OurTupelo

Story by Rick Cleveland, photos by Keith Warren

Let’s take a trip through the thrills, chills and spills of State Championship Weekend at The Rock in Hattiesburg, where the best of Mississippi high school football was on display.

Championship dreams were both lived and dashed. Tears of both joy and despair were shed. Six state champions were crowned. Six gold ball trophies were awarded — and earned. Every player and coach received a medal — and memories for life.

We’ll go in the order the games were played and begin with the Jefferson Davis County Jaguars’ 42-10 Class 3A championship victory over Amory. It was Jaguars coach Lance Mancuso’s record ninth straight state championship and the Jags’ third in five years. Most of Mancuso’s previous titles were won at Bassfield, which was consolidated with nearby Prentiss, to form the new high school five years ago.

Three things haven’t changed with the new school. One, they still run the old, Wing-T offense. Two, they still run exceedingly fast. Three, they still have players named Booth. Demario Booth Jr. ran for 205 yards and three touchdowns to lead the way Friday.

“I’d like to take credit, but it’s really all about these kids,” Mancuso said, with grandchildren tugging at his pants legs. “I’ve been lucky enough to be the head coach of nine amazing football teams, and this group this year was no different. It’s just a collection of great kids and great players who deserve everything they’ve achieved.

“I don’t know why the good Lord has blessed me so.”

Class 1A, the division for Mississippi’s smallest football-playing schools, often produces the best championship games. It produced a doozy Friday afternoon when Bay Springs fired back from a 12-8 halftime deficit to defeat previously unbeaten Hollandale Simmons 32-12 with one of the smallest players on either team leading the way.

In truth, neither Bay Springs, not Simmons, looked like your typical Class 1A team. Their rosters were bigger, and so were their players. But Anthony Newell, who played quarterback and linebacker, showed there is still room in 1A football for a smaller guy with a huge heart. The mite-sized Newell played offense and defense and special teams for the Bulldogs, who won the first state championship in school history.

Newell completed four of six passes and led the ‘Dogs with 10 tackles. More importantly, he handed or pitched the ball 20 times to Anthony Ross, who rambled for 220 yards and two touchdowns and MVP honors.

Bay Springs has been in the playoffs countless times, been to the championship three times, but had never won one. “This championship is for all those teams that came close to doing this in the past,” said Bay Springs coach Dan Brady.

Brandon had won nine straight games. Madison Central had won seven straight. Something had to give in the Friday night battle of Class 6A titans. Finally, in the fourth quarter of a back-forth-struggle, Madison Central took advantage of a Brandon fumble and clinched a 24-17 victory for its first state championship in 22 years and only its second in school history. The game was an instant classic.

“It’s been a long time coming,” Madison Central coach Toby Collums said. “More than anything I’m proud for these kids for finding a way to win a state championship, especially against a group that’s as good and as well-coached as Brandon.”

Jaguars junior quarterback Jake Norris, who just three weeks ago was a reserve tight end, claimed MVP honors with a 178-yard performance that included a 79-yard touchdown pass and then the winning two-yard, TD run in the fourth quarter.

Norris became the Jags’ quarterback when normal starter Vic Sutton suffered a torn ACL two weeks ago. Asked if he would have believed he would be the state championship MVP two weeks ago, Norris responded, “Not in a million years. I had one touchdown all season at tight end. This is crazy … and awesome.

Senatobia’s Hunter Mabry caught three touchdown passes in the 4A championship game. And he lost. Columbia won its first state title in 39 years, prevailing 22-21 when Senatobia missed a short field goal attempt in the final seconds.

Columbia’s 6-foot-4-inch, 340-pound man child Jaheim Oatis, the state’s most coveted recruit (committed to Alabama), was on display, but his much smaller Wildcat teammate Kentrell Jackson made by far the game’s biggest play late in the third quarter with Senatobia leading the game 21-14 and seemingly driving for another touchdown.

Jackson, a 165-pound wide receiver and defensive back, had other ideas. He stripped the ball away from a Senatobia runner, broke three or four tackles, then raced 81 yards for a touchdown, zigging and zagging all the way down the field.

Southern Miss coach Will Hall, watching from the end zone, exclaimed, “Wow, that’s the greatest play I’ve ever seen! That kid’s last name must be Payton!”

No, it was Jackson. “It was just going through my mind I had to make a play,” Jackson would say afterward. “Finally, I made it happen.”

Yes, and then Columbia went for two with Oatis, who primarily plays defense, lining up at left tackle. Naturally, running back Omar Johnson followed Oatis’s push into the end zone for the winning two-point conversion.

NFL legend Vince Lombardi once said, “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can attain excellence.”

The Scott Central Rebels found both this season. Scott Central set the MHSAA championships scoring record in a 72-24 victory over Leflore County to cap a perfect 15-0 season. The Rebels were the lone public school football team in Mississippi this season to finish the season undefeated.

Quez Goss, the team’s 15-year-old sophomore quarterback, might not have been perfect, but he was as close as it gets. He ran for 103 yards and two touchdowns. He threw for 350 yards and six touchdowns. That’s eight touchdowns total, but he was not perfect. Seven of his 24 passes fell incomplete.

Listen: Scott Central won its five playoff games by scores of 54-8, 54-25, 60-14, 60-14 again, and 72-24. That was after a regular season during which the Rebels averaged over 40 points per game.

Said Leflore County coach Eric House: “Scott Central was everything they were advertised to be. They are a great football team. They have the best receivers we’ve seen all year, and that quarterback is a special, special player.”

As the final seconds ticked down in Picayune’s 40-21 State 5A Championship victory over West Point, former Maroon Tide coach Dodd Lee found his successor Cody Stogner on the sidelines. They shared a long, obviously meaningful embrace.

“That man has had the biggest influence of anyone in my life outside my father,” Stogner would later say. “He coached me, he hired me as a coach and gave me a chance. He helped me replace him here as the coach. It’s just a very special moment.”

To win the title, Picayune had to beat the state’s most successful football program, 11-time state champ West Point and its ultra-successful coach Chris Chambless. Afterward, Stogner paid tribute to Chambless and West Point. He said his goal at Picayune has been to emulate in south Mississippi what Chambless has achieved in the Golden Triangle.

“… I don’t know how you wouldn’t want to mirror what those guys have been doing year in and year out. They show up every game and play it the right way. That’s why I’m so proud of my guys and what they have accomplished.”

As Dodd’s teams once did, Stogner’s Maroon Tide runs the somewhat old-fashioned Wing-T offense. They run it, run it, and then run it some more. They ran it for 393 of their 414 yards of total offense. Indeed, they threw the ball only three times all night.

Dante Dowdell ran it for 148 yards and two touchdowns. Chris Davis ran it for 139 yards and two more scores. Darnell Smith chipped in 88 yards and another TD.

In many ways, Picayune did mirror West Point’s season-after-season formula for success. That is, they blocked, tackled and executed to perfection — or at least something mighty close.

The post A Mississippi tradition: Six state championship games, so many thrills appeared first on Mississippi Today.

In this episode of Mississippi Stories, Mississippi Today Editor-At-Large Marshall Ramsey sits down with AARP Mississippi State Director Kimberly L. Campbell. She is responsible for leading and directing AARP’s work in advocacy, community engagement, and communications to serve the 285,000 AARP members in Mississippi.

Previously, she served in the House of Representatives (House District 72) from 2008 to 2016 and clerked for two justices on the Mississippi Supreme Court.

A mom of four girls, Campbell talks about work-life balance, her career, Mississippi and family. It’s an inspiring conversation. 

The post Mississippi Stories: Kimberly Campbell appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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Mississippi residents would enjoy a significant financial boost if they only had a $1 for every time Gov. Tate Reeves advocated eliminating the personal income tax so that the state could compete with Texas, Florida and Tennessee.

“We compete with them every single day for new jobs, and in every instance we are at a disadvantage because they don’t have an income tax and we do,” Reeves said recently.

Reeves wants to eliminate the Mississippi personal income tax within five years.

There are a multitude of ways to compare Mississippi to those three Southern no-income tax states and perhaps to the nation as a whole. And it is no secret that Mississippi lags in comparison to those three states and the entire nation when it comes to wages, health care outcomes and other factors. For instance, Mississippi is last in per capita income and mean household income. Florida, Texas and Tennessee are not in the top 10 in those categories.

The top states in terms of per capita income, such as California, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey and New York, have a significant tax on income.

Surprisingly, Mississippi outpaces many of those states, the nation, and — gulp — those three no-income tax states in personal income growth, adjusted for inflation, for the calendar year 2020.

In 2020, the nation’s personal income grew by a healthy 5.28% while Mississippi’s grew at an even healthier 6.16%. On the other hand, Florida’s personal income grew by 4.89% while Texas increased by 3.58% and Tennessee grew by 3.77%.

Of the nine states without an income tax, only two — Washington and South Dakota — grew faster in personal income than did Mississippi and the United States.

Granted, 2020 was an anomaly in many ways thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic and the massive influx of federal funds that fueled growth, especially in a poor state like Mississippi where those funds had a greater impact. A study by Pew, a national non-profit foundation that provides research on public policy issues, shows that for many years dating back to 2007, Mississippi’s growth in personal income was fairly anemic — dismal for many of those years. And yes, Texas, which has been a booming economic engine for many years, enjoyed much stronger growth in personal income, according to the Pew study. But so did other states that have an income tax, an income tax much bigger than Mississippi such as California, New York and others.

Numerous methods of measuring economic vitality exist, but personal income growth seems like a reasonable way to do so.

According to Sara Leiseca of Pew, “Personal income sums up residents’ paychecks, Social Security benefits, employers’ contributions to retirement plans and health insurance, income from rent and other property, and benefits from public assistance programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, among other items. Personal income excludes realized or unrealized capital gains, such as those from stock market investments.”

Despite those strong personal income growth numbers Mississippi enjoyed in 2020, it is true, as Reeves points out, that Tennessee, Texas and Florida outpace Mississippi in most areas.

But the bottom line is that Mississippi is at a disadvantage in many areas, not just in tax policy, when competing with those states. Mississippi does not have the tourism options and large cities that Florida has. Mississippi also does not have Nashville, becoming one of the leading cities in the nation, like Tennessee has. And Texas has multiple cities than are larger than our largest city, Jackson, and some of those liberal-leaning cities like Austin offer high-paying tech job options.

Where Mississippi competes directly with Tennessee and wins every day is in DeSoto County — a Memphis suburb.

For decades, DeSoto County has been one of Mississippi’s fastest growing counties, primarily because of people leaving Shelby County in Tennessee, home of Memphis, where there is no income tax, to move across the state line to live and pay that income tax that Reeves so disdains.

According to the 2020 Census, Shelby County grew by 0.2% during the last 10 years. Across the state line in Mississippi, where people have to pay income tax, DeSoto County grew by almost 15%.

People chose to live in DeSoto County and pay the income tax instead of across the state line in Tennessee where there is no income tax.

And in terms of economic development, DeSoto County also is winning against Tennessee — at least according to none other than Gov. Reeves.

“DeSoto County and Mississippi can compete with the best of the best…and win,” the governor said recently on social media.

Maybe, Mississippians could also get a $1 for each time the governor says that.

The post Gov. Reeves seems obsessed with Texas, Florida, Tennessee. But are they fair comparisons for our state? appeared first on Mississippi Today.

HATTIESBURG — Where to start on Madison Central’s marvelously competitive, exceedingly hard-fought 24-17 Class 6A championship victory over Brandon Friday night at The Rock at Southern Miss?

I could tell you about the fierce hitting on both sides of the ball. Or about how well-coached both teams were, or how cleanly played the game was despite all the brutally hard knocks. I could tell you about heroic efforts on the part of opposing quarterbacks Jake Norris of Madison Central and 15-year-old sophomore Landon Varnes of Brandon. I could tell you about running backs De’Andre Pullen, who gained 132 yards rushing for Madison Central and Jarvis Durr, who ran for 116 and a touchdown for Brandon.

Or maybe I should just let Demario Davis, the New Orleans Saints linebacking great and former Brandon Bulldog who walked the sidelines throughout, sum it up.

“Man, there were a lot of tremendous athletes out there tonight on both sides,” Davis said, as fans of both teams waited to pose with him for photos. “It was a hard-fought, well-played game by two extremely well-coached teams. Both teams should be proud. I mean, that was one heck of a football game.”

And his team lost…

Those of us who follow Mississippi high school football expected nothing less. After all, you had two of the state’s largest high schools, natural rivals located in suburbs of Jackson. You had the 12-1 Madison Central Jaguars, winners of nine straight, going against the 11-2 Brandon Bulldogs, winners of 11 straight. You had two of the state’s top coaches, the Jaguars’ Toby Collums, matching wits with Brandon’s 30-year-old whiz kid Sam Williams.

It had all the makings. It did not disappoint.

Every time you thought one team clearly had the upper hand and momentum, the other team came off the deck and fired back.

Brandon landed the first big blow on the game’s first possession. Varnes, the 5-foot, 10-inch 15-year-old who has a learner’s permit but no driver’s license, nevertheless drove the Bulldogs 82 yards on eight plays, mixing Varnes’ hard running with some slick passing of his own. With blitzing Jaguars in his face on both plays, Varnes hit Lester Miller with a 33-yard pass and Devin Thigpen with a 40-yarder to the Jaguar one. After a holding penalty and a sack moved it back to the 23, Brandon faced third and goal from nearly a quarter of the football field. So, Varnes, again in the face of a relentless pass rush, hit Miller with a 23-yard touchdown. You should know Varnes was playing despite a strained knee ligament.

Said Brandon offensive coordinator Wyatt Rogers, daddy of Mississippi State quarterback Will Rogers: “I’ll tell you this about Landon Varnes, he’s tougher than a lighter knot. He ain’t nothing but a winner.”

You could say the same about Madison Central quarterback Jake Norris, a strapping 6-2, 205-pound junior, who was the backup tight end before starting QB Vic Sutton suffered a bad knee injury two weeks before against Oxford.

Norris passed and ran the Jags into position for a 35-yard Max Zuluga field goal that cut the deficit to 7-3 early in the second quarter. Then, Norris guided the Jags on a nine-play, 59-yard play touchdown drive for a 10-7 lead.

That’s the way the half ended, but Brandon quickly tied it 10-10 early in the third on Jalen Ballard’s 33-yard field goal. Two plays later, Norris hit the play of the game, a 79-yard strike to wide receiver Isiah Spencer, who was speeding down the middle of the field, two steps ahead of a defender. It was a play-action pass, which caught the Brandon safeties cheating up to stop the run. Norris threw a strike.

“We practiced it all week,” Spencer said. “We knew it was going to work, and it did.”

That made it 17-10. Again, the Bulldogs answered early in the fourth quarter with Durr capping a 78-yard drive with a one-yard touchdown run to tie the score at 17.

You just had the feeling that in such a cleanly played game that eventually a turnover might become the difference. And it did. With Brandon driving at its own 47, Braxton Barney, who was all over the field making plays this night, stripped the ball away from Durr, and Victor Hollins recovered at the Madison Central 48.

The Jaguars covered the 52 yards in seven plays, all runs, with Norris pulling away from a Bulldog into the end zone for the final two yards and the winning points with 3 minutes, 53 seconds remaining. 

“He’s a dude now, he’s special,” Collums said of Norris, who ran for 46 yards and threw for 115. “I’m so proud for him and for our whole team and our community. It’s been a long time (22 years) since Madison Central won one of these. Doing it against a great team like Brandon makes it all the more special.”

The game ended the way these state championship games so often do, with tears of joy on one side and tears of abject sadness on the other. And here’s the deal: Both Madison Central and Brandon are stacked with high-level talent in freshmen, sophomore and junior classes. We could see this happen again next December and then beyond.

Lucky us.

The post Madison Central outlasts Brandon in what was a Class 6A instant classic appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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Since 2018, more than one in ten Mississippians received drinking water from their public utility that had an illegal level of contaminants in it, according to state and federal health data.

By far the most common contaminants that exceeded federal limits were disinfection byproducts, or DBPs; 29 utilities in the state, serving a combined 278,000 residents, exceeded the legal limit for those since 2018.

DBPs form when chlorine or another disinfectant used for treatment reacts with organic materials in water. But overexposure to DBPs, which are widespread across the U.S., can damage a person’s liver and nervous system, according to the CDC. They can also increase risks of cancer and affect pregnancies, says an Environmental Working Group study that published in November. 

Other contaminants exceeding legal limits in the state included arsenic and radium, both of which are carcinogens. In total, Mississippi Today found 31 utilities serving 328,000 residents with contamination violations since 2018, using state health department and Environmental Protection Agency data.

Below is a map of drinking water contaminant violations found in the state:

The EWG study — which includes a tool for users to find tap water contaminants by zip code — argues that federal limits, many of which are based on decades-old research, are not nearly strict enough; for DBPs, for example, EWG’s recommended limits are over a hundred times smaller than the EPA’s.  

“We’ve taken a look at a lot of drinking water requirements, and they’re quite outdated or they’re based on outdated science,” said Tasha Stoiber, Ph.D, a scientist at EWG. “Just because your drinking water is meeting this federal legal limit, it doesn't really mean it's without concern.”

When asked about the contamination data, Mississippi water experts pointed to the financial hardships most utilities face, and the expensive procedures, such as reverse osmosis, required to remove DBPs. Moreover, they added that what contaminant data does exist doesn't paint the whole picture.

Unknown scope of water contamination

Whether it’s a type of contaminant or a type of system, there are several holes in the way the state and country conducts drinking water testing, especially in rural areas.

Jason Barrett, an associate professor at Mississippi State University’s Water Resources Research Institute, analyzes testing data from private wells, where about 13% of Mississippians get their drinking water.

No testing requirements exist for those private connections, but anyone interested can pay between $10 to $20 to get their water tested at either a private lab or the state health department. Those tests, however, only look at a small fraction of the contaminants that public systems are required to check for. 

Barrett said what private well data does exist is concerning, showing a coliform bacteria presence in about one-third of those connections. But that data is only a tiny glance of the reality: MSU and the Mississippi State Department of Health together test about 1,500 connections per year, which is only 1% of all the state's private wells.   

“These are people that are going out of their way, saying, ‘Hey, I don’t know what’s in my water, but I'd like to know it’s safe,’” he said. “So these are people that are curious and conscious about it, and we’re still seeing about a third of them have bacteria. 

“Think about all the people that don’t really care and don’t really know to care.”

Too many utilities, not enough money

Similar to the publicized shortfall with Jackson’s water system funding, many utilities are struggling to stay up to code because of aging infrastructure and a decrease in federal funding over the last few decades. 

“I think what is often lost in these conversations is that when the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act were enacted by Congress in the 1970s, they came with significant federal investment,” said Stephanie Showalter-Otts, director of the National Sea Grant Law Center. “It wasn't local communities and towns and cities paying to build water treatment facilities, that money was coming from the federal government.”

Showalter-Otts works with a group at the University of Mississippi studying the presence of lead in the state’s water systems, the severity of which is unclear because of limited federal requirements and Mississippi’s lack of lead tracking. 

Barrett added that financial constraints are also due to the amount of utilities in Mississippi.

“We’re in bad need of some consolidation across the state,” he said. “We’ve got way too many systems for the population. If you look at public water systems per capita, we’ve got to be leading the nation. As small as we are, less than 3 million people, and we’re sitting at over 1,100 public water supplies.”

He explained that nearby utilities can save costs by combining operations, such as building a shared well between two towns. 

Rural water associations, he added, are especially handicapped because they serve such small populations, and their board has to be comprised of members from the community.

Overall, Showalter-Otts expressed the need for more testing, whether it’s for lead or for agricultural-related contaminants such as nitrogen and phosphorus. When asked about the hundreds of millions of dollars coming to Mississippi through federal legislation, she said she hopes the state will value water systems with its spending. 

“I think it's important that water be considered part of our infrastructure,” she said. “Infrastructure is more than roads and bridges, it’s also our water, wastewater and drinking water, how we move water around in our communities.” 

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After cries from struggling child care providers, many of whom were forced to stay open during the pandemic even while schools closed, Mississippi has started taking federal grant applications from day care centers.

The Mississippi Department of Human Services received $319 million from the American Rescue Plan Act in April to help stabilize the child care industry. Centers may apply for a direct grant, which could be over $400,000 depending on their capacity size, on the agency’s website.

The Division of Early Childhood Care and Development hosted a virtual meeting on Dec. 1 to answer questions about the application process and how the money may be used.

The grant program, called Child Care Strong, is sure to provide breathing room to often understaffed, cash-strapped centers and ideally create the opportunity for improvements within the facilities.

Patricia Young, owner of School of Champions Development & Learning Academy in Itta Bena, said she hopes to use the money to hire and retain more workers and increase salaries for certified teachers.

“We are on pins and needles. We need the money,” Young said.

But the influx in funding won’t necessarily translate to more working parents who need child care getting it — which Mississippi has an interest in if it wants to grow its economy and strengthen its workforce.

“A lot of our centers, they’re under-enrolled, they’ve got empty seats, they’ve got parents who are on their waiting lists needing child care, it’s just the parent can’t afford to pay,” said Carol Burnett, founder of the Low-Income Child Care Initiative, which primarily works with child care centers that accept the state’s Child Care Payment Program voucher for low-income parents. “So if this money steps in and pays, then conceivably they could add children and fill those slots. But there’s nothing in the application or in the requirements from DHS that they do that.”

Young said many working parents in her area, who work at fish plants and fast food restaurants, cannot afford child care out-of-pocket but are also struggling to get their application for a voucher approved at the Mississippi Department of Human Services. Thousands of parents have been kicked off the program in the last year, according to a recent center survey, and due to the red tape, the program is only serving just a fraction of those who would qualify based on their income.

Burnett said she’s concerned that the state is making the grants accessible to well-off child care centers that serve parents in the professional class, so the state isn’t targeting the money to the highest need areas. Meanwhile, officials have said they don’t intend to put more money in the voucher program, which they say is serving every eligible applicant despite widespread complaints.

State agency officials argue the federally stated purpose for the stabilization funding isn’t necessarily to expand child care. However, “providers are encouraged not to collect copayments from families during the grant period to the extent possible and prioritize such relief for families struggling to make either type of payment,” the website states.

The state received an additional $199 million in its Child Care Development Fund block grant, which provides funding for the voucher, from the American Rescue Plan Act. Agency officials have said they may use this funding to supplement the stabilization grants directly to child care centers.

The state could use this money to fund vouchers for the many parents who would become eligible for the program if the agency did away with a requirement — that neither federal regulations or state law requires — that single parents sue their child’s noncustodial parent in order to qualify for child care assistance.

But despite an outcry from providers and advocates, the agency has not entertained changing the policy.

Child care centers may use the new grant funding on “personnel costs, rent or mortgage payments, insurance, facility maintenance and improvements, personal protective equipment (PPE) and COVID-related supplies, training, and professional development related to the health and safety practices, goods and services needed to resume providing care, mental health supports for children and early educators, and reimbursement of costs associated with the current public health emergency,” and agency press release said.

Licensed or registered child care providers are eligible for the grant if they are in good standing with the department, federal accountability reports, and have not violated some rule, such as committing fraud within the voucher program or having their license suspended by the Department of Health. The centers do not have to participate in the voucher program to qualify. Head start and state or locally-funded Pre-K programs are not qualified.

“This third round of direct pandemic-related support is part of our continued service to Mississippi children and childcare providers who continue to feel the effects of the pandemic,” Mississippi Department of Human Services director Bob Anderson said in the release. “Childcare is essential to our workforce and getting families back to work in support of our state economy and providing tangible help to Mississippi children to create hope for tomorrow.” 

The state also issued $47 million in Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, or CARES Act, funding through similar grants to child care centers in 2020.

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Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch has contracted to pay a D.C. law firm and two out-of-state public relations firms up to $558,000 in her efforts to defend Mississippi laws seeking to ban or limit access to abortion.

Scott Stewart, Fitch’s solicitor general, argued before the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday that the 1973 Roe v. Wade high court court ruling guaranteeing abortion rights should be overturned. Stewart, a former Department of Justice appointee of former President Donald Trump, was tabbed as solicitor general by Fitch earlier this year. She created the post of solicitor general in 2020 soon after her election.

Fitch sat by Stewart’s side at the counsel’s table during the arguments.

Fitch contracted with the law firm last year and the PR firms this summer. The contracts say the state will pay up to $558,000 for the work, but could be amended to pay more. The contract with the law firm has already been amended from its original $300,000 cap to $450,000.

The contracts are with:

• Schaerr Jaffe, a Washington, D-C.-based law firm, for up to $450,000. The firm is charging the state $385 an hour for work by partners, $285 an hour for associates and $125 an hour for paralegals. So far, Mississippi taxpayers have paid the firm $369,537 from April 2020 through early August, according to state records.
• Debbee Heller Hancock, a Birmingham-based public relations consultant, for up to $60,000. The firm is being paid up to $5,000 a month to “provide assistance in developing messaging, drafting written and graphic materials, working with reporters and others … related to AGO litigation.” Hancock had been paid $24,031 from June through mid October.
• Becky Rogness, a Alexandria, Va.-based public relations consultant, for up $48,000. The firms is being paid up to $4,000 a month for the same services listed in the Hancock contract. Rogness had been paid $18,000 from July through early November.

The contracts with the public relations consultants for now run from June 2021 to June 2022. The contract with Schaerr Jaffee is for February 2020 until Feb. 28, 2023. The contracts could be extended.

In addition to payments to private entities, public employees in Fitch’s office, such as Stewart, also are working to defend the anti-abortion laws.

Michelle Williams, Fitch’s chief of staff, said it is “perfectly legitimate” to hire the public relations firms to help with the litigation since the Attorney’s General Office has only one in-house communications person. She said, “The AGO brought on two communications individuals on contract for a total of $108,000 annually. We have one person on staff full-time doing communications.”

Since Fitch took office in January 2020, she has fired two communications directors.

Williams said Schaerr Jaffe did not do any work on the case that was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday. She said it was working on another abortion case that was being heard in the lower courts and was put on hold while the Supreme Court decided whether it, as Fitch is requesting, will overturn Roe v. Wade.

She said only attorneys within the AG’s office worked on the Supreme Court arguments.

“We are not a very big Attorney General’s Office compared to other attorneys general,” William said.

The Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case before the Supreme Court centers around Mississippi’s 2018 law that banned abortions after 15 weeks. That law was prevented from going into effort by lower federal courts, based on Roe v. Wade and on other rulings by the Supreme Court.

After the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, Fitch argued that not only should the 15-week ban be upheld, but that Roe v. Wade in its totality should be overturned. Since the Legislature passed the 15-week ban, it also has enacted a ban on abortions after six weeks. That is part of what is being argued in the lower court and what is on hold while the Supreme Court rules. If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, the six-week ban would be moot. The state has in place a 2007 trigger law that would make abortion illegal in Mississippi if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

READ MORE: Supreme Court appears likely to uphold Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban

Shaerr Jaffe, LLP is a self-described “boutique law firm specializing in high-profile trial and appellate litigation.” The firm has handled hundreds of Supreme Court proceedings and have won eight cases before the high court.

Partner Gene Schaerr served in the George H.W. Bush White House as associate counsel to the president and previously clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justice Antonin Scalia. He clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals D.C. Circuit for then-Judge Kenneth Starr. Partner Erik S. Jaffe clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Court of Appeals Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg.

The contract with the AG’s office said Schaerr Jaffe will “review relevant documents, meet with any and all officials, witnesses and representatives as deemed necessary.”

Both public relations consultants have deep roots in Republican politics and have been advocates for conservative social issues, such as opposing abortions. But Debbee Heller Hancock wrote an essay urging Republicans in the U.S. House and Senate to vote to impeach Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Republicans often criticized Fitch’s Democratic predecessor, Jim Hood, for his use of outside counsel, which he normally hired on a contingency basis, meaning they did not get paid unless they prevailed in court.

READ MORE: Lynn Fitch wants to overturn Roe v. Wade. Is she up to something more?

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A federal judge has struck down the part of Mississippi’s eviction law that allows landlords to immediately seize the property of delinquent tenants, saying it has “unpredictable and absurd results.”

In 2019, an apartment manager stood in front of Columbus paralegal Samantha Conner while he took nearly everything she owned — the electronics she used to stay employed, her children’s birth certificates and baby photos, her college diplomas and even the Playstation her teenage son bought himself with money he earned.

All over less than a thousand dollars in unpaid rent.

With the help of the University of Mississippi School of Law Civil Legal Clinic, Conner eventually sued the apartment owner, property manager and constable, asking the judge to examine the law and award her damages.

Conner told Mississippi Today she lost more than just belongings that day, which is why the latest ruling means so much to her.

“To know that I was the catalyst for getting this ridiculous law changed, that gives me back some of the power that I feel that I had lost,” she said Wednesday.

Facing a surprise removal warrant in early 2019, Conner tried to pack up whatever belongings she could after the property manager at her apartment and a county constable entered her apartment, ordering her to leave.

But apartment manager Kevin Casteel demanded she drop the items — her laptop she needs for freelance work, hard drives with client information on them and even a tub of Vaseline.

“Casteel and (Lowndes County Constable Sonny) Sanders followed her through the apartment like she was a criminal trying to steal her own property,” Conner’s attorney wrote.

Conner recounted what Casteel told Sanders during the removal: “Make her give it back. Make her give it back. She can’t keep it. Tell her she can’t keep that. Arrest her. Arrest her.”

Casteel later testified that he sold, donated or trashed Conner’s things.

U.S. District Judge Michael Mills said there’s just one way to look at what Casteel did: “It can only be regarded as an act of pure mean-spiritedness and spite that Casteel deemed it preferable to throw plaintiff’s cherished personal items in a dumpster rather than allow her to keep them or return them to her,” he wrote.

But state law apparently allowed him to do it.

Despite what Mills called “very vague and non-specific” arguments Mississippi Attorney General’s Office presented in the case in defense of the law, “This court concludes that the Mississippi statutes in question are, in fact, unconstitutional and must be so declared,” the Nov. 30 order reads.

The judge’s order includes a stay pending an appeal, giving the Legislature the opportunity to revise the statute in its 2022 session. Michelle Williams, chief of staff for Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, did not say whether the office planned to appeal. “We are reviewing the order and evaluating our next steps at this time,” she said in an email.

When contacted in February for an initial story about Conner’s case, Jack Hayes, the Columbus attorney representing Casteel and the apartment complex owner James Brooks, told Mississippi Today: “It may sound harsh. And it may be harsh, but they followed the letter of the law.”

Hayes told Mississippi Today on Thursday that the judge’s ruling has “put everyone in a tailspin.” He said he’s received calls from realtors and leasing agents who are concerned about how to handle evictions going forward. Hayes also said that it’s rare for a case like this to result in a judge finding state law unconstitutional, and it’s never happened in a case of his. But it’s the attorney general’s office, not Hayes, who is responsible for defending the law.

Hayes said that the latest ruling does not resolve Conner’s request for damages against his clients, whom he still argues never acted illegally. The parties could reach a settlement before trial, otherwise a jury will decide what the defendants owe Conner.

On top of losing access to all her basic necessities, Conner has faced homelessness on and off since the eviction.

“I know what struggling is, and I know the feeling of being without a home and having a family and what that entails,” Conner said. “I’m glad that they’re finally recognizing how many lives this has wrecked, because you can’t rely on all the landlords to just be upstanding individuals and to use the law the way it was supposedly written.”

Mississippi’s Landlord-Tenant Act, amended in 2018 and 2019, provides that as soon as a judge grants an eviction in court, the landlord may immediately assume ownership of all the tenant’s belongings located on the property, even a trailer home. An eviction is almost always ordered automatically if the tenant is even one day behind on rent and there is no guarantee of a grace period that would give them the time to move.

No other states allow landlords to immediately seize tenant property the way Mississippi does, lawyers with the Mississippi Center for Justice told Mississippi Today earlier this year.

The law says: “If the judge grants possession of this premises to the landlord and you do not remove your personal property, including any manufactured home, from the premises before the date and time ordered by the judge, then the landlord may dispose of your personal property without any further legal action.”

Mississippi Center for Justice attorney William Bedwell said the recent judge’s order presents an opportunity to revamp the entire eviction process in Mississippi, “because it’s kind of a Frankenstein process the way our statutes are split up.”

“Judges, landlords and tenants would all benefit from better clarity,” he said.

Mills wrote that one reason he was compelled to find the statute unconstitutional is because it is one of the harshest eviction provisions in the nation. He argued that even if tenants are given notice that any property left at the apartment past the date of removal may be “disposed,” no reasonable person would anticipate they be forced to leave their belongings at the premise.

“This court can discern no reason why a tenant in plaintiff’s position would have even dreamed, based on the language of the summons, that she would be confronted with the Kafkaesque nightmare which actually transpired in this case. Such things do not happen in America. In forty-nine states in this country, this perception would be correct,” he wrote.

Mills described a statute in West Virginia, for example, which specifies that for property to be considered “abandoned,” the tenant “must have ‘informed the landlord in writing’ that such is the case, or else it must be ‘garbage,’” Mills wrote in his order.

“Mississippi’s eviction statutes fail to engage in such a reasonable balancing of the interests of the landlord and tenant, instead giving the landlord full and complete authority to immediately ‘dispose of’ any personal property of the tenant, with unpredictable and absurd results.”

The rule also creates scenarios where tenants can have wildly different outcomes based on the moods of the landlord.

“A tenant fortunate enough to be evicted by a landlord with a modicum of human decency might be allowed to take much of her property with her,” Mills wrote, “while less fortunate tenants, such as the plaintiff in this case, might see cherished personal possessions such as family photos and diplomas maliciously discarded.”

What happened in Conner’s case may be outrageous, but it’s not entirely unique. The University of Mississippi legal clinic recently filed two other suits against Casteel and Brooks, alleging they did the same thing to other tenants.

Conner’s attorney Desiree Hensley described the scenario: Casteel and the constable show up, force the tenants to leave with nothing, then when the tenants beg, even show up with cash to try to pay for their stuff back, they’re told, “No, this is mine.”

“I think it was their business model,” Hensley said.

Hensley said that when Conner first reached out to the clinic, the team immediately sent a letter to the landlord, notifying him he had violated Conner’s rights and asking him to return her belongings, in which case they wouldn’t have sued. He refused.

Hensley said that without brave victims like Conner, constitutional challenges don’t happen.

“Our hope is that that leads her to get damages that help her put her life back in order,” Hensley said.

Conner has been living in a hotel for the past three months. When reached on Wednesday with the news of the ruling, Conner’s initial tone after answering the phone changed: “Are you serious?” she said through laughter.

“You don’t know how much I needed this news today,” Conner said. “I can jump out of bed and click my heels. I am homeless now again because of them. And so this makes me sing from the inside out. Trust me. You can’t see it, and probably can’t hear it in my voice, because I am extremely depressed right now, but this definitely gives me some light out of that dark tunnel.”

“I think that this is going to enable people and may give other people the courage to be able to go forward and maybe seek out some justice,” Conner continued. “They may have been scared. And now I have been able to provide this footing, so that they can use this law now to say that, ‘Hey, you cannot do this to people.’ People matter. We have feelings. And I don’t think that people grasp that. When you’re poor and struggling, people just think that you’re nothing. And I want people to understand that our feelings are valid as well.”

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