Gov. Tate Reeves is holding up efforts to enact a Mississippi medical marijuana law.
The first-term Republican governor’s refusal to call a special session is preventing legislators from taking up and presumably passing a bill approving medical marijuana.
While Reeves is, at this point, the sole person blocking efforts of legislators to at least take up the issue of medical marijuana, there is plenty of blame to be shared by both House and Senate leaders as to why the state does not already have a medical cannabis program.
Medical marijuana is an issue that legislators have been dragging their collective feet on for years.
First and foremost, during the 2021 session, the Senate, led by Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, passed a bill that would have made medical marijuana legal by now if the House had passed it and if it was signed into law by the governor.
The House opted to let the bill die.
The backdrop is that many supporters of medical marijuana did not want the Legislature to pass a bill that they feared would supplant Initiative 65 that was approved overwhelmingly by voters in November 2020 to legalize medical marijuana.
The bill approved by the Senate would have gone into effect only if the Mississippi Supreme Court threw out the citizen-sponsored Initiative 65. As everyone now knows, the Supreme Court in a lawsuit that was pending when the Senate passed its bill did strike down Initiative 65, citing problems with the language establishing the initiative process.
Since that controversial Supreme Court ruling in May, legislators have been trying to reach agreement on a medical marijuana proposal that could be taken up in a special session.
There was a second moment in the 2021 regular session that could have already decided the fate of medical marijuana. Had the Senate agreed to what some members of the House wanted earlier this year — an extended regular session — the Legislature could have come back into session on its on to enact medical marijuana.
The state Constitution gives the Legislature the authority to extend the regular session essentially through the entire year if two-thirds of the membership of both the House and Senate agree. While the House wanted to do this in 2021, the Senate leaders had no interest.
The session extension resolution could be crafted in a way that legislators would only return to the Capitol if Hosemann and House Speaker Philip Gunn agreed on a reason for them to return.
But lawmakers are responsible for the delay dating back many years before 2021. Truth be known, as neighboring states began to legalize medical marijuana years ago, the Mississippi Legislature should have seen the writing on the wall — the broad public support for medical marijuana — and acted before it ever got to a citizen-sponsored initiative.
And when the initiative was filed, legislative leaders should have known there was a good chance it would be successful. That is especially true since it had the backing of state Rep. Joel Bomgar, R-Madison, who has the tech savvy needed to wage a successful campaign to gather the number of signatures of registered voters needed to place an issue on the ballot.
Legislators could have passed a medical marijuana bill early on after the initiative was filed. The Legislature’s legalization of medical marijuana most likely would have taken the steam out of the initiative.
To further parse blame, there would have been less of a chance a lawsuit would have been filed challenging the initiative had the proposal not incorporated many of Bomgar’s libertarian principles, including the restraints on taxing the product and the wide discretion in its use.
In fairness to Reeves, one of the few powers the Mississippi Constitution gives the governor is the authority to call a special session. He is using that leverage to say precisely what he wants the bill to entail.
That is his right. But as a veteran of the legislative process, the governor also should know that even if legislative leaders agree to his demands, it would be difficult for them to guarantee that an amendment offered and passed by the full membership during debate would not be contrary to Reeves’ wishes.
The legislative leadership, presumably, could limit debate and prevent amendments from being offered. But how would it look to pass a bill legalizing medical marijuana without debate?
Another option would be for Reeves to do the hard work of gaining commitments from enough lawmakers to ensure amendments changing his proposal did not pass.
But if Reeves does not want to do that work — as other governors have done in the past — he can simply keep them from convening. He has that power, at least until January when the 2022 regular session begins.
Then, legislators can pass whatever medical marijuana bill they want, and it will be up to Reeves to sign it or veto it. The question then will be does he want to veto medical marijuana that has been approved overwhelmingly by the Mississippi electorate.
As Geoff Pender reported earlier this month, Mississippi is the only state without an equal pay law. And his analysis found that compared to the rest of the country, Mississippi’s gender pay gap is higher than the national average of 19%. According to the American Association of University Women, women in the Magnolia State earn 23% less of what men earn, which translates to a rank of 41 out of 51 states and 13 out of the 17 Southern states.
View our data illustrating the varying gender pay gap in the Southern United States:
People wanting to draw their own congressional district can access legislative computers and in-depth data to do so until Nov. 5.
The guidelines of the Joint Legislative Redistricting Committee require public access for three weeks to allow the public to draw their own congressional districts and three weeks to draw their own state House and Senate districts.
People wishing to do so should call 601-359-1226 and ask for Ted Booth, executive director of the Legislature’s Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review Committee. The offices and computers will be available from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. on weekdays.
“We will have operators available to help the public draw the districts,” said Ben Collins, the Geographic Information System coordinator for the redistricting staff, which is part of PEER. “If they want to look at DeSoto County, we will look at DeSoto County. If they want to look statewide, we will look statewide.”
Collins said members of the public can keep the maps they draw, and the maps also will be made available as part of the public record as the Legislature works to redraw the state’s four U.S. House seats and 174 state legislative districts to match population shifts found by the 2020 U.S. Census.
State and federal laws require redistricting to be conducted every 10 years to ensure equal representation of districts on the federal, state and local levels.
A three-week period early in January after the 2022 session begins will be made available for the public to draw state House and Senate districts.
The plan is for the Joint Redistricting Committee to adopt a U.S. House redistricting plan before the session begins in January. Then early in the session the entire Legislature will take up congressional redistricting with the hope of getting it adopted quickly.
The reason for the need for swift action on congressional redistricting is because the deadline for candidates to qualify to run for the congressional seats is March 1. The primary election will be held in June.
For the past two redistricting cycles, the Legislature has been unable to agree on a congressional redistricting plan and the federal judiciary ultimately drew the congressional district map for the state.
The next election for the 174 legislative seats is not scheduled until 2023 so the Legislature most likely will take up redrawing those districts late in the 2022 session.
Though healthcare workers were among the first able to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, just 32 of the 204 nursing homes in Mississippi have reported that at least 75% of their employees are fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
This data comes from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which has called the 75% threshold a “realistic goal for providers to meet.”
The Biden administration announced in August that CMS was collaborating with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to develop a plan that will require staff working at all nursing homes accepting Medicare and Medicaid funding to be vaccinated, or risk losing their federal funding. While the new rules are expected to go into effect by late October, around 40% of nursing home employees in Mississippi have refused to get vaccinated.
Since mid-June, all staff and employees of Mississippi nursing homes have been required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or be tested for the virus twice per week under an order from State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs.
Still, public health officials have maintained for months that the vast majority of outbreaks occurring in nursing home settings are due to unvaccinated employees. Employees account for nearly half of all infections that have occurred in these settings throughout the pandemic.
In 2000, the year Eli Manning joined the Ole Miss football varsity, the population of Oxford was 13,572. In 2010, the next Census year, Oxford had grown by a remarkable 40% rate to nearly 19,000. What’s more, the real estate market soared. Ole Miss alums bought second homes there. The condo market exploded.
Oxford Mayor Robyn Tannehill graduated from Ole Miss in 1992 and has remained in Oxford ever since. She witnessed it all.
“Oxford’s population and real estate market took off during the Eli years, no doubt about it,” Tannehill said. “The years Eli was at Ole Miss were some of Oxford’s greatest years for growth an economic prosperity. The numbers are amazing. The trajectory, thankfully, has continued.”
Jackson lawyer Fred Krutz once told the story of shopping for an Oxford condo Eli’s freshman year. He found one he really liked. “I told the realtor it was just what I wanted but I thought the price was too steep for a little place like Oxford. She told me, ‘If that Manning kid is as good as they say he is, real estate prices in Oxford are fixing to go off the charts.’”
Rick Cleveland
Krutz continued, “Turns out, she was right.”
Back then, it seemed every kid in Oxford or at any Ole Miss sporting event wore a Rebel jersey, number 10. Ole Miss will pay tribute to Manning when that jersey number is retired Saturday evening during ceremonies at the LSU-Ole Miss game. He was inducted into the Ole Miss M Club Alumni Hall of Fame in ceremonies on Thursday night.
Oxford is hardly recognizable from the pre-Eli days. Count Archie Manning, Eli’s father, among those amazed at the transition.
“It’s not the sleepy little college town I remember from my college days, that’s for sure,” the elder Manning said Thursday morning. “I don’t know how much Eli had to do with all the growth, but I do know he loved his time here, just like I did.
“Eli doesn’t get real excited about anything, but he is excited about this weekend.”
Ole Miss has honored Eli Manning for this weekend’s festivities by painting his name in the end zones. (Photo: Ole Miss Athletics)
Eli Manning met his wife, the former Abby McGrew, in Oxford. They returned to Oxford Thursday, bringing their four children in tow. Although they live in the New York area, they retain an Oxford home. Archie and Olivia Manning still have a condo on University Avenue.
Certainly not all the Oxford growth is due to Archie’s and Olivia’s youngest son. Says real estate developer Campbell McCool, “I really believe the fuse was lit when Robert Khayat became chancellor in 1995. The Eli years poured gasoline on the flame. Oxford exploded.”
Ole Miss never won a conference championship during the Eli years. He did lead the Rebels to 24 victories in three seasons as the starter and set 45 school records. He capped off his college career with an almost perfect, MVP performance in a Cotton Bowl victory. He was a first team All American and finished third in Heisman Trophy voting.
But those numbers don’t tell why he became such a beloved Ole Miss legend. As was the case with his father, some of Eli’s greatest, most valiant performances came in defeat — such as the time, as a sophomore, he threw for seven touchdowns against Arkansas in a losing cause.
Peyton Manning, left, Eli Manning, and Cooper Manning on the field as their dad Archie’s No. 18 was retired in Oxford. (Photo: Ole Miss Athletics)
Khayat, now retired, once told me why he believed Eli Manning has become such a beloved icon at Ole Miss. It wasn’t just his on field accomplishments or the two Super Bowl MVP trophies he won with the New York Giants. It wasn’t just the fact that Ole Miss season ticket sales increased 61% — or $5 million per year — during Eli’s college career.
“It’s the image he projects: wholesome, honorable, intelligent, humble,” Khayat said. “And it’s not just an image. That’s Eli. He’s the quintessential student-athlete. Every college wishes it had an Eli Manning. We were so fortunate to have him at Ole Miss.”
Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, where Eli will be honored Saturday evening, underwent a 10,000-seat, $25 million expansion during No. 10’s time there. That’s when Ole Miss began construction on the the indoor performance facility, now known as The Manning Center, for Archie and Olivia Manning.
Eventually, all that might have happened anyway. It wouldn’t have happened nearly so fast had it not been for Eli Manning.
This weekend’s ceremonies coincide with the notable recruiting visit to Ole Miss of a football prospect named Arch Manning, Archie’s grandson, Cooper Manning’s son, Eli’s nephew and the No. 1 recruit nationally in the class of 2023.
Coincidence? Certainly not.
“I have no idea where Arch is going and I try to stay out of it,” Archie Manning said. “But I am happy it works out that he will be here this weekend for his uncle.”
The Mississippi Supreme Court has scheduled an execution in the case of a Union County man convicted of killing his wife — the first execution scheduled in Mississippi since 2012.
David Neal Cox was sentenced to death in 2012.
David Neal Cox was sentenced to death in 2012 after pleading guilty to all eight charges against him, including one count of capital murder, two counts of kidnapping, one count of burglary, one of firing into a dwelling, and three counts of sexual battery.
In 2010, Cox broke into the home of his sister-in-law, shot his estranged wife twice, and barricaded himself, his wife, his son and his stepdaughter in the home for 10 hours. The wife died due to lack of medical treatment, and the stepdaughter was sexually assaulted twice during the 10-hour period.
Cox’s attorneys filed a petition for post-conviction relief (the lessening of a sentence) in 2016 citing multiple issues with the trial, but Cox subsequently submitted multiple motions asking to have his court-counsel dismissed, all appeals terminated, and his execution scheduled. Cox has submitted multiple letters to the court stating his guilt and his belief that he should be executed.
A hearing occurred in February 2021 to determine Cox’s mental competence, which found that he was capable of understanding the gravity of the situation and that his motions could be honored. His court-appointed attorneys submitted appeals to this ruling, which resulted in the Supreme Court decision that was issued today.
The Supreme Court scheduled Cox to be executed on Nov. 17, 2021, at 6 p.m.
Mississippi Today reporter Geoff Pender contributed to this reporting.
It was late at night in December 2018 when Andy Flores discovered an opportunity that would change his life.
The senior at Ocean Springs High School was searching the internet for college scholarships when he came across a result for an aid program on the website for Mississippi’s Office of Student Financial Aid. The description said the program paid for all four years of college.
Flores was intrigued. The son of Panamanian and Mexican immigrants, he was the first in his family to apply for college, much less attend. Flores knew he was smart, but whether his family could afford to pay for college was another matter entirely.
Huddled over his laptop, Flores read through the qualifications for the Higher Education Legislative Plan for Needy Students (HELP) grant: A 20 or higher on the ACT? Check — Flores had scored a 33. A GPA better than 2.5? Check. Coming from a household making less than $39,500? Check.
“I was like, ‘Wow, wait, I should apply,’” Flores said.
20-year-old Andy Flores started a petition in support of the HELP program after he learned the Post-Secondary Board’s proposed doing away with the grant. Credit: Andy Flores
Three years later,Flores is thriving as a double-major in public policy and philosophy in the honors college at the University of Mississippi. The 20-year-old is the co-founder of the First-Generation Student Network, and, when he graduates, he plans to continue advocating for marginalized students in Mississippi.
“The HELP grant quite literally changed my life and saved my chance at higher education,” Flores told Mississippi Today.
After years of budget woes, the Post-Secondary Board, which oversees student financial aid in Mississippi, proposed last week a drastic overhaul of the state’s programs. In an unanimous vote, the board recommended replacing the state’s three existing programs with the “Mississippi One Grant,” which would award financial aid using a formula of need plus merit. “Need” would be determined by a student’s Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), and “merit” would be based on composite ACT scores.
Jim Turcotte, the chair of the Post-Secondary Board, said the redesign is intended to give financial aid to more students. But with a finite pot of funds, granting aid to more students will necessitate decreasing the average amount of each award — especially for the poorest students.
If the Legislature adopts the program this session, low-income students will lose thousands of dollars in financial aid. Flores, as a current HELP recipient, would not see his award go down: The proposed program has a legacy period. But the difference between Flores current award under HELP grant and what he would get from the Mississippi One Grant is illustrative of what prospective students will face under the proposed program.
Over the course of his four years at UM, Flores is slated to receive more than $35,000 in financial aid from the HELP. That’s a yearly award of approximately $8,700, the annual tuition at UM. With the Mississippi One grant, Flores would get the maximum four-year award — of just $18,000.
Yet low-income students weren’t included in the Post-Secondary Board’s discussions of the proposal. The board convened a panel of eight financial aid directors to rewrite the programs, but they did not bring students, their parents or families into the policy-making process.
Now, these students are speaking out. Flores has started a campaign called “Help save HELP” to compile testimonials in an effort to make sure legislators know how much the program means to students and their families. A change.org petition that Flores created already has over 1,000 signatures.
“We want to talk about a college education as a great equalizer, but then we get this on our plate, when the HELP grant has been shown to be effective time and time again,” Flores said. “It’s a big, jumbled mess.”
Noah Watts was near tears when he got his financial aid award the summer after his senior year at East Union High School. Watts always knew he wanted to go to college, but with a single mother who works as a receptionist in a doctor’s office, he didn’t know how his family would afford it. But thanks to more than $8,500 in annual financial aid from the HELP grant, he’s now a sophomore at University of Mississippi considering studying pre-health.
Noah Watts attends University of Mississippi with the support of the HELP grant.
Under the Mississippi One Grant, Watts would struggle to afford UM. With an ACT of 33 and an expected family contribution of zero, Watts would receive the highest annual aid award of $4,500 under the proposed program, leaving him to make up the more than $4,000 difference through scholarships or the Pell Grant.
“I was just worried, instantly,” Watts said of when he learned about the proposed changes. “It was like a very, very bad feeling in my stomach. I was thinking, ‘What if that was me? What if this was two years earlier, and I had that money taken away from me?’”
Without the HELP grant, students who talked with Mississippi Today say that in order to attend college, they might’ve had to take jobs or student loans, making it harder to focus on their studies or get involved in clubs. For many students, their life would be radically different without the HELP grant.
“I would probably be homeless — I probably wouldn’t be talking to you right now,” said Tabrelle Deering, a senior accounting major at Mississippi State University. “The HELP grant enabled me to live off campus and pay all my bills for each entire semester and have a little bit of money left over in case of emergency.”
Tabrelle Deering said the HELP grant is what allows her to afford her bills as a college student. Credit: Tabrelle Deering
Deering is the second person in her family to graduate high school. Her mother died when she was 15, so when it came time to apply for college, she had to do it on her own while taking care of her four siblings.
“I did my FAFSA completely on my own,” she said. “It was a bit difficult, but Google was a big help. … It was just kinda like, if I was gonna do it, I knew I had to do it by myself.”
She didn’t know if college was going to be possible until she got the HELP grant. And now, like many HELP recipients, Deering wants to give back to the state that has helped her by becoming a teacher.
Other students say the HELP grant has fostered a sense of social responsibility.
“Programs like the HELP grant are Mississippi’s smartest investment,” said Justin Childs, a junior at Mississippi State University. “For Mississippi to have the most competitive and educated workforce, it needs to address those who are most harmed by systemic oppression and poverty.”
Childs receives around $9,100 a year from the HELP grant. “It was my ticket” to college, he said.
But under the Mississippi One Grant, Childs would see his financial aid award drop to $3,300 a year. Childs would receive $2,500 for his “need,” the maximum award, so the decrease is mainly due to his ACT score, which is a 21.
Justin Childs, a junior at Mississippi State University, said the HELP grant makes it possible for him to focus on leaving at mark at his school.
The minimum ACT score to receive aid from the Mississippi One Grant is an 18, but students won’t receive any additional “merit” aid unless they score higher than a 20. In Mississippi, the average ACT score is 17.7.
Not only do Mississippi’s public schools do a poor job of preparing students to take the ACT, Childs pointed out that the test is not the best indicator of academic potential.
Child’s ACT score aside, he has flourished at Mississippi State. He is now double majoring in political science and psychology and volunteers as a mentor to first-generation college students.
With the HELP grant, Childs said he can “focus on my studies and what I want to do with my time here at Mississippi State, how I want to leave a mark here and just help the students I mentor.”
The current debate over Mississippi’s financial aid programs gets at an important point: What exactly should the state’s goal be? Is it to award students for good grades in high school, or encourage them to pursue certain fields in the workforce? Should the state help low-income students afford college, or award aid to as many people as possible?
Although they all voted in favor, the nine members of the Post-Secondary Board seemed split during the meeting as to how to answer those questions.
And the Mississippi One Grant will impact students in ways the board did not intend. The proposal meets the board’s goal of giving aid to more students and staying in budget. But it does so by cutting aid substantially for the poorest students. And that means, on average, Black and low-income students will be getting much less.
Under the new program, non-white students at four-year universities will lose approximately $900,000 in state financial aid while white students will gain more than $1.4 million, according to data released from OSFA. At an individual level, the average white student will receive $83 less than they would under the current system, but the average Black student will lose out on $689 of state financial aid. And the average HELP students will lose the most: $1,672.
This shift in resources was “not an intended outcome” of the new program, Turcotte told Mississippi Today. The committee didn’t “deliberately say, ‘let’s take money from this group and give it to that group,” he said. “We didn’t want to have a disparate impact on low-income students, white or Black.”
For their part, students who currently receive the HELP grant say that Mississippi should use its money to help students who need it.
“If the state wants to ensure a brighter future for the students, its teachers, its communities, that starts with investing in people’s future and codifying parts of law that affirm their worth,” Flores said. “I genuinely believe that people tend to flourish when you recognize that they’re not defined by what kind of financial position they’re born into.”
As legislators consider the board’s proposal, Childs said he’d like to see them ask students and families what goals they think Mississippi’s financial aid program should achieve.
“It’s weird to me how a lot of these programs for poor Mississippians are never open-door or town hall or even, what’s the word, referendum,” Childs said.
Low-income students want to know that their contributions to the state matter.
“This is something that helps the future generations,” Deering said. “Taking (HELP) away could possibly hinder a lot of students. … I feel like we should help every child in Mississippi, because we are the future. Why not help your future?”
The Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees announced on Thursday it had unanimously voted to renew Mark Keenum’s contract as president of Mississippi State University for another four years to 2025.
Keenum’s salary will remain $800,000 per year, matching University of Mississippi Chancellor Glenn Boyce as Mississippi’s highest paid college president.
The portion of Keenum’s salary paid for by the state of Mississippi, however, will increase to $400,000. The other half will come from MSU’s Foundation. The state’s universities typically supplement presidents’ salaries through their foundations, which are considered private entities that raise private funds.
Previously, the state of Mississippi paid $300,000 toward Keenum’s salary.
“I appreciate the fact that the Board of Trustees wants to see the strong momentum we have at Mississippi State continue in the years to come,” Keenum said in a press release sent by MSU. “I also appreciate the confidence they have placed in me, and I look forward to continuing to work with them and all of our many stakeholders.”
The vote was taken over a month ago in an executive session at the board’s Sept. 16 regular meeting. Tom Duff, the vice president of the board, made the motion to renew Keenum’s contract.
Duff also moved to include a new provision in Keenum’s contract directing MSU’s Foundation to pay out up to an additional $800,000 in “retention pay” if Keenum remains employed as president through 2025.
“It is wise on the (MSU) Foundation’s part to incentivize stability and continuity in leadership as the institution moves forward,” J. Walt Starr, the IHL board’s president, said in a press release.
IHL’s press release notes that Keenum did not request this additional pay, but the board saw “the wisdom in taking steps to invest in retaining the effective and visionary leadership that Dr. Keenum has brought to MSU.”
Keenum wrote in an Oct. 15 letter to Hines Brannon, the chairman of MSU’s Foundation, that he would like “a majority — if not all” of the additional retention pay to go toward student scholarships, according to MSU’s press release.
“As you know, one of my passions personally is to grow our support of student scholarships,” Keenum wrote. “While I know any possible action on the retention incentive item is several years away, I wanted you to know of my desire to make this investment in our students.”
