turned to live streams, snarky tweets and time lapse videos to help prove its point: Passenger and freight trains can coexist on the railways that run through Mississippi from Mobile to New Orleans. 

“We can help people in this town,” Magilari said during his Bay St. Louis visit. “That’s why we’re here.” 

Amtrak wants to expand access to public transportation. CSX and other freight companies say the addition of passengers at this time could heighten supply chain issues and harm businesses relying on the Port of Mobile.

Freight company officials say Mississippi’s railway corridor is congested; that Amtrak is over simplifying obstacles; and that the repairs and updates needed to accommodate passenger trains will cost taxpayers upwards of $400 million. In a statement, CSX called Amtrak’s and others live videos misleading.  

Amtrak contends that CSX’s explanations are largely scare or delay tactics because the transport company doesn’t want passenger rail to expand on its tracks, even if federal law says they’re supposed to share. It also disputes CSX’s hefty repair and update estimate. The project already has more $77 million in secured funding. 

The back-and-forth – which has been near constant since 2015 and beyond – is why a federal board has been tasked to find the truth and make a decision about the route’s future. Amtrak wants to run two round-trip trains between Mobile and New Oreleans – one in the morning and one in the evening – with four stops in Mississippi. 

READ MORE: The fate of Amtrak’s Gulf Coast return rests with a federal board

The Surface Transportation Board, a body of transportation experts selected by the president and approved by congress, entered its second week of an evidentiary hearing over the Gulf Coast route dispute on Tuesday morning. The hearing is based in Washington, D.C. but being live streamed to the public. 

It’s not just Gulf Coast leaders and Amtrak watching closely. The debate has turned into a test case that experts say could dictate the future of railroad expansion across the United States. 

By law, Amtrak can run passenger trains on tracks owned by a freight company as long as it doesn’t “unreasonably impair” businesses. The law stems from a 1970s agreement – often called the “great bargain” – between struggling railroad companies that needed debt forgiven and the federal government. 

The board is litigating what constitutes “unreasonable” impacts on business for the first time. And that definition could affect the 160 other communities Amtrak wants to grow or restore service to as part of its “Amtrak Connects” plan, as they would all share tracks with freight companies. 

Experts have said its unlikely freight rail companies will let up on the fight easily since Amtrak first filed a complaint with the board over a year ago. 

“This is their Waterloo,” said Thomas “Todd” Stennis, an Amtrak senior manager from Gulfport. 

In the second 8-hour day of the hearing last week, CSX’s legal team began laying what seemed to be the groundwork for an argument to appeal the board’s pending decision. 

In a statement to Mississippi Today, CSX said it doesn’t comment on legal strategies. 

CSX attorney Raymond Atkins – who was once the transportation board’s own lawyer – told the board last week that some of their questions of a witness could be veering into advocacy. 

“This is a unique case where you’re charged by congress and stepping into the role of a judge and you can overstep those bounds if your questioning is too partisan or too extensive,” Atkins said, referencing case law examples of decisions being overturned. 

Board chair Martin Oberman disagreed, saying while CSX’s team could continue to object to questions, he and other board members wouldn’t change how they were questioning witnesses. 

Oberman said that, if anything, not asking questions to get facts that make the record as robust as possible could leave room for the future decision to be overturned. 

“We are not a court, we are not a jury,” Martin said during the hearing. “We have some similarities to those bodies but we are an administrative agency with an obligation to protect the freight network to ensure the law is enforced in regards to the passenger rail network with a very broad and important public interest.” 

Public transportation advocates like Jim Matthews, the CEO of the National Association of Railroad Passengers, said it’s likely CSX will appeal a ruling that’s in favor of Amtrak. 

“But I think the (board) is doing an excellent job,” Matthews said. “And that bodes well for passenger rail because it makes an appeal based on the merits likely to fail.” 

But an appeal, regardless of its success or failure, would likely mean even more waiting for a region that hasn’t had access to an Amtrak route since 2005. 

“We’re not giving up,” Magilari said. 

After Amtrak’s live stream in Bay. St. Louis, Transportation for America – an advocacy group – posted a time-lapse video out of Pascagoula. 

The group’s camera ran from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. and captured seven trains, with a bridge moving up and down to accommodate each train. Like Amtrak, the advocacy group argues train traffic over this stretch of about 150 miles of railway isn’t excessive. 

CSX says that focusing on one point on the route doesn’t show the full scope of the corridor.

“Purporting that it is indicative of the operational realities of the entire line is grossly misleading,” CSX said in a statement. “Anyone that understands railroad operations, including Amtrak, would know that.” 

CSX says it averages eight to 10 through trains (that make limited stops), one to three coal and giant trains and “numerous local trains” on the track each day.

While the board could make a ruling that calls for the parties to go to mediation to solve the access quarrel, that route seems unlikely given how little the parties can agree on historically. A spokesman for the board said there is no mandated timeline they have to follow once the hearing is over to announce their decision. 

The board has made it clear it takes the weight of the case seriously. The hearings were first scheduled to only last a week, but by the end of day one it was clear it would stretch beyond that. As of Tuesday, April 14, 18 and 19 were scheduled as hearing dates. 

The post Snarky tweets, time lapse videos: How the Gulf Coast train beef between Amtrak and CSX is intensifying appeared first on Mississippi Today.

In a $5 million agreement, the University of Mississippi is researching essential oils for doTerra, a multi-level marketing company the Federal Trade Commission warned in 2020 to stop claiming its products could cure or prevent COVID-19. 

doTerra, a Utah-based company, calls this partnership “a natural fit.” 

The partnership was born several years ago after Ikhlas Khan, the award-winning director of UM’s National Center for Natural Products Research, and doTerra’s chief medical officer, Russell Osguthorpe, got to talking at a conference in Oxford. 

The pair came to an initial agreement for Khan’s center to study lavender oil, doTerra’s best-selling essential oil. In that deal, worth half a million dollars, doTerra provided 42 lavender essential oil samples in the hopes that Khan would publish a study in a peer-reviewed journal, which he did last year.

In early March, UM announced it had extended the partnership with doTerra by five years. The research will be funded with $5 million from doTerra, UM told Mississippi Today. In a press release, Osguthorpe extolled the partnership: “Together, we can help to create higher standards that will allow the world to see the true benefits of doTERRA essential oils.”

Companies have long sought to partner on research with public universities, which, starved for state funding, eagerly take private dollars. But UM’s partnership with doTerra raises questions about how a university’s stamp of approval can help multi-level marketing companies obscure an exploitative business model. 

In interviews, UM and doTerra both told Mississippi Today the partnership is focused on researching essential oils and is not related to doTerra’s business setup. John O’Hara, who leads the Better Business Bureau of Mississippi, questioned if consumers will understand the nature of the pair’s relationship. 

“Think about the credentials,” O’Hara said. “If they (doTerra) throw the University of Mississippi logo on their products, it does give them credibility.”

“Is the average Joe on the street going to understand that?” O’Hara continued, “Or would they look at it as, ‘the University of Mississippi is doing it? It must be good.’”

The Food and Drug Administration does not regulate essential oils as drugs, so companies are prohibited from claiming essential oils are medicine that can treat diseases. That hasn’t stopped doTerra. 

In 2020, the company was warned by the Federal Trade Commission for advertising its products as cures to COVID-19. In the letter, the FTC described multiple claims made by doTerra’s distributors, employees of the company that not only sell essential oils but recruit others to do the same. “An image of doTERRA-brand peppermint and lemon essential oil bottles, accompanied by the hashtags ‘#covid #prevention.’” 

doTerra responded to the FTC’s letter by saying it was “working to address concerns.” But earlier this year, a watchdog group asked the FTC to take further action against doTerra in a letter alleging its distributors were continuing to claim the company’s essential oils can prevent COVID.  

Josh Gladden, UM’s vice chancellor for research and sponsored programs, told Mississippi Today the university’s partnership with doTerra is focused on studying a potentially beneficial product. Gladden said it was his understanding that the FTC commonly issues warning letters. 

“In that particular case, you know, our understanding is that that was a claim made by someone in their (doTerra’s) sales department on social media, it was not an organized marketing strategy by the company leadership or company direction,” he said. 

Mississippi Today replied that doTerra’s leadership picked a multi-level marketing strategy. 

“That’s true,” Gladden said. “And how they actually get their product out there, you know, they’ve chosen a multi-marketing level approach, and that’s their choice on marketing. What we do feel confident, though, in is that the company itself is dedicated to producing a high quality product however it goes into the market.

“And honestly, in terms of the multi-level marketing strategy, I’m not gonna comment on that,” Gladden continued. “That’s their business model that they’ve decided on. But, you know, every company needs some strategy to do their marketing.” 

“What would you do with an extra $300 a month? $2,000 a month? $10,000 a month?” doTerra asks on a page on its website. “The more you put into your business, the greater the compensation.” 

Declarations like that pervade doTerra’s website. But the truth is that most of doTerra’s distributors don’t make thousands of dollars a month. In fact, a little over half didn’t make a single dollar in 2020, according to doTerra’s recent income statement. That same year, just 5% of doTerra’s distributors made more than $1,370 a month, a poverty-level wage — and that was before business expenses.

doTerra was founded in 2008 by former executives at Young Living, another multi-level marketing company that sells essential oils. To make money, doTerra’s distributors commit to buying at least $100 worth of products at a wholesale discount each month. Distributors also get bonuses by recruiting people to work in their “downline.” Even though this business model takes on a pyramid-like structure, multi-level marketing is legal. 

The gap between the promises MLMs make and the reality has led to numerous stories of harm: Distributors, driven into thousands of dollars in debt, forced to declare bankruptcy; strained or broken relationships; friends promising the new product they’re selling can cure illnesses. 

Still, doTerra claims it’s different. 

“There are many Multi-Level Marketing companies out there, but not all MLMs are created equal,” the company says on a webpage explaining why people should join. One reason doTerra stands out, the webpage says, is because its essential oils are the “most tested, most trusted” on the market. 

That kind of claim — “most tested, most trusted” — is where partnerships with universities come into play, said Robert FitzPatrick, an expert on multi-level marketing who authored the book “Ponzinomics.” These relationships help MLMs fight public perception, FitzPatrick said, but UM studying doTerra’s essential oils ultimately “doesn’t matter to the scheme itself. That has nothing to do with (doTerra) being a multi-level marketing company.” 

doTerra has partnerships with Oklahoma University, the University of Utah, and Southern Adventist University. But the multi-level marketing company is most proud of its relationship with Khan and the National Center for Natural Products Research. 

It’s easy to see why: For one, Khan’s reputation precedes him. In a video promoting the center, the dean of UM’s school of pharmacy described Khan as a “world-renowned individual” who has won “possibly every award that you can.”

“We’ve got other partnerships,” Osguthorpe told Mississippi Today. “But personally, we’re most proud of what we do with NCNPR.” 

Corporate-sponsored research at University of Mississippi is facilitated by the Industry Engagement Council, an office in the Brandt Memory House, a historic building that also contains the university’s foundation. In 2019, its director, Hughes Miller, helped form the council, which calls itself “your gateway to Ole Miss.” 

As director, Miller assists a wide variety of research partnerships at the university. That could be a contract with Viking Range for students to study manufacturing or a law school fellowship program with companies like FedEx, C-Spire, or Yates Construction. In Miller’s work, “discovery calls” and non-disclosure agreements are common. But the particulars of each agreement vary. In doTerra’s case, Khan cultivated the partnership. 

“It’s never cookie cutter,” Miller said. 

As Miller sees it, corporate-sponsored research supports economic development in Mississippi. It’s also beneficial to the university. Each year, sponsored-research contributes $60-$75 million to UM’s Oxford campus alone, Gladden told Mississippi Today. The University of Mississippi Medical Center brings in just as much. 

That’s money the Legislature could be providing in public funding, but appropriations for the Institutions of Higher Learning have never recovered from the Great Recession. Public universities in states that have seen a decline in funding for higher education have more of an incentive to take dollars for privately funded research. 

In pursuing sponsored-research, the university contemplates the appearance of each partnership, Gladden told Mississippi Today. “We ask, what is the history of this company? What is the reputation of this company? Do we want to hitch our wagon? What is this gonna look like from the outside?” 

Gladden said UM has turned down corporate sponsors whose business practices it does not support, but he would not name those companies.

“That’s gonna be a case-by-case assessment,” Gladden told Mississippi Today. “Now, our scientists and our researchers probably wouldn’t be focusing so much on that. But our university leadership could be focused on that. So, if you’re asking where do we draw the line, that’s sort of an impossible question because it depends a lot on the details.” 

UM has more uniformity in the guidelines it provides researchers for how to ethically conduct a corporate partnership that include disclosing conflicts of interests. Companies are still able to have input on study design and framing. Khan said NCNPR kept doTerra updated on the results of the lavender oil study but the company did not have a say in whether the article was published. 

In late March, hundreds of scientists, researchers and policymakers, including officials at the Food and Drug Administration, gathered in Oxford for the International Conference on the Science of Botanicals. Since it was first held in 2000, ICSB has grown into the largest annual event at the Oxford Conference Center, a brick building just off MS-Highway 7. 

Under Khan’s leadership, ICSB became known for its “nonthreatening atmosphere,” according to NutraIngredients-USA, a publication that covers the dietary supplement industry. At the conference, private companies and FDA officials mingle and discuss the often contentious topic that is federal regulation. This year, doTerra was a title sponsor. Osguthorpe, the company’s chief medical officer, spoke during a session called “industry perspectives” that also included a scientist from Amway, another multi-level marketing company.  

The initial lavender oil study that Khan worked on proposed a new way to measure the quality of essential oils, including ones that are adulterated, or mixed with another substance. Khan said he hopes his new framework will become “a tool for everybody,” including regulatory agencies. 

“I think that what we’re using our relationship to do is to substantiate and scientifically better understand the product,” Osguthorpe said. “It has nothing to do with a business model.” 

Almost a year after Khan published the study, doTerra is using it to claim its lavender oil is the “purest on the market” and “the gold standard against which all other lavender oils are measured.” On a website called “Source to you,” doTerra says NCNPR’s study shows that “2/3rds of lavender oils on the market are contaminated and of inferior quality.” 

“I mean, they can extrapolate that,” Khan said, “but in our paper, I don’t think it says anywhere that DoTerra products are superior quality. I don’t see any mention of anything superior to anything.” 

The study actually found 51.9% of the 27 unidentified lavender essential oil samples doTerra provided were adulterated or of poor quality, while 62.5% of samples NCNPR sourced from other places were adulterated or of poor quality. 

This year, Khan’s center is studying peppermint oil with its funding from doTerra. After that, it might be cinnamon oil. He said the market will decide which essential oil doTerra would like NCNPR to study next. 

Khan said he views the partnership with doTerra as a matter of uncovering scientific knowledge and that it has nothing to do with the company’s multi-level marketing model. 

“I don’t think we’re going to not partner with them because they have a bad reputation,” Khan said. “For us to tell them, ‘we can’t help you because you had an FTC violation before’ — where else are they gonna go to get it (the study) done right?”

“The thing is, the company does exist, they’re here, they are selling it,” Khan continued. “If they’re asking us a scientific question that we can solve, I really don’t think it’s the right thing to turn down anybody or any place, if they’re trying to do things right.”

The post Ole Miss strikes $5 million research deal with company warned for claiming essential oils can cure COVID appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The tidal wave of alleged misspending identified by auditors at the Mississippi Department of Human Services was not confined to the headline-grabbing payments for publicity events with famous athletes, inspirational talks from a former pro-wrestler and construction of a new volleyball stadium.

Auditors say some disputed payments also included grants to established programs, such as the T.K. Martin Center at Mississippi State University that helps children with dyslexia learn to read.

The problem is not with the worthiness of the recipients but with how officials awarded the grants in violation of federal regulations, the auditors say.

The examples also show how then-MDHS director John Davis cut corners and skirted guidelines to further his own agenda and to try to satisfy the aims of former Gov. Phil Bryant. Behind his support for valid programs, Bryant’s requests also served to placate a campaign donor and the agriculture school, one of the state’s most powerful lobbies.

New communication obtained by Mississippi Today shows Bryant asking Davis about funding for specific vendors — encouraging Davis to pre-select grant awards — and the director eagerly complying.

“Yes sir we can definitely help,” Davis replied to his boss in one instance. “You can go ahead and tell them I will be reaching out to fund them. I will do today.”

The exchanges shed light on a larger scandal that began after Davis exploited his agency’s nonexistent bid process for federal block grants that came with virtually no federal oversight. Under his leadership, the agency started making upfront, multimillion-dollar payments to two private nonprofits, Mississippi Community Education Center and Family Resource Center of North Mississippi, to run an umbrella program they called Families First for Mississippi.

Davis maintained control over how Families First operated while he treated the private nonprofits and the public agency as one in the same.

But they weren’t the same because the nonprofit spending was shielded from public view,  creating a black hole and concealing a raft of legal and ethical issues until state auditors finally caught up with them.

Davis and five others have pleaded not guilty to criminal charges while the state attempts to claw back payments identified as improper. Officials have not accused Bryant of any wrongdoing in the case.

Mississippi Today reviewed communication between Davis, Bryant and other welfare officials in the months leading up to the start of the state auditor’s welfare investigation to understand the closed-door decisions behind the public spending. Some of those text messages are reprinted here exactly as they appear without correction.

In this story, we examine two examples of Bryant asking Davis, his appointee, if he could fund a specific organization without using normal channels.

“Any way we can help?” Bryant worded his request both times.

In one case, Davis responded within minutes, assuring the governor he would reach out that day to fund Willowood Developmental Center, a nonprofit that serves adults and children with intellectual and developmental disabilities in Jackson.

Willowood was already under a separate child care grant with the department when Bryant sent Davis the request for Families First funding. And even though Willowood never ended up receiving additional MDHS funding after the exchange, Davis’ response reveals his agency’s cavalier and preferential grant award process – and Bryant’s involvement in it.

“If it’s wrong to try to help Willowood and those poor children out there, then I will have to say I was wrong, but I don’t think I was,” Bryant told Mississippi Today.

In the other case, Davis initially told the governor it would be against federal regulations for his agency to fund the T.K. Martin Center for Technology and Disability at Mississippi State University. But, then Davis found a way to award the center a grant anyway.

“Perhaps he did,” Bryant said. “And I hope it was proper and legal and ethical and moral because I remember people at Mississippi State, and I don’t remember who, calling and saying, ‘This is a wonderful program for these poor children and we’re going to lose it.’”

Both programs were associated with Families First for Mississippi, the now-defunct program that attached its name to many existing organizations across the state and promised to pump resources directly into the communities of needy residents. 

In reality, the initiative was little more than a smokescreen for the widespread misspending of a federal grant called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), intended to help the state’s most vulnerable residents. According to a Mississippi Today analysis of audit reports, independent accountants found that between 70% and 86% of purchases by the two Families First nonprofits violated federal rules – including welfare regulations, which are already some of the laxest guidelines of all federal grants.

For more than two decades, Families First was a catch-all phrase for services Mississippi provided with its TANF dollars.

Dating to the 1990s, after Congress overhauled the welfare system, small organizations across the state received “Families First grants” from the Mississippi Department of Human Services to offer parenting and anger management classes, after-school programs, tutoring, and job-preparation activities. Sometimes these entities received grants directly from the state agency and sometimes they received subcontracts from other MDHS subgrantees, making them what auditors call “third tier recipients.” The contractors were supposed to advance the state’s goal of helping low-income families “achieve self-sufficiency.”

But the state also used its welfare money and the Families First program to supplement the budgets of existing programs and private organizations that don’t seem to directly relate to poverty, such as services for children with disabilities – programs often absent from Mississippi’s notoriously underfunded public school system.

The state has broad flexibility to spend welfare dollars not just to help people out of poverty, but to prevent others from falling into it. Ideally, the money would be distributed as part of a cohesive plan for battling poverty in the state or through a competitive process to boost the most promising programs. But records show that under Davis, the agency often awarded grants at his discretion, sometimes on the suggestion of political leaders.

Davis said when he became director, Bryant instructed him to significantly consolidate the number of TANF grants to a manageable number, resulting in the large contracts with the two nonprofits. This was just one of multiple areas of the agency that Davis said Bryant instructed him to outsource, including child support enforcement.

The T.K. Martin Center, formed in 1997 and named after a former MSU dean and vice president, received a “Families First grant” in 2017 to open a program to help kids learn to read. It was called the IGNITE Dyslexia Clinic.

Willowood, a roughly $6 million-a-year, nearly 50-year-old charity funded primarily by government grants and run by a board of prominent community members, had received Families First funding throughout the 2000s, its director told Mississippi Today.

Both Willowood and T.K. Martin programs overlapped with another federal grant that investigators and auditors have yet to examine as closely as they have TANF: the Child Care Development Fund (CCDF).

From 2015 to 2019, MDHS had stopped giving Families First grants to Willowood but instead funded the center through a CCDF subgrant, which the nonprofit used to operate its day care center.

When the TANF program was in strife during the months leading up to Davis’ forced retirement – after his agency had cut the budgets of several subgrantees and Families First was bleeding funds – the agency also pivoted to CCDF to help T.K. Martin.

The Child Care Development Fund is a federal block grant, similar to TANF, that states can use to provide child care vouchers to low-income working parents or improve the quality of day care centers. In 2018, child care advocates complained that the agency had not approved a new voucher in five years.

A week after Davis told Bryant his agency couldn’t legally fund T.K. Martin, the welfare director visited Mississippi State University to tour the facilities and discuss funding with college president Mark Keenum, emails show. They struck a deal that day, according to text messages. 

Nancy New, the nonprofit founder who partly ran Families First, also crossed paths with both programs. She is one of the central figures in the welfare scandal who has pleaded not guilty to several criminal charges and is awaiting trial.

New joined welfare officials when they visited T.K. Martin in April of 2019, according to an emailed itinerary.

New also attended a luncheon at Willowood with “special Guest Brett Favre,” a calendar entry from October 2018 shows. Willowood’s director told Mississippi Today that Favre’s cousin sat on its board and arranged for the former NFL star to speak at Willowood’s event and fundraiser.

Favre became a high profile figure in the welfare scandal after the auditor revealed that the New’s nonprofit had paid the athlete $1 million in welfare funds to promote Families First and to speak at events that the auditor said he didn’t attend.

“That was not one of the speeches he was quote-unquote supposed to make,” said Willowood’s executive director Curtis Alford, who added that Willowood did not pay Favre for the appearance. 

A couple months after the event, Davis signed a $182,275 CCDF subgrant with Willowood “to promote self-sufficiency by promoting the optimal development of children” — language that more closely aligns with the purposes of TANF. A week later, calendar entries show, the News planned to attend a tour of Willowood.

Independent accountants found that Family Resource Center of North Mississippi, one of the Families First subgrantees, had illegally funded the dyslexia program at T.K. Martin Center in 2017 and 2018. 

Overall, auditors determined that the nonprofit misused more than $11.5 million in federal grant dollars, including $717,000 it improperly paid to Mississippi State University. That included the grant that went to T.K. Martin. No one from the north Mississippi nonprofit has faced criminal charges.

In the spring of 2019, while the Family Resource Center faced reported budget cuts and its grant to T.K. Martin had expired, Davis received a flurry of messages. 

He heard concerns about the reading program from First Lady Deborah Bryant, U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and the head of the Republican Party in Starkville where Mississippi State University is located, texts show.

“Things like this disturb me,” Deborah Bryant said in an email to her husband, referring to the story of a mom whose 6-year-old daughter was at risk of losing the life-changing services she received from the clinic.

Bryant, who struggled with dyslexia as a kid, forwarded his wife’s email to Davis. “Anyway we can help?” he wrote from his personal email account.

Davis said he couldn’t. He told the governor that his agency would be violating federal regulations if it funded the center – even though MDHS had already indirectly funded the center through Families First.

“My attorneys told me that after they reviewed the scope it is all clinical based diagnosis and treatment,” Davis told Bryant in the April 17, 2019 email. “They advised me that they are of the opinion that it cannot be funded with TANF or any other MDHS funds.”

A footnote in the forensic audit referenced this email, but didn’t mention that the recipient was Gov. Bryant. Auditors determined that TANF money could not be used for the services at T.K. Martin because the program did not target needy families. The audit never acknowledges that the center eventually received child care funding.

“Thanks John,” Gov. Bryant responded. “Let me know if I can help find funding. We always want to follow the rules.”

The same day as the email, the Columbus Dispatch published a story addressing concerns that MSU might be closing T.K. Martin, which included vague quotes from university officials saying that a new plan for funding “is still being formulated.”

Behind closed doors, the university was discussing funding with Davis. A week later, welfare officials visited the campus to discuss the program. 

With the help of a deputy director named Jacob Black, who also attended the April 24 tour, Davis found the funding workaround. The day of the visit, Davis texted Bryant, saying he had “FOUND A WAY TO FUND THE T.K. Martin Center you ask me about.”

Later that day, Black texted Davis, recommending they add T.K. Martin into its application for renewed federal preschool funding, which was set to open in a few months. The federal agency eventually rejected Mississippi’s application and the state never got that funding.

“I think we can bridge the gap until that funding starts next spring. I will make that happen,” Black wrote.

Davis thanked Black for “always thinking ahead.”

“I am just tying to keep up with my teacher,” Black responded. “Thank you for being that teacher.”

Davis relied on Black, who is an attorney, to provide legal advice and ensure the agency was complying with the law. Their communication suggests Black knew how to get creative with funding. Once, when Davis asked Black by text if he could find $2.5 million to shore up New’s nonprofit, he agreed to find a way.

“Let me figure out how to do it without creating an audit finding,” Black wrote. 

Davis and Black seemed to get along; the director once told his deputy that the governor “thinks a great deal of you.” 

But Black apparently wasn’t as loyal to Davis as he appeared. Black was one of the employees who took information about Davis’ alleged misspending to Phil Bryant’s office in late June of 2019, according to a former agency spokesperson. Bryant alerted State Auditor Shad White, according to the auditor, prompting the investigation that identified rampant misspending and possible theft. Officials have not made public what exactly the tip entailed, calling it an exempt investigatory record. After Davis was ousted, Black remained a top agency official and even became interim director for about a month in early 2020 before current Gov. Tate Reeves replaced him with former prosecutor Bob Anderson. Soon after, Black left MDHS to take a staff attorney job at Medicaid.

Days after the MSU tour, Davis told Gov. Bryant the funding to T.K. Martin was a done deal, even though the agency didn’t yet possess a “scope of work” document from the center and wouldn’t officially ink the grant for almost three months. 

“They are being funded,” Davis texted Bryant on April 26. “…They sent a memo out telling the staff at TK Martin everything is good … I told him that’s all I needed to know. So, we are slick.”

Officials never publicized – even in a press release about T.K. Martin published weeks later – that the welfare agency provided the stopgap. 

Mississippi State spokesperson Sid Salter did not return several phone calls for this story, but he told Mississippi Today by email, “Your assertions regarding ‘closed doors’ or ‘workarounds’ reflect neither the spirit nor the letter of what transpired at the meeting” with Davis. 

That July, days after the investigation into Davis began, Black signed the official MDHS subgrant agreement with T.K. Martin for $149,978. Since MDHS awarded the grant after Davis left office and the money came out of the child care fund and not TANF, the main grant under investigation recently, forensic auditors have not examined this expenditure. 

In the subgrant file, there is a non-solicitation grant sheet, on which officials must explain why they are awarding funds outside of a bid process. On the document, there is a box that asks agency officers to “explain in detail the reason(s) that quotes, bids or proposals were not requested to obtain an award of services.”

The box is empty.

“Any assertion that MSU did not appropriately apply for the MDHS grant is simply not factual,” Salter wrote.

Although T.K. Martin is no longer receiving funding from MDHS, the university representative said the program is on solid footing. “MSU is proud of the T.K. Martin Center and openly advocates for funding to keep TKMC programs operating because those programs serve deserving clients,” Salter said by email.

Last year, Gov. Reeves awarded T.K. Martin $242,000 from his Governor’s Emergency Education Response (GEER) pandemic relief funds for IGNITE, its dyslexia and reading clinic. A relatively new program, IGNITE was propped up in 2017 by the allegedly illegal Families First grant from Family Resource Center. The clinic curiously shares the same name, Ignite, with other welfare-funded programs run by Christian ministers and former WWE wrestlers within Gov. Bryant’s welfare-funded “faith-based initiative.”

Bryant made a similar intervention on behalf of Willowood, the Jackson center that provides services to adults and children with special needs and runs a day care center that often takes kids who are in state custody.

From 2000 to 2010, MDHS had given Willowood an annual Families First grant averaging around $130,000, which allowed it to run fatherhood initiatives or programs at Mississippi’s youth detention center. But in recent years, Willowood hadn’t received that funding, so it stopped providing those services.

Alford, the Willowood director, told Mississippi Today that around 2018, he began discussing the changing landscape of the state’s welfare program with other community leaders, asking, “How do you get back into the Families First deal?” 

“They said, ‘Well, Nancy New is controlling a lot of that money now,’” Alford said. “I reached out to her to see if we could get back into that loop of money.”

But the help never came.

Willowood board member David Marsh wrote Bryant a letter in March of 2019, just a few months before the auditor’s investigation began and Davis abruptly retired.

“You have been a friend to Willowood for numerous years and we can’t thank you enough for your support,” wrote Marsh, owner of a local construction company. “We humbly ask that Families First reinstate the $150,000.00 that Willowood desperately needs.”

Marsh, whose company Benchmark Construction has donated $6,200 to Bryant’s political campaigns over the years, told Mississippi Today that he had known Gov. Bryant for decades. Marsh said Bryant helped Willowood fundraise when he was state auditor. 

“I thought that would be beneficial if he knew that Willowood needed help,” Marsh said. “… So I just reached out to him because I know him personally and wanted to see if there was any opportunity to get that (Families First grant) back.”

Gov. Bryant sent a picture of the letter to his welfare director, Davis, with the message, “Anyway we can help these guys?”

Davis said yes. “You can go ahead and tell them I will be reaching out to fund them,” he responded. “I will do today.”

Though the Families First program collapsed before Willowood received another grant, the exchange shines light on Bryant’s role in the channeling of funds not just at the state agency level, but through the privatized Families First program run by Nancy New.

Auditors have accused Davis of having inappropriate involvement in New’s funding decisions, demonstrating his favoritism and undue influence over the nonprofit. But in the case of Willowood, Bryant appeared to wield the power.

After Marsh sent the letter, Alford said he received a call.

“In just a couple days,” Alford said, “Nancy New called me and said, ‘I understand that the governor says that y’all are supposed to be getting money from us and we’re not giving it to you.’”

“She said she was going to try to fund me something and then she got arrested, I’m assuming, shortly after that because I’ve never heard another word from her,” he said.

This is Part 3 in Mississippi Today’s series “The Backchannel,” which examines former Gov. Phil Bryant’s role in the running of his welfare department during what officials have called the largest public embezzlement scheme in state history.

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Read more about the story here in Bobby Harrison’s analysis.

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OXFORD – Haley Morgan lost her job at a liquor store when she came out as transgender last year. 

The 23-year-old cycled through job interviews where she shared her new, chosen name. She didn’t get calls back. 

That May, her college town’s Starbucks became a lifeline. The Seattle-based coffee chain had policies that supported trans workers and provided health insurance that could cover hormone replacement therapy.

But store managers never stayed for long, creating a chaotic workplace. And the one manager who did stick around made Morgan’s work life a nightmare. 

“He was explicitly transphobic,” Morgan said. “He’d say things like my appearance gives away the fact I’m trans. He’d refer to me as a man as a way to belittle me.” 

Workers at the Starbucks just outside University of Mississippi’s campus were already frustrated that the new manager was given the position at all. He hadn’t worked at a Starbucks before. The situation got Morgan thinking about a strategy she was seeing at Starbucks stores across the country: unionizing. 

The reasons to do so kept piling up in her mind: inconsistent scheduling, pay that has yet to hit $15 an hour, confusing performance metrics.

As a lifelong Mississippian, where federal data shows just 5.5% of workers are in unions, Morgan’s understanding was theoretical — what she learned through bits of American history in grade school and as a public policy major at UM. But as she saw the number of unionized Starbucks stores grow, she felt more confident trying. 

Since a Buffalo Starbucks voted to form a union in December 2021, seven others have won union elections. More than 100 others have started petitioning to hold their own.

“Why not Mississippi?” Morgan thought. 

On March 3, Morgan and eight coworkers signed a letter to the CEO expressing their intentions to unionize while pointing out consistent problems they’d seen at their location: lackluster leadership, understaffed shifts, and inappropriate comments and treatments from management. 

Their efforts come amid a growing movement nationwide led by younger members in consumer-oriented jobs known for high turnover, not the stereotypical blue collar trade work usually associated with union representation.

Amazon workers in Staten Island won their election last week. The workers who wrap Amy’s burritos in California and the people who box Hershey’s chocolate in Virginia are organizing, too, demanding better conditions and pay. 

“The kind of grass roots efforts we are seeing are real and part of a broader pattern,” said Jarod Roll, a labor historian at the University of Mississippi. “Whether (young people) are leaving high school or leaving college, living-wage jobs or jobs that allow them to buy a house or pay off debt are hard to find. And that, in part, is the result of intense anti-union efforts over the last 50 years.”

Brenda Scott has been a voice for workers over three decades and is the president of Mississippi Alliance of State Employees. At one point, her group represented 6,000 workers in 1989. Now that number is fewer than 2,000, as workers have left and lost interest. It’s a challenge, she said, to keep people engaged rather than “on the bench.”  

Mississippi’s so-called right-to-work laws make it so workers can opt out of joining and paying dues to recognized unions, just like the rest of the South. 

“The Mississippi labor movement has a lot of work to do,” Scott said. “Our numbers are low.” 

In 2020, Mississippi’s number of union workers was at about 7,400. In 2021, that number was down to 5,900, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Over the last decade, the number of unionized Mississippians has rarely reached 7% of the workforce.

“We older leaders, we need to engage with the younger leaders,” Scott said. “They’re not only leaders of tomorrow, they’re the leaders of today.” 

The last major Mississippi union campaign at the Canton Nissan plant in 2017 failed. But less than a month after Morgan’s announcement at the Oxford Starbucks, workers in Hattiesburg held the first ever strike at a call center contracted by the federal government. They, too, are working to unionize.

In Mississippi, the unions that do exist include educators and teachers, the Teamster brotherhood, boilermakers, electrical workers, steel workers, and communications workers from AT&T. Some of those unions are more in name than action. Their numbers are still small considering the workforce at large. 

Morgan is now experiencing what those who have dedicated decades to mobilizing workers in Mississippi have long seen: workers aren’t often familiar with the concepts and abilities of unions and they’re terrified of losing their jobs or health insurance. 

“It’s really hard to explain what a union is when there is no real concept of bottom-up organizing in Mississippi,” Morgan said. “The Nissan plant was a huge thing in the news, so a lot of the times that is brought up: It didn’t work there so why would it work here?” 

The Nissan campaign targeted thousands of workers in a single plant. It had over a decade of work built up behind it. But come election day, workers voted 2,244-1,307 against the United Auto Workers. 

Sanchioni Butler, a UAW organizer, spent a decade building support from clergy members to community leaders in addition to educating plant workers on unions. 

“I learned that fear is real,” Butler said. “I’ve seen some of the strongest people fold because of the fear of losing what they have.”

Then-Gov. Phil Bryant and business leaders came out hard against union efforts at Nissan. It would hurt the company’s competitiveness, they said, in turn hurting its workers. A National Labor Relations Board complaint accused a plant supervisor of threatening workers with lost wages and a plant closure if a union came in — something Nissan denied. 

Similar back-and-forth has played out between workers and management at the Maximus Federal office in Hattiesburg, where workers answer calls about Medicare and the Affordable Care Act.   

“In order for workers in the South to win, they have to stand together and have courage,” Butler said. “Somebody has to take a stand. The organizer can’t do that. The workers are the ones who have the power to vote in their best interest.” 

In its annual report on unions, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that the national median weekly earnings of nonunion workers was about 83% of the wages of their union counterparts — $975 versus $1,169. 

A recent study by Oxfam, a nonprofit that works to end poverty, found that 45% of Mississippians are earning under $15 an hour.

While the Maximus workers aren’t in a recognized union, they’ve still put pressure on the company with some results alongside other Maximus call center workers in Louisiana and members of Communications Workers of America. Maximus bumped wages up to $15 per hour before a presidential federal contractor order required it; the company lowered health insurance costs; and shareholders voted to have a third-party racial equity audit to examine the company’s impact on communities of color. 

The workers — largely single mothers and women of color — are still pushing for higher wages that compare to the $55,000 salaries federal call center workers make at the Internal Revenue Service. Maximus also doesn’t offer every worker paid sick days. 

While Starbucks touts investing in baristas’ pay, Morgan has yet to see an increase to $15 an hour in her paycheck. She said she and her coworkers are still around $12 with the promise it will eventually reach $15. Morgan says it’s unclear when that will happen. 

A Starbucks spokesperson told Mississippi Today that $15 an hour for baristas will become the baseline starting wage this summer. The average wage, at that point, will be $17 nationwide, according to the chain.

Morgan would work at Starbucks full-time, but the store isn’t offering it. To ensure she brings home at least $600 every two weeks — just barely enough to cover her rent and other expenses — she works on a food delivery app. 

“Different managers said different things,” Morgan said, referring to the hourly pay increases. “And it’s hard to hold any of them accountable.”

A union, she thinks, could mitigate issues like that.

Workers can either sign enough union cards to spur an election hosted by the National Labor Board or they can have a large enough number of cards signed that the election isn’t needed.

Neither the local Starbucks or Maximus workers are at that point yet — getting there has long been a challenge in Mississippi, especially. 

“There was a conscious effort to erase unions, demonize unions, that goes back to the 40s and 50s,” said Roll, the UM professor. “And it all goes back to maintaining Mississippi’s cheap labor economy.” 

That economic structure originated from Mississippi’s reliance on the free work of enslaved Black people and then their cheap work through tenant farming and sharecropping.

By the 1940s, white male Mississippians in grain processing, timber and other trade jobs did create influential unions. Hall said those gains were stomped out by politicians and business leaders with accusations of communism during the McCarthy era. 

“There’s a history that they were here and they were successful that often gets overlooked,” Roll said. “And the suppression of those unions shows how much a threat they were seen as by employers and politicians.” 

Morgan has been inspired by the work of former UM classmate, Jaz Brisack, who led the Buffalo Starbuck unionizing efforts. She isn’t sure she’d have found the confidence to begin organizing without Brisack. 

Morgan’s manager, who workers say also made racist and sexist comments, was put on leave to be investigated. But Morgan said Starbucks ethics and compliance investigators didn’t call her to discuss what happened until after workers shared their letter about unionizing publicly. 

Recently, Morgan was told the manager was fired. In a statement to Mississippi Today, Starbucks said it “separated” from the manager for “policy violations.” 

Starbucks has consistently said it supports its workers’ right to unionize but thinks a union would come between them and their workers, which it prefers to call “partners.” It says it’s continuing to “listen and learn” from its stores.

Morgan said hours are still inconsistent for her and her coworkers. She has to stay at about 20 hours each week to hold onto her health insurance. Most weeks she’s lucky to hit 25. 

“Not many jobs are going to support being trans in Mississippi,” Morgan said. 

It’s not as simple as just quitting and finding something better — an option critics often jump to. 

“We like working at Starbucks,” Morgan said. “That’s why we want to unionize. We care.” 

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State Sen. John Horhn of Jackson discusses how Mississippi’s capital city fared in the 2022 legislative session. He said the delegation managed to secure more than $78 million for various projects across the city, but that state funding for drastically needed water and sewer infrastructure will fall far short. He said part of this problem is because of lack of leadership from city government.

Listen to more episodes of The Other Side here.

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While 50,000 Mississippians face the prospect of going without affordable medical care thanks to a contract dispute between the state’s largest hospital and insurer over reimbursement rates, the salaries for executives at both entities are shielded from the public.

Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi sued the state over a decade ago to make sure its executives’ compensation could not be disclosed, and the University of Mississippi Medical Center — despite being under the purview of the Institutions of Higher Learning and receiving state and federal funding — cites a broad exemption in state law when withholding its top administrators’ salary information.

Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi is required to file information about its executives’ compensation as part of its annual report to the Mississippi Insurance Department. But in 2009, the insurer sued the department to stop it from releasing that information to the public.

Several current executives at the company — Carol Pigott, the CEO; Thomas Fenter, the chief medical officer; and Bryan Lagg, senior vice president of consumer marketing and sales — are listed as plaintiffs in court filings.

Hinds County Chancery Court Judge Patricia D. Wise sided with Blue Cross, ordering the department “to withhold from public disclosure all information concerning the compensation of BCBSM executives.” Wise determined that the Insurance Department didn’t use the information to carry out its duties, so it isn’t a public record, and that disclosing the salary information would violate “the privacy rights of the individual plaintiffs/executives.”

Top executives make seven figures, a longtime former employee of the insurance company told Mississippi Today.

The median household income in Mississippi is around $46,000.

“Salaries and employee compensation of all employees at BCBSMS is not pertinent to the contract dispute with UMMC, and simply distracts from what is really important — high-quality, cost-effective care for our Members,” Cayla Mangrum, manager of corporate communications for the company, said in a statement to Mississippi Today. 

But Mississippians faced with exorbitant health care costs or the added burden — financial and otherwise — of driving elsewhere for care might see it differently.

Court Order Bcbs by kate on Scribd

Carmen Balber, executive director of the nonprofit consumer advocacy group Consumer Watchdog, said that health insurance is essentially a public good, even when delivered through private companies. 

“At the end of the day, we’re paying for those salaries,” she said, speaking about health insurance companies generally because she doesn’t have specific knowledge of BCBS Mississippi. “I’m certain that any consumer who’s had issues with their health insurance, paying for what they need, would be very interested to know that the CEO of the company was making $1 or $2 or $6 million a year.” 

In many other states, that information is public record. In California, for example, an executive compensation report published annually on the company’s website shows their top executive made $6.4 million in 2020. In Michigan, the company’s CEO made $15.6 million in 2021. A spokesperson for the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, the umbrella group for 34 different BCBS companies, said they did not have information about the number of states in which BCBS executive compensation is withheld from the public.

A 2016 survey by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners of its members around the country found that insurance company compensation figures were kept confidential in at least 12 states, including Mississippi. 

The company awards yearly bonuses to employees — as much as six figures for executives — around March each year, said the former BCBS employee, and the amounts of the bonuses also increased in recent years.

The company told Mississippi Today the bonuses are “an important part” of incentive-based compensation. 

“Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi (BCBSMS) is proud of our employee incentive program because it rewards (and thanks) our employees for their individual performance and contribution to the achievement of the Company’s health and wellness goals for our Members,” Mangrum said. 

Though the University of Mississippi Medical Center receives about 9% of its funding from the state, the hospital shields its executives’ compensation, too. When Mississippi Today requested hospital salary information last year, UMMC invoked the broad hospital exemption in the state’s public records law to withhold the information. When reporters asked the Institutes of Higher Learning for the salary information this week, a spokesperson cited the law and said UMMC employees’ salaries are exempt from disclosure.

The salary for Dr. LouAnn Woodward, vice chancellor of health affairs and dean of the school of medicine, was $700,400 a year in 2016, according to a news article.

A 2021 report by the Economic Research Institute showed the average nonprofit hospital CEO made $600,000 in 2018. 

On March 31, Blue Cross and UMMC missed their deadline to sign a new contract, forcing tens of thousands of patients to pay higher costs for out-of-network care at the hospital, or go elsewhere. UMMC maintains it has been underpaid relative to other academic medical centers in the region and is asking for a 30% overall increase in reimbursement rates from Blue Cross in the first year of a new contract. Blue Cross argues that’s too much. 

Contract disputes between the two have been tense in the past, but this is the first time UMMC has gone out of network with Blue Cross, hospital officials said.

In 2009, reporters from WLBT requested information on Blue Cross Blue Shield executive compensation from the Insurance Department, on behalf of several policyholders who wanted to know where their money was going. 

Blue Cross then sued the Insurance Department, triggering the court order in their favor. 

Last week, Mississippi Today filed a records request with the Mississippi Insurance Department for the executive compensation information Blue Cross Blue Shield is required to file with the state annually. The department responded that the 2009 court order prohibits it from fulfilling the request.

“In accordance with the Court’s directive, MID is prohibited from releasing the aforementioned information which is the subject of your request,” wrote deputy commissioner Mark Haire.

Historically, public hospital records were exempt from public disclosure. But after Singing River Health System in Pascagoula secretly stopped paying into its pension system from 2009 to 2014 as it faced a hidden financial crisis, legislators moved to require greater transparency. Public hospitals are now required to share board meeting minutes and financial records. But employee salaries and personnel records are still exempt.

In a statement to Mississippi Today, Blue Cross said they make money not from customer premiums but from “administrative efficiency and investments.” They also said they outperform federal requirements for the percentage of customer premiums they spend on claims, a figure called the medical loss ratio. For large employer groups, the requirement is 85%; Blue Cross says it hit 94%. For individuals, the requirement is 80%, and Blue Cross reached 99%. 

“Our medical loss ratio performance clearly illustrates Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi’s ability to ensure the vast majority of the Member’s premium is for health care costs,” the statement said.

In other states, legislatures have passed laws preventing disclosure of insurers’ executive compensation. Alabama, for example, used to release the information publicly. In 2015, following lobbying from the insurance industry, the law changed to make salaries confidential. 

Alabama health care attorney Jim McFerrin told AL.com that making salary information public gave customers more information about where their money was going and could allow them to take legal action in certain situations – like, for example if they believed a rate increase was unreasonable.

“A decrease in transparency means a decrease in accountability,” he told the news site. 

Mississippi Today reporter Molly Minta contributed to this report.

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Legislators approved $20 million in federal pandemic relief funds to private K-12 schools and private colleges for infrastructure improvements this week, despite concerns from some that public dollars should stay with public schools. 

The money comes from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which gave the Mississippi Legislature $1.8 billion to spend on pandemic response, government services, and infrastructure improvements to water, sewer, and broadband. 

After several rounds of deliberation, the Legislature approved grants of $10 million each to private K-12 schools and private colleges and universities. 

Private schools must be members of the Midsouth Association of Independent Schools or accredited by another regional or national accrediting organization to be eligible for the grant. No school can receive more than $100,000 for infrastructure improvement projects related to water, sewer, broadband, or other allowable infrastructure projects under ARPA. 

Rep. Becky Currie, R-Brookhaven, said she voted against the measure because she felt that the state shouldn’t be giving tax dollars to private schools. 

“It’s a choice to go to a private school, and they have other methods of funding that our public schools don’t have,” she said. 

Nancy Loome of The Parents’ Campaign shared that sentiment, calling the passage of the bill a “tremendous disappointment.”

“We believe that the public’s funds should be used for the public’s schools, not for the private schools that pick and choose which children they want to educate,” Loome said. “Right now, public schools are severely underfunded in Mississippi, and that harms all of us. Every public dollar that gets spent on a private school could be spent on a public school.”

Loome also pointed out that the program for public school infrastructure projects that was created this session is a loan program, not a grant like this bill. 

For the private colleges and universities, funds will be allocated based on a school’s enrollment and schools can apply for grants to spend on water, sewer, broadband, or other allowable infrastructure projects under ARPA. The seven private colleges and universities named in the legislation are Belhaven University, Blue Mountain College, Millsaps College, Mississippi College, Rust College, Tougaloo College, and William Carey University.

Jason Dean, director of the Mississippi Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, was grateful to see the needs of these schools acknowledged, which he said serve 13,000 students across the state. 

“There are private colleges that have served students in this state for decades, and some of their buildings are literally falling in,” he said. “While the money can’t go to build new buildings, it can go to water, sewer, and HVAC systems, which is a big one.”

Dean explained that by updating HVAC systems, costs can be defrayed on energy bills, giving colleges more money to allocate to other things. 

The money for both grants must be allocated to schools by December 2024 and spent by December 2026.

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Delta State, in many ways the most successful college athletics program in Mississippi, will celebrate much of that rich sports history Friday night at the Grammy Museum in Cleveland with its annual Hall of Fame celebration.

When I write “most successful in Mississippi,” I mean it. Delta State has won national championships in baseball, football and six — count ‘em, six — in women’s basketball. In all sports combined (including swimming), Delta State athletes have claimed 14 national titles, 37 regional championships and 68 conference crowns.

Not bad for a rather remote school of about 3,500 that receives precious little publicity outside of Bolivar County. As traditional newspapers have reduced staffing and the size of sports sections, much of what Delta State has achieved has gone under-publicized, to say the least. Nevertheless, the Deltans keep winning. 

It is an amazing story that dates back to when the legendary and gentlemanly Boo Ferriss returned home from the Boston Red Sox in 1960 to take over the Delta State baseball program, carve out a baseball field out of a bean field, and create a national powerhouse. And it dates back to when Delta State decided to revive women’s basketball in 1973 and handed the reins to a graceful lady named Margaret Wade.

And it includes the 2000 national football championship and one of the most perfect offensive performances in the history of the sport at any level. Today, we’ll concentrate of that achievement since Steve Campbell, the head coach of that team, and Mark Hudspeth, who was the offensive coordinator, are among Friday night’s Hall of Fame inductees.

And I know what many readers are thinking: those are mighty big words: “one of the most perfect offensive performances in the history of the sport.” 

Yeah, well, listen to this: In its 63-34 national championship demolition of Bloomsburg (Pa.) State at Florence, Ala., Delta State rolled up 36 first downs and 524 yards rushing. You’ve heard of “three yards and a cloud of dust.” This was “10 yards and a grass stain.” With quarterback Josh Bright leading the way, the Statesmen averaged nearly a first down per play. Delta State scored on nine of its first 10 possessions and then ran out the clock on the 11th. Nobody’s perfect.

We’re talking precision here. Campbell and Hudspeth directed an option offense executed to near perfection. The Statesmen possessed remarkable speed at the skill positions behind an offensive line of stout, muscular linemen, most of whom had been judged as a couple inches too short to play Division I football.

That team, it should be noted, had been picked to finish sixth in the Gulf South Conference in a pre-season poll. It finished first in the nation.

Campbell, the head coach, had served as an offensive line coach at Delta State earlier in his career. Indeed, that was his first full-time job in 1990 when he was hired by Don Skelton. Thirty-two years later, Campbell remembers knowing, as a 24-year-old, that he had come to a special place to work.

“You knew there was greatness there,” Campbell said by phone Wednesday from his home in Mobile. “You knew where the bar was set. You could see the banners and the pennants and all the trophies. Coach Ferriss was still in the building every day and the way he went about his business permeated the place. It wasn’t just his success; it was the way he went about his business, the attention to detail and the way he treated people. Margaret Wade was retired but still around and you went into the gymnasium and you saw all those championship banners. It was — it is — a special place.”

I know that many who read this will say something like, “Yeah, but it’s Division II, small stuff.”

Yes, it is Division II but it’s not necessarily small stuff. The athletes may be an inch or two shorter or a few pounds lighter, but they can play. Look at the history.

Ferriss’ baseball teams competed with much success against Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Southern Miss and Alabama. Between games of a doubleheader Delta State swept at Alabama one day, Bear Bryant dropped by the Delta State dugout. “Boo, we’re going to have to quit playing you if you keep beating us like this,” Bryant told Ferriss.

To which Ferriss replied, “Bear, if everybody felt that way, you wouldn’t be able to find anybody who would play you.”

Wade’s Lady Statesmen routinely defeated national powerhouses. LSU was the victim in her last championship victory. In 1990, Delta State played Southern Miss in football and had a chance to win in the fourth quarter before USM scored late to preserve a 12-0 victory. The next week, Southern Miss beat Alabama. The 2007 Jackson State football team that won the SWAC championship lost by two touchdowns to Delta State.

Gerald Glass helped Delta State to a men’s basketball victory over Mississippi State and to the Division II Final Four before transferring to Ole Miss and becoming one of the greatest players in Rebel basketball history.

It’s still true, in many respects, today.

In 2021, pitcher Hunter Riggins achieved a 9-4 record and 2.97 earned run average for Delta State. In 2022, as a graduate transfer at Southern Miss, Riggins has a 3-2 record and a 2.71 ERA. Yes, the level of play is a little bit higher at Division I, but the emphasis is on “a little bit.” The Gulf South Conference, in which Delta State competes, is the Southeastern Conference of Division II athletics.

Jeremy McClain, who directs Southern Miss athletics, once held the same job at Delta State. Before that, he was probably the best pitcher in Delta State history. He was asked recently about the historical excellence of Delta State athletics.

“Well, number one, look at the coaches that been through there,” McClain said. “Just unbelievable — from Coach Ferriss, Bill Marchant and Mike Kinnison in baseball, to Margaret Wade and Lloyd Clark in women’s basketball and Horace McCool, Red Parker, Steve Campbell and Ron Roberts in football. That’s pretty amazing right there. Plus, you’ve got great athletes in the Delta area. And Delta State has made great use of Mississippi’s junior college system in recruiting in all sports.

“It’s a special place, always has been.”

•••

The 2022 Delta State Athletics Hall of Fame Induction will be held Friday at 7 p.m. at the Grammy Museum. Sixteen new inductees will be honored, including, because of COVID delays, the classes of 2020 and 2022.

In the class of 2020: Jennifer Artichuk Beckert (swimming and diving), Michael Eubanks (football), Nicole Trotter Francis (women’s basketball), Lardester Hicks Green (football), Mark Hudspeth (football coach), Edwin Maysonet (baseball), Clyde Muse (men’s basketball) and Jeremy Richardson (men’s basketball).

The Class of 2022 includes Bobby Barrett (football), Steve Campbell (football coach), Micah Davis (football), Dusty Hughes (baseball), Josh Melton (baseball), Chico Potts (men’s basketball) and Tanya Redmond (women’s basketball).

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